every day should be a susie day

Joshua Files launch: Agent Peter Cox, MG Harris and BBC Oxford's Bill Heine

In a change from our regularly scheduled bacon sarnies, this week I got to hear good mate MG Harris nattering about books in a slightly more glam context.  The launch party for the third Joshua Files book, Zero Moment, transformed Oxford Blackwell’s into a riot of excited readers and luminous cake.  MG even dished a big secret about Book 5!  Now, if only I can persuade her to give me her Lime Cheesecake cupcake recipe…

I confess, I snagged an early preview so I read this a while ago – but gosh, Zero Moment really does live up to its limited-edition glowing green cover.  If you’re not up to speed with all things Joshua File-y, I suggest you kidnap the nearest 11-year-old boy and insist he fills you in.  (Then let him go again: it’s only polite.)  Josh leaves Oxford for Mexico once again, with Mum and Tyler along for the trip, but a thrilling buggy ride across the sand ends in disaster.  This time Josh isn’t the one in obvious danger – but while he’s chasing one set of bad guys, there’s another lot closing in.  Throw in some nifty time-travel and a car chase on a winding Swiss mountain pass that will leave you utterly breathless, and you have, undubitably, the best Joshua book yet – and that’s high praise indeed.

The downside of having finished the first draft of The Poppy Project is that this week I had to read it.  Ugh.  AL Kennedy sums up the state of mind beautifully in this weekend’s Guardian: could do better.

Discovering that Wii swordfighting brings out my, um, forceful tendencies; watching so much BSG that I sincerely pondered the potential charm of an invisible blonde giant whispering in Poppy’s ear all through draft number 2; lamenting the de-relaxation properties of cancelled yoga classes.

Because why should snowmen get all the fun?

I know she looks a bit fierce, but I promise she’s ‘armless.

*hides*

Gloves probably dry now.  Wonder what to make next…  (Shush.  You can totally have a Snow Day even if you already work from home.)

  Thanks to a bumper festive haul, I am festooned with booky goodness.  Continuing my Bloomsbury groupie-ing with Frank Baker’s Mrs Hargreaves, which is the lovely silly tale of what happens when poor Norman’s entirely figmentary 83-year-old loony old dear suddenly turns up on his doorstep, under the impression she really exists.  Quietly philosophical and very funny (ty, S & N!).  Now lolloping through some Ngaio Marsh with great glee.

  HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ANY WRITING WHEN EXCITING WHITE STUFF HAS FALLEN OUT OF THE SKY?  Project Poppy’s plot chasm was leapt pre-Christmas, but am feeling that Januaryish sense of meh.  Also, EXCITING WHITE STUFF.  May have to bribe self into getting today’s 1000 words done with promises of hot chocolate.

  Seeing John Barrowman in panto in the company of a 3-year-old (most. fun ever.); sniffling at the very mention of Bernard Cribbins (yet being utterly gleeful at the prospect of Doctor Eleven and Ms Pond taking over TARDIS duties); wondering why it took me so long to finally see Mirrormask (which is beeyootiful, and very reminiscent of Labyrinth: no Bowie in tights, alas; just Andy Hamilton as a hedgehog).

I hear murmurings from the blogosphere that the ARC of My Invisible Boyfriend is beginning to arrive in a few US mailboxes.  For those of you who’ll have to wait till April, here’s a sneaky peek at the absurdly cute cover.

Look, pretty people!   (Don’t get too excited, European readers: this is the US edition of Girl Meets Cake, not a new book: you’ll have to wait till 2011 for one of them.  North American readers, please feel free to get as excited as is humanly possible.)

  I’ve got a copy of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go sitting next to me – yet appear to be reading Dick Francis’s Forfeit.  Eh, it’s Christmas, right?

  Project Poppy has been speeding along very happily, and has now careened into a wall and fallen down a plothole.  Grr.  Now have to decide whether to skip over the hole and fill it in later, or spend a few days with pen and paper scribbling metaphorical ladders. Hrmmm…

Listening to R4′s Shelved on how abandoned or banned episodes of Doctor Who and The Professionals reveal that people who made TV in the 1970s were, um, bonkers (a shock, I know); discovering my Christmas lights are borked; finally getting around to watching Inkheart and LOVING IT TO PIECES, OOH! – really must get round to reading the other 2 books.

I thought this might provide a fascinating insight into my creative process.  Mostly it involves being in the world’s yellowest room, trying to read my own handwriting to find out what’s supposed to happen next. The yellow is even more horrid in person, but this is my kitchen and thus the kettle is but a jump to the left (along with the drawer containing the wherewithal to write myself motivatingly silly post-it notes).

The Brontes WentTo Woolworths, Rachel Ferguson. “Three years ago I was proposed to. I couldn’t accept the man, much as I liked him, because I was in love with Sherlock Holmes.” Where have you been all my life, book? Why were you not on the family bookshelves, filed under ‘Noel Streatfeild for grown-ups’, in between Cold Comfort Farm and I Capture The Castle? (I know why: because it’s been out of print for ages, and is newly reissued as part of a group from Bloomsbury – guess what they’ve called it – of neglected but beloved early C20th fiction. I want them all.) The Carne sisters Katrine, Deidre and Sheil spend their days accompanied by numerous colourful ‘friends’, many of whom they’ve never met – so when they encounter the ‘real’ Lord and Lady Toddington, will real life live up to the fiction, or destroy it? The moment where it begins to dawn exactly how the Brontes come in put a mile-wide smile on my face. A clever and very funny 1930s novel about families and fiction, which makes the reader entirely lose track of who is real and who is not (and not mind at all).

  UNICORNS!!  Only not really (before my editor expires).  It ought to read MERMAIDS!! too.    (Not really them either.)  I’m having proper fun with Project Poppy this week, even if I seem to have hit my intended halfway-point in terms of word count but not in terms of plot.  I don’t care: any day when I get to type ‘SIMEON’S GOLDEN SNOTRAG OF LOVE’ into my manuscript counts as a good ‘un.

  Icing Sinterklaas biscuits for St Nick’s Day (thank you Kirsten!); making parsnip, chilli & ginger soup (mmm); wishing I was home to see Small Person being an angel (awwww).

… but the adults are useless!  This was the view from the author seats of the Kids’ Lit Quiz UK final in Oxford, where we all sadly realised that we might write children’s books, but we’ve forgotten about all the ones we’ve read.  The terrifyingly brainy teams had no such trouble – and for their pains got to hear a sneaky snippet from Charlie Higson’s next Young Bond book, courtesy of his chum Harry Enfield (who then ate it, as befitted a top secret document).  Huge props to Wheatley Park School for taking first place in such a closely-fought contest (and a special hello to Iona, Varshini, Skye and Flora from Mary Erskine in Edinburgh: well done, girls!).

Now to see if I can come up with a sensible reason to be in Edinburgh in August, when the World Final takes place…

  Peter Pan. For Very Important Reasons which will all be revealed.  (Unless I cut that bit out, in which case they won’t, and you’ll be left wondering what on earth I was on about. No change there then.)

  I’m not far off one third of the way through The Hilarious But Untitled Time-Travelling Teenage Adventures of A Girl Who Is Currently Called Poppy, Although That Might Change Too, You Never Can Tell With Time-Travel.  Woo!

Finally working out why this site was down all last week (oops) and plotting a revamp (ooer); becoming worryingly obsessed with Co-Op’s Wensleydale with cranberries; losing all my gym motivation – I think it’s wedged somewhere under my big, warm, cosy bed?