Zoe FitzGibbon - Winner
Zoe FitzGibbon grew up in North East Scotland and South West Wales. She now lives right in the middle in Leeds, with her partner and the most beautiful cat in the world. Other than a brief sojourn into opera, she has spent her entire career in libraries, and currently works as a secondary school librarian. Zoe writes funny, voicey fiction that aims to engage reluctant readers of all genders, and her work has been shortlisted for the Cheshire Novel Prize Kids and the WriteMentor Novel Awards, and longlisted for the Times/Chicken House Competition. Her greatest achievement, however, is absolutely destroying a twelve-year-old in a rap battle.
What made you enter the Cheshire Novel Prize Kids?
This is actually the second year I entered this manuscript, and I’m so glad I did! I first entered last year because I was lured in by the promise of feedback for every entry, and it was probably the best thing I could have done for my work. While I didn’t make the long list, the feedback was so incredibly in depth, personalised and encouraging that it felt like I had won! I knew I’d made the top one hundred, so I applied the advice on the first few thousand words to my whole manuscript, cut out about twenty thousand words, and sent it off hoping for the best. I figured that even if I didn’t make the longlist, there would be feedback that would let me know if I’d taken the book in the right direction or not.
What did it feel like when you were LL and then SL?
I was on the brink of giving up! I made the mistake of sending out this manuscript too early, and so I’d had nothing back from agents (not even rejections, just silence) and had fully accepted it was dead in a ditch. This was my final attempt, and really all I was looking for was feedback to let me know that I’d improved on my editing from last time, so that I could apply that learning to the book I was working on. So it was really a total shock. But I thought, okay, lovely to make the longlist, lovely to know that I’ve made the book better. I had no expectation that anything more would happen. When Sara called me to say I’d made the shortlist I thought there must have been a mistake. It was such a surprise that I felt almost totally detached from it, like it was happening to someone else.
What was the reaction from those around you/family and friends?
Very excited! They helped me to realise it was actually me on the list. My lovely partner has had to learn a lot about the publishing industry so he can celebrate all the wins big and small with me, so he understood that this was a big win! I felt weirdly shy to tell my writer friends, but when I eventually did the support was fantastic. Special shoutout to Philip Kavvadias, the kingpin of the kidlit community. As so many of us know, if you’ve got him cheering in your corner you’ll feel a million miles tall at all times.
How did you come up with the idea for your book?
I was watching the film ‘Everything, Everywhere, All At Once’ in the cinema and I was totally blown away by its brilliance. Multiverses have been hot for a while (so I’m definitely a bit late to the trend - don’t write to the market, folks!) but I didn’t get the hype until that film. I missed about ten minutes of the third act because I was busy workshopping multiverse puns in my head - I just had to write something for kids that might capture even a fraction of the vast, heartfelt bonkersness that is that film.
What’s it about?
When corpses from the wrong space and time start turning up at Hearst Family Funeral Care, Marty, aided by cat sidekick Professor Tangerine, must take the family hearse on a trip across the multiverse to deposit each newly animated corpse back where they belong, defeat villain The Edict, and save every universe from eternal destruction. It’s about grief, family, and friendship - but it’s also about zombies, video games, and talking cats.
What’s your writing routine?
Deeply erratic. I’m not one of those people who rises serenely at five in the morning to tap-tap away at a keyboard while sipping a cup of peppermint tea. During term time I consider it a win if I’ve managed to write for an hour or so a week, and it’s not like I have any responsibilities other than keeping one enormous cat alive. I don’t know how people with children manage it. I get most of it done in bursts during the school holidays, when I’ll take myself to a coffee shop and bash out a few thousand words. I am, however, constantly thinking about the work. So I might spend a fortnight not writing, but when I sit down I can get a few chapters out in one go because I know everything that’s going to happen. If I haven’t spent that time marinating, it’s probably going to be pants.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently putting the final polishes on my first Young Adult manuscript, which I absolutely adore. I’m pitching it as Holly Bourne meets The Inbetweeners for the Heartstopper generation, and this is the one where I’ll be proper gutted if it doesn’t get anywhere. It’s about sixteen-year-old Isla, who is forced to take a look at the direction her life is going when she discovers she’s pregnant. This sets her off on a journey of figuring out who she wants to be, and how to get there. It’s about family, both biological and found, set against a backdrop of small-town diy drag culture. If I had to say something negative about it, I’d say there isn’t really enough snogging - but we’ll get to that in the sequel.
What are your favourite children’s books and why?
I will never stop talking about how wonderful ‘Steady for This’ by Nathanael Lessore is. It’s the most borrowed novel in my library, because I recommend it to basically every kid. I love the voice, I love how positively it represents growing up in a city, and I love Growls like he’s the most enthusiastic kid in Book Club. Another absolute banger that’s come out in recent years is Rebecca Anderson’s ‘Officially Losing It’, which hasn’t had nearly enough attention. It’s the perfect YA - funny, heartfelt, and full of the sort of information teens actually want to know. Looking further back to my own childhood, the Princess Diaries and Georgia Nicolson books were my life. Again, both so funny and so representative of real kids and their experiences - I mean, maybe not the princess stuff, but definitely the rest of it. ‘Dealing With Dragons’ by Patricia Wrede was the first book I read that I was fully immersed in - doing Shrek before Shrek was even a thing! And ‘The Wee Free Men’ by Terry Pratchett is probably the best Middle Grade ever written - I actually have a tattoo for it on my calf. And if you want to talk proper classics, then ‘Little Women’ has to be an all timer. I’m firmly team Amy, and I’ll fight anyone that has a bad word to say about her.
Any tips for writers intending on entering the competition?
Just do it! If it doesn’t work out, you’ll get the most helpful feedback you’ll ever receive, and then you can try again!
How did it feel when you knew you had won?
Completely surreal! At every stage of this I’ve thought ‘How nice! What a shame this won’t go any further’, so to make it all the way to the finish line was totally unexpected. I was having coffee with friends when I saw Sara’s name pop up on my phone, and even then I assumed it was a polite call to let me know I hadn’t made it. I think I kept saying ‘how can this be possible?’ while crying in a car park. It still hasn’t sunk in yet!