In an interview with Tracey Mathias she told me all about how her children’s fantasy series was first published in Germany and how she got it into children’s hands in the UK.

She started writing in 2005 and as a crime fiction addict and had a vague ambition to write but no real direction or conviction. That summer, whilst she was working at a children’s music school she found herself writing some last minute song lyrics, and had the sudden inspiration that she wanted to write for children.

At the same time, she had an idea for a story that wouldn’t leave her alone. Over a week of sleepless nights she sketched out a rough plot for a whole novel and gave herself a year to work on the story. By the end of the summer term, she had completed the first draft of A Fragment of Moonswood, and her brain was seething with plans for volumes two and three of the Assalay trilogy – an otherworld fantasy about a land with a hidden past, facing political and ecological breakdown. She wrote the other two volumes – The Singing War and Weatherlord – over the next three years.

The first volume of the trilogy went on submission in the UK and overseas in mid-2007. In one of the most bizarre couple of weeks of her life, she got a quick succession of offers from three German publishers. Her agent was hopeful that this would be quickly followed by a UK deal – but over the next months, rejection followed rejection, including a couple of annoyingly near misses. Tracey explained:

“I was left with an odd sense of half success, half failure. Yes, I was a published author (and unpacking your first box of author copies is thrilling whichever language they’re in!) but I was dogged by a sense of unfinished business that didn’t go away. Friends kept asking when they could read my books in English. ‘Why not self-publish?’ was a frequent suggestion, but for a long time, I clung to the hope of a conventional UK deal. “Tracey Mathias

Then, in 2015, Tracey was invited to speak to a school workshop on fantasy writing. She read the opening of A Fragment of Moonswood to a class of year 6 children, and at the end of the session, one of the boys came up to her, handed her a scrap of grubby paper for her autograph, and asked, ‘Miss, when can I read your book in English? Because I really like books like that…’

Tracey told me that this was a bit of a lightning moment! She decided pretty much on the spot just to go ahead and pursue the option of self-publishing and started to research options.

“Self-publishing is definitely a demanding route to take. It’s great to be independent and in control – but the flip side of that is having to tackle a wide variety of often quite technically detailed tasks that call for very different skills. Some of them suited me. Others, emphatically, didn’t.” Tracey Mathias

Tracey’s tip for children’s book authors who are considering self-publishing is to start by taking a long, hard look at what this is going to involve. It’s important to have a clear sense of how ‘self-publishing’ breaks down into different tasks, and how you’re going to tackle each, where you want or need help, and where you want to devote your energies.

The Assalay trilogy is published by Erika Klopp – part of the Oetinger group in Germany and can be ordered in any bookshop and on Amazon in the UK and is also available to buy from Barnes and Noble in the US.

In 2018, Tracey got a traditional publishing deal with Scholastic with her very topical novel Night of the Party. It is about withdrawing from the EU and Britain is governed by a far-right nationalist party. Its flagship policy is the British Born edict, which allows only those born in Britain to live here. Everyone else is an ‘illegal’, subject to immediate arrest and deportation. ‘

You can find extracts and links to Tracey’s books on her website: www.traceymathias.com and follow her on twitter @traceymathias. 

You can read the complete feature in Writers’ Forum #190 Aug 2017, in my Writing 4 Children column.