WICKEDNESS BLOG TOUR

Today I'm really pleased to welcome Debroah White author of Wickedness  released at the beginning of Sept 2011

Deborah White grew up and went to school near Slough. She loved to read and write stories on her 1914 portable Corona typewriter and secretly dreamed of being an actress. She went to the University of Leicester where she studied English and French and read lots more books. She got the idea for Wickedness when she read that Samuel Pepys had been to see a mummy on show at the Head and Combe...A". When she's not writing she draws, reads, goes sailing with her brother and cleans up after her very old cat Martha.

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 I wouldn’t be here without…

A bit of sticking power, a thick skin and hope.  Getting published is a bit like winning the lottery. Not likely to happen…but impossible if you don’t keep trying. You need that thick skin to cope with the rejections (see below) and hope that one day someone will recognize your amazing talent!

An endless supply of brown envelopes and stamps (so there’s no excuse to stop sending out the manuscripts). A copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook (publishers and agents addresses)

  Alison Sage…the first editor ever to tell me I could write. She   

   turned stuff down initially…but she kept ringing me to make   

   sure I didn’t give up. Thanks Alison!

Pippa Goodhart, the children’s author. I met her early on and she has been a fount of knowledge, an inspiration and a good friend. She also told me about Brett Brubaker and David Ford who went on to be my agents. They introduced me to Templar…who are publishing Wickedness. And brilliant publicist, Georgia Lawe, has introduced me to all of you out there!

My portable Corona typewriter made in 1910 that I had for Christmas when I was nine. I learnt to type on it and clattered away on it for years. I loved the smell of the ink from the ribbon…the noise the keys made…and knowing that ‘Out of Africa’ by Karen Blixen had been written on the very same model typewriter. I now work on an Apple, but take the typewriter in to schools to show the children. “This is the original laptop”. They’re amazed!

Pepys Diary…if I hadn’t read it I would never have written Wickedness.

My ancient cat Martha (aka the Phantom Widdler) who keeps me sitting at the computer…my lap is comfy and she hates being disturbed.

My two sons Al and Nik who have provided me with a massive amount of writing material over the years. Loved eavesdropping on their conversations in the back of the car. Did they think I couldn’t hear or what?

An obsession with words.  I think being able to read is the single most important skill you can have. I was really lucky that I could read before I went to school…and I’ve been in love with the written word ever since.

A thrilling adventure that combines history fantasy and romance. Refreshingly original, from an exciting new voice in teenage fiction. This is a stunning debut in a brilliant new series for teenage girls from new Templar author Deborah White. A powerful and charismatic man; an Egyptian mummy and twenty spells written in hieroglyphics on parchment. An emerald casket, a French ropewalker and two red-haired girls, fourteen years old and living in London, but four hundred years apart - are all united by blood and by a devastating prophecy.