Not in the shops until July – but I got my first real, proper copy today and it looks GORGEOUS. Very happy author!

If you can’t wait until July, there’s currently a competition for a signed proof running over at Feeling Fictional.

Now I’m off to stroke the cover… is that wrong?

I’ve been amazingly lucky with the reviews I’ve got for A Witch in Winter (thank you lovely bloggers and reviewers!) It’s always brilliant when people “get” your work and bond with your characters. But one of the things that I’ve got the biggest kick out of really surprised me – the way that people reacted to the slang.

I guess I never really thought that the way I speak and write would be so interesting – I’m British (and specifically, English), so my characters reflect that. And because we get a lot of US books and TV here in the UK, I tend to think of our language as pretty much a common one, I know what “grades” are, and roughly how the US school system works because I grew up with Saved by the Bell. I knew (or guessed) pretty much what Hershley’s kisses were long before I ever tasted one (by the way – MAJOR disappointment). I worked out (eventually) that a popsicle = an icelolly, and what a “freshman” is (that one took a while to figure out).

But as US and Canadian reviews started to come in, I realised that what I take for granted is often charmingly foreign to a transatlantic reader.

The first comment I noticed about this was the lovely Mocha Latte Reads‘ review where she said, “I adored how Ruth Warburton stuck to using British wording, which wonderfully helped the novel set itself apart from others while also helping me envision the characters in a brighter light. Even now, I still giggle at the thought of several characters calling each other “tits” and “tossers”. Ah, the beauty of it all!”

Then Stories and Sweeties chimed in, commenting “it is filled with wonderful British slang, some of which are still a mystery to me! So if anyone knows what sheets of A4 paper are or what it means to be swooty, then this book is for you (and please let me know!)”

(NB translations follow below!)

But the cherry on the cake was Rhiannon Paille‘s review, saying, “British slang is amazing. Any writer who regularly uses terms like “sod off” and “bollocks” and “loo” are golden in my books. In fact, Ruth Warburton used loos which is plural for toilets, and basically I love her because of it. Yep, I love a writer because of toilets.”

So for any US/Canadian readers out there who’re perplexed by UK slang in A Witch in Winter (or in general!) I am offering you my translation services! Post below and I will endeavour to unravel these transatlantic mysteries. Of course my offer isn’t limited to US/Canadian nationals. Feel free to chime in if you’re from any nationality. The more the merrier.

A4 paper – the standard printer sized paper in Europe. It is 21cm x 29.7cm – similar to US Letter sized paper.

(As a geeky fact, you start off with A1 (huge – poster sized), this folded in half becomes A2 (still poster sized), fold in half again it becomes A3 (like a large page for drawing on), fold in half again and it becomes A4 (similar to foolscap/US letter), fold in half again and it becomes A5 (the kind of size you’d use for flyers), A6 and so on, right down to A10 which is teeny – like, postage stamp sized. There you go – now you know. Yes, I am a swot – see below.)

A-Levels – the exams you take in the last two years of the English and Welsh school system when you’re 17 and 18. You take your A-levels in the Sixth form (see below) and get a mark between A* and F, and the marks determine whether you get into university or not. Note – in Scotland they take Highers which is a different system.

Sixth Form  - the last two years of the UK school system. which is confusing since the numbering system for school years changed a while back.

The system used to go like this, you started at primary school age 4 in Reception, and moved through years 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 then you moved to secondary school at age 11 and started again in the 1st form, right through to the 6th form which was divided into Lower Sixth (for age 16/17) and Upper Sixth (for age 17/18).

Then it was decided that they would just carry on with the numbers, so now it goes from Reception (age 4) right through to year 12. However for some reason, people often still refer to year 12 as the Sixth Form, and colleges which specialise in A-Levels are called Sixth Form Colleges. Clear as mud.

Swotty – I didn’t realise this was a UK-ism! Hermione Granger in Harry Potter is a swot – ie someone who spends a lot of time studying, and (by implication, shows off about it, although this isn’t a given). You can use it as a verb (I’ve got to swot up on my maths before the test) and as a noun (God, I must look like such a swot). The adjective is “swotty”.

Tit – again, I didn’t think this was a solely UKism, but maybe it’s more regional than I thought? It means “breast” basically, but it’s also used as a term to mean an idiot. Usually about men for some reason – don’t know why that would be? “I fell on my arse and reflected ruefully that, as usual when I most wanted to impress, I’d ended up looking like a total tit”.

Tosser – see also Wanker. Very rude. DO NOT say this in front of your English granny. Both words mean someone who masturbates. It’s the kind of word you shout out of the car window when someone cuts you up at a junction.

Twitten – this confused some of my London readers as it’s VERY regional – it’s a Sussex term meaning a narrow path or passage, usually between two buildings.

So, that’s got you started. Any more? Fancy swearing like a Brit? Try it out on your mates!

Or, if you’re a UK reader, any terms that have always puzzled you about US books?

EDIT!! I have just discovered the awesome Britishisms glossary over at UKYA, check it out: http://ukyabooks.wordpress.com/britishisms/

I’m really sorry I’ve had to install one of those captcha things on the comment section. I know how incredibly annoying they are. Unfortunately I’ve been suddenly deluged with spam-bots, 100s of them a day, to the point where my email inbox was about to explode with alerts.

Hopefully might be a temporary thing… Now – where is the wiping-brow-and-returning-to-overflowing-inbox emoticon?

To celebrate 100 likes on facebook I am giving away a signed first edition copy of A Witch in Winter!

To enter, just post a comment below and I will pick a name out of the hat after midnight GMT on Sunday 26th Feb 2012.

Good luck!

EDIT: just to add, don’t worry if your comment doesn’t appear straight away, new comments have to be manually approved, but any that are submitted before the 12 midnight GMT deadline will count, even if the comment doesn’t show up on the website before the deadline.

I’ve just finished a week on tour, doing a whole load of events with libraries and schools round London and the south west.

I had a great time – not least because I got to stay in a hotel at night and have someone cook breakfast for me! But mainly it was fantastic to meet so many enthusiastic readers – even some who’d already read A Witch in Winter, though it’s only been on sale for a couple of weeks.

The events were really varied – from a library reading group with about 20 people, right through to a school canteen filled with over a hundred kids. But all the different audiences asked great questions – so I thought I’d post a selection here with my answers. Thank you to everyone who came along and particular thanks to anyone whose question is quoted below!

If you have a question not covered feel free to add it in the comments.

Q – What inspired you to write A Witch in Winter?

A – I’ve kind of already answered this in the back of A Witch in Winter, where there is an author interview, but for anyone who hasn’t read the book: I was listening to the radio one day and there was a piece on about romance. One of the contributors said that the challenge for writers these days was keeping the hero and heroine apart, because in this day and age most of us don’t have a Victorian father or a cruel guardian to throw up obstacles.

I listened to it thinking that actually for me, the strongest reason for not falling into someone’s arms would be if I wasn’t sure the person really liked me. And that’s when the idea for A Witch in Winter came into my head – a girl enchants the boy of her dreams to love her, but the price she pays is never being completely certain if his feelings are real.

Q – When did you start writing and is A Witch in Winter your first book?

A – I’ve always written, pretty much ever since I can remember. I wrote stories at school, and then when my dad got a computer I used to type out little stories on that, on an ancient primitive word processor with a black screen and orange type (I’m not that old – honest! Computers have changed a lot in the past few years). As I got older the stories got longer and longer, until finally sometime in my mid teens I was writing book-length things. I didn’t try to get any of them published though. The first ones weren’t very good, and then later on I was working in adult publishing and I thought it would be embarrassing to sub to agents I might have to meet the next day or the next week.

Finally A Witch in Winter just came out as a YA book, and I realised this was a completely different set of agents – ones I’d never met and would probably never have to work with in the future – and I realised I could send this one out.

Q – How long did it take you write A Witch in Winter?

A – It took me about 3 months to write the first draft. That was 90,000 words, which is about 1000 words a day (although some days I wrote more, and other days I didn’t write that much). From talking to writer friends, I think that’s pretty quick. But then I spent about another year tinkering and editing (mostly cutting bits out – the published book is only about 75,000 words), and I showed it to a few friends who gave me their advice on what they thought worked and didn’t work. I finally signed with an agent about 18 months after I first put pen to paper (or rather, opened up a file and started typing).

Q – Was it demoralising having to cut out scenes that you’d worked really hard on?

A – Yes and no. A Witch in Winter lost about 15,000 words in editing. About half of those I cut myself, and the other half my editor suggested I cut. It’s always sad saying goodbye to a scene you’ve spent a long time writing, but sometimes (often!) less is more. You don’t need to show everything – if you did the book would be interminably slow. I always felt the cuts made the book better – faster, pacier, more exciting. If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t have agreed to them. So although it was sometimes painful pressing the “delete” key, I always knew it was for a good reason, so I didn’t mind too much.

Q – Was it hard work writing the book? How did you make yourself sit down and write it?

A – To be honest, it wasn’t really hard work. I wrote it for fun – I write for the same reason I read: because I love to inhabit other people’s heads and other people’s worlds. Only writing is even more fun than reading, because you get to choose what happens. And I didn’t really write A Witch in Winter with publication in mind, I wrote it for the same reason I wrote all my other books – to amuse myself. It was only after I’d finished that I thought I’d like to try and get this one published.

So I wrote when I wanted to write, and if I was bored or wasn’t feeling in the mood then I just shut the laptop and waited until I did feel like it. It was only afterwards, when I was subbing to agents, that it felt like work – and that part wasn’t very fun. At least not until I knew it was going to be published – that part was great!

Writing the sequels have been a bit different because I’m contracted to write them for a certain deadline and will get into trouble if they’re not finished. It’s still fantastic fun getting to live in this dark, witchy world for a while – and even better, getting paid for it – but I do sometimes feel a bit like I’m back at school or uni, and have a looming essay deadline!

Q – What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a writer?

A – Read lots – get a feel for what you like, what irritates you, what kind of writer you want to be. I’ve never written fan fiction but some writers start out that way – using other people’s characters and taking them on different adventures. That can be a great way to learn as long as you’re just using it for practice, not profit, and as long as you’re honest about which parts of the story are yours and don’t try to pretend the borrowed parts are your own creation.

Finally though you have to tell your own story, and then polish it to be as good as it can be. Online critique sites can be really good for that – not just for the advice you get from other writers – though that can be great – but more because of the discipline of reading other people’s manuscripts. It forces you to really analyse why a piece works for you, or doesn’t work, and is a very good way of sharpening your eye for faults in your own writing and ways you could improve.

Q – What advice would you give someone who wants to work in publishing? Do you need an English degree?

[This was because I'd explained that in my day job I work in adult publishing]

A – I do have an English degree but it’s definitely not a necessity. One of my colleagues – who is a brilliant publicist – has a degree in Geography! You pretty much need a degree of some kind though. In recent years a lot of publishing BAs and MAs have sprung up, but they’re certainly not essential. They’re probably good for giving you a realistic idea of the industry but the majority of people I know didn’t come via this route but via work experience (of which more below).

Aside from the obvious stuff like good qualifications and reasonably smart presentation, I would say most publishers want to see two things:

That you have a realistic idea of the industry, know what the job you are applying for entails, and are prepared to start at the bottom and do some boring stuff. You need to know what the job entails because publishing roles are very different – the skills required of someone in sales are very different to the skills required by an editor, and different again from a publicist or a rights person. When people think of publishing they tend to think of editorial, but in fact editors are quite a small percentage of the publishing workforce. Plus, publishers themselves are very different – a publisher like Phaidon (which does mainly illustrated and photographic books) is very different from a publisher like Bloodaxe (which does poetry collections) and different again from a publisher like Century (which does commercial fiction and non-fiction). Find out which sector would suit you best, bone on up your knowledge of that particular sector, and tailor your CV to the role. As for starting at the bottom – it would be great if you could get a job one week and start editing manuscripts the next, but it’s not like that (sadly!) Junior roles in publishing houses are like junior roles anywhere – hard work, and often quite repetitive. There’s definitely some really fun stuff involved, but you have to put in time and effort at the photocopier as well.

The other thing they want to see is that you love and understand their particular books. You need to have a genuine interest in the type of books you’ll be working with – whether that be celebrity memoirs or literary fiction – and know a bit about the market, the major players etc. That doesn’t need to be an in-depth expertise, but if you work in a bookshop, then great! If you read voraciously and they publish your favourite genre and author – brilliant!

One of the most common ways of recruiting entry-level positions within publishing is through work experience. Unfortunately this is difficult for many people, since it’s usually unpaid (or paid only basic expenses) and involves travelling to or living in London (unless you can find a more local publisher, which will depend which part of the country you live in). Publishers are aware of this and are increasingly trying to offer more structured internships and funding support for people unable to break into the industry, but a few weeks work experience is at least cheaper than doing a publishing MA, and probably as useful in terms of industry contacts.

You can usually find details of how to organise and apply for work experience on publishers’ websites.

Q – Are you going to make A Witch in Winter into a film?

[LOTS of people asked this!]

A – No – I would be a terrible film-maker! Seriously, it’s not really up to the author – all you can do as a writer is sell the rights to a film company, who then own the right to make a film of your work if they want. Rights to A Witch in Winter have not been sold yet (flutters lashes at Mr/Ms Hollywood Producer if they’re reading this!)

Q – If someone did make a film of it, who would you want to play Seth?

A – I was asked this question on a blog previously and said a young Tom Weller/Ashton Kutcher type – but then over Christmas I watched the brilliant BBC adaptation of Great Expectations, and the actor who played Pip is very like how I imagined Seth, which is weird since I had never heard of him when I wrote A Witch in Winter. Plus he’s British! So he would totally be able to do the accent. (Pic here – obviously you have to imagine him without the cravat and top hat.)

Q – Are you going to write other books?

A – Yes – I’m contracted to write two sequels to A Witch in Winter, book two is called A Witch in Love (out July 2012) and book three is called A Witch Alone (out Jan 2013). After that – who knows! I’m sure I’ll be writing, I just don’t know quite what.

Thank you so much to all the schools and libraries who hosted me – and thank you to everyone who came to hear me talk! You were all brilliant but if you asked a question or gave a reading, you are particularly brilliant. It was great to meet you all

It’s publication day of A Witch in Winter – and to celebrate I thought I’d post a bit about the inspiration behind Winter, the town in the book.

Winter isn’t a real place – though a lot of people have asked if it is. It’s kind of a mishmash of holidays in Devon and Cornwall, places like Mousehole and Padstow, and elements of my home town of Lewes.

Lewes is different to Winter in that it’s not on the sea – it’s about five or six miles inland – but it has a ruined castle which broods over the town from a hill-top position, which was part of the inspiration behind Winter Castle. Here’s a photo, taken by my dad:

Lewes is very old and – like Winter – chocolate box pretty. But, like Winter, its prettiness hides a tough, practical and sometimes wild and anarchic interior. Anyone who’s visited Lewes on November 5th knows that it’s a complicated place. Lewesians can spend a night dressing up in costume and burning their enemies in effigy – not to mention throwing bangers and fireworks at a real live person dressed as an Arch-Bishop and preaching a sermon – then by 5am they’ve tidied up the town, taken down the shutters, and resumed business as normal. Albeit slightly hung-over and a little bit scorched.

I wanted Winter to have that same mix of wildness and charm. Its inhabitants are ordinary people, with jobs, and a living to make, sometimes a tough one. But underneath they are a little bit different. Somewhere, perhaps, they might be winding sacking round a stake to make a makeshift torch. And one day they might light it.

Well, 2011 is coming to an end and so is my life as an unpublished writer. I can’t believe it’s less than a week until A Witch in Winter is going to be let loose on the world, and now seems like the perfect time to say a huge THANK YOU to all the bloggers who have taken the time to read and review it.

I’m completely in awe of their energy, commitment and above all, their sheer love for the written word. And they do it all in their free time! I have trouble finding the time to make a cup of coffee, let alone create a lovingly honed literary blog.

Someone asked me the other day if I had a favourite review and I couldn’t choose – it’s too hard. There are links to some on the Witch in Winter page if you want to take a look and decide for yourself – though The Cait Files review will always feel like a milestone, because it was the first one ever. Thanks Caitlin

But actually, after I thought about it, I decided if I had to pick a favourite quote, it would be this one from A Cupcake and a Latte

I adored how Ruth Warburton stuck to using British wording… Even now, I still giggle at the thought of several characters calling each other “tits” and “tossers”. Ah, the beauty of it all!

Enough said

Thanks guys!

And it’s beeeeyoootiful. Which I can say without boasting because I had nothing to do with making it. Thank you Hodder – very happy author here:)

Here it is…

What do you think?

Here’s the jacket for the sequel to A Witch in Winter – what do you think?!

…. only kidding

It’s not a film yet (I wish!) but it WILL be in UK cinemas as part of a postcard promotion.

So if you’re watching Breaking Dawn next week then keep an eye out for Witch in Winter postcards at participating outlets. They have a QR code on the back that takes you to an exclusive downloadable extract. Happy reading…