New Year, New Publisher Catherine Johnson

How's your year been? I think I have had the pre-requisite number of ups and downs. I don't think I would be still writing if I weren't a glass half full sort of person, one who thinks something good is just around the corner and it will all work out in the end, even if my tax bill is looming and there's now sign of a holiday this year...
Anyway here they are...


Ups.
1. New publisher! Thanks to Frances Lincoln for taking me on and thinking Brave New Girl is 'funny and warm'. Out in September which, I know, is aaagges away!
2. Jo De Giuia at Victoria Park Books. A woman who works so hard for books and writers and whose shop must rank as the best specialist children's bookshop in London and it's on my doorstep. Thanks to her and Dylan Calder for StarLit and for a new London wide chldren's festival coming next year called Pop-Up.
3. Lovely books! This year I enjoyed Gillian Philips; Firebrand, Let's Get Lost by Sarra Manning, The Long Song by Andrea Levy and Ottoline at Sea by Chris Riddell, Slightly Invisible by Lauren Child and There are Cats in This Book by Viviane Schwarz.
4. I am still writing. I have not had to get a proper job for ages. I feel totally blessed.
5. Meeting lovely writer friends. This could be a lonely job, but it isn't because we get to chat. How lucky am I!

Downs
1. No book out this year. The Barrington Stoke has been pushed back, and due to being dropped by Random House I have had a gap....
2. Not finishing the book I was supposed to finish....well I sort of finished it once and am dragging my feet a bit *sigh*
3. Still no Pony. When I was around eight I read a story about a girl who opened her bedroom window on Christmas morning and saw a pony waiting for her outside. This has never happened to me.
4. Katie Price selling more books than me. Ho hum.
5. Don't get me started on the new government!

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all, my all the words flow and may you never get stuck!
xxx Catherine