The other writer in the awarding winning creators of One Year One Night by SL Roman has an American connection. Sarah Onions lived in Manhattan as a child.
And that experience influenced her as she also went to school in the city and read books for American kids.
Her favourite writer was Laura Ingalls Wilder whose experience of winters in the midwest in the 19th century was vivid. Living on the East Side Sarah loved All Kind of a Family by the Jewish writer Sydney Taylor. And she enjoyed A Horse Named Summer which reminded her of the horse riding she’d left behind in Sussex in southern England.
Her grandfather sent her copies of the British Puffin Club magazine to keep in touch with home where she read about the children’s writer Joan Aitken who wrote Night Birds in Nantucket and the Wolves of Willoughby Chase,
Back home in the UK more than 3 years later she picked up the reins of the old life and grew up to become a journalist, following in her father’s footsteps. At the start she found the discipline of radio news tough. The hourly deadlines were demanding and it was hard to write a story in an entertaining way without exaggeration. The most difficult job was persuading members of the public to talk into a microphone. And newsreading was nerve wracking. But it gave her a training in presenting information quickly which she still uses to this day. She often would submit and occasionally sell story ideas to newspapers and TV.
Becoming a author of young adult fiction with her writing partner Laura Meloni Bywaters taught her a new range of skills. Both women work closely together on the text often debating the choice of a single word. The offer of a publishing deal in America and Canada for One Year One Night by SL Roman came out of the blue on International Women’s Day. For Sarah there’s a sense of returning to those American roots.
The North American version can be bought here.
One Year One Night - SL Roman. 
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