So I'm back and buzzing from the most wonderful weekend in London. YALC, the UK's first young adult literature convention set up by Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman and Booktrust, took place amidst the cosplay craziness and fun of the London Film and Comic Con at Earl's Court.  I caught up with tons of lovely writerly friends, ate overpriced hotdogs, almost melted in the heat like the Wicked Witch of the West and saw some very entertaining and thought-provoking panels.

Before we get onto the bookish stuff, here are some of the fantastic cosplays I saw:

THE DYSTOPIAN PANEL

Malorie Blackman kicked off YALC in style by giving her opening speech in Klingon!
Patrick Ness joked that he 'was brought up by scary evangelical Christians so I basically grew up in a dystopia.'
Sarah Crossan asked 'How do you survive when the worst thing you can imagine happens? Dystopia looks at that.'
Malorie Blackman was asked why dystopias and not utopias? Her answer: 'Stories thrive on conflict. I just read Dante's trilogy. The part set in Hell is far more interesting than the sections in Heaven!'
Patrick Ness joked that living in a dystopia is like being a teenager: 'Every day seems like the end of the world. There are lots of rules but no one will tell you what they are.'
Malorie Blackman: 'We love books that look at the world in a fresh and different way, and dystopians do that.'
Patrick Ness: In response to the question 'Have all possible dystopian stories already been written?' 'A book isn't a song, it's the performance of a song. You can choose a song that's been done before, because each performance will be different.'
Malorie Blackman said with a smile 'If my books aren't upsetting somebody somewhere, I'm not doing it right!'

THE GRAPHIC NOVEL PANEL

Marcus Sedgwick: 'I wrote my first graphic novel because I had writer's block. I was exploring different types of writing and I remembered how much I used to love comics as a child.'
Ian Edgington: 'Word count must be kept to much more stringently in graphic novels. A regular novel can be 20,000 words longer than expected and it's not a big deal. But that would be suicidal for an illustrated book!'
Marcus Sedgwick: 'One of the best things about comics and graphic novels is the collaboration.'
Ian Edgington half-joked that 'As a writer you have to brace yourself for the artist's interpretation! It might not be what you expect.'

THE FANTASY PANEL

The chair, Mark Aplin, opened with a question about why the panellists chose to write YA fantasy, rather than adult, and if there were differences:
Ruth Warburton: 'YA readers are fearless. YA is open to limitless possibilities.'
Frances Hardinge: 'I think you need to give sex and violence more weight and thought in YA, rather than sprinkle them on like condiments which Adult sometimes does.'
Jonathan Stroud: 'Compared to Adult Fantasy, YA is quicker and more nimble and more personal. It's more about celebrating the individual.'

Amy McCullough: 'I like to know and research as much as I can about my fantasy world - and then pare it down as much as possible.'
Jonathan Stroud: 'The most fascinating fantasies are often worlds where there's just a slight shift away from our own - just one thing that's different.'
Ruth Warburton: 'We're all writing fanfic, really! All books are populated by the books which the author has read.'
Ruth Warburton: 'Whatever you do, stick to the rules you've invented for your world!'
Frances Hardinge: 'I love travel for research and inspiration. I've claimed clambering about on volcanoes against tax!'

THE HORROR PANEL

Derek Landy joked that 'MG and YA Horror is a gateway drug for young readers before they move onto adult writers like Stephen King.'
Darren Shan: 'A little description goes a long way. I prefer to let people imagine characters for themselves.'
Derek Landy: 'What I love about writing a series is that you get to fully explore characters as they grow and change.'
Charlie Higson on series:' 'To quote Tolkein, "The tale grows in the telling." Also if you find you have too many characters and you don't know what to do with them at the end of a long series - you can always take a leaf out of GRR Martin or Stephen King's book and gather a whole bunch of them together and kill them all off!'
Derek Landy, on how he channels his younger self to write books for kids and teens: 'You don't lose the ages you've been before. The 15-year-old is still inside you. You don't forget what it was like to be that age.'
Derek Landy on what he likes best about writing a long series: 'You get to make your readers care so much about your characters... and then you kill them. *evil laugh*'

So that was Saturday! It was a long, hot, exhausting day, so I was extremely happy to retire to the gorgeous pub garden of The Troubadour (who also have the nicest staff) afterwards with lots of awesome writer and blogger friends. *waves merrily to the lovely Nikki Sheehan, Marieke Nijkamp, Luna, Kat Ellis, Rachel Hamilton, Antonia Lindsay, Gary Meehan, Sarah Sky and Dawn Kurtagich* These cocktails were earned, let me tell you!

THE HEROINES PANEL

(Which I sadly don't even have a fuzzy picture of, which is a pity because Tanya Byrne has the most kickass blue hair.)

Julie Mayhew: 'I think most authors have a writing age they automatically slip back to. Mine is fifteen.'
Tanya Byrne: 'The joy of writing villains or bad girls is that they can do and say stuff that you yourself would never do.'
Holly Smale: 'We all still have the child within us, but some of ours are noisier than others'!'
Tanya Byrne, in response to 'Do you feel a responsibility to represent your readers in your stories?' - 'NO. I just try to tell stories you haven't heard before.'
Tanya Byrne: 'Bad girls are more interesting. After all, we're all just a couple of bad decisions away from disaster.'
Holly Smale: 'There's so much pressure on women to be perfect. Authors aren't helping if all their female characters are shiny and perfect. It just makes girls feel crappier. Anyway, flawed characters are more interesting.'
Holly Smale, in response to 'Do you feel publishers take female authors less seriously?' - 'Well, I write comedy, so I'm happy not to be taken seriously!'

HOLLY BLACK & SALLY GARDNER IN CONVERSATION

Holly Black: 'Fairy tales are all plot and no character. Often the characters aren't even named, they're just an archetype. So the minute you turn the characters into real people, you automatically change the fairy tale and make it your own.'
Sally Gardner: 'Fairy tales allow you to go into the dark, dark wood of the psyche - but only as far as you're comfortable with.'
Sally Gardner: 'It's a misunderstanding that fairy tales are for kids. They're actually a vehicle for exploring topics which couldn't be spoken about in the family - like puberty, incest, and other dark things.'
Sally Gardner continued: 'For example, the original Cinderella has her father, the king, looking for a bride. He has a ring, and whosoever's finger fits the ring, he'll marry her. He searches the whole kingdom, but it doesn't fit anyone's... so he tries it on his daughter's hand. And it fits. So a horrified Cinderella runs away, and the story we know begins...'
Holly Black: 'What I find fascinating about fairies - as opposed to vampires, werewolves etc - is that they have never been human. So they have a completely different morality, and a focus on odd things like extreme courtesy.'
Sally Gardner says she 'used to go walking and tell my stories to myself out loud. So, naturally, if I bumped into anyone, they thought I was quite mad. But now, in the age of bluetooth, everyone just presumes I'm talking on the phone, so I can talk to myself with impunity!'
Sally Gardner: 'I never want to write the same book twice.'
Holly Black finds it weird that we make children give up shared storytelling and games. 'Why should we?'
Sally Gardner: 'Our society encourages girls to grow up far too young, and boys not to grow up at all.'
Sally Gardner: 'Fairy tales are a slow knife in the flesh, not wham-bam like superhero stories.'

This post is already far too long, so I'll wrap up now with a big thank you to all my friends and all the organisers who helped make this weekend so brilliant. Earl's Court had its downsides, true: it was very hot, crowded, and noisy, and there were queues everywhere. But overall it was a fabulous experience. I REALLY, REALLY hope that there'll be more YALCs in the future - and maybe even an MGLC one day, who knows? :D

This week's dragon is Jeramey Kraatz, who's scared of sasquatches but not supervillains or evil cats. Jeramey has wanted superpowers ever since he opened his first comic book as a kid. His middle grade series, The Cloak Society, is about a kid born into a family of supervillains. He lives in Texas, where he works in the animation industry. 

1) Uh oh, it’s the zombie apocalypse. Which author (living or dead) do you want riding shotgun?

Obviously Max Brooks—I’d want an expert to help ensure my survival. If he’s not available… let’s go with Chekhov. We’ll have a lot of meaningful silences, and he’d be our team medic. (BRB, writing a zombie-fighting Chekhov spec script.)

2) Look, I got a time machine on eBay! Where do you want to go? (Said time machine may possibly malfunction and leave you there. Possibly. It was *very* cheap.)

Let’s go back to the early 80s so we can see Queen in concert and then write really cheesy horror movies full of fashion montages!

3) What’s your favourite thing about writing for kids?

Getting to talk to young readers about reading and writing—especially when they’ve read some of my work. It’s the coolest thing in the world, even when the kids say, “I didn’t like this part/character/everything about what you’ve done,” because then I get to say “Ah-ha! Tricked you into reading it anyway!” I am constantly impressed and awed by how incredibly nuanced and insightful elementary students can be when talking about writing. And most of the time they don’t even realize it.

4) A witch has cast a spell on you (sorry about that) and you’ve woken up as a character in a children’s book – what’s your special talent or power?

I hope it was a rapping Into The Woods kind of witch so I at least got a show before I turned into a book character. As much as I want to say that I’d have something cool like telekinesis or telepathy, I think I could have a lot of fun as a spunky kid detective who remembered everything he saw or read, kind of like Cam Jansen. This is kind of wish fulfillment, because I have a really hard time with retaining stuff I read usually.  

5) What’s the scariest or strangest thing you’ve ever done?

When I was about four or five years old I dreamed that Harry, the sasquatch from Harry and the Hendersons, was just standing in my bedroom doorway, smiling that CREEPY smile of his. Not moving or blinking. Just grinning. When I tried to run past him, he pulled out a tape recorder and played Dolly Parton’s “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That,” which somehow stole my voice (I was really into The Little Mermaid at the time), so I couldn’t tell my parents that Harry was going to murder us all.

I am still not on good terms with sasquatches.

6) What’s something you wish you’d known about writing when you started out? What’s something you wish you’d known about publishing?

For publishing, it would probably have to be how much of my time as an author is spent doing stuff for my books that’s not writing. There are marketing plans, interviews, school visits, emails—a world of other stuff that eats away at all that time you’re supposed to spend working on the text. Don’t get me wrong—most of it is really fun (like this!)—but it’s time not spent working on books. For writing, probably the importance of putting material away for a little while before doing an edit or revision. Taking a little break makes all those typos and plot holes so much more obvious than when you’ve been working in the text nonstop for weeks! 

7) What would your daemon be?

I wish I could say an adorable red panda, but in truth I think I’ve already found my daemon. He’s a black cat named Loki who’s kind of self-absorbed, likes to nap, and gets very vocal when he’s hungry. Look how much he loves me:

8) My books don’t have dragons, but they do have...  Supervillains! Lots and lots of supervillains with terrible superpowers and catastrophic plans for the rest of humanity. (Also, superheroes if you’re into that sorta thing.)

Haha I think I'm in love with Loki. But would also not mess with him :) And I *adore* that cover! You can find out more about Jeramey and his books on his website, and chat to him on Twitter.

1) Uh oh, it’s the zombie apocalypse. Which author (living or dead) do you want riding shotgun?

Ernest Hemingway. I think of him as a gun-toting badass, who also probably wouldn’t have any qualms about blowing me away if I got zombified.  And he is responsible for the best fictional sleeping bag ever and could catch us a big fish.

2) Look, I got a time machine on eBay! Where do you want to go? (Said time machine may possibly malfunction and leave you there. Possibly. It was *very* cheap.)

Rome in the first century AD, as long as I was middle class and could keep out of the way of those crazy emperors. But just a day, please, I’m not great with pain and wouldn’t want to take a risk on staying there so long I had to give birth, or deal with sunburn.

3) What’s your favourite thing about writing for kids?

I think books are more important to kids. I also think kids have truer responses and get more involved with stories. I love the idea of building a world for a child to live in for a while.

4) A witch has cast a spell on you (sorry about that) and you’ve woken up as a character in a children’s book – what’s your special talent or power?

I suppose it would be nice to be one of those winning-goal-scoring Enid Blyton heroines for the length of a lacrosse match. That’s probably the farthest from any experience I will ever actually have.

5) What’s the scariest or strangest thing you’ve ever done?

Possibly getting married quite early in life. Scariest and strangest. It’s worked out all right though.

6) What’s something you wish you’d known about writing when you started out? What’s something you wish you’d known about publishing?

To combine the two, I could have done with knowing that the editorial process, not to mention criticism, is seriously worthwhile and useful in terms of making your book better. But I’m not sure that would really have stopped me going mad over it. We’ll see next time round.

7) What would your daemon be?

A sloth. A torpid one.

8) My book doesn’t have dragons, but it does have... indefensibly bossy older brothers.

Hemingway is proving pretty popular as Zombie Partner-in-Crime! I can feel him smiling smugly from the afterlife... If you want to find out more about Aoife, you can follow her on Twitter, and you can find Look After Me on Goodreads.