every day should be a susie day

I have, at long last, achieved my life’s ambition.  (Technically I did that in 2004 by getting published, but if you achieve your life’s ambition and remain inconveniently alive, you have to come up with a new one.  It’s in the rules.)

Those who were around these parts last year will recall the joys of Bake 7 and GingerbRed Dwarf, and the bake-a-boy gallery already bears a respectable showing of Time Lords.  But I have, at last, achieved the pinnacle of sci-fi bakery: ALL ELEVEN DOCTORS, in nommable gingerbread form. Behold!

Click: they're bigger on the inside

And in case you were thinking that wasn’t a very productive way to spend a Sunday, here is my review of this week’s Doctor Who.   Proof positive that biscuits are central to everything.

Gingerbread Who: Victory of the Daleks

I have a feeling this may become a weekly thing.  I’d apologise, but I’m not even a little but sorry.

Oh, and if you should happen to feel inspired by my adventures in food colouring AND like to win lovely things, then you still have a couple of weeks left to enter the FABULOUS BAKE-A-BOY CHALLENGE, and snag yourself a tasty little parcel of books.  Go on, go on, you will, you will…

Am reading China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun, which is like a funny Phantom Tollbooth mixed with Mortal Engines.  There are ninja bins (binjas!), and nice drawings, and two fabulously dry and narky heroines.  Loving it so far.

I’m being so naughty.  I’m plotting a new possible series, the idea of which I am madly in love with, and am supposed to be writing 3 chapters for my agent – which is why this week I randomly started writing a completely different book about superpowered teenagers on a sinister landlocked island who, you know, fight crime, and fall in love in inappropriate directions. I’ve decided it’s going to be my guilty evening pleasure.  Will doubtless never see the light of day, but I miss having something to write which I’ve no intention of publishing: writing purely for my own wonky lols.  (Dear Agent/Editor/Bank Manager: this is all lies, and I never said any of it.)

Failing to go on proper holiday this Easter (which is lucky due to the GIANT ASH CLOUD which can apparently eat planes); discovering microwave popcorn; wondering why anyone in their right mind thought that remaking The Prisoner was a good idea.

Lovely blog readers, let me steal your brains!   This here shiny website is shortly to undergo a grand transformation, and (as well as exclusive extracts, noisy things on YouTube and general time-wasty shenanigans) SusieDay Towers will be getting a new coat of paint.  This makes me happy.  And confused.  I am so indecisive I have been known not to have any lunch because I can’t decide if I want cheese on toast or soup, so picking my favourite of two colour schemes is utterly beyond me.  So: halp?

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Am currently reading The Official Nancy Drew Handbook: Skills, Tips & Life Lessons From Everyone’s Favourite Girl Detective.  V handy as I bunked off Girl Detective School the day they did How To Train a Carrier Pigeon and Advanced Kidnap-Thwarting.  Alas, I am less interested in Nancy’s help in flower-arranging and, um, How To Get That Ring on Your Finger and That Man to the Altar.  Hush now, Nancy dear: I’m reading the Usborne Detective’s Handbook which has proper criminals with straggly beards in.  Now where’s my Whifflepoof?

CUT CUT SNIPPETY TYPE CUT SLASH HACK ARGH! SLURP.  Or: I am editing Project Poppy.  So far this mostly involves deleting entire chapters and drinking a lot of tea while trying to think of things that are funny.  Dairylea triangles = funny.  Explaining how time travel works = not funny.  Oh, but guess what I’ve got?  The brand new not-out-till-March-1st North American paperback of serafina67 *urgently requires life*!  Still as pink and gorgeous as ever, and now with a sneaky peeky at My Invisible Boyfriend tucked away at the back too.  Woo, etc.

cooking tagine in my new tagine (eee! even if I need to learn to actually read a recipe on occasion); wondering who thought BSG’s Razor was a good idea; giggling at the sheer lolarity of the new Doctor Who trailer; throwing things in skips; eating lotus flowers while harassed by a dragon for Chinese New Year.

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 am in awe of your collective gingerbread boyfriend-making skills, gentle readers!  Apparently inspired by having made 60 gingerbread personages (YEP! SIXTY!), the divine Rosie has produced a selection of mini-dress and monokini-ed gogo dancers, hippy chicks, and Nehru-jacketed Beatles, look!  Cor, etc.  Anna, meanwhile, has beaten me to the TARDIS with her spectacular selection of Gingerbread Doctors (and Donna too, hurrah) – not to mention some unidentifiable-by-me-but-probably-very-recognisable-if-you-know-who-they-are snooker players, who you will find in the Fabulous Bake-A-Boy Gallery along with many magnificent new pics! Applause all round to Tina, Jess, Alex, Cerys, Other Jess, James, Small Person, Josie, and anyone who volunteered to clean up the kitchen afterwards.  I hope your Gingerbread Beloveds were all as yummy as they looked.

I feel strangely hungry now.

  Sally Nicholls, Season of Secrets.  READ THIS BOOK.  I mean it.  Find yourself an enormous box of tissues first and someone to hug you at regular intervals, because it’s an unflinching look at the impact on a family of the death of a parent.  But don’t let that put you off, because – like her brilliant debut, Ways to Live Forever – it’s also extraordinary.  Like David Almond’s Skellig, a family tragedy runs parallel to a child’s encounter with an improbable saviour (in this case not an angel but the mythical Green Man), which represents all their fears regarding the terrifying fragility of life, but also offers the hope of renewal.  Unmissable and unforgettable.

Have also just read Joanna Nadin’s My So-Called Life, the first of her Rachel Riley series, which is very very funny (though there was a disappointing lack of Jordan Catalano), and made me feel really quite relieved I’m not 13.

  I’m currently writing a comedy/romance/sci-fi/musical set in Oxford/space/The Future/1832, in which a girl/boy/wisecracking armadillo sidekick have to save the cheerleader/save the world/save the Wispa bar all over again, and also fight crime/some Conquistadors/each other! with hilarious consequences.  It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of thing.  Maybe.  Oh, all right, I’m not writing that really.  I quite want to now, though.  Who doesn’t love a wisecracking armadillo?  In the meantime, here’s my interview with the lovely Jenny at Wondrous Reads.

Being startled by how much I loved the new Star Trek (Gingerbread Kirk, Spock and McCoy? oh, I think so); cooking feijoada, mmm; getting overexcited by muppets all over again.