SCBWI
Tall Story out June 2010
Undiscovered Voices. Winner 2008
This is me

I was born in a city called Davao in the Philippines. I like to say I wanted to become a writer from the moment I was born but looking at that baby picture, maybe that wasn't quite true. I do remember when I was six realizing that words and paragraphs strung together made stories. That was a big AHA! moment for me. 

Candy aged six. I am the one on the left in both pictures. That's my big sister Joy, who became a rock singer. She bit me when I was a baby. The younger kids are my brother Randy who now directs films and my sister Mia, who is an architect.

My first writing job was on Stork News, a typewritten newsletter edited by my younger sister Mia. Mostly, I wrote about my dogs and my little brothers and life in Manila where I grew up.

My baby brothers Some baby brothers came along when I was a teenager which is why I have extreme nappy changing skills. Armand on the far left is now an animator and Andre (with the cake) is a teacher.

I did become a writer but for a long time, I thought I was the wrong kind: working as a reporter for newspapers and magazines. I didn't earn much money so I also drew a weekly cartoon strip for a women's magazine, and took photographs. I had a lot of adventures!

Images of my journalistic life Photos: Mandy Navasero, Bobby Coloma, Brian Allan, Ray Vivo

The eighties was a great time to be a journalist in the Philippines. And I was so proud that, during the People Power Revolution, I worked for some really fantastic women who helped good history happen. Pictured above is my press pass, that's me taking pictures in the Forbidden City in China, and that's a lion I got to interview (he said: "Roar"). And that cartoon is by the wonderful political cartoonist Jess Abrera.

baby photos of my children

Then I realized that what I wanted to write was fiction. But it was too late. Children started appearing in my house. Three children in all. LOUD children.

Interviewing Working on Motherless Nation for BBC Radio 4

Once my children didn't require my nappy changing skills any more, I began writing again. I edited a magazine called Filipinos in Europe, did a bit of journalism and wrote and presented a documentary called Motherless Nation for BBC Radio 4. But mostly I was writing fiction for children.

Undiscovered Voices

But getting published is a long, hard slog. To pass the time, I kept (and still do) a blog called Notes from the Slushpile. The slushpile is where editors dump manuscripts that they probably will never publish. A lot of my stories ended up there.

 

Luckily I joined SCBWI also known as Scooby. It's a group of writers and illustrators for children who spend a lot of time moaning about how hard it is to get published. Sometimes, they help each other.

Ugly City: a novel in progress by Candy Gourlay I love Photoshop. I like to create images for my unpublished work, like this one for my adventure novel Ugly City.

SCBWI had a competition for unpublished authors and published an anthology of all the winners. They chose Ugly City, my novel, as one of the winners. Which made me jump up and down for two months without stop and without water.

It was still hard work. But things began to happen. I got an agent. I sold a short story. I sold a little book of animal stories. And then I wrote Tall Story ...

 

Here's the video I made (with some cool kids) to celebrate!

 

I cut this video from another video I made called Why Writers Need Agents which didn't have as happy an ending. You can view it here.