Manuscript page from Deadpoint, a novel for reluctant teen readers set on the side of a mountain.
Busy doesn’t even begin to describe what’s on the writing to-do list these days! As sometimes happens, two manuscripts have landed back on my desk for editing at the same time – both with similar deadlines. The first is Deadpoint in the Orca Sports series, a novel for reluctant tween readers. I’ve done a couple of these before (Venom and Razor’s Edge – both novels set in the world of horse racing).
Deadpoint is about climbing (not much of a surprise there, given how much climbing I’ve been doing over the past year or so… )
The second book is a collaboration with my daughter, Dani. She and I worked on Take Shelter together (which is doing very well – we will be in Vancouver at the Red Cedar Gala on May 7th as the book was nominated for a Red Cedar Award – very exciting!!). Our next project is in the Orca Origins series and is all about birthdays – the history of birthday celebrations, how we celebrate birthdays
in different parts of the world as well as some personal stories about memorable birthdays in our family… We’ve been having a lot of fun doing the research and finding suitable photos that might accompany the text. We are well into the edits now, which is a good thing because next on the list for the same series is a book about Christmas.
80 candles for Dad’s birthday – yep, he’s going to be in the new book about birthdays!
At the same time, I’m beavering away on two other books – one, an adult memoir about the nature of personality and what happens when someone develops Pick’s Disease (the type of early onset dementia my mother had) and a non-fiction book for teens and pre-teens tentatively called The Young Activists Handbook.
In other news, Holiday House in the US has picked up a picture book manuscript which combines the two subjects of baseball and bricklaying… because those two topics fit together very naturally, don’t you think? They are currently selecting an illustrator and I’m pretty excited to see who that might be!
There’s also another climbing-themed project being considered by another publisher – can’t say anything more about that yet as nothing has been finalized, but suffice it to say I’m thrilled that I’ve been able to find ways to write about the climbing bug which has so thoroughly infected me!
Categories: Uncategorized, Works in Progress, Writing Life
Nikki Tate - Author 