Dame Jacqueline Wilson’s children’s book My Sister Jodie is apparently having an ‘offensive’ term removed from all future editions, on the basis of one person’s complaint to a supermarket. ONE. One person, who overrules the author, the editor, the multiple people who will have already discussed whether that word can be included before publication of a book that’s sold 28,000 copies in Asda alone, prior to that ONE complaint. What an excellent lesson to teach young readers on the logic and fairness of the adult world.

The term in question can be amended to ‘twit’ with the adjustment of a single letter, so no prizes for figuring it out. I wouldn’t want to repeat it here, naturally, what with it being so very filthy – though I’m amused that the two are supposedly interchangeable. Roald Dahl’s The Twits has taken on a whole new meaning – a book which, incidentally contains worm-eating, the cruel misuse of superglue, and ‘bare bottoms winking in the sun’, a phrase which has stayed with me across decades.  Won’t somebody think of the children?

I happen to think swearing is both big and clever – when you do it right. There’s a single magnificent use of the ‘c’ word in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (crossover, true, but absolutely something I’d give to a bright 10-year-old) which made the book for me.  Christopher’s Asperger’s syndrome denies him emotional articulacy, but the casually brutal adults around him have no such excuse: it’s a powerful moment, cementing our sympathy and understanding of his actually very reasonable incomprehension of our world. Wilson puts ‘tw*t’ (honestly, how hilarious does that look?) into the mouth of an unpleasant, unempathetic antagonist. Humbert Humbert’s a great big perv.  Raskolnikov kills.  It’s called characterisation. Or is children’s literature not allowed to have that particular grown-up toy?

  Holiday = books!  Oh, I’ve missed you.  Selected to be as unrelated to Girl Meets Cake as possible, and thus the fabulously eclectic mix of Silence by Josie Henley-Einion (debut literary thriller from a dear old mate, and a cracking read: pacy page-turner, challenging erotica, and above all a truly compelling character study of one woman searching for a coherent social, racial, gendered identity across decades), Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov (recommended by M the Wonderagent with typical wisdom: dark, funny, gorgeously economical prose, killer ending, and A PENGUIN), and Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies (your common-or-garden Calvino mindmelt: a musing on the nature of stories, and storytellers, beautiful and strange).

  Girl Meets Cake might currently be titled Woman Meets Caffeine.  I look forward to the forthcoming Writer Meets Deadline more than you can possibly know.

  Trucking around Pompeii in the blazing sunshine; discovering my niece has proven her super-brainiac status for good; becoming an auntie x 6 (Writer Meets Nephew next week!); realising that solo holidays are only fun until you’ve found a snack product with the face of Rolf Harris, and you have no one with whom to share him.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the votes have been counted and verified, and I can gleefully reveal that the next book (formerly known round these parts as Biscuits & Lies) from your resident scribbler Susie Day will be called…

*drumrolls*

GIRL MEETS CAKE

I love it, I love it, I love it to bits!  Mmmcake.  Cakey cakey cake.  Hee!  I may need to celebrate in an appropriate face-stuffing manner: who’s with me?

Those who have already heard a whisper about the plot will know that the Cake in question is in fact a Gingerbread Man (or boy…blimey, so complicated), and thus technically not a Cake at all.  Rather than be drawn into this ever-controversial topic, I direct you to the authoritative Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down coverage of the infamous Jaffa Cake ‘cake or biscuit?’ debate.  (Scroll to the bottom – but don’t miss the ‘Jamectomies’!)  When I worked as a college porter, I passed many an hour reading their biscuit reviews in lieu of eating any (the biscuit tin only ever had Rich Tea, a biscuit so rubbish it barely deserves the name).  Mmmbiscuits.  And cake.  Mmmmmmm.

To the kitchen, Batman!

(This is the UK title, btw: might be something else in the North American edition.  All the best books have two names, you know. )

Hardbacks!  Pink hardbacks!  Pink hardbacks that when piled resemble some kind of delicious mutant xylophone made from boiled sugar!  OK, maybe that’s just me having gone a bit wonk-eyed from staring at them lovingly.  But honestly, has a pile of books ever looked quite that lickable?  How handy that I have a nice three-letter word for a last name so it can fit tidily on the spine, too.  (Well done, father: impressive planning ahead there.)

For those at the back, this would be the US/Canada edition of Big Woo, which (as you might just be able to spot) is titled serafina67 *urgently requires life*.  Innit shiny?  In theory it’s released on August 1st, but the blogverse informs me it’s already been sighted on the shop floor: yay!  I get to be excited all over again, without even having to write another one.  Cunning, eh?

*toasts pile o’ books with glass of pink wine in their honour*

  Train timetables, mostly.  Though I am sneaking small doses of Douglas Coupland’s JPod every now and then, because the writerly No Books Diet is like all other diets: all I want is books, tasty books, naughty sinful calorific distracting books…

  Biscuits & Lies is whizzing along at breakneck speed, almost as if there were an impending deadline snapping at my heels and the prospect of going to Italy as a reward after I’ve finished it.  Or something.  I’m having a lovely time doing devious things to my poor characters and telling crap jokes, anyway, even if on occasion I’m doing it in fast forward and missing some of the best lines.  Despite it not being remotely finished, we’re in the process of settling on a title, so prepare for an exciting exclusive reveal.  (Unless we decide to call it Biscuits & Lies, in which case…um…you heard it here first?)

  Alas, precious little rocrastination time – except for the wedding of the inestimable Rarg (regular commenter and ridiculously dear old friend) to the equally lovely Mrs Rarg, which managed to cram several weeks’ worth of cheery fun into a day. ‘Wedstock’ fused marriage with the entire live music scene of Bristol, in the most apt celebration of two people’s relationship I can imagine – not to mention the whole roast pig, the flowing cocktails, and me catching up with an old school crowd I’ve not clapped eyes on in well over a decade.  I confess I was eating pig during some of the bands, but I urge you to check out North Sea Navigator (think early PJ Harvey, Levitation, a shoutier Auteurs) and Rose Kemp, who has the kind of startlingly pure voice that demands you stand utterly still and listen, pig or no pig.  And, of course, rarg‘s alter ego as one quarter of Smokehand, who seem to be expanding their ‘Scott Walker sings Tom Waits’ repertoire in the obvious direction of ska-tinged fairground klezmer.  So predictable, those boys.   Highlight, however, was the performance by rarg (with smokehand!Adam on vocals) of a special song for his new missus, which reduced the entire place to sniffly rubble.  Have a glorious honeymoon, you fabulous pair.

I humbly apologise for the shoddy lack of regular updates lately.  Alas, the part of my brain that I use to form sentences is the size of a peanut (the rest is all pictures of kittens, misheard song lyrics, and dialogue from Firefly), and can only produce a peanut-sized quantity of them per day before start I like Yoda typing.

So in lieu of a proper post, here’s the best news story ever written, containing as it does the holy trinity of local news: underwear, a small furry creature in peril, and just enough wild implausibility to make you believe it’s true.  The peanut, he is envious.

The kidlit world is getting its undies in a right old knot over publishers’ plans to include age guidance on children’s books. Those against include, well, probably every children’s writer you’ve ever heard of. Except for Meg Rosoff who, in typical fashion, is swimming against the tide, and thinks it might be quite handy for the humble book-buying punter.

Me? I’m with Mighty Meg.

Books aren’t unpackaged and unmediated. They come with covers carefully designed to target a specific audience: cupcakes and faces for girlies, logos for boys, artsy graphics for ‘serious’. (Foil and shiny bits for everyone: we’re all magpies, apparently.) Even the author’s name is retooled for the market where possible. Betcha I wouldn’t be ‘Susie’ if I wrote action thrillers for 10-year-old boys.

But all of these are inexplicit devices, and on occasion quite subtle ones. (I’ve not heard it stated aloud, but I’m fairly sure the colour scheme of the US edition of serafina67 doesn’t quietly evoke Lauren Myracle’s ttyl by accident.) The No To Age Banding posse point out that kids study these tricks of the trade in school. True: I’ve taught that lesson (and it’s gold: nothing gets a book-deprived disinterested class engaged better than getting them to redesign The Hobbit, even if it might end up a bit gorier than you remember, with considerably more grenades and rocket launchers). But it’s not kids who hand over the cash in the bookshop. And as a grown-up who reads kidlit avidly, I still find myself at nephew-birthday time wondering if I’m about to cause family meltdown with a gift that includes oral sex under its Spiderman wrapping paper.

Let’s get this clear: no 9-year-old booknut is going to be arrested for possession of an 11+ rated novel. Alarms will not sound throughout the local library, sending masked men with AK47s to shoot dead gay Dumbledore out of Little Johnny’s hands. If we can credit young readers with understanding book covers as marketing devices, we can also grant them the wit to interpret age banding in exactly the same way: as information which serves a specific purpose, and can be ignored and discarded if you think you know better. Meanwhile us crumbly types can be reassured that by buying a book we aren’t effectively taking a 7-year-old to a 12A film, only to have to carry them out, sobbing uncontrollably, after the ninth beheading.

Timing means everything in literature. I firmly believe that every copy of The Catcher In The Rye should come stamped with ‘not to be read if over 18: may cause nausea’. Martin Amis’s early works should explode off one’s bookshelf after the age of 25 in case you’re tempted to revisit, and discover that what seemed ‘like totally postmodern man, whoa’ back in the day now feels a bit studenty and crap. No kid is going to be heinously scarred by reading outside what is designated ‘age-appropriate’ – but I fail to see how they’ll suffer from a little guidance. We’re in a second Golden Age of children’s writing. Magnificent new books get published every day. A little help finding the ones you’ll get the most out of is no bad thing.

The Last of the Warrior Kings, Sarah Mussi (YA, 12+, contemporary thriller). Regular readers will know Sarah is an old mate, who despite being an award-winning and nominated-for-more-award-winning author, still deigns to associate with the likes of me. Much as I’d love to annoy her with a bad review, the bloody woman continues to write such uniquely funny, brainy, pacy stuff that I’m stuck with the usual effusions of dribbly praise. If you’ve read her Door of No Return, you’ll know to expect movie-worthy action and thrills, bonkers plot twists, heartbreakingly accurate teenage characters, and a serious dose of education on African issues. Last of the Warrior Kings manages to revisit the same territory while feeling utterly fresh, largely thanks to hero Max, whose endearingly hapless efforts to save the day and win the unattainable girl (all while keeping his expensive trainers pristine) can’t help but draw you in. It seems cheeky to highlight the sillier side of a story that has genuine darkness at its heart: Sarah’s not naive about her own South London, and the harsh realities of gang warfare now are accompanied by the no less grim history of C19th British intervention in Nigeria. But this is a fundamentally uplifting book about finding a way to live your life well no matter what hand fate has dealt you, with plenty of daft gags along the way and an ending that will really linger in the mind. Quite infuriatingly good. Stop making the rest of us look inadequate, dammit!

Had a typically spectacular weekend with my writing group (the evil Mussi included), who kindly held my hand through a bit of Biscuits & Lies structural paranoia, and, as always, fed me till I was barrel-like. I’m now back to too much thinking and not enough typing. And the realisation that I now have three separate characters called Simon. This is going to be an interesting editing experience…

Mourning the loss of Lovely Lucinda from The Apprentice; finding new things to hate about Indy IV (while coveting Lego Indy); playing Prince of Persia on someone’s PS2 (this is what old-skool looks like now? gosh); staring, open-mouthed, at this…er…unusual cover version of Rihanna’s Umbrella (T: isn’t that Arbruzzi in a wig?).