Girls Guide to Guys

Author: Rachel Hill (AKA Gabby) Aside from a few short stories about Keanu Reeves, this is Rachel's first attempt at writing. She has just trudged her way through her school years and is now ready to begin the hard life of a university student; where it is clearly all serious work and early mornings. As well as giving her an excuse to laze around and read books all day, she hopes her choice of an English Literature course will finally knock the confusion between 'your' and 'you're' out of her once and for all. A Girls Guide to Guys was written as a result of Rachel being absolutely hopeless when it came to anything boy related. Turning to girly magazines, she found some help in numerous how to articles but found mainly that these were written for semi-capable people who only needed a little push in the right direction. Rachel did need someone to tell her how to do something; she needed someone to tell her how to do everything, right down to the shoes to wear. Because it's all very well to tell someone to 'smile alluringly' but there is a surprisingly fine line between 'flirting with your eyes' and scary evil stare. Sometime later, when she'd finally gathered her information together from a secret boy source who may or may not know his giving away of guy secrets have found their way into a book, she decided that there was a slim chance there were other girls out there similarly hopeless with boys and so maybe she should share what she'd found out. The guide is introduced by a character called Gabby who leads the reader through the guide explaining all about the strange alien life from that gives every girl problems, BOYS! Why Gabby? Because then she can pretend it is her alter ego who knew what to do all along. Illustrator: Heby Sim (Manga Artist) Heby is also at University where she is training to be a teacher, her loves are Cats, Chocolate and Drawing and has not only brought to life in drawings Rachel's alto ego Gabby but also created all the images of the Boys in the Boy Catalogue. If both girls had to agree on a favorite Guy image in the book then they would go for Mr Random Encounter on page 18 as they say he looks so cute with his sunglasses. Heby has also illustrated other books in the Chocolate Manga Series for Reardon Publishing.

Keris Stainton author of Della SaysA" Cute and funny, with some excellent advice (and really adorable illustrations)' True Stories from Shout MagazineA" (Its all about you) SHOUT Inspired me to be a Writer! We Chatted to Rachel Hill, the author of A Girls Guide to Guys who told us how she went from bedroom scribbler to author! I wrote a Girl's Guide to Guys as a kind of self-help book for teenagers to help them with relationships. It's not too serious, and includes loads of advice on how to chat to boys, and how to handle dates and stuff. I wrote it because I just wished that there was a book like it to help me on what to do when it comes to boys, because I found it a nightmare when I was younger! It all started when I was 16. It was summer and I was bored, so i decided to write a lads guide for myself, just for fun. I read shout all the time and I loved how chatty and funny it was, so I decided to write with the same attitude - keeping it fun and positive! Chatting to boys can be so stressful and serious, but shout showed me it doesn't have to be. It's always packed with great advice, and I learned so much about boys from it, which was a great help for writing the book! When I finished it, I just put it in my wardrobe and forgot about it, until one day when I was cleaning out my room a few months later, I found it again. When I read it over I thought maybe and should try and get it published. I bought the book Writer's Market, which is has a list of publishers who accept unsolicited manuscripts. I sent out quite a few to publishers, and after I got back a number of rejection letters, I finally received a 'yes'! Nicholas Reardon, my publisher, then made sure my book was edited properly and brought in this amazing artist from Malaysia, Heby Sim, to draw all the cool illustrations in the book. It ended up taking three years from when I first started writing it until it finally got published and printed. When I finally saw copies of the book, I was really excited - it was so strange seeing my scribbles from a notepad in book looking so professional! I still haven't told my friends about it - it's sort of a secret! Although they'll probably find out when they see shout! I didn't want to tell everyone about it until it was finally out and because it took so long, I just kept it quiet. My advice to anyone who wants to be a writer would be to start off small, writing a blog is perfect because it's free. You should try to write lots, as much as you can, to help you find your own style. Then when you've got something your happy with, send it out - the worst thing that can happen is someone saying 'no'.