every day should be a susie day

The Fabulous Bake-A-Boy Challenge: Sci-Fi Edition continues, boldly going where goldfish roes are nibbling at your toes…

Yep, that’s Lister, Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat of the good ship Red Dwarf, as created by the magnificent revision-avoiding hands of Nicky, James and Tom.  I do love how, even in gingerbread form, Rimmer is losing his hair.  (I’ve only seen the first episode of the reunion special thingy, but so far it falls into ‘not at all bad and surprisingly non-cheapo-looking given that they allegedly made it for ninepence’ category: phew.  Weird having no laughter track, though.)

Keep them coming, people!  I think the Bake-A-Boy gallery is going to need a Gingerbread Spock before long…

  I’ve been a bit hopelessly distracted, so nothing new on the bookish front (though I am itching to get my mitts on Sally Nicholls’ Season of Secrets, because Ways To Live Forever was great; Zombie Queen of Newbury High by Amanda Ashby, because ZOMBIES; and The Teashop Girls by Laura Schaefer, because in places it sounds spookily like Girl Meets Cake…). In the meantime, here’s Tanya Gold’s brilliant Guardian piece on YouTube ‘starlet’ Susan Boyle.

  I seem to be doing more unwriting than writing at the moment.  File The Becky Book under ‘You’ll Read It One Day, Probably’, because now I’m writing… something else.  Watch this space.  (Not literally, or your eyes will go funny.  At least get yourself a cup of tea or something: I might be a while.)  In the meantime, I’m at the final copyedit stage of My Invisible Boyfriend (ie the US version of Girl Meets Cake) – just as soon as I can get OpenOffice to play nicely with Word, sigh  – and they’ve been taking pretty pictures of pretty people for the cover!  It’s going to look so very gorgeous.

Getting sunburnt in Wales in April (???); having deep and meaningful discussions about the hobbies of mermaids with Small Person (“on weekends, they like to go to the garden centre”); melting into a very happy puddle in a turkish steam room (followed by a MINTY SHOWER, oh bliss); wondering why there’s still water dripping through the kitchen ceiling when my flat has been full of plumbers all week; feeling happyhappyhappy.

Surefire way to avoid the post-Christmas blues: go on holiday. OK, so the part where it was -7°C wasn't entirely part of the plan, but Paris in the snow turns out to be absurdly lovely. And it gives one an excellent excuse to drink the utterly decadent hot chocolate at Angelina while thawing...

  Georgette Heyer, wheeee! And Russell T. Davies' A Writer's Tale, which (being about both writing and Doctor Who) was clearly cooked up in the 'things which exist purely to please Susie' cauldron. TARDISes aside, Davies has been responsible for some of the most cheerfully thought-provoking telly of the last 10 years – and he's every bit as entertaining and insightful on the page as you'd hope. I'm finding his reluctant commitment to prevarication until utter terror forces him to start working deeply reassuring, though he's emphatically wary about assuming any writer's method as a template. Always have an ending in mind! Only write in the mornings! In pencil, on the backs of envelopes, while drinking nothing but squid ink! He's right: we all want to have our hands held, to believe there's a secret trick to it, but sometimes the best advice really is to ignore whatever anyone tells you and just get on with it. Though of course you'll have to take my word for that...

  Next Book* is at the vertiginous decision-making stage. There are so many ways to write this story: whether it works depends entirely on me picking the right one. Actually, that's rubbish. No decisions are final: sometimes you have to write it 'wrong' before you can see how to write it 'right'. (If you're me, anyway.) It does help if you can spot the 'right' early on, though: Girl Meets Cake got to 55,000 words of Mostly Wrong, which was a bit wearing to sort out. Speaking of which: look! OK, so you still can't have it until April – but magnificent cover, no?

* Next Book (ie not the Next Book for you lot, the one I haven't written yet but hopefully might come out in 2010) needs a 'Biscuits & Lies'-style working title.  It's got a working working title, but that tells you the whole plot in one go, so we can't have that.  Hmm...bear with me?

  Drinking gallons of tea from my Christmas Blake's 7 mug; seeing in the New Year with Spaniards and grapes (twelve of 'em); pondering the many ways in which The Other Boleyn Girl is terrible; plotting a Prisoner marathon in honour of the *sniffles* late, great McGoohan.