every day should be a susie day

The face behind the book

Posted on 15. Jul, 2010 by susie in blog, books i've been reading, cooking, holidays, kids' books i've been reading, other writers

My sister once sent a fan letter to Anne McCaffrey. She received, to her amazement, a typed reply (and I mean typed, with awkward spacing and ribbon smudge: this must’ve been ~1985) answering each of her 20 questions in turn, clearly from Anne herself. I remember being impressed, jealous, but mostly confused. I liked books, not the people who wrote them.  If I could’ve written to Lucie Pevensie or Mrs Twit, I could see the point, but writers were probably waffly old ladies who’d tell you to eat your greens and pull your socks up and – most worryingly of all – might tell you to sod off and stop bothering them, thus ruining their books by associated disappointment for eternity.

Now that I am writer, I know that we love to be bothered by readers.  Sometimes you say heartskippingly kind things that we remember when it all seems a bit pointless and impossible.  Even when you don’t, replying to you means we can put that niggly bit of  Chapter 7 off for another ten minutes.  And of course we’re all infinitely more accessible in the post-typewriter age. Publishers expect their charges to have a website, a blog, an online presence, well before their first book ever touches shelf – and swathes of us already tweet and blog our writerly woes, because that niggly bit of Chapter 7? It’s still there.

I’m struck lately, however, that I’m meeting more and more writers online (and occasionally in person: lucky me!) before reading their books – which means I’m often sitting down with a pristine new tome, and the eeriest sense that the writer is sitting opposite me: watching, poised, hopeful, waiting to footnote any pause or lip-squinch as I go, and glowing whenever I smile, or cry, or (let’s not get too demanding) fail to throw it out of the window.   What does that do to the reading experience, exactly?  And do other readers do that too, now that we’re so much more likely to have a face to put to the name on the book?

What do you think?

Me, I’ve worrited over it as a pernicious influence (not least because I can think of one writer whose online interactions have made me firmly decide never to read his books, and for all I know they’re wonderful).  But you know what? In my experience, writers tend towards the lovely. If you encounter them on Twitter, or their own blog, or someone else’s, you can probably gauge whether they’re the type of lovely you’d want to invite round for tea and nonsense, and if they are then you might want to read a book by them too.  All this online interaction is like an extra, perpetually updating, ultra-nuanced, personalised, everchanging book cover.  And that writer you’ve seen online, who is now sitting, ghostlike, across from you waiting for you to start reading the book you hold in your hands with their name on it?  They’re not frowning or tutting or squinching their lips.  I like to think they’re reading the book to you.  And who doesn’t love a bedtime story?

*

WOW. I’ve found my Catcher in the Rye.  I thought Frank Portman’s King Dork might be it, because it’s almost exactly the dry witty sincere hip-not-hipster late teen novel I wanted to read when I was 17 – but now I’ve found Simmone Howell’s Notes on the Teenage Underground, and that, my friends, is the real shiny deal right there.  It’s not only that it’s ‘girls and films’ instead of King Dork’s ‘guys and bands’ (though I’m sure that’s a chunk of it: all hail Gem, a female protagonist who is beset by all the standard friends/virginity/absent dad/what next? trauma of a teen era ending, but who gets the most empowered line of any teen girl in the history of teens and girls without it feeling for an instant like a cliche or a reach or a lecture). Make no mistake: this is a bible of cool AND an emotionally honest, enticing, snort-your-cola funny read.  All those how-to guides that tell you to focus on ‘voice’ when you write?  This is what they mean.  I’m rereading bits already. (I met Simmone a few weeks back, and when reading I can entirely see her impishly grinning from the pages. She’s @postteen on Twitter, and her website is here: go fangirl at her, she’s aces.)

I’m…writing.  I don’t even know what I’m writing, or if any of you will ever see it, but I am writing.  It is a mite worrying how many words I can wring out of describing the Tower of London gift shop in lieu of plot, mind.

Realising that a British barbecue is actually amazingly delicious and involves none of the trad food poisoning/burnage when you put a Galician in charge;  getting very flaily indeed at the prospect of going to Canada in 5 weeks (hooray! oh no, bears! but hooray!); inventing a new approach to cooking which involves making normal food and then putting peas in it.  I do like peas.  They are a bit weird in a bacon sarnie though.

Purple it is!

Posted on 08. Mar, 2010 by susie in blog, books i've been reading, cooking, kids' books i've been reading, project poppy

Ta-da!  Isn’t it shiny?

Apologies to those reading this post on my RSS feed, and any new arrivals: you’ll just have to trust me when I say that www.susieday.com has just received a Gok-worthy makeover, and is skipping off into the internet with replenished self-esteem and a new handbag.  Twirl, my pretty, twirl!

Like everything, it’s best viewed in, um, anything but Internet Explorer.  (Mum: MOZILLA FIREFOX.  Google, then download.  Trust your youngest.)

Oh, and that’s a peep at what the teal/poppy logo would’ve looked like, for the curious-minded and easily-blinded.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: YA smash-hit about teens in a dystopian future, forced to endure a gladiatorial arena produced for entertainment, Big Brother-style.  I honestly don’t think I’ve ever read anything so gripping in my life.  A book to let your tea go cold for – and it’s a trilogy, yay!

Supervising the tinkering pixies in charge of my website has been a wee bit time-consuming, but Project Poppy’s edit continues apace.  Deadline is now end of March, so I have time to reread it multiple times and realise how terrible it is, in true tedious angsting author fashion.  My Big Wall Of Notes is now adorned with ‘Zit On Face’ and ‘Chestnut Mane’, written in urgent biro.  I’m not sure those are going to be entirely helpful.

Wishing Glee was actually good, not just well-intentioned; hanging a full-length mirror in my kitchen because there wasn’t anywhere else to put it (it’s opposite the fridge: disaster!); making fantastic butternut squash and plum tagine.

To purple or not to purple, that is the question

Posted on 22. Feb, 2010 by susie in books i've been reading, cooking, doctor who, my invisible boyfriend

Lovely blog readers, let me steal your brains!   This here shiny website is shortly to undergo a grand transformation, and (as well as exclusive extracts, noisy things on YouTube and general time-wasty shenanigans) SusieDay Towers will be getting a new coat of paint.  This makes me happy.  And confused.  I am so indecisive I have been known not to have any lunch because I can’t decide if I want cheese on toast or soup, so picking my favourite of two colour schemes is utterly beyond me.  So: halp?

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Am currently reading The Official Nancy Drew Handbook: Skills, Tips & Life Lessons From Everyone’s Favourite Girl Detective.  V handy as I bunked off Girl Detective School the day they did How To Train a Carrier Pigeon and Advanced Kidnap-Thwarting.  Alas, I am less interested in Nancy’s help in flower-arranging and, um, How To Get That Ring on Your Finger and That Man to the Altar.  Hush now, Nancy dear: I’m reading the Usborne Detective’s Handbook which has proper criminals with straggly beards in.  Now where’s my Whifflepoof?

CUT CUT SNIPPETY TYPE CUT SLASH HACK ARGH! SLURP.  Or: I am editing Project Poppy.  So far this mostly involves deleting entire chapters and drinking a lot of tea while trying to think of things that are funny.  Dairylea triangles = funny.  Explaining how time travel works = not funny.  Oh, but guess what I’ve got?  The brand new not-out-till-March-1st North American paperback of serafina67 *urgently requires life*!  Still as pink and gorgeous as ever, and now with a sneaky peeky at My Invisible Boyfriend tucked away at the back too.  Woo, etc.

cooking tagine in my new tagine (eee! even if I need to learn to actually read a recipe on occasion); wondering who thought BSG’s Razor was a good idea; giggling at the sheer lolarity of the new Doctor Who trailer; throwing things in skips; eating lotus flowers while harassed by a dragon for Chinese New Year.

The view from my desk

Posted on 08. Dec, 2009 by susie in books i've been reading, cooking

I thought this might provide a fascinating insight into my creative process.  Mostly it involves being in the world’s yellowest room, trying to read my own handwriting to find out what’s supposed to happen next. The yellow is even more horrid in person, but this is my kitchen and thus the kettle is but a jump to the left (along with the drawer containing the wherewithal to write myself motivatingly silly post-it notes).

The Brontes WentTo Woolworths, Rachel Ferguson. “Three years ago I was proposed to. I couldn’t accept the man, much as I liked him, because I was in love with Sherlock Holmes.” Where have you been all my life, book? Why were you not on the family bookshelves, filed under ‘Noel Streatfeild for grown-ups’, in between Cold Comfort Farm and I Capture The Castle? (I know why: because it’s been out of print for ages, and is newly reissued as part of a group from Bloomsbury – guess what they’ve called it – of neglected but beloved early C20th fiction. I want them all.) The Carne sisters Katrine, Deidre and Sheil spend their days accompanied by numerous colourful ‘friends’, many of whom they’ve never met – so when they encounter the ‘real’ Lord and Lady Toddington, will real life live up to the fiction, or destroy it? The moment where it begins to dawn exactly how the Brontes come in put a mile-wide smile on my face. A clever and very funny 1930s novel about families and fiction, which makes the reader entirely lose track of who is real and who is not (and not mind at all).

  UNICORNS!!  Only not really (before my editor expires).  It ought to read MERMAIDS!! too.  :P  (Not really them either.)  I’m having proper fun with Project Poppy this week, even if I seem to have hit my intended halfway-point in terms of word count but not in terms of plot.  I don’t care: any day when I get to type ‘SIMEON’S GOLDEN SNOTRAG OF LOVE’ into my manuscript counts as a good ‘un.

  Icing Sinterklaas biscuits for St Nick’s Day (thank you Kirsten!); making parsnip, chilli & ginger soup (mmm); wishing I was home to see Small Person being an angel (awwww).

Stop! Hammocktime

Posted on 27. Jun, 2009 by susie in books i've been reading, cooking, girl meets cake, internet, kids' books i've been reading, my invisible boyfriend, telly

I’ve wanted a hammock since the summer after my GCSEs, when I spent an entire week at a French campsite refusing to budge out of one, while reading Dune.  (Truly, there cannot be more compelling evidence of the comfortableness of hammocks.  Sorry, sci-nerds, but that’s a 750-page turd of a book.)

Today the sun shone, I read the weekend Guardian cover to cover, and there were raspberries, and much tea.   Bliss.

  Nomnomnombooks. Lately I’ve read Scarlett Thomas’ PopCo, which is marginally less weird than The End of Mr Y, despite being about commercial globalisation, treasure-hunting, and complex mathematical formulae. Brilliant, though: the ideas are magnificent but it’s the characters I still miss, weeks later. Then Nicola Upson’s An Expert In Murder: faux 30s detective fiction, starring actual 30s detective fiction author Josephine Tey (do you see what she did there?), who gets embroiled in a series of murders connected to her play about Richard III.  Being a Tey geek, I adore the concept more than is reasonable, but the execution is a disappointment: in lieu of narrative urgency the point of view wanders from character to character, including to the killer – who conveniently happens not to be thinking “hmm, wish I hadn’t committed that murder” at the time – and Tey is barely in it. I’d go and read Brat Farrar instead if I were you (or Allingham’s Dancers in Mourning, for genuine Golden Age theatreland intrigue). I’ve also finally read a Jaclyn Moriarty, Becoming Bindy McKenzie (YA), which I adored with the queasy reservations of one who recognises bits of her teenage self in the (profoundly unlovely) heroine. The denouement is bonkers, but there’s so much brilliance before that you don’t mind at all. It’s the 3rd of her Ashbury books, and I plan to eat the others as soon as the library lets me.

  I have proofs!  One last pass over the insides of My Invisible Boyfriend (the US title for Girl Meets Cake), which is going to look beautiful.  And I’m playing with a new Sooper Sekrit Project: only a few thousand words in, but I’m getting a wee bit excited.  If I can juuust get the voice right…

Becoming enthralled by the televisual loveliness that is Chuck; watching Don Juan De Marco (Johnny Depp is so young! Marlon Brando is so… many other things); being dead chuffed about Anthony Browne being the new children’s laureate; eating lasagne; still loving RebelliousPixels’ Buffy vs Twilight satire vid (just in case you missed it); wondering if I can bring the hammock indoors at the end of the summer so I don’t have to contemplate life without it…