Hove and Portsmouth duo create fictional world for the songs they have written

It has been published by Clock Tower, the Young Adult imprint of Sweet Cherry, available from Waterstones, Amazon, WHSmith, Foyles, Bookshop.org etc.

As Ellie, explains: “My friend Becky Jerams and I met through a shared love of song-writing and all things Taylor Swift. We were attending song camps and trying to get our songs placed with artists but we were getting frustrated with always writing for other people, so around five years ago we started wondering what it would be like to create a fictional world for our songs.

“We felt that being musicians as well as writers we could make our book stand out by incorporating real songs into the story to be read as lyrics but also listened to as you would any album or playlist. And this is how we came up with the concept of a booksical! The Songs You’ve Never Heard is a young adult fiction, told from the perspective of Meg McCarthy who seems to be everything Alana Howard is not: rich, glamorous and – thanks to Caspar, her world-famous pop star brother – a social media influencer that every brand wants to sponsor.

“But while Meg is feeling trapped by the squeaky-clean McCarthy brand, plagued by online haters and too terrified to share her own talent with the world, songwriter Alana doesn’t seem to be scared of standing out. When Meg and Alana’s worlds collide, they quickly learn that appearances can be deceiving…

“The story evolved from our experiences as women in the music industry. We wanted to reflect on some of the issues we have come up against such as body image, peer pressure, female friendship and defining what success really means. There are YA books on the market about boy bands where the female character is the fan or groupie but we wanted to create a story where the girls take centre stage.

“Our booksical took a lot of careful planning, working out the best sections to include songs and pinpointing the scenes where music would really enhance the journey of our characters. Together we developed both the music and the story by adding scenes, tweaking dialogue, honing the writing, the jokes and the imagery. It was a real labour of love with many, many Zoom calls until we felt the story was polished enough to pitch out. We secured representation with the lovely Gill McLay, at Bath Literary Agency, who said it was exactly the kind of book she would have wanted to read as a teenager. She guided us through the process of editing our book down by around 20k words and then sending it off to publishers. Just when we were about to sign a publishing deal Covid hit and everything went on hold. We couldn’t believe we’d written a book about song-writing and performing then all of a sudden venues were closed and live music was completely on lockdown. However we kept the faith and just over a year ago The Songs You’ve Never Heard was signed by Sweet Cherry Publishing (winner of Small Press of the Year 2021 and Children’s Publisher of the Year 2022). The team there are total music fans and they loved all the references in our book to music, past and present. Our book is being marketed for age 14-plus but absolutely anyone can enjoy it.”