Times/Chicken House 2022 - I got longlisted!

Alright, bit early for confetti, I know.

But… it’s so bloody rare I actually have publishing-related news to share, I thought I’d celebrate a bit.

So, the Times/Chicken House competition is an annual contest for completed, unpublished novels by unagented authors, specifically, novels for children.

I submitted All Hell, the novel I’ve been trying to write for about seventeen years and finally succeeded with last year.

In case you’ve not seen me talk about it before, this is my pitch for All Hell:

“Homeless 16-year-old Jenny Hall travels to the centre of Hell to retrieve her stolen soul and accidentally saves the world in the process.”

There’s a bit more to it than that - creepy twins, Angelic politics, and geography I like to call an updated vision of Alighieri’s Inferno. It’s an adventure story, sure, but to me the most important element is that Jenny isn’t special. She could be anyone. She’s got a messed up family life and she’d dealing with a whole host of problems she shouldn’t have to, and then discovers that a long time ago she was just… wrong place, wrong time. Bam. Soul gone.

I wrote it for me when I was sixteen, and my hope is that it will appeal to other teenagers (and maybe some adults too!) who also know that it’s what you go through that makes you special. You don’t have to be a chosen one.

Anyway, I’m so delighted that the readers from the T/CH competition liked it enough to include it in the longlist. It’s such lovely validation that maybe someone else saw what I was trying to do. Makes me feel like maybe one day I’ll be able able to share it with the people I wrote it for.

Of course, I’ve had a nosey at the other longlistees on Twitter and let me tell you, it’s a strong field! Some cracking YA and MG stuff on there. I’m genuinely delighted to be considered along the like. So congratulations to all of us, and whichever incredible stories make it to the shortlist!