![\"AJagofOnesOwn\"](\"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/AJagofOnesOwn.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLet me introduce you to one of the stars of my current book. Not the owl; the guitar.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It’s a Fender Jaguar<\/b>. This one’s new. Part of the reason I got it was to celebrate the fact that I’m now as sure as I can be that two guitars like it are definitely going to be in the book<\/strong> – together with all the other main elements that were in the book’s first working draft<\/b>.<\/p>\n The second draft is due in mid-September. There’s plenty of work to be done<\/b>, but that work is of a clarifying, refining<\/b> nature \u2013 not the major surgery I was worried about. That’s a big deal for me. As my somewhat inarticulate post<\/strong> when I finished it<\/a> implied, I was excited about the first working draft. The book had survived its darkest hour<\/strong><\/a> and was now starting to look like the book I want it to be<\/strong>. What I didn’t know was whether anyone else would want to read it.<\/p>\n I now have fantastic, inspiring comments and notes from the book’s first test readers<\/b>: HUGE <\/b>thanks here to Laura, Jack, Adrian <\/b>and James<\/b>. I now also<\/i> have the notes and comments \u2013 and the backing and enthusiasm \u2013 of my editor<\/b>, the redoubtable Ruth<\/b> of Random House Children’s Books UK<\/b>.<\/p>\n Before our meeting at the start of this month the last time Ruth and I spoke about the book was in Autumn 2011, in a pub in London’s West End. At the end of a long, arm-waving speech from me about bands, space travel, utopias<\/b>, cowboys <\/b>and giant squid<\/b> Ruth nodded and said, ‘Sounds like you’re enjoying yourself. Show me when it’s done.’ For nearly two years afterwards those words were the only clue I had as to whether the book I wanted to write might be something Ruth wants to publish.<\/p>\n It is<\/b>. And it’s going to have Fender Jaguars in, and everything. I am happy.<\/p>\n Back to work. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n Sam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let me introduce you to one of the stars of my current book. Not the owl; the guitar. It’s a Fender Jaguar. This one’s new. Part of the reason I got it was to celebrate the fact that I’m now as sure as I can be that two guitars like it are definitely going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bwaha-bwahahahaha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1483"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1492,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions\/1492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}