Sam Young YA Fantasy Author

I’ve Moved! Move with me!

Sam Young — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 15:34:55 +0000

Hey all! Just to let you know I’ve moved my blog to http://samyoungyafantasyauthor.blogspot.com!

Cheers!

Sam x

Too-much-laptop-visual-deficiency

Sam Young — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 19:06:12 +0000

My eyes feel a little bleary. That’s probably because they’ve been glued to this bloody screen for the last eight hours…yes I did say eight hours. I’ve written a chapter in my new book (yay!), and am enjoying writing it very mucho!!! Probably went a little overboard on those exclamation points but you get the idea. Me>new book=happy>

After the writing of the chapter, I did a little note-writing of the next chapter and then I started fiddling around with my website. I’ve added a facebook button for all those people out there who want to be my friend

I’m sure there are loads of you! …

…no? well that’s just mean.

Anyhoo I’ve also added an amazon mp3 player so you can hear snatches of the songs on my author playlist, just in case you hadn’t heard of some of them. Moreover, I’ve added a new page called FUN STUFF! Fun for me anyway…hopefully fun for you all. It’s got crappy book cover ideas and some of my drawings for the book trailer and random photos and extra tidbits that are relevant to the novel if you’ve read it. If you haven’t read it…

…please do

The Notebook

Sam Young — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 10:35:46 +0000

My alarm went off this morning. I don’t have that annoying sharp, jerk you out of peaceful dreaming kind of alarm. No. That kind of alarm would put me in a pissy mood for the rest of the day. My alarm is the gentle tones of Bats for Lashes’ Daniel. Still…it is an alarm. Usually when it goes off you fumble to grab your phone (my alarm) and switch the damn thing off so that you can shove off your duvet in anger and stumble into the bathroom in irritation. All of this followed by the daily ritual of getting ready for work and spending the rest of the day wishing you were doing anything but what you were doing. Now…I actually like my job. But I love writing. So when my alarm went off this morning it was with wonderful realisation that I did in fact have the day off –>

Whilst the rest of my colleagues are no doubt out shopping or vegging in front of the tv enjoying their little drop of freedom I’m scribbling notes for a new novel and am sooo excited. There’s nothing better than the rush of a new idea I’m note-jotting frantically in the hopes that I get lots of it down before I return to work tomorrow.

It’s taken me away from my new addiction which is the site goodreads.com. If you haven’t joined it and you’re a fellow bookworm then you should, and then friend me

For now I’m heading back to the notebook – my notebook, not Nicholas Sparks’ notebook (just to clarify in case there was some confusion there).

Wow my goldfish is HUGE. When did he get that big? Hmm…that’s suspicious.

Sam x

Yahoo!!!

Sam Young — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:11:28 +0000

I have just since learned (minutes after posting YAHOO ME!) that Google answers has been retired :-p – their word not mine. So…guess I’ve won the marathon after all.

I’m a yahoo answer.

Sam x

Yahoo me!

Sam Young — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:08:47 +0000

It’s been a long day…it’s been a long month. This here author has been a wee bit stressed on the work front and generally needing a chill pill…or something to put a loopy smile on her face. Today when I got home from work I was cheered up immensely by…what? You’ll never guess it. Not the half-price ugg’s I got to see me through the coming Scottish winter. Not the large bar of crunchy chocolate I had hiding in the fridge (OK…it may have made me smile a little), and not Keith Gray’s Ostrich Boys which I’m enjoying immensely. No. It was googling Lunarmorte only to discover I’m a yahoo answer! ‘Books based on Greek mythology?’ and the recurring answer was Percy Jackson and Lunarmorte! How good is that?! Am well chuffed, this here author says (whilst munching on crunchy chocolate, wearing snug uggs and reading Ostrich Boys).

Is it sad to be happy to be a yahoo answer? I know what you’re thinking. Being a yahoo answer is like coming runner up in a marathon. To win…you want to be a GOOGLE answer! Next stop ladies and gentleman…next stop.

Sam x

(P.S. I realise the title of this post is rather suggestive)

amazon widget

Sam Young — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 11:30:59 +0000

http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Fsayoyafaau-21%2F8003%2F5ed402f7-6900-4e5d-87d2-79855cfd3af1&Operation=GetDisplayTemplate Amazon.co.uk Widgets

All the music that inspired the novel as well as books and films you might like to check out from the fantasy genre.

A day out in Scotland!

Sam Young — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 15:51:21 +0000

Did anyone else literally get soaked to the underwear in the torrential rain today? Nope? Just me then?

Ahhh! It wasn’t so much the soggy delicates but the primark bag (bloody brown paper baggers!) that tore in the middle of the street and all my stuff went flying including my beautiful shiny new copy of Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Angel which is now grubby around the edges

Ooooh not happy. It was such a good day before I returned home looking like the creature from the deep. I went shopping with my friend Kate (the walking library – she has had a mention on here before) and bought christmas presents (you can hate that I’m so organised :p), had an amazing lunch at Ziggy Forelli’s in Stirling (recommend it!) and then took some mad photos as you’re wont to do and generally acted like the non-grown ups we are.

Kate looking like she’s never seen a camera before. And me…well…I look like I’m planning something evil…maybe I am…

There really are no words for this picture. Although may I say that the crazy person next to me that I’m trying to ignore is in fact a HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER!

Sooo…after a good day, I’m now drowned, my phone is waterlogged and no longer working and I have a dirty brand new book (not a ‘dirty’ book, an ACTUAL dirty as in mucky, muddy etc book – get your head out of the gutter!) and my hair is so mad I look like a walking curly fries ad.

Me? Picture you say?

Sam Young — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 19:29:27 +0000

I’ve spent today not really doing much bookwise (slap on the wrist for that). I mailed out a couple of review copies but that’s the extent of my hardwork which is truly shocking. Instead I sat on my behind and watched Enchanted (You’re a wizard! ahh it makes me laugh) and then episodes of Alias (the greatest tv programme ever…no really it is), all the while eating the chocolates that I received from LHS’ english department.

I ate them all.

Every single delicious one.

Anyhow whilst I did splurge on television and chocolates today, last night I began reading the first in three Keith Gray novels I took out the library as he will be appearing at the Meadowbank Library Teen Group next month and is doing really, really well…have mucho to learn from him. I only read one of his short novels and I’m a little on the fence at the moment. Can’t wait to read Ostrich Boys though, I hope it lives up to its blurb. OOh and I started Michael Grant’s Gone – so far so excellent.

Now I’m off to see if there’s any newspapers that can be bothered about Lunarmorte. Pfft, what am I saying…there is no IF about it!

(rubs her hands together evilly) there are loads of newspapers to annoy until the end of time…

…or until one of them puts a hit out on me just to stop the incessant emails titled LUNARMORTE!

anyways…work to be done. Ooh and check out the pic below. It’s me with Becca and Julie from the Fife Book carnival. I hope they’re enjoying the book!

Larbert High Part Deux

Sam Young — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 11:31:02 +0000

YAY! By jove I think she’s got it!

Hopefully anyway.

Today was my second visit at Larbert High with higher and intermediate english classes and I used the creative writing process plan that I came up with yesterday. It definitely got a way better response…well kind of…I guess I just felt better standing there doing something more constructive and hopefully the kids learned something! :p

Although there was an embarrassing moment. I couldn’t spell dimensional(!!!) on the whiteboard i’m just so used to writing 3D instead of 3 dimensional that I made a gaff, which seriously dented by credibility as a writer. It was right at the beginning of the session as well…ooh gawd.

Anyhoo never mind, such is life :p

At the end of the class Jill Buckley, the english teacher who organised my visits gave me a present from the English department. I got wine and chocolates how good is that! So nice.

Tonight I’m off to the teen group at Meadowbank library and then I’ve got a wee break in my schedule for a while before my next school visit. Now starts the waiting. Dun dun duh….

The Reviews. They should start coming in over the next 3 months.

I await with bated breath.

Sam x

Larbert High Part Uno

Sam Young — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:32:24 +0000

Hmm…I’m not doing this right am I?

Kids, older kids can be really difficult to engage. They tend to be shyer of asking questions than younger students, or at least that’s what I’ve come across lately, and I can’t believe it’s down to a lack of interest in fiction or writing. I think it’s the uncool factor. It’s uncool to appear interested or they don’t want to be laughed at for asking a question.

OR maybe they just aren’t interested, I snort gracelessly (is it possible to snort any other way?)

Maybe not but my first of two visits to Larbert High this week has decided me. It’s not that the higher kids at Larbert High didn’t ask questions because they did, and according to the two well-mannered higher pupils who escorted me back and forth to the library, they asked me more questions than they usually ask anyone. The point is it’s my wee fault. My visits are too unstructured by just standing there expecting them to ask me questions.

Soooo….this afternoon I have been working diligently to come up with a proper (ooh proper) creative writing discussion that means I can cover all that I had hoped to say in my other visits. Tomorrow I’ll try it out and let you all know how it went. And I don’t care that I’ll be standing there reading from notes! I’m a writer not a memorist…and apparently not a writer either since that word doesn’t exist in the english language. Anyhoo yes I’ve not got a photographic memory and I do need pointers so I’ll be taking my bits of paper with me god dammit! And yes I realise that no one has actually criticised me for doing that so there really is no need for the defensiveness or utilisation of the exclamation point…

I fear these school visits are making me doolally.

On the agenda this week? Read Michael Grants GONE…can’t wait to get my teeth into it, sounds awesome. Larbert High visit Part Deux tomorrow and also I’m going to pop up to Lisa Ryan’s teen group at Meadowbank Library tomorrow night and have a wee nose. Might give me some inspiration for my school visits

Hope you are all well, especially to those in Falkirk who have enjoyed a deluge of murky rain today. Just turn on the telly…there’s always somewhere sunny on there.

Sam x