I’m painfully late to write about this, but one major highlight of last year was the children’s novel I’m querying, The Boy at the Wynyates, getting shortlisted for the Guppy Open Submission Competition 2025 - that’s two shortlists in two years!
Although I didn’t win, being shortlisted meant that I got an editorial one-to-one with Bella Pearson, the founder of Guppy Books. This was my first time getting to talk about Wynyates with a publisher, and Bella’s comments, questions and suggestions were really insightful and encouraging. She even revealed that Wynyates had been in all of the judges’ top three picks - which is obviously simultaneously extremely gratifying and frustrating!
What was particularly useful was gaining insights into marketing children’s literature, and how difficult it is to straddle the tricky middle ground between Middle-Grade (aimed at 8-12 year olds) and Young Adult (13+, but as most readers of YA are in their 20s and 30s, they tend to skew upwards). The Guppy competition was specifically for Middle-Grade novels, and the consensus from Bella and the judges was that Wynyates might be a bit too YA to fit comfortable in this age range, but not quite YA enough to be YA. This chimes with the feedback I’ve received from the agents I’ve queried so far: love the writing, love the story, love the world-building, but would struggle to sell it as either Middle-Grade or YA.
So over the last few months I’ve been wrestling with how re-draft Wynyates either as a fully Middle-Grade novel, or as a YA novel. The problem is picking which one the story is in its soul…