A pandemic and some inspiration from her son kickstarted Sarah Lane’s dream of becoming an author.
Loreto College Library Assistant Sarah Lane has always dreamt of becoming an author. Thanks to her love of writing, Sarah came close to publishing her first book before starting a family, submitting manuscripts and gaining positive feedback for her work. But when her children came along, that dream was put on hold.
It wasn’t until 2020 that Sarah began writing again. At the time, her son was home schooling due to COVID and that’s where the inspiration for her debut children’s book, Surprise Shark, came from.
“My son had to rewrite the ending to a book called Whitney and Brittany Chicken Divas. He decided to put a shark in it, and I thought, ‘how wonderful that in his mind a shark could just show up anywhere.’ That got me thinking about the most unlikely scenarios a shark could show up in, which became the inspiration for my book,” Sarah said.
Surprise Shark tells the story of a shark who tries to make friends in the most unlikely places by jumping out and surprising people. The shark thinks he has a foolproof plan for winning people over except they keep running away. The story blends humour and emotion, capturing the imagination of young readers with a playful twist on friendship and belonging.
Sarah teamed up with children's book illustrator, Patrick Corrigan, who interpreted Sarah’s vision and whose illustrations for the book were even better than she could have imagined.
“Patrick was suggested to me by my publishers who had sent me samples of other books he had illustrated. I immediately thought his work was amazing. Working with him was a very collaborative process, and he drew all these beautiful extra details in the book like the picture of the astronaut's dog on the wall and the fluffy dice on a rearview mirror.”
Sarah worked on Surprise Shark for roughly six months before pitching it to publishers and says the process of writing her first children’s book has been very rewarding and a great learning experience.
“I would do a draft and then put it away and not look at it for three or four weeks and then come back with fresh eyes and edit the work. I took my time getting every single word perfect as there are so few words to play with when writing a children’s book.”
“Once it was ready, I needed to get it in front of publishers. I went along to the KidLitVic Meet the Publishers festival, which gave me the opportunity to pitch my manuscript. You get a 12-minute slot to read your story to the publishers and get feedback.”
“I actually read another manuscript at first, which the publisher loved, but then after reading the manuscript for Surprise Shark, that was the one that ended up getting over the line.”
Sarah hopes that Surprise Shark is the first of many, many books to come. She has a few more picture books on the go and would also love to write a middle grade book aimed at 8 to 13 year olds.
“I have always written, I've always loved writing, I've always wanted to be an author, and it’s a dream come true to have my first book out in the world.”