Official website of Rachel Tey, writer and lecturer
Author: Rachel Tey
Rachel Tey is the author of the middle-grade fantasy adventure series, Tea in Pajamas and Tea in Pajamas: Beyond Belzerac, and most recently contributed an original short story, "The Midnight Mission", to the anthology A View of the Stars: Stories of Love (Felix Cheong and Anitha Pillai, eds). She is also a resident writer and creative writing workshop instructor under Sing Lit Station’s “Book A Writer” programme. Since she was awarded the National Arts Council grant in 2015, Rachel has been featured in The Sunday Times, has spoken at the Singapore Writers Festival, and her books have been presented at the London and Frankfurt Bookfairs. Outside of writing and conducting talks and workshops for schools, she works as a content and communications specialist. Rachel lives in Singapore with her husband, who illustrated her books, and two children.
I’m pleased to share that I’ve signed a book deal with Marshall Cavendish to publish Tea in Pajamas and its sequel, Beyond Belzerac!
Both titles will be hitting all major bookstores very soon—the first book in September and the sequel around November of this year. Yep, that’s right, in time for Christmas!
In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at both covers. (Book 2’s cover is still a work-in-progress, and not a final draft.)
Exactly the number of days that elapsed between publication of the first book and completion of the sequel’s first full draft. That works out to 2 years and 102 days, most of spent not writing anything at all.
Anyhoodle, I wouldn’t call 832 days a long time (I mean, Anne Boleyn had a longer stint in her famously short reign as Queen of England), but it was during this period that I learned a good deal about writing, and about the kind of writer I am.
Last Christmas, we did a “Teys in Pajamas” photoshoot to celebrate TIP turning one. Photo by Eadwine Lay of Plush Photography.
It’s been almost two years since Tea in Pajamas was first published, and what a ride it’s been! Today’s post will the first in a series entitled #WhatNow?, in which I document personal insights from my post-publication and sequel-writing journey.
A basic premise: I thought I’d learned plenty from the road toward publication, but in all seriousness, it’s the post-publication journey that’s kicking my ass. Throw into the mix the grand endeavor to write a sequel one can only hope will live up to the first, if not outdo it, and things get even trickier.
To even begin to describe what I mean, here are three major lessons I’ve learned since the time ‘Tea in Pajamas’ saw the light of day.
1. It’s a whole new world post-publication
Wait, what? Isn’t print publication the be-all and end-all of an author’s publishing trajectory? To some degree, yes. I mean, you gotta have an actual product to talk about in the first place. But that’s also when the real work begins: the part where you have to get out there and hustle remind people that: 1) you exist; and 2) you’re still writing.
It’s all well and good to create Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads and Pinterest accounts—not to mention an official website—but devoting time and resources to keeping them updated with fresh content is a whole other animal.