My Totes Lush Morning in Ingatestone!

Well, do you know what?  Just the other morning I had one of the loveliest experiences that anyone can possibly ever have in Ingatestone!

I'll be honest, those aren't words I ever expected to write.  Not that there's anything wrong with Ingatestone.  Oh no no.  Quite the opposite - it's a lovely little place with lovely people in it.  But until last Wednesday, my only experience of Ingatestone was speeding straight through without stopping on the train from Norwich to London.  Or the other way round.

But now that's no longer the case.  Now, I associate Ingatestone with the wonderful Essex Book Award and with What's Up With Jody Barton?  and... er... winning!

:-)

But even more than those things, I'll associate it with the fab kids I met that day.  Literally hundreds of them!  From all over Essex.  And all wearing such snappy dapper uniforms that I felt like a right old Scruffy McGuffy.  And I'll remember the interesting and intelligent questions they asked me and the big smiles they had on their faces.  And I'll remember that little bloke on the front row who looked utterly horrified when I told them that famous quotation from Atticus Finch in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' which goes:  'You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.'

- Urrggh.  That's disgusting!  (he said.)

-  Not literally.  (I said.)  If you tried actually doing that, you'd get into a serious heap of trouble and wind up in prison.

Anyway, that young bloke sort of put his finger on one of the things  I really like about writing for young people.

And even though I'd never heard of the Essex Book Award before I won it, I definitely have now.  And I'll be looking out with interest every single year to see which lucky authors have made it on to their shortlist.  Because it's a shortlist well worth being on.  Thirty- three high schools took part in reading and voting for those books on the 7th annual shortlist.  That they chose What's Up With Jody Barton? as their winner makes me very happy indeed.

So, from now on, whenever I'm sitting on the train and speeding straight through Ingatestone, I'll think of all those lovely kids from Essex and their hardworking teachers and librarians and the Essex Library Service and smile.

Lots of love to you all. x

p.s  After a slight 'unclaimed prize' kerfuffle, I can now happily reveal that the winner of the WUWJB? audio book is MOST DEFINITELY...... LILY BONIFACE of Surrey.
 

My Feet are in Norfolk but my Heart is in Essex

What a lovely way to welcome in March!  There I was... stuck in bed with blocked ears, shivers, shakes and The Throat From Hell when I noticed that the red light on my phone was flashing.  I reached down to the floor, picked up my phone and illuminated the screen.  Apparently I'd been mentioned on Twitter.  I clicked on the icon of the little bird.  To my surprise, I noticed that I'd been mentioned a LOT on Twitter.   @EssexSLS (Essex Library Service) had tweeted:  'And the Essex Book Award winner is.....'

I shook my minging head and scrolled to the next tweet.

@EssexSLS had tweeted:  '....What's Up With Jody Barton?'

I put my phone down.

Was I delirious?

My phone started flashing again. I stared at it and picked it up.  Tweets were coming thick and fast and all with the same message: Congratulations.

I wasn't delirious.  I HAD won!  I'd actually won!

I was SO CHUFFED, I actually dragged myself out of bed and went downstairs and opened a can of chicken soup to celebrate.

And today, I'm feeling quite a lot better and I'm STILL massively chuffed.  I really hadn't been expecting to win this award.  For three reasons:  One, look at this shortlist; the real triumph is getting selected to be amongst this lot in the first place.

·         Mortal Chaos by Matt Dickinson

·         Messenger Bird by Ruth Eastham

·         Cracks by Caroline Green

·         What's Up with Jody Barton by Hayley Long

·         The Secret Hen House Theatre by Helen Peters

·         Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

Two, I’ll be honest; I was getting cosy with the role of being a shortlist kind of girl ;-)  And three, this award is decided for by votes from Essex School kids.  And What's Up With Jody Barton? isn't an obvious vote winner because it addresses a subject which some people still get a bit hung-up about.  But clearly, not those cool kids in Essex.  No hang-ups there!

So I want to say thank you to everyone who voted for me and thank you to the Essex Library Service for organising this fantastic award and thank you to the other shortlisted authors for putting me in such good company.  I’m really looking forward to meeting some of those Essex students later on in the year.  And as a final celebration, I thought I’d round this blog post off with a storming boy/girl mash-up of a tune from Colchester’s finest son and his mates.  Any old excuse….

Essex Book Awards

I was massively chuffed to hear the other day that 'What's Up With Jody Barton?' has been shortlisted for the Essex Book Awards.  This is an award shortlisted by Essex librarians and voted for by students in Essex high schools.  The other shortlisted novels are:-

Mortal Chaos by Matt Dickinson

Messenger Bird by Ruth Eastham

Cracks by Caroline Green

The Secret Hen House Theatre by Helen Peters

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

I feel enormously honoured to be included in this list.  So... to celebrate, I am giving away some 'Jody Barton' related stuff via my facebook page.  All you have to do is visit me at www.facebook.com/hayleylongauthor and leave the following EXACT message on my wall:

Hey Hayley, the only way is Jody Barton!

And do this before November the 12th.  Then, I will randomly choose a random winner at random - and that random winner will receive...

- a signed copy of 'What's Up With Jody Barton?'
- a CD of Jody's favourite band - 'The Best of The Doors'
and
- a DVD of River Phoenix's most famous film, 'Stand By Me.'

Can't say fairer than that.

By the way, I have finished the hard part of my next book and I'm now doing the much easier part - which is editing.  Hooray!  :-)