YouTube star turned author Zoe Sugg (AKA Zoella) says she is writing the sequel to her record busting debut novel Girl Online without the help of author Siobhan Curham, whose unacknowledged role as co-writer wasn’t clearly acknowledged at first – causing a whole heap of controversy.
This weekend Zoe Sugg told subscribers of her YouTube channel that she was writing her new book with the help only of Amy Alward, her editor at Penguin. Amy Alward is also a novelist whose novel The Potion Diaries is out later this spring, and who also writes under the name Amy McCulloch.
“Amy’s been coming to my house every week for the past four months... we essentially spend the day bashing heads and writing the book together,” said Zoe Sugg. Zoe explained: “With Girl Online I also had an editorial consultant who helped me get everything down on the page and as it was my first novel it was all very daunting and very scary but I feel as though I’m learning as I go along so now it’s just me and Amy for book two.”
Zoe said writing the sequel is “definitely the most fun thing I am doing right now. It’s so exciting, every week I am super excited.” Editor Amy Alward appears in the video, but Zoe Sugg said she didn’t usually film book days “because it’s just us sat typing and that’s not very fun”.
Zoe Sugg said she had decided “on all the themes and storyline for the second book” and had added some new characters as well.
The title is of the sequel is not known yet, but “Girl Online 2” is due out later this year. “I am currently typing up chapter 11 so that’s how far along we are. We do have quite a tight deadline though. I’m writing this up and then I’m going to send it to Amy,” explained Zoe. “I was just saying to Amy I say ‘and’ way too much. That’s the blog post writer in me. And I keep putting exclamation marks like EVERYTHING IS SO EXCITING! But it’s all a learning curve, it’s all very exciting… we’re well on the way!”
Girl Online has sold 343,562 copies in the UK so far.
