Society chriStmaS of young issue publiSherS INPRINT issue 148 1 EDITOR´S COLUMN Zara Markland There’s a tingle in the air and a crunch Now, with all sugar, comes a pinch of salt underfoot. It’s December already and the time and the salt for our SYP editorial team is that has flown somewhere no-one knows where. this is our last Inprint as your editorial team. We have brought you now four fabulous (we This is your Inprint Issue 148, the last one hope!) issues of InPrint this year and have of 2015 and full to the brim with delightful loved every second of it – though we may have Christmas-themed content to help you wile lost some blood, a bit of sweat and a lot of away those winter hours. As Christmas-time tears. I want to use this space to thank all of is all about self-indulgence, fun, a lot of giving my 2015 editors – Sarah Minty, Emily Finn, and a pinch of spice, we wanted this Inprint Jasmin Kirkbride, Alice May-Dewing and to reflect all of that too. Follow Santa’s sleigh Diane Brincat… and of course our absolutely around the world and see what’s happening amazing designer Sarah Baldwin. I am in publishing at each of Santa’s stops; Oo and honoured to have worked with all of you and ahhh as we trip down memory lane, looking all I can say is keep the enthusiasm, keep being at what ‘Naughty and Nice’ suprises 2015 booky – You’re SO SYP! has brought with it. Oh, and did I mention spice? Have a giggle at our Christmas themed Happy Holidays all! sections where we hope you’ll feel a true bookish Christmas glow. 2 INPRINT CONTENTS Issue 148 • Dec 2015 3 A Christmas Cheer! www.thesyp.org.uk 4 Top 3 Christmas Authors InPrint is the printed magazine of the Society Naughty & Nice of Young Publishers, sent 6 Let’s Talk About Sex out free to all members. A @SYP_UK Naughty & Nice 8 Publishing’s Charitable Heart CHRISTMAS CHEER Commissioning Editor 10 Book Recommendations FOR A Zara Markland Editors 13 Wordsearch TRULY BRILLIANT Diane Brincat Alice May Dewing 14 The SYP’s 12 Days of Christmas SYP YEAR Emily Finn Jasmin Kirkbride 16 Around the World in Santa’s Sleigh As the world around becomes a wintery Sarah Minty wonderland and the New Year beckons with enticing promises, the reign of the SYP 2015 22 A Day in the Life of... Designer committees comes to an end. Let’s have a look Sarah Baldwin back over the fantastic year we’ve had from 24 Super Thursday Scotland, North & Midlands, Oxford and Contributors London. We raise our cups of mulled wine to 26 Christmas Wish List for the Anna Cunnane you all! Tahmeed Zaki Book Nerd Emma Clifford Laura Summers 28 Book Club Maria Vassilopoulos 30 2015 – The Good and the Bad 32 Messages from the Editors Jasmin Kirkbride Alongside Dickens’ usual cast of vibrant death, his estate gathered together the letters TOP 3 characters and satirical commentary on and published them in one book, The Father Victorian society, this novella is also an Christmas Letters. CHRISTMAS interesting snapshot of a pivotal moment in Christmas history. At the time that Dickens Being Tolkien, he couldn’t resist adding AUTHORS wrote, Victorian society was re-evaluating how stories into each letter, including one about it celebrated Christmas and what that meant. how a massive fireworks display created the This coincided with a movement in the church Northern Lights. Though there has been some and state towards acts of charity and kindness speculation as whether the Father Christmas With the present-buying rush well underway, as this is also the version which Tchaikovsky the Christmas season is a popular time of the took his inspiration from when writing the year to release books, especially those focused music for his ballet. A shame, as the original on the holiday theme itself. Throughout has a far happier ending, much more in- history, however, some authors have gone keeping with the spirit of Christmas! above and beyond the call of duty, not because of market demands, but because of their Nevertheless, E. T. A. Hoffmann deserves his enduring love for Christmas. Here are our top place on this list, for being the starting point of three! a traditional piece of Christmas fun that still resonates and entertains today. 3rd Place E.T.A. Hoffmann 2nd Place Charles dickens Everybody’s heard of The Nutcracker ballet, made famous by the wonderful music of We couldn’t put together this list without Tchaikovsky. However, not everybody has giving homage to the author of another heard of the original tale, The Nutcracker and Christmas classic, Charles Dickens. In to the poor. It is not a stretch to say that this letter influencedThe Lord of the Rings (could Mouse King, set down in German in 1816 by December 1943, Chapman & Hall published charitable Christmas spirit might not be so Gandalf be an evolution of Father Christmas?) E. T. A. Hoffmann and on which the show is A Christmas Carol by Dickens himself, and it has strong in Britain today were it not for the bold the letters make for beautiful and entertaining loosely based. never gone out of print since. honesty of Dickens’ story and its enduring reading. popularity. The story is an absolute classic, about a small It tells the story of the miserly and wealthy And what, we ask, could be Christmassier girl who is given a magical nutcracker by her Ebenezer Scrooge, and his transformation into 1st Place than keeping Father Christmas alive for your inventor godfather, Drosselmeyer. Featuring a kinder, more charitable man. His miraculous j.r.r. tolkien children and for children everywhere, even toy battles, an evil Mouse Queen and an metamorphosis takes place on Christmas Eve after some of the older ones become ‘non- enchanted eligible bachelor, it is a romping itself, and is enabled by the workings of four This one may come as a surprise to many, but believers’? Christmas tale that reignites the magic of ghosts. Tolkien is in fact one of the unsung heroes of presents under the tree. Christmas. Between 1920 and 1942, every year There’s no doubt that this is a dark tale in Tolkien wrote a letter from Father Christmas Over the years, it has been much revised, most many places – perhaps most famously when to his children, which are either from Father notably by the legendary Alexandre Dumas the Ghost of Christmas Future takes Scrooge Christmas himself, or his elfish secretary. They in 1844. It is the Dumas version with which to his own funeral – but there are also strong also feature Father Christmas’ mischievous modern audiences are most familiar, with the elements of comedy and the book has a festive helper the North Polar Bear and his two kingdom of sweets and the Sugarplum Fairy, happy ending. cubs Paksu and Valkotukka. After Tolkien’s 4 5 NAUGHTY LET´S TALK ABOUT SEX - CE Alice May Dewing - NI Top Quote: book is astonishing, the trauma – relentless ‘Life goal 33 achieved: say the word and the comeback after having read it, almost ‘dildo’ in the Guardian’ as painful as the reading experience itself. The When it comes to writing about sex, it seems the re-telling of a story we all know so well book asks huge questions – on euthanasia, on the more emphatic the panting, tickling and (even without having read it) dominated both The most cringe–worthy friendships, on humanity, but also addresses heaving that works its way into literature, the the charts (and our heroine), selling over one Morrissey, List of the Lost head-on the influence of sex and sexuality on more heated (forgive the pun) and engaged million copies in four days. Dedicated to her Ah, Morrissey. If I were to not recommend our psyche. the response from critics and readers alike. fans who ‘asked … and asked … and asked … a book this year, this would be it. Despite Romantic fiction has always had a fervent and asked for this’, James managed to add an its brevity, the novel is crammed with his Top Quote: following and new explorations of carnality even more cringe-worthy element to the sexual infamous arrogance, poor and unrealistic ‘It saddened him, of course, that at the crux of human experience have always experience, forcing readers to either quiver dialogue and…terrible, terrible sex. This was his sex life and his home life should sparked interest and debate. I avidly remember with excitement…or question the authenticity tipped to win this year’s Bad Sex awards (by a have to be two distinct realms, the first time my friends and I crowded round of their own experience of sex and sexuality. landslide), for good reason. but he was old enough now to a copy of Mills & Boon, snickering away at the know that within every relationship words ‘breast and ‘penis’ but now we’re grown- Top Quote: Top Quote: was something unfulfilled and ups (of sorts) have we really stopped? The ‘I ask, ‘Are you hungry?’ ‘Not for food,’ ‘Eliza and Ezra rolled together into disappointing, something that nation’s response to the ‘Piggate’ biography of she teases. Whoa. She might the one giggling snowball of full- had to be sought elsewhere.’ David Cameron would suggest otherwise. Can as well be addressing my groin.’ figured copulation, screaming and sex really be good when placed on a page, or is shouting as they playfully bit and The Good it sexier left to the imagination? The debut pulled at each other in a dangerous Miranda July, The First Bad Man Kirsty Logan, The Rental Heart and Other Stories and clamorous rollercoaster coil of More wonderful work from ‘The Queen of Each year The Literary Review Bad Sex prize Polari First Book Prize 2015 winner sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s Quirk’.