every day should be a susie day

Fellow kid-novelista MG’s been torturing me all week with beachside Blackberry-blogging from Brazil, so when my Brazilian buddy Be pined loudly for the Bossa Nostra bistro in Brighton, I said ‘brilliant’ and booked a B&B. When the alphabet is that freakishly persistent, I say roll with it.

I’ll concede that Maracajau probably had the edge on the weather, but even in an April weathermunge (blue sky, sunshine, high winds, bloody freezing) I love Brighton: tacky seaside town reeking of chips, hipster bohemia, party town, shady underworld where Pinky might pop up with a knife and do you in down some Art Deco alleyway. Where else could you find a retro arcade on the prom, complete with genuine 1920s end-of-the-pier peepshow viewers, hand-cranked and run on George IV pennies? But the highlight was undeniably the food. I’d no idea what to expect of Brazilian cuisine – and being a somewhat gigantic country, there’s plenty of regional variation. But the national dish is Feijoada, and if you know anyone who can make it, equip your kitchen with manacles and kidnap them immediately. Black bean stew with beef and pork might not sound all that thrilling, but I would gladly make it my last meal on death row. Yep, even above bacon sandwiches.

Feijoada: traditionally served with rice, farofa (ground manioc – a bit like maize), couve (fried greens), and a slice of orange (said to counteract the fat content: I do not entirely believe this bit). I’ll be trying to recreate it: anyone likely to come for dinner, be warned, you may be experimented upon…

* ‘Fish fingers a la Portuguese’ was what my Dad always threatened to cook us for tea if my Mum was otherwise engaged. I still have no idea what they might be. He does a good sprat, though.

Brighton’s North Laine has some nifty secondhand shops (not least Snoopers’ Paradise, which I very nearly left with a Man from UNCLE annual, several dozen plastic Lando Calrissians, and a top hat). Instead I wound up with some well-thumbed Dick Francis, and Knights of the Cardboard Castle by Elizabeth Beresford (of Womble-creating fame) which I remember loving. I don’t remember it being filled with people called Dickie, Ginger, and Mr Trumpet, though. It makes me wonder growing up in a second Golden Age of kidlit is depriving this generation of certain skills: I read so much Blyton, C.S.Lewis and Ransome that I developed an automatic socio-historical context filter, and contemporary characters who weren’t hopelessly gender-stereotyped and prone to adventuring parentless with gypsies and ginger beer were the aberrations. But Blyton still sells a million books a year worldwide, albeit under painfully misleading chicklit covers. I’m guessing the filter just comes naturally, the same way you know after a sentence or two whether something is literature, or just ‘pleasantly readable’.

As well as Brazilian food, Brighton also possesses a bakery in the Lanes that produces cupcakes to die for. These were necessary for important book research. Expect multiple loving descriptions in Biscuits & Lies (though, you know, I might have to go back just to clarify). In other news, there’s a rather spiffy micro-site accompanying a competition to win signed Big Woos over at MyKindaPlace. They’re giving away chocolate with the books: think I might have to enter myself…

Eating my words about Catherine Tate on Doctor Who (where do I sign up to the Donna Noble fanclub?); missing the old Skins cast already, even though they’re dead right to reshuffle; rediscovering the route to the gym at long last (feijoada, cupcakes: not exactly diet food); playing ancient PJ Harvey very very loudly indeed.

It’s Oxford Literary Festival time, so yesterday I put on my cunning ‘humble punter’ disguise and trundled off to see some Important Successful Writers in action. Meg Rosoff (Rose-Off, apparently: who knew?) was every bit as relaxed, witty, and insightful as you’d hope a favourite author might be in person. I say a favourite: the book she was there to talk about, What I Was, was a disappointment to me – but perhaps only because her first two, How I Live Now and Just In Case, are quite so brilliant. And I have enormous respect for her disregard for doing the expected thing, despite it presumably driving her publishers nuts. She’s a YA author here and in Canada: they’re marketing her as an adult writer in the US, and she says herself she imagines her most obvious readership to be middle-aged women. (From the front row I detected the sound of a PR person quietly expiring.) Certainly she seems brilliantly unbothered by the demands of the market to put authors in a neat convenient pigeonhole: her next two novels are an adult-sounding period romance (complete with ‘sexy poacher’), and a contemporary tale of a 19-year-old God. File under: Uncategorized.

She also says she’s rubbish at plot, and recommends stealing other people’s. I too am rubbish at plot, and plan to put ‘Meg Rosoff said I could’ at the end of all future books, just in case the lawyers come knocking.

I then couldn’t resist a panel of chaps who write the current Doctor Who tie-in novels, despite never having read any of them. It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering (Do you hide behind the sofa? Yes. Which are your favourite monsters? We like Daleks. etc), but the audience was almost entirely made up of excited small children (and their excited nerdy dads), one of whom was in costume as Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, and that made me grin all day.

Split by a Kiss, by Luisa Playa (10+, contemporary, girls). Josephine, new Brit arrival at an American high school, snogs the cutest boy in the school, and finds herself split in two: cool Josie, who wears the right clothes and hangs with the popular girls; and Jo the nerd, trying to remain true to herself while also struggling to fit in with the ‘alt’ kids. It’s Mean Girls meets Sliding Doors – except that Playa cleverly manages to keep both versions sympathetic, no matter which one reflects your own teenage status. (And on the nerdy writer front, I was really struck by how what sounds like a tricksy complicated structure is perfectly easy to follow: she makes it look effortless, and I’ll bet it wasn’t.) Throw in oodles of Buffy references, a genuinely touching sub-plot involving Jo’s mum, and a simply lickable love interest, and you have a gem that’s pitched absolutely perfectly at the target audience. If you know teens that eat up Louise Rennison, Jacqueline Wilson’s teen books, Joanna Nadin et al, they will consume this with equal glee. (And if they’re looking for further inspiration, they’ll find plenty at www.chicklish.co.uk, Luisa Playa’s own website, which is stacked with that sort of thing. You might come across a rather fabulous review of a certain Big Woo while you’re there, too…)

Publication Day! Well, it will be tomorrow. And actually Big Woo appears to be available EVERYWHERE already: I keep spotting it on tables in bookshops. (Possibly this is because I’ve been going into bookshops to look for it. Ahem.) I ought to do something special to mark the Official Release, I know, but I’ll just be having my usual Monday: being taken out for lunch in old London Town, and buying myself some posh underwear. *sighs theatrically*

Chuckling over the Guardian Apprentice blog, which is still every bit as entertaining as Siralan and co; continuing to marvel at eclectic DJs (China Crisis followed by Outkast, anyone?); boggling at the wacky snow ‘n’ sunshine thing happening outside.

Despite not being officially released into the wild until April 7th, eagle-eyed genius MG has spotted this rare bird in Oxford Waterstone’s. Quick, someone call Bill Oddie!

The Lesser Spotted Bigwoo is by nature quite timid, but its magnificently shiny plumage should make it easy to locate. If in doubt, apparently look for it amidst books about cake. And geese. (Yep, I’m in the Cake & Geese section. Who knew?) And do please report any further early sightings of this fine fowl: it’s quite exciting seeing it on a shelf like that…

Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris (adult, contemporary). Office workers at a failing ad agency trundle through their mundane lives, which are shared through a collective voice. I haven’t come to the end yet, however, so I’m not in any position to pass judgement: so far file under ‘interesting conceit, but actually quite uninvolving’.

Musicals! Everyone loves musicals, right? Right? *looks hopeful*

Finally getting round to watching Die Hard 4 (liked the way they didn’t bother pretending it was in any way related to the other films: didn’t like the startling chunk of misogyny and racism that was applied to one character); eating very fine tortilla (and salmon, and risotto, and cheese, and actually I’m quite full just thinking about it); wondering why The Great Escape isn’t on.

(For those living under a rock/on the wrong continent, that’s Ryan Jones, Captain of the Welsh rugby team, celebrating our glorious grand slam in the Six Nations. He looks quite happy, y?)

Sport is mostly a dull thing to me. I was your typical specs ‘n’ textbook brainiac in school, and PE lessons rolled around on the timetable like a twice-weekly Room 101, performed in bri-nylon hotpants. The only time I ever threw a javelin, it went backwards. Hurdles, being at the approximate height of my armpits, were a bit of a challenge. I did make the school hockey team, but as goalie, a position where the only skill involved is intimidating the opposition by wearing really enormous clown shoes. Watching sport therefore tends to reduce me to a pimply-legged shivering 14-year-old, attempting to do cross-country half-naked through the streets of my home town to the sonorous hooting of passing cars.

But not rugby. It’s not a sport in Wales, not really: it’s a fandom. You buy the shirt; you argue about the team selection, favourites, past glories; you bellow like a loon at the telly, as if volume alone can spur your heroes on to glory, and then dissect and revisit and delight. It’s like Doctor Who, only with really muscular thighs.

For me, too, there’s a whopping chunk of nostalgia: going into Cardiff on match days to mooch round the shops and soak up the atmosphere, then home to line up on the sofa and holler (with a half-time cake to soothe nerves). The real joy is that I grew up watching the 80s, when we were mostly crap. And now? Well, look at Ryan’s face.

I keep failing to babble properly about Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr Y – partly because I’m not sure I can describe it. It’s a university novel: Ariel, impoverished student, is writing a PhD on ‘thought experiments’ in philosophy and literature while conducting an inappropriate affair and trying not to starve to death. It’s a book within a book: The End of Mr Y is a deeply obscure Victorian novel, said to curse anyone who reads it. It’s a sci-fi fantasy with bonus time-travel: the cursed novel isn’t fiction, but a key to a parallel world. It’s a thriller with evil agents and death threats, a romance, a genuinely complex and thought-provoking reflection on relationships, on time, on selfhood. It’s twelve books at once, and yet it never for a moment feels muddled or overstretched. Fascinating, intelligent, witty, brain-breaking – all the good things. I loved it. (I’m told by several that her PopCo is equally good: one for the Big List Of Things To Get Round To Reading.)

Biscuits & Lies progresses in lurches rather than leaps and bounds, but progress is progress. I’m still having fun with it, anyway (it’s reached the ‘Susie makes herself get some work done by coming up with stupid jokes’ stage, which is quite fundamental to my working routine). Publication of Big Woo (April 7th! That’s actually quite soon!) continues to impend. I’m still working on The Website, but all will be unveiled once there’s some ‘all’ to unveil. In the meantime, the US bound proof (a pre-publication version they send out to drum up interest) has already got a few bloggers Stateside talking, and in glowing terms too. Woo!

Suspecting my house is trying to kill me (ceilings falling down, microwaves on fire: Coming Soon: LOCUSTS!); watching Sunshine (an interesting take on the ‘people trapped inside a spaceship’ genre – but what the hell is the glittery gold spacesuit all about? Did no one tell the costume guys that the official colours of space travel are white and silver?); painting my fingernails Incredible Hulk green.

…champagne and lovely lunch and boooooooooooooooooks! Oh, glee. It’s not in the shops till April, so until then you’ll just have to make do with a rubbish cameraphone picture which in no way conveys the sheer SHININESS of the beautiful wee thing. And the inside looks even more pretty. I love it to bits, I do.

I might be convinced to part with one or two – mainly to stop me from spending the next six weeks in a giddy stupor, unable to stop just gazing lovingly at its shiny woo-some self. You’ll have to be very persuasive, though. I am open to all forms of bribery involving either tea or cake. Let the bidding commence!

Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine (YA 12+, contemporary fiction). I loved her debut last year, Finding Violet Park, and we’re in similar territory here, with another teenage hero struggling with the responsibility of taking on an adult role within a family. FVP‘s Lucas was trying to become his missing father while searching for him: Broken Soup‘s Rowan has to play parent to both her little sister and her ailing Mum, in the absence of her dynamic big brother. There’s romance too, and a puzzle to solve – but unlike her first book, precious few laughs. Yet however much I found myself missing Lucas’s sly little asides, there’s really no place for them in this heartbreaking story. Any reservations I had about the meandering plot and the slow place were crushed by the latter half of the novel, in which difficult subject matter and a slightly creaky plot twist are handled with such skill that there is not one false emotional note. Not fun, exactly, but absolutely worth the work. (Contrast Anne Kelley’s The Bower Bird, winner of the 2007 Children’s Costa and the last in my trio of ‘books about kids at death’s door’, which I will be kind enough not to pass comment on. If you can’t say anything nice…)

Writing? I have no time for writing! I am too busy meeting sales reps and being taken out for lunch by my editor!

Compulsively listening to the Moldy Peaches and Kimya Dawson (baa baa, yes, I know); being in Wales; ice-skating (which apparently is a Thing I Can Do now: how odd); becoming strangely obsessed with Masterchef (though if Emily doesn’t win, this will lead to sulking).