WriteMentor Hub member Rachel Pattinson won the Hachette Children’s Novel Award at the Northern Writers’ Awards in 2023. Rachel’s work weaves together real-life themes and page-turning mysteries. She lives in the North East and her writing has been supported by Arts Council England.

Here, Rachel shares how she made her own luck by taking control of her publishing career.

Am I lucky? Yes.

My award-winning novel, Seven: Distracted Detective was published last year. And there’s been a lot of luck involved. But I’ve also had to grab opportunities, like taking part in WriteMentor’s Summer Mentoring Programme, and back myself. Here’s how it happened…

The first draft

I had this idea for my first longer children’s novel back in 2021, when I was in the middle of a Masters. Bad timing, right?

So, I sat on it until I submitted my dissertation in late 2022, and then I started writing. On the bus, on my lunch breaks from work, whenever I could fit it in, basically. And because I’d never written anything longer than a chapter book before, every wordcount milestone I hit felt like a win.

The competition

While I wrote that first draft, I looked ahead to see what competition deadlines were coming up. And I thought – hey, maybe if I keep writing, I’ll have enough words down to submit it for the Northern Writers Awards.

Then I got longlisted for the awards, and I hadn’t actually written ‘The End’ on that first draft, so I quickly finished it off, tidied it up, and send them the full manuscript.

And it won. The Hachette Children’s Novel Award 2023. I was completely amazed. Still am, actually.

The award

The award came with a package of support from Hachette Children’s Group and New Writing North. And a cash prize. Which meant…

Becoming self-employed

…as I was going to have to pay tax on the winnings, I had to register as self-employed. Which wasn’t really in the plan. But then I thought, maybe I could do something else with this, like apply for Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice scheme. So, I did. I made the best application I could, and guess what?

The grant

I got the grant! For a programme that supported me to take up mentoring and training opportunities, engage with WriteMentor, and paid me to edit that novel, with editorial input from Hachette. I focused on getting my manuscript into great shape and finding out more about the publishing industry.

The silence

Yet I still didn’t have an agent or a publishing deal. So, finally, in 2024 I made my list of agents and publishers, sent the novel out on submission and then…

Silence, mostly. Fair enough. Look, we all know the children’s market is crowded and competitive. And maybe my book just wasn’t for them. (The combination of an entertaining middle-grade mystery with a major storyline about late-stage parental alcoholism perhaps isn’t the most commercial).

The publishing imprint

But I’d explored both traditional and new forms of publishing during my Arts Council funding. My book had already made the money that most debut children’s authors are offered as an advance. I could publish it. And I kind of felt like I owed it to the story.

So, I bought the ISBNs. I set up my own imprint and commissioned illustrator Lily Mae Kroese and designer Megan Watson to work with me on the cover. I typeset the interior, figured out how to distribute it and got to work on some marketing plans. And finally…

The book

That novel, Seven was published by Aralyn Press on 13^th November 2025!

But even if it only sells 10 copies to my friends and my Aunty, I’m so proud of it. I felt like that when I hit 20,000 words, to be honest. And it’s already done so much more than that.

Good luck, Seven. Let’s go. Again.