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…

Hardbacks!  Pink hardbacks!  Pink hardbacks that when piled resemble some kind of delicious mutant xylophone made from boiled sugar!  OK, maybe that’s just me having gone a bit wonk-eyed from staring at them lovingly.  But honestly, has a pile of books ever looked quite that lickable?  How handy that I have a nice three-letter word for a last name so it can fit tidily on the spine, too.  (Well done, father: impressive planning ahead there.)

For those at the back, this would be the US/Canada edition of Big Woo, which (as you might just be able to spot) is titled serafina67 *urgently requires life*.  Innit shiny?  In theory it’s released on August 1st, but the blogverse informs me it’s already been sighted on the shop floor: yay!  I get to be excited all over again, without even having to write another one.  Cunning, eh?

*toasts pile o’ books with glass of pink wine in their honour*

  Train timetables, mostly.  Though I am sneaking small doses of Douglas Coupland’s JPod every now and then, because the writerly No Books Diet is like all other diets: all I want is books, tasty books, naughty sinful calorific distracting books…

  Biscuits & Lies is whizzing along at breakneck speed, almost as if there were an impending deadline snapping at my heels and the prospect of going to Italy as a reward after I’ve finished it.  Or something.  I’m having a lovely time doing devious things to my poor characters and telling crap jokes, anyway, even if on occasion I’m doing it in fast forward and missing some of the best lines.  Despite it not being remotely finished, we’re in the process of settling on a title, so prepare for an exciting exclusive reveal.  (Unless we decide to call it Biscuits & Lies, in which case…um…you heard it here first?)

  Alas, precious little rocrastination time – except for the wedding of the inestimable Rarg (regular commenter and ridiculously dear old friend) to the equally lovely Mrs Rarg, which managed to cram several weeks’ worth of cheery fun into a day. ‘Wedstock’ fused marriage with the entire live music scene of Bristol, in the most apt celebration of two people’s relationship I can imagine – not to mention the whole roast pig, the flowing cocktails, and me catching up with an old school crowd I’ve not clapped eyes on in well over a decade.  I confess I was eating pig during some of the bands, but I urge you to check out North Sea Navigator (think early PJ Harvey, Levitation, a shoutier Auteurs) and Rose Kemp, who has the kind of startlingly pure voice that demands you stand utterly still and listen, pig or no pig.  And, of course, rarg‘s alter ego as one quarter of Smokehand, who seem to be expanding their ‘Scott Walker sings Tom Waits’ repertoire in the obvious direction of ska-tinged fairground klezmer.  So predictable, those boys.   Highlight, however, was the performance by rarg (with smokehand!Adam on vocals) of a special song for his new missus, which reduced the entire place to sniffly rubble.  Have a glorious honeymoon, you fabulous pair.

Me? I’m with Mighty Meg.

Books aren’t unpackaged and unmediated. They come with covers carefully designed to target a specific audience: cupcakes and faces for girlies, logos for boys, artsy graphics for ‘serious’. (Foil and shiny bits for everyone: we’re all magpies, apparently.) Even the author’s name is retooled for the market where possible. Betcha I wouldn’t be ‘Susie’ if I wrote action thrillers for 10-year-old boys.

But all of these are inexplicit devices, and on occasion quite subtle ones. (I’ve not heard it stated aloud, but I’m fairly sure the colour scheme of the US edition of serafina67 doesn’t quietly evoke Lauren Myracle’s ttyl by accident.) The No To Age Banding posse point out that kids study these tricks of the trade in school. True: I’ve taught that lesson (and it’s gold: nothing gets a book-deprived disinterested class engaged better than getting them to redesign The Hobbit, even if it might end up a bit gorier than you remember, with considerably more grenades and rocket launchers). But it’s not kids who hand over the cash in the bookshop. And as a grown-up who reads kidlit avidly, I still find myself at nephew-birthday time wondering if I’m about to cause family meltdown with a gift that includes oral sex under its Spiderman wrapping paper.

Let’s get this clear: no 9-year-old booknut is going to be arrested for possession of an 11+ rated novel. Alarms will not sound throughout the local library, sending masked men with AK47s to shoot dead gay Dumbledore out of Little Johnny’s hands. If we can credit young readers with understanding book covers as marketing devices, we can also grant them the wit to interpret age banding in exactly the same way: as information which serves a specific purpose, and can be ignored and discarded if you think you know better. Meanwhile us crumbly types can be reassured that by buying a book we aren’t effectively taking a 7-year-old to a 12A film, only to have to carry them out, sobbing uncontrollably, after the ninth beheading.

Timing means everything in literature. I firmly believe that every copy of The Catcher In The Rye should come stamped with ‘not to be read if over 18: may cause nausea’. Martin Amis’s early works should explode off one’s bookshelf after the age of 25 in case you’re tempted to revisit, and discover that what seemed ‘like totally postmodern man, whoa’ back in the day now feels a bit studenty and crap. No kid is going to be heinously scarred by reading outside what is designated ‘age-appropriate’ – but I fail to see how they’ll suffer from a little guidance. We’re in a second Golden Age of children’s writing. Magnificent new books get published every day. A little help finding the ones you’ll get the most out of is no bad thing.

The Last of the Warrior Kings, Sarah Mussi (YA, 12+, contemporary thriller). Regular readers will know Sarah is an old mate, who despite being an award-winning and nominated-for-more-award-winning author, still deigns to associate with the likes of me. Much as I’d love to annoy her with a bad review, the bloody woman continues to write such uniquely funny, brainy, pacy stuff that I’m stuck with the usual effusions of dribbly praise. If you’ve read her Door of No Return, you’ll know to expect movie-worthy action and thrills, bonkers plot twists, heartbreakingly accurate teenage characters, and a serious dose of education on African issues. Last of the Warrior Kings manages to revisit the same territory while feeling utterly fresh, largely thanks to hero Max, whose endearingly hapless efforts to save the day and win the unattainable girl (all while keeping his expensive trainers pristine) can’t help but draw you in. It seems cheeky to highlight the sillier side of a story that has genuine darkness at its heart: Sarah’s not naive about her own South London, and the harsh realities of gang warfare now are accompanied by the no less grim history of C19th British intervention in Nigeria. But this is a fundamentally uplifting book about finding a way to live your life well no matter what hand fate has dealt you, with plenty of daft gags along the way and an ending that will really linger in the mind. Quite infuriatingly good. Stop making the rest of us look inadequate, dammit!

Had a typically spectacular weekend with my writing group (the evil Mussi included), who kindly held my hand through a bit of Biscuits & Lies structural paranoia, and, as always, fed me till I was barrel-like. I’m now back to too much thinking and not enough typing. And the realisation that I now have three separate characters called Simon. This is going to be an interesting editing experience…

Mourning the loss of Lovely Lucinda from The Apprentice; finding new things to hate about Indy IV (while coveting Lego Indy); playing Prince of Persia on someone’s PS2 (this is what old-skool looks like now? gosh); staring, open-mouthed, at this…er…unusual cover version of Rihanna’s Umbrella (T: isn’t that Arbruzzi in a wig?).

That’s what happens when you burrow in the cupboard for chick peas, and find the turmeric instead.  If I was a C15th spice merchant, I’d be well narked.  As it is, I’m quite impressed by my artistic jar-juggling skills.  I’m calling it Sunset Boulevard: Kitchen, and leaving it there for future generations to appreciate.  Or until I find my dustpan and brush.

 I’m slacking on the fiction front – always tricky when you’re knee deep in your own book to fully pay attention to someone else’s – so you’ll have to wait for my review of the marvellous Sarah Mussi’s new teen issue-thriller, Last of the Warrior Kings.   (It is killing me to keep putting it down, though.  Damn you, Mussi, and your cliffhangery ways!)  In the meantime, here’s Charlie Brooker talking about existentialism.  He’s always good value, but this column has bonus thought-provocation in with the LOLs.  It’s what Biscuits & Lies is about, really: becoming so accustomed to the rules of the unreal world (telly, movies, the internet, where you’re a safe observer in the audience, just a pseudonym among millions of untraceable others) that you can’t help but apply them to the real one, at which point everything goes tits-up up quite spectacularly.  Speaking of which…

 You know how last week I said I kept thinking of throwing the whole of B&L out of the window?  Well, I did.  (Metaphorically.  It was in my laptop: I sort of need that a bit too much to go throwing it at windows.)  I’ve nailed the heroine’s voice, at last.  The characters I’d planned out are writing themselves into unexpected, sparkly new people.  There’s a whole new subplot, and I have no idea how it will end: I’m spotting clues to it as I type them, and giggling, and scribbling down ridiculous possibilities, because who knows?  It’s a messy, impractical way to work: I can see already the places I’ll need to tighten up, the meandering chunks of dialogue that don’t do anything for the plot, are just there because I was having fun making these people talk to each other.  (I’m writing dialogue!  I’ve missed dialogue.)  But I don’t think my brain works any other way.  I’ve got the fundamental story set in stone, but if it’s all preconstructed, I get bored.  Knowing exactly where I’m going would be like reading the last page of the detective novel to find out whodunnit: simply unsporting, old chap.  I shall deny ever saying such things when I’m sweating over Edit #43, obviously, but right now, I’m having a riot.  Can there really be people on the planet who don’t want to do this for a living?

 Doing a little spoon-based dance round the kitchen while cooking, only to realise there were three students in the garden, probably weeing themselves at my old-lady moves; celebrating 2 chocolate-free weeks with pistachio ice-cream (I fit in my jeans again: sod it); Prison Break-ing like a mo-fo (2 eps from the end of Season 2: gosh *flails* etc); finally being a grown-up and going for a proper bra-fitting, which is much less scary than I’d imagined (though I was mentally writing an extra serafina67 scene where she did the same – with hi-larious consequences, of course).

Forget cups of tea, kings and queens, fish and chips (or endless rain, endemic alcoholism, and teenage pregnancy): I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is the true symbol of Britishness. When Gordon Brown suggested we needed a motto to rival France’s ‘liberte, egalite, fraternite’ he should have looked no further than the 30+ years of Radio 4′s antidote to panel games. Brains, Filth, Silliness: that’s Blighty. (I’d settle for ‘Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!’, though.)

I remember my glee when I first looked at a Tube map, and discovered Mornington Crescent actually exists. I can’t hear the word ‘punt’ without recalling Barry Cryer reducing a theatre to mirthful mush, without ever needing to reach the punchline. Thanks to Willie Rushton, in my mind Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’ will forever be sung to the tune of ‘A you’re Adorable’. And Humph’s own contributions – wearily deriding the panel, the audience, the games themselves – pricked the possible balloon of smuggery, on the comedy programme of fate.

I just hope that Samantha can cope all right without him. In her honour, some greatest hits: Girlfriend in a Coma to the tune of Tiptoe through the Tulips, and some of the gent himself from 2006.

Red: the Next Generation of American Writers, edited by Amy Goldwasser (hardback: essays). This is a peach of a dip-into book: a collection of essays on everything from terminal illness to fangirling Johnny Depp, from ‘a generation, perhaps the first, of writers’. It’s grand proof that all the blogging, social networking, texting and gossiping teenagers do instead of their homework has inherent value. They’re not just giving an insight into the familiar petty distractions of teenage angst (although they do that spectacularly); these are writers, showing off how much they already know about structure, pace, how to use wit or shock to manipulate the reader. And some of them are only 13. We old fart fictioneers had better watch our backs. (Incidentally, I don’t know of anything similar that exists in the UK. Anyone else? It’s quite a tempting idea, if not…)

I’m in the keyboard-hammering stage with Biscuits & Lies: one day it’s going swimmingly, the next I dream of throwing it all out of the window and starting again. A first draft needs to exist before I can edit it into something less humiliatingly terrible, but it’s still frustrating to know how much of my still-puny word count is delete-worthy guff. (Today is a ‘throw it out of the window’ day: can you tell?) I’ve finally pegged the key difference between the main characters in Big Woo and B&L, though: Big Woo‘s serafina is fixated on how messed up she is; B&L‘s heroine has absolutely no idea. Now, if only I could find a way to respond to the note I’ve got pinned up above the laptop: NEEDS MORE JOKES.

Breaking myself horribly through yoga; becoming obsessed with The Apprentice, even though the last three firings have made no sense whatsoever (Lucinda FTW!); watching Atonement (good enough to distract from La Knightley and her Amazing Performing Back, even: remarkable); watching There Will Be Blood (possibly good in theory: could not stand it); avoiding chocolate, with great sadness.