every day should be a susie day

I love books. (Duh.) I love being recommended books, and borrowing books, and being given them by lovely generous people. But once the Billys are doublestacked and the TBR pile on the beside table starts to need its own postcode, tricky decisions have to be made. What to read next? And how to avoid that awful grudging ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ sensation when you discover that you’ve picked up one that’s not really your cup of tea?

Apparently Ford Madox Ford reckoned that there was a sure test for any book: “open the book to page ninety-nine and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.”

My Reader brain says: I see what you’re getting at, Ford Madox Ford.  (And while I’m here, can I just say how much I enjoyed Ladies Whose Bright Eyes, your reworking of the Twain classic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and that I really must get around to reading Parade’s End, and I really am sorry that these days you’re just a rent-a-quote guy with a funny name when you were instrumental in shaping the C20th literary canon? Also, sorry that you’re dead and everything.)

My Writer brain says: Isn’t that terrifying?

Page 1 is the one we all worry about.  The opening sentence, the first paragraph: those get fussed over, tended to,  pruned to perfection like roses. By page 99 I’m a bit busy telling the story to the people who’ve read the previous 98 pages to worry about hooking them in all over again.  But people put books down. Sometimes they don’t pick them back up. So should every page of my own writing be jampacked with amazingness, just in case the whim of the typesetter makes it #99?

Applying the Page 99 test to my own books is… interesting.  Different territories = different page numbers (ha, take that, FMF!), but I’ve stuck with the UK editions via the scientific logic known as ‘they were nearest’. So:

Girl Meets Cake: we’re faced with an IM conversation from Ludo – the sort which is all subtexty and meaningful if you know that she thinks she’s talking to Heidi’s boyfriend Ed, when actually she’s talking to Heidi – but looks inane and off-putting if you don’t.

Big Woo: possibly my favourite scene in the entire book: where Serafina narrates her failed first date in the style of a film script, where squirrels throw nuts and a bird poos on her dress which means she cannot even take it back to Topshop.

Whump!…in which Bill falls 632 miles down a manhole (my first, now out-of-print, book: 8-12/MG) : a hilariously overwritten scene in which the hero is kidnapped and taken to the Land Of Too Many Adjectives.

Hmm.

As you can see, Pterry is devastated.

What conclusion do those 3 completely disparate results lead me to – other than blimey, Slowly the hushed voices built up again to a steady hum is a horrible sentence? Well, obviously good old FMF was onto something. Cover design and blurb can’t do it all: some things – tone of voice, sense of humour – are so aligned to personal taste that the text itself must be the clincher.  (Terry Pratchett falls into this category for me. In theory, I should love Discworld. In practice: eh.) If you are immune to the charm of books which reference the internet or include email, IMs, blogging in CAPSLOCK, imaginary squirrels etc, then my teen stuff won’t be your thing – so a sniff of page 99 will help you to steer clear. Alternatively, if you are a tech-comfy reader, happy with screen-styled interaction appearing on a printed page, maybe you already approach the text as something to be read as if onscreen – to be skimmed, saved for later, dipped into instead of treated like a traditional novel.

To me, it still feels like cheating: a funny sort of disregard for the rules, no different from skipping to the end to see Whodunnit or reading plot spoilers (though I understand plenty of UTTERLY BEWILDERING AND ODD people do both).  There’s a reason publishers tend to put Chapter 1 of future titles online or at the end of another novel, as a teaser. Chapter 1 is the beginning of the story.  Reading the middle first is like trying to be 17 before you’ve been 7: not likely to help you learn how to drive.

That said, whichever page number gets randomly assigned to my words, my job as a writer is to write as well as  personally possible. Even allowing for the necessary peaks and troughs of plotlines and emotional journeys, every page should be jampacked with amazingness – even if it’s the sort of amazingness that isn’t apparent to a casual page-99 drive-by reader: something that looks amusing/disastrous/kind but we know for that character that it isn’t; a pay-off to an earlier set-up, Chekov’s gun coming off the wall; a line that rattles in your head because it’s honest and true and you thought you were the only one. Or an imaginary squirrel.

Time to prune the roses…

Yep, that is me blethering away there in the background.  (Even the Mycroft Christie bits.)  That’s my special ‘oh no, I’m talking to myself, let’s try to get this over and done with as quickly as possible’ voice.

MY INVISIBLE BOYFRIEND has now been read by lots of people who aren’t my Mum, including the lovely ABA, who’ve picked it for the Kids’ Indie Next List Summer 2010. (I’m rubbing shoulders with Diana Wynne Jones, David Almond, Mark Haddon, David Levithan… mind officially blown, tyvm.)

And here’s what some other people (who also aren’t my Mum, unless she’s been very busy) thought:

‘quirky, hilarious, and entertaining… Heidi is an unforgettable protagonist that will not fail to make readers laugh with her LOL-worthy shenanigans and escapades’ – The Undercover Book Lover

‘a strong first-person narrative voice that reminds me a little of Georgia in Louise Rennison’s series (Angus, Thongs, and Full-frontal Snogging, etc.)… very funny’ – Book Aunt

‘one darlin’ book that I simply couldn’t get enough of’ – Lauren’s Crammed Bookshelf

‘very, very funny… Every single secondary character (Dai, Ludo, Teddy and Fili especially) comes to life on the page, and I want to be friends with all of them’ – Wondrous Reads (on GIRL MEETS CAKE, the UK/World edition)

‘I just really fell for Heidi and her friends… cute and entertaining, and if you like Brit humor the way I do, like fun romantic comedy-type stories, or like books with a funky and diverse cast of characters, you’ll really get a kick out of it’ – Forever Young

Just in case you were, you know, wondering if it was your cup of tea…    I think what’s really stuck out in all the reviews so far is how very British people have found it.  I’m still wondering exactly what that means.  Blog on the subject will ensue, once I’ve pondered some more…

I’m reading a book about faeries – and loving it to pieces (despite being a cynical git who tends to find straight fantasy and ‘magick’ a bit of a stretch) because it’s just that good.  It’s R.J. Anderson’s Knife (published in the US as Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter), which so far is reminding me of The Borrowers: an enticing doll’s house world of tiny furniture and monstrous humans (who might turn out to be allies, after all), and a tough bored girl who wants to see the big wide world.  The prose is glorious too.  Zippy clever stuff for 9+ girls.

Still puttering away at the opening chapters of Exciting New Secret Book Thingy, juggling a few scenes around to get the best fit.  It’s like a jigsaw with a piece missing at the moment (sorry, peanut-butter-in-bra story I borrowed from Girl Scout camp, not sure you’re quite good enough) – but I’m itching to get to the next bit.  Plus coffee with agent, shop-talky dinner with an old mate who’s now commissioning teen lit for a living (small small world), and oceans of tea with awesome writer-buddy Sarah Mussi. That all counts as work, right?

Going out for dinner and ending up dancing to random 60s girl groups in an awesomely manky student nightclub; discovering that the Marylebone Oxfam Bookshop is where Scholastic mock-ups go to die (I found a Philip Pullman with a Big Woo cover, and an Ally Kennen which was Girl Meets Cake on the inside: utterly surreal); eating a lot of peas.  Mmm, peas.

To mark the last of My Invisible Boyfriend‘s celebratory 7 Days of Stuff, what better than a giveaway?

Want to get your hands on this little lot?

Up for grabs: a signed copy of My Invisible Boyfriend, a signed copy of serafina67 *urgently requires life*, and a gingerbread goodiebag (not as pictured – they seem to have mysteriously vanished post photoshoot )…

In My Invisible Boyfriend, Heidi creates an imaginary BF inspired by a gingerbread man.  To win, create your own invisible friend (no gender required, and you’re very welcome to keep things platonic), and send me a picture.  It can be a real gingerbread cookie, or a drawing of one.  Check out the last Fabulous Bake-A-Boy Challenge gallery for inspiration, and links to a deeply yummy gingerbread recipe.  Send me your invisible friends!

Email your entries to: susie AT susieday.com (or here, with a link to your image hosted online): all images in jpg, png, or gif format please
Contest open to: everyone!  All territories, all ages (please ask permission from a guardian if you are <13)
Closing date: Friday 7th May

Entries must be your own creative work and not infringe copyright.  For example:

THIS IS OK

THIS IS CUTE BUT NOT OK

Good luck! And if you missed it, don’t forget to check out the rest of the 7 Days of Stuff!

Full T&Cs are listed below:
Read More…

I hear murmurings from the blogosphere that the ARC of My Invisible Boyfriend is beginning to arrive in a few US mailboxes.  For those of you who’ll have to wait till April, here’s a sneaky peek at the absurdly cute cover.

Look, pretty people!   (Don’t get too excited, European readers: this is the US edition of Girl Meets Cake, not a new book: you’ll have to wait till 2011 for one of them.  North American readers, please feel free to get as excited as is humanly possible.)

  I’ve got a copy of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go sitting next to me – yet appear to be reading Dick Francis’s Forfeit.  Eh, it’s Christmas, right?

  Project Poppy has been speeding along very happily, and has now careened into a wall and fallen down a plothole.  Grr.  Now have to decide whether to skip over the hole and fill it in later, or spend a few days with pen and paper scribbling metaphorical ladders. Hrmmm…

Listening to R4′s Shelved on how abandoned or banned episodes of Doctor Who and The Professionals reveal that people who made TV in the 1970s were, um, bonkers (a shock, I know); discovering my Christmas lights are borked; finally getting around to watching Inkheart and LOVING IT TO PIECES, OOH! – really must get round to reading the other 2 books.

How lucky am I?  Not only do I get to write books about cake, but this week I got to have afternoon tea with one of the people who reads them!   The utterly lovely Paige won the Mizz magazine ‘Tea with Susie’ star prize, and she and her family joined me and a few of the divine Scholastic ladies at the Wallace Collection in London.  Much tea, cake, book-talk and giggling was had – not to mention cartwheels in the sunshine (confession: I left that bit to Paige).  Keep up the dancing, Paige, and I hope you’re all having a lovely summer holiday this week!

  Judy Blume, Meg Cabot, and, um, Margery Allingham.  Plus Justine Larbalastier’s original version of this blog post, expressing her frustration at Bloomsbury’s choice of a shockingly disingenous cover for her YA novel Liar.  I’m thrilled to see that sanity has prevailed – and have the utmost respect for her courage in speaking out.

  Ooh!  Aah!  I shall have to be infuriatingly vague (since at the moment it’s still at the back-of-an-envelope stage and I haven’t even decided on the main character’s name yet), but I’m about to start my next book.  (Well, I’m about to go on holiday and do no work on it at all, actually – but after that, workiness will ensue, I promise.)  For the ultra-curious: think Groundhog Year.  Hmm… *plots*

  Frolicking around the Tower of London; building slightly less impressive towers for baby M to knock over; having pretty pictures taken for the My Invisible Boyfriend jacket by my super-talented friend Justa Mili; practising putting up my tent!