every day should be a susie day

Elisabeth Sladen died yesterday, at 63, apparently after a long battle with cancer. It seems at best a bit daft to weep over someone you’ve only ever known via a fictional character, and my thoughts are with her husband, daughter and friends – but I clearly wasn’t the only old Whovian last night watching  Genesis of the Daleks with something in their eye.

Sarah Jane Smith was on telly the day I was born, wearing a woolly hat, orange wellies and a yellow pac-a-mac and getting tied up with string by Mr Potato Head.  My Doctor was that blond chap with the celery, so the first time I saw her in action was in The Five Doctors, where she zoomed gleefully about in Bessie with Jon Pertwee and made you not mind at all that Mr ‘teeth and curls’ had declined the invite. Lately, I’ve adored her on The Sarah Jane Adventures, where an older single woman and her adopted son define ‘family’ and get to save the world by being clever and brave and relying on each other. It’s the show that comes closest to the Doctor Who I watched as a kid, all cliffhangers and Lord Reith – and despite being set in Ealing, since it’s filmed in my old home town I know that attic is actually just round the corner from my old school, and with a little helpful time-travel, I could’ve been Rani or Maria.

Here’s her crowning moment in the original series, I think: reminds you what a wonderful performer she was.

I’ll give your love to Harry, and the Brigadier… *sniffs*

Luisa, Keris, Sarra and Simmone

What better way to celebrate 4 glorious years of Chicklish, the UK’s very first teen/YA book blog, than with a celebration of books by its founders and friends?  Luisa Plaja, Keris Stainton, Sarra Manning and Simmone Howell treated Dulwich to readings, a Q&A, and signings (thanks to the indie bookshop Tales on Moon Lane, who also kindly gave me directions to the event as I am an utter donkey who apparently likes to get to these things 30 minutes late looking like a sweaty beetroot).  The discussion ranged from sources of inspiration (the whole panel confessed to being developmentally stuck circa age 15/16: oh, how I relate), to plan or not to plan (Sarra: YES! Everyone else: NO!) and their varied routes into writing for teens.

What stuck out most of all, though, was the fondness and respect there is for Chicklish, and all the YA book bloggers who have followed here in the UK, and worldwide. Those of us who write contemporary fiction for teenage girls don’t tend to snag award nominations or broadsheet reviews: instead we’re reviewed by our readers, online, because they love books and want to share them. All hail them. And lucky us.

Cheers, ladies, for a fabulous evening! (And to the just-as-fabulous Sophia Bennett, who cooked me dinner and walked me to my train after more booky nattering.)  Can we do it all again next year?

I broke my usual ‘no non-fiction unless I get to write an essay about it later’ rule for Libby Brooks’ The Story of Childhood, profiles of 12 children and young adults living in modern Britain. I should break that rule more often: it’s well-written, thought-provoking stuff, prodding at our strange cultural doublethink of over-protective child-panic, and the demonisation of the feral teen.  Also Gayle Forman’s If I Stay, which is one of those oddities where I can tell objectively that I’m reading a ‘good’ book without really connecting with it (though it reduced me to a sniffly weepy mess several times with perfect efficiency). Now galloping through Nicola Morgan’s Wasted, which turns on such a brilliant premise that it starts to creep into your brain, and leave you standing in the Co-Op, holding carrots in one hand and crisps in the other, wondering if this decision might be about more than my dipping-things-in-houmous choices, and how I’ll never ever know…

Ahhh, writing: sometimes it’s awesome and lovely and you’ve just written the funniest cleverest most emotionally gobsmacking sentence  OF YOUR ENTIRE WRITING LIFE, and sometimes you hate everything you do.  Mostly the reality is actually a wiggly line between those two – but not always, and sometimes the ‘oh dear, this book is bobbins, argh help flail’ feeling takes root for good reasons.  Which is a long way of saying I think like I’ve got a lot of rewriting to do on Project Poppy, so you might not see it for a little while.  Have gone from quivery meep-mode to a cheering sense that this makes me a Proper Writer type – Sophia Bennett told me she wrote 32 drafts of Threads (which is brilliant, by the way: high fashion and child soldiers in Uganda, and funnyfunnyfunny) before it was done. THIRTY-TWO.  I’m such a slacker – all the way to feeling a  bit excited, as I’ve got the loveliest idea for how to rewrite it…

Skipping around the New Forest with sister and family, where ponies stand in the middle of the road looking imperiously at cars and Bournemouth beach makes me ultra-freckly (or ‘spotty’, as Small Person would have it); hanging out with old college mates in old college pubs, and feeling cheered by how people’s lives work out (mine included); loving Matt Smith’s Doctor Who (and Amy, and Rory, and everything in it at all ever) like a big ninny.

My holiday picnic spot: lighthouse at Hurst Castle

Excuse me for being Captain Obvious here, but: aren’t libraries amazing?

My childhood library. (That's not me in the picture. I'm not quite that old.)

This is the library I grew up in: probably the place that made me want to be a writer.   The children’s section was underground, accessed by a wrought-iron gate, a staircase coated with slippery green moss, and a dank, dripping tunnel.  Going to borrow books was like passing into the underworld – except you got to come out the other side, clutching fistfuls of Roald Dahl and Lucy M Boston.

The tunnel has been replaced by wheelchair and pushchair-friendly slopes – for which hooray, obviously: now the book-borrowing there is done by my smallest niece and nephew, who are a bit wee to appreciate a cod-gothic intro to Story Time.  My borrowing takes place in Oxford, under the amused gaze of a librarian who (correctly) suspects I am not taking out Meg Cabot on behalf of an absent teenage daughter.  But I still have the same sensation of being in a vast papery sweet shop.  There are books!  I can take them away without paying!  And if I bring them back – ok, get this, no, really – they’ll let me have some more!

My last visit did remind me of two downsides of my childhood adventures in that underworld:

I reread a lot as a kid. The instinct is still there: my hand reaches automatically for the familiar titles, because I trust them. And I didn’t know how to move on.  Downstairs the names on the spines were old friends: upstairs books were sorted by genre, and I didn’t have a clue where to start. I fell into a gap: not quite ready for Austen, and deeply scared that I might borrow something too challenging or, erm, porny by accident.  (My pre-teen brain: oh, sigh.)

And now? I’m not sure that would’ve happened.  There are SO MANY GOOD BOOKS – and so many ways to find out about them.  You kids these days, you don’t know how lucky you are, with your gigantically varied YA universe, and your well-informed librarians, and your new-fangled reviewing blogthings on your interwebs…

I take it back. That is me in the picture, and apparently I am that old. Now get off my lawn, you whippersnappers! *waves stick* *throws cat*

I started Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush: lovingly written, and if YA paranormal romance is your bag then I suspect this is cream not milk – but it’s just not my cup of tea. Alice Kuipers’ Life on the Refridgerator Door fascinated me in a writerly way (how much of a conventional novel can you strip away without losing the fundamentals?) but I was left disappointed, mostly by the thought that we as readers probably need those conventions after all.  And then I read Anne Cassidy’s Forget Me Not, which blew me away.  The story of an missing child, which becomes the story of another missing child from almost 20 years before: multi-layered, suspenseful, all in deceptively simple prose that takes you by the hand and won’t let go.  I want to read everything she’s ever written.

I keep leaping out of bed at 2 am to write down ideas.  Then leaping out of bed at 8 to write them properly.  I’m making wrong turns, and there’s still lots to do with the opening chapters before they are on-the-nose right, but the voice is sorted, and it’s all a bit lovely, this new thing.

Raising a glass of Luigi’s finest to Gene Hunt and the Ashes To Ashes crew, who went out with a blinding finale and will be much missed (I’m still not over the departure of The Perm: this is going to be a slow break-up); ducking Lost finale spoilers (cos I’m only on S5 and that’s too many hours of having my brain broken to ruin the ‘ending’); wondering if my life will ever stop revolving around television about wonky time-travel (while watching Doctor Who, obvs).

No Graham Norton guest appearance on Doctor Who this week, though it appears some people would have preferred him to pop up distractingly in the closing moments…

Flesh and Stone: angels and Amy and SPOILERS, oh my!

Public Service Announcement, for anyone still planning to enter the FABULOUS BAKE-A-BOY CHALLENGE competition (closing date is this Friday, btw): Delia’s gingerbread men recipe is rubbish! Now have kitchen full of inedible people. I sense the Ginger(bread) Companions Club beckoning, just to get rid of the little beggars…  (Much nicerer recipe here, btw.)  Did I mention that you can win lovely free signed books and things?  Go on go on, you will, you will, you will…

This weekend is all about the snogging, apparently. Just finished Luisa Plaja’s Swapped By A Kiss, the semi-sequel to the very funny Split By A Kiss, and it’s another twisty and touching treat. Spiky American Rachel, convinced her British best mate Jo has the perfect life, wishes they could swap places – but when they do, walking in Jo’s shoes isn’t quite as she’d imagined. So far, so Freaky Friday – but as with her previous novels it’s a deceptively clever read, with each girl keeping secrets from the reader as well as each other until the end. The incidental characters are sharply drawn (Tori, Clyde and Tamber especially), Jo’s frantic diary excerpts are a giggle (despite being reproduced in Comic Sans: oh, editors, why do you do such things?), and it’s a thrill to read a fluffy teen romance where the heroine is a sharp-tongued, comic-book-drawing, plus-sized grump.  Frankly, any novel which turns on being able to identify a text message code based on Buffy episode titles cannot fail to charm.

Erm.  I’m having motivation issues, and for once they aren’t even mine.  Too many characters, all going in different directions!  Now I remember why I liked writing in the first person.

Attempting to cure womanflu through the power of early Supernatural alone (Dean Winchester: like paracetamol, in a way); getting overexcited about the election, and then horribly depressed at the prospect of any of the likely outcomes; being Twitterspammed by Gene Hunt.

The Guardian may think the Daleks win the monster-off, but for the stuff of nightmares nothing can top Weeping Angels.  Blimey.

The Time of Angels. Click if you dare!

Whovians are a crafty lot, btw: check out this spiffy birthday cake, and the magnificent cosplaying femme!Doctors (complete with a really intriguing answer to the ‘why are you doing that, then?’ question). Telly: it’s not just for looking at, you know.

Della Says OMG! – the debut novel from Chicklish‘s co-founder Keris Stainton.  It’s the best/worst night of Della’s life: she kisses the boy of her dreams, only to discover her diary has been stolen – and whoever has it is intent on torturing her, posting extracts online and into her friends’ pockets.  It’s a great set-up for exploring issues of trust and privacy, but above all this is a first-love story, written in sparky, convincing prose.  There’s a strong language warning on the back (which is definitely accurate!), but I hope parents and book-providers aren’t put off giving this to mature younger teens: there are wonderful positive messages in this book, about self-confidence and understanding your own body without shame.  This could be the Forever of the 21st century, girls…

My one quibble is with the cover, which is gorgeous but made me expect a very different book (something more immediately OMG!tastic, like Lauren Myracle’s Internet Girls series, or, erm, Big Woo/serafina67).  But if it makes the book leap off the shelves into readers’ hands, then it’s done its job – and the writing is so fresh, fun and beguiling that you’ll probably be halfway through the book before you’ve noticed.  A teen-lit voice to watch.

Note to self: PLANNING.  We do that now.  I sat down all excited to write the next chapter, and then realised I didn’t know what was going to happen in it or what any of the characters were like.  Have thus ended up with a lovely meandering string of crap jokes about Jane Eyre and ramen noodles, that goes nowhere at all.  (“It’s stream of consciousness, Miss! Virginia made me do it!”)  Also decided this week that Project Poppy is carp personified and I might well throw it away and start again.  So, funtimes.

Crawling to the gym for the first time in 3 weeks, ooer; watching Ashes to Ashes in open-mouthed awe; discovering baked sweet potato and blue cheese (taste: om nom nom; visual: Giant Mouldy Wotsit).