If by ‘Deadline’ we mean ‘arbitrary date several weeks after the proper deadline’, and by ‘Meets’ we mean ‘constructs vaguely comprehensible draft that is embarrassingly shoddy in places and needs to be at least 36% more funny’.  Come to think of it, ‘Girl’ is pushing it too.  Writer Writes Writing?

In any case, Girl Meets Cake has graduated from Floaty Amorphous Headstuffs to Actual Legible Existence, which as any writer will tell you is a rather important stage of the process, so woo, yay, etc.  It’s still rather a long way from what will actually appear on a shelf next year, but definitely closer than it was before I’d written any of it.  Well, hopefully.  Now to find out if my epic mountain of notes on Bits That Desperately Need Rewriting And/Or Throwing Away Completely matches up with my editors’.  It’s a bit like waiting for your exam results to arrive, while knowing in advance that you’ll have to resit.  If they were voluntary exams which you got paid to sit, and the questions mostly asked you to write jokes, and you were positively encouraged to cheat and look the answers up on the internet.  Erm.  Still, anything above a C is a passing grade, right?

  Mr Big by Ed Vere, in which a nice but huge gorilla discovers music may be the way to acceptance.  Lovely artwork, and it prompted Small Person (aged 2 and a half) to ask the eternal question ‘Where is the jazz?’, which made me laugh for about a day.  (Rarg, any suggestions?)  Also finally finished Douglas Coupland’s JPod, which is even less plot-driven than Microserfs, but still larky fun.  You’ll never look at Ronald McDonald the same way again (and I’m guessing the way you were looking at him before wasn’t exactly replete with the cosy warmth reserved for puppies, Stephen Fry, etc).

  A book!  A whole book!

  Post-deadline celebration has included acquainting myself with Smallest Person (babies! they’re so brilliant), building sandcastles on Barry Island beach, watching Starsky & Hutch, and having whole conversations with people who are a) not fictional and b) don’t work at Co-Op.  Oh, and I made some really good pea soup earlier.  Never let it be said I don’t know how to let my hair down. :D

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.

Dear Reader, behold: the above represents a fleeting glimpse at the contents of my head.  *shudders*  For every blog post that appears here, there are dozens of others that I intend to write, and decide not to due to knackeration/distractedness/the realisation that probably no one else is all that interested in which bit of my ceiling will fall down next.  Give infinite monkeys an infinite number of blogposts, and they’ll plan to write Shakespeare, right after they’ve shown you this picture of a kitten with stuff written on it.

In the spirit of brevity, I shall thus give you the sonic drive-by version of all the things I meant to say lately but ran out of time/brain/ability to stand upright:

• I saw David Tennant being Hamlet!  In the previews, too, allowing much smugness at seeing the reviews roll in a week later (many thanks to T for ticket wizardry).  I had quibbles, sure (interval too late so ending feels comparatively flat, Laertes is AWFUL) but I was hopelessly delighted: an honestly likeable, endearing, funny Hamlet of the kind I’ve not seen before (I missed the 60s: shoot me), plus Patrick Stewart bringing epic chills to the ghost, and Oliver Ford Davies as a definitively comic Polonius.  Having admired Tennant since his TV debut in Takin’ Over The Asylum (astonishing 6-part drama by Donna Franceschild, watch it now, go on, shoo), I felt moderately fangirly, but mostly for Shakespeare.  He could do with a decent editor, but gosh, that bloke can write. :)
• Ned’s Atomic Dustbin.  Musical inspiration, with the added bonus of making me feel about 15 again. I seem to remember listening to ‘Up’ compulsively while doing my GCSE art coursework (a charming still life of a Leopard Lily named Colin, FYI).  Weird to realise I still know ALL the words.
• To spell or not to spell, etc.  Man named Ken says ‘oh sod it, ’speach’ will do, who cares?‘  The Spelling Society are…unexpectedly not very into spelling.  I am retro yet down with the young people: in other words, I’m rather fond of this spelling system we’ve had since, ooh, 1755 - but there are contexts in which correct spelling is laborious and irrelevant.  The context is the important bit, though, surely?  There’s something very meaningful in intentionally spelling something wrong (I muck about with that a fair bit in Big Woo/serafina67, after all).  No rules means less jokes.  Sorry, fewer jokes.  See, spelling isn’t everything. :P
• The Gingerbread Man, who you shall be hearing more of in due course…  Girl Meets Cake continues apace, and will be much enhanced by its author being somewhere warm and replete with really nice pizza next week, while editing.
• No good can come of the sentence ’so I called the emergency plumber…’
• Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (ie the 4th, and final, of her series of sparkly vampire romances).  I confess I haven’t read it: struggled through Twilight, but it is officially not my cup of tea.  Yet the series seems to be being eviscerated not only by the mainstream reviewers (jumping aboard the ‘new Potter’ in time for the film of the first book), but by its own fanbase now.  She’s a millionaire author who is selling books by the kajillion and will continue to do so, yet is despised and derided (loudly, in detail) by multitudes.  We’re witnessing not the standard carping that JKR received, but the turning of the fanbase upon the creator.  Count me into the ‘I think the book sounds horrible, but I still feel terribly awkward for her as a human being’ camp, k?
• Deep Heat!  It’s not pictured, but you can imagine that after that complex juggling routine, Hamlet is going to slap a mountain of the stuff on Claudius’ shoulders, oh yes.  For it hurts, the Deep Heat. It might prompt a confession.  But it’s also the only thing that has allowed me any sleep at all for the last three days, and for that, I snog its creator, despite me now smelling quite odd.  I assume Mr Deep Heat Creating Man will be OK with that.

  NOT Breaking Dawn, sorry.

  To-do lists for holiday.

  Buying new shoes with little cakes on, failing to see Batman still, genuinely being excited about being able to stand up.

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. :P)