Until I wrote that down, I’d never registered that my two supposed career goals as a little girl are quite so depressing. Will I be pretty, will I be rich? No, I’ll be an AIRLINE PILOT with TWELVETY DEGREES IN THE SCIENCE OF BRAAAINS, Doris, if that’s all right with you?

Ahem. I am not actually an airline pilot. I have no brain science degrees. I didn’t want to do either of those. My Que Sera Sera mum-questioning as ‘just’ a little girl would’ve basically boiled down to

Will I be Indy? Will I be Luke?

Although Imaginary Doris Mum would presumably have felt obliged to sing back

No, you can’t, Susie
Those people are fictional

- I’ve spent most of this year being an eleven-year-old redhead, a pregnant dog, and a bonkers German student on crutches. This afternoon, I’m going to wear a hat and fight crime. Tomorrow, SPACE! (Or Cardiff. Who knows.)

Being a writer is exactly like being a Jedi – only I get to be DarthVader and R2-D2 and Third Sandperson On The Left as well. Now, stand aside. This isn’t the blog post you were looking for…

Lovely author buddy Sophia Bennett has been blog-touring it up lately for her new book, The Look. You can find out what a bunch of other authorial types wanted to be when they were just little girls on her blog. (I’m not the only Indiana Jones, yay!) Then, if you like YA, I highly recommend you go and read The Look, that book with the bright pink page edges that prompted me to bellow across a Eurostar carriage ‘It’s about cancer!’, because it’s a rather excellent meditation on why plenty of real teenage girls care about bigger things than being pretty or rich.

I had a stupidly lovely day hanging out with friends, eating my favourite things (sea-spiced aubergine: oh my nom), watching The Artist (which is as joyous and cheery and life-affirming to the creative soul as you might hope – and still is, even if it’s now won so many Oscars people have to pretend not to like it). Then I had a weekend of watching Wales stuff England in the rugby

Triple Crown. Get in!

and doing the auntie thing with beloved small people.

I did a smidgen of work too – poking through old synopses; giving this here website a new lick of paint. (You like orange, right?) Backtracking through the archives made me do that sit-back-and-look thing you’re probably required to do, when you have a birthday.

I have two new books coming out this year. Two more the year after that – and I’m tinkering with a pitch for a new series (shhh, not telling) and brimful of ideas for another teen/YA standalone. That sit-back-and-look made me think, about where I’ve been, and all the fiddly bits we don’t tend to talk about where life gets boringly horrible.

Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator - and vanished...

And… I’m really happy. Things mess up, I get stuff wrong and am wonky in multiple ways – there’s the fruit pastille addiction, and needing a haircut; I always join in the talky bit of the Quantum Leap theme tune; I use too many parentheses (and ellipses, and dashes, and semi-colons); I never answer letters and you don’t like my tie – but think that’s sort of meant, somehow. I am a fundamentally British human. I expect things to be a bit rubbish, and to be terribly stiff-upper-lipped and noble about it. But here I am, having the best life ever, doing the thing I’m meant to be doing.

(Disclaimer: Dear Editor, next time I have a big whinge about copy-edits or deadlines, please don’t send me a link to this post while cackling, k?)

I suppose what I mean is – to any hopeful aspiring writers out there, or hopeful aspiring whater-it-is-es – hang in there. Keep working. I finished my first book 11 years ago, and I’m still not JK Rowling and never will be – but I’m potching along doing my thing, writing stuff I’m proud of, which other people are going to get to read, and that’s completely spectacular.

It is very un-British of me to say so, but I hope your life is spectacular too.

If all that hasn’t made you want to vom, March 1st seems to be a very Susie-flavoured day. You can also find me at Girls Heart Books, talking about World Book Day costumes, and at Bookangel’s Booktopia picking a sort-of-Welsh-if-you-know-the-story Song of the Month for St David’s Day. Happy reading.

Look look looooook! Death by adorableness.

It’s not out until July (sorry). But if you’re the pre-ordering type and like free delivery worldwide, it’s about the price of a posh sandwich, and will look much lovelier on your bookshelf.

Ages, is the answer. Aaaaages. How do you sum up a book that is a coming-of-age teenage birthday summer holiday story with a bit of time-travel, two main characters who are really the same person, a pretty eyelinery boy named Merlin, and a family story which is funny, and sad, and sometimes both at once?

My lovely editor Marion Lloyd, her assistant Anna Solemani (who is also lovely, but ‘lovely assistant’ sounds quite wrong) and I sat in her office a few weeks ago, armed with our shortlist of the very best ideas, planning to pluck the solution from the pile before a nice bit of lunch. FOUR AND A HALF HOURS LATER, we still had nothing. Nowt. Nada. We had tried every dodgy pun; every timey-wimey birthday-wishy beachy-but-not-too-beachy summertime phrase. I had, it appeared, written an untitleable book.

It was nearly two more weeks before we got there. And inevitably, now we have, it seems impossible that it was ever called anything else. The perfect title.

You want to know the title? OK, bear with me a sec.

Because, of course, now we had the perfect title, we also had a squeaky-tight schedule, and designers at work on the next big decision: the cover. I was a teensy bit worried. Covers are as hard to get right as titles. We did not have three years of thinking time. IT COULD STILL ALL GO HORRIBLY WRONG.

Only, here’s the thing. You know those designer people? They’re really clever. Properly, remarkably clever. The super-talented Jamie managed somehow to take all that madly disparate stuff, and produce a cover that’s fresh and bright and utterly apt. The perfect cover.

And even though it isn’t out until August 2012  -I know! Aaaages! – the (lovely, so lovely) people at Marion Lloyd Books and Scholastic UK said I could share it.

…

…

…

Look at my girls! Bluebell – aka Blue – is on the left. Red – who is actually Bluebell, too, but from one year in the future (did I mention this book was complicated?) – she’s on the right. Obviously. And I want to hug them both, lots. I hope you will too.

*

PS: For those following at home who are now going ‘eh? I thought your next book was about peas and mermaids’ – yes, the first of the Pea’s Book series is coming out summer 2012 too. Other magical designer-people are still tweaking the cover into ultimate perfection, but what I’ve seen already is every bit as perfectly suited to that story – in a completely different way. Will share as soon as I can…!

*

BBC Television Centre! Where they make the television!

I was one of six finalists in the BBC Talent Children’s Fiction Prize. I’d sent in one chapter and a short synopsis, been inexplicably plucked from 4500 entries, and commanded to write the rest by early December. All six hopefuls were invited to a day’s workshop at Television Centre, to get advice from – get this, this still blows my mind – Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Rosen. They were warm and hilarious, encouraging, and very kind to a group of people who (in my case at least) very plainly had NO IDEA AT ALL how to finish a book. (Jacqueline Wilson’s face on learning that we had 3 months left before the deadline and some of us hadn’t written any of it at all? Memorable. Oh so memorable.)

We ate the BBC’s crispy prawns, failed to visit the Blue Peter garden as promised because we were too busy nattering, and left clutching a sealed brown envelope marked ‘Feedback’ and all the other finalists’ email addresses, with promises that we would stay in touch.

I met my sister J for coffee, and burst into tears all over her. 2 hours’ sleep and the first ever experience of what a sealed brown envelope marked ‘Feedback’ feels like will do that to a girl. (It was – as all early-stage critiques should be – 90% positive, with a few gentle suggestions for improvements. At the time, it felt like the end of the world.) I was definitely not going to win the prize, and all those other finalists were definitely scary people who had probably given me made-up email addresses.

The following February, I got a call saying my book was the winner. Not long after, I got on a train to Market Bosworth, and all 6 finalists ate and drank and celebrated and commiserated, and they didn’t spit in my food or poke me with bitter sticks. In fact, they were lovely! We talked about how we didn’t really know a lot about the publishing industry, or any other writers: how maybe we ought to stick together, and help each other out.

Ten years later, that BBC prize-winning book is of course out of print – but that wasn’t the real prize. One of our little band decided not to pursue writing (we miss you, Zoe!), but the rest of us have kept at it. In the last ten years, between us we’ve published seven novels: there are contracts signed for another seven, with more waiting to be inked. We’ve cheered each other on, and been brutally honest when honesty was needed. We’ve skipped over hurdles because one of us has seen them before, and knows when to jump. We’ve eaten a quite startling amount of curry. I’d have given up in despair on multiple occasions without them – and I think that goes for the lot of us.

So thank you, Sarah, Ruth, Josie and Caroline: I owe you tons. And tons. And some more tons.

Sometimes we also eat cake in our jim-jams. *waves at absent Josie*

And for those of you who are aspiring writers, and don’t have a Sarah, Ruth, Josie and Caroline to read your first draft, or your submission letter (and spot that humiliating typo on line 1), or brainstorm plot with, or give you a hug when you get a rejection, or to pontificate wildly at that special wine-based time of the evening, or comfortingly hate that book that just came out that’s a bit like that idea you had, or just tell you you’re ace at the precise moment you happen to need to hear that – I hope you find some.