Phoenix

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All in all, your books have been a huge inspiration to me (even leading to me doing a small amount of my own story writing when I have the time). I guess there isn't really anything else I can say, other than thank you so much and Thank you so much for your wonderful message! I'm so glad that you enjoyed reading Phoenix. I will do my best to answer your questions:

S. F. Said has published three novels for children thus far. Varjak Paw tells the story of a Mesopotamian Blue cat called Varjak who leaves his sheltered upbringing to explore the city and learn the "Seven Skills of the Way", taught to him in dreams by his ancestor Jalal. In his dreams, Varjak finds himself transported from his gritty urban surroundings to the deserts, rivers and mountains of Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq). With the Skills, he is able to fight the Gentleman. Varjak was staged as a play by Playbox Theatre, [8] and was performed as an opera by The Opera Group in 2008. [9] Said wrote 17 drafts of the book. [6] The Guardian young critics competition is for all young readers to share their views on any of the longlisted books. Anyone aged 17 or under can enter by writing a review of no more than 200 words of one of the books longlisted for the prize. Individuals or school classes can enter and there are great prizes to be won including all the longlisted books. You can find out more and enter the competition here. I write the stories that I most want to read myself! All writers are really just readers who take one more step, and write the stories they want to read. You can do this too - all writers are readers, and all readers can be writers. I wrote a bit about this in this blog post. I'm already working on my next book, but I can't say anything about it, because my books always change a lot in the years it takes me to write them! Every writer is different, and every book is different. But for me, it's been 5 years (Varjak), 3 years (Outlaw), 7 years (Phoenix), and 9 years (TYGER!)At the risk of giving "spoilers" here, I wanted to alert parents and readers that this book has evidently jumped on the recent bandwagon of re-branding Satan (yes, literally The Devil) to make him appear sympathetic--heroic, even. (Never mind that it's also a bizarre and incongruent insertion that made a shoehorn fit into the rest of the sci-fi and astrological theme of the book at large.)

Playbox Theatre Company. "Varjak Paw trailer". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21 . Retrieved 22 January 2021. Our favourite characters were Cludge (14 votes) Varjak (4 votes), Holly (3 votes) and one for scary Sally Bones! We wrote a chapter when Varjak met another 'monster' on the streets of the city at night for example, a rubbish lorry (Aran), a fox (Bernardo), a motorbike (Daniel), a fire engine (Sophia). I've found that when you talk to children about reading and writing in those terms - as something that connects to their love of stories, whether those stories are in books, films, TV or other forms altogether - they will often amaze you with their enthusiasm and creativity. Pauli, Michelle (3 December 2003). "Debut wins Smarties gold medal". The Guardian . Retrieved 8 June 2021.

Varjak Paw

It took me seven years to write this book, but really, it's been growing inside me for my whole life. I remember seeing the very first Star Wars film when it was released in 1977. It was a life-changing moment. As I looked up in awe at that first starship filling the screen, I remember thinking that I wanted to write a story as big as that one day. I wanted to write a book that contained an entire galaxy.

https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2017/august/s.f.-said---the-epic-story-of-phoenix/ Those things developed as I worked on the book. They weren't there in the first draft, or even the second draft, as you will see if you look at the blog above! I do a lot of drafts, because my aim is always to make my books as good as I possibly can, and that takes a long time. I only realised that the book should be called Phoenix in the seventh and final year of writing it! Sometimes you know the title at the start, as I did with Varjak Paw; but sometimes you need to know everything in the story first, as I did with Phoenix. As for drafts - every writer is different. Some need more than others. But all of us do more than one. All you can do is keep working on it until it's the very best you can possibly make it; until it's exactly what you would most want to read yourself. And I think it will be worth it, because you have some brilliant ideas.It is so very definitely something; a text that dances with shadow and light and illustrations that pull and tease the words until something strange and alchemical happens to them. The truth about Phoenix is that I was just trying to write a story I wanted to read myself. I've always loved space stories, from Star Wars onwards, and wanted to write a really great one for young readers. This is love, then, this mad and foolish and facade-full thing; we love, we put our faces on, and we sacrifice the whole of ourselves for another, we want them to live and to love and to thrive and to be themselves, to be whole and to be the best that they can be and to be the person that they should and could be and we will stop ourselves and hold ourselves and make that happen because we love them. We love them. I love the fact that you want to read more - thank you! I don't have any plans to write a sequel to Phoenix myself, but I would be totally honoured if YOU were to write your own sequels! Some of the first stories I ever wrote were inspired by other people's stories. If you'd like to do that, here's something you might find interesting - a blog I made about the writing process, with lots of tips, and an early draft of the opening of Phoenix: Thank you so much for the link to the blog. Extremely helpful and really helped me with something new I've been working on. It is called The Realm. Here is a brief blurb: