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Sunday 3 March 2013

Blog Tour for Geek Girl by Holly Smale; Guest Post

Geek Girl
Geek Girl by Holly Smale
Release Date: February 28th, 2013
Publishers: HarperCollins
Format: Paperback
Pages:  378
Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US / The Book Depo

Harriet Manners knows a lot of things. 

She knows that a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a "jiffy" lasts 1/100th of a second, and the average person laughs 15 times per day. What she isn't quite so sure about is why nobody at school seems to like her very much. So when she's spotted by a top model agent, Harriet grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Even if it means stealing her Best Friend's dream, incurring the wrath of her arch enemy Alexa, and repeatedly humiliating herself in front of the impossibly handsome supermodel Nick. Even if it means lying to the people she loves. 

As Harriet veers from one couture disaster to the next with the help of her overly enthusiastic father and her uber-geeky stalker, Toby, she begins to realise that the world of fashion doesn't seem to like her any more than the real world did. 

And as her old life starts to fall apart, the question is: will Harriet be able to transform herself before she ruins everything?

Holly SmaleHolly Smale’s Top 10 Writing  Tips

1. Be yourself. It doesn’t matter how much you like somebody else’s writing: it has already been written. Your own voice is all you have to bring to the table.

2. Know all the rules for writing, and then you can break them. Dali could paint a swan before he turned them into elephants.

3. Trust your instincts, but understand they may not always be right. Learn when to stick to your guns and when to admit that other people know better. Also: learn that if they’re a professional, they usually do.

4. Believe in what you’re writing...

5. But not too much. The first sign of a really bad writer is usually a belief that they’re an unrecognised genius.

6. Maverick it. Experiment, have fun, take risks, do something different. Nothing great has ever come from somebody obediently ticking boxes or following the crowd, so try something new and see what happens.

7. Story is good, but character is better. A bad story can live with great characters; bad characters will always kill a great story.

8. Try not to be too sensitive. Your “baby” may well end up sliced, diced, cut and strewn about. Smile and remember how much you love it regardless.

9. Put the story first, not your ego. If your focus is on showing how great your writing is and how intelligent you are, you’ve misunderstood what a novel is. Likewise, if all a passage does is tell the reader how talented you are, cut it. Immediately. It does exactly the opposite.

10. Read, read, read, read, but at some stage stop reading. The only thing that’s going to get a book written is actually sitting down and writing it.

Author Bio & Links:
Clumsy, geeky and incredibly shy, Holly Smale spent her teenage years hiding in the changing room toilets at school, scraping abuse off her belongings. When she was unexpectedly spotted by a top London modelling agency at the age of fifteen, nothing changed at all: she spent the following two years falling over on catwalks, going bright red and breaking things she couldn’t afford to replace. 

By the time Holly had graduated from Bristol University with a BA in English Literature and an MA in Shakespeare she had given up modelling and set herself on the path to becoming a writer.


"Geek Girl by Holly Smale is out on 28th February, published by HarperCollins Children's Books, £6.99 (PB).  Also available in e-book formats".

6 comments:

Billie said...

Nice tips, very helpful :) Thank you for sharing :)

Suzanne @ Paranormal Book Fan said...

Great guest post. Love number 5 lol and totally agree with number 7. I can forgive a lot but it's hard to like a book when you can't like the characters. Thanks for sharing Donna :)

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