every day should be a susie day

The face behind the book

Posted on 15. Jul, 2010 by susie in blog, books i've been reading, cooking, holidays, kids' books i've been reading, other writers

My sister once sent a fan letter to Anne McCaffrey. She received, to her amazement, a typed reply (and I mean typed, with awkward spacing and ribbon smudge: this must’ve been ~1985) answering each of her 20 questions in turn, clearly from Anne herself. I remember being impressed, jealous, but mostly confused. I liked books, not the people who wrote them.  If I could’ve written to Lucie Pevensie or Mrs Twit, I could see the point, but writers were probably waffly old ladies who’d tell you to eat your greens and pull your socks up and – most worryingly of all – might tell you to sod off and stop bothering them, thus ruining their books by associated disappointment for eternity.

Now that I am writer, I know that we love to be bothered by readers.  Sometimes you say heartskippingly kind things that we remember when it all seems a bit pointless and impossible.  Even when you don’t, replying to you means we can put that niggly bit of  Chapter 7 off for another ten minutes.  And of course we’re all infinitely more accessible in the post-typewriter age. Publishers expect their charges to have a website, a blog, an online presence, well before their first book ever touches shelf – and swathes of us already tweet and blog our writerly woes, because that niggly bit of Chapter 7? It’s still there.

I’m struck lately, however, that I’m meeting more and more writers online (and occasionally in person: lucky me!) before reading their books – which means I’m often sitting down with a pristine new tome, and the eeriest sense that the writer is sitting opposite me: watching, poised, hopeful, waiting to footnote any pause or lip-squinch as I go, and glowing whenever I smile, or cry, or (let’s not get too demanding) fail to throw it out of the window.   What does that do to the reading experience, exactly?  And do other readers do that too, now that we’re so much more likely to have a face to put to the name on the book?

What do you think?

Me, I’ve worrited over it as a pernicious influence (not least because I can think of one writer whose online interactions have made me firmly decide never to read his books, and for all I know they’re wonderful).  But you know what? In my experience, writers tend towards the lovely. If you encounter them on Twitter, or their own blog, or someone else’s, you can probably gauge whether they’re the type of lovely you’d want to invite round for tea and nonsense, and if they are then you might want to read a book by them too.  All this online interaction is like an extra, perpetually updating, ultra-nuanced, personalised, everchanging book cover.  And that writer you’ve seen online, who is now sitting, ghostlike, across from you waiting for you to start reading the book you hold in your hands with their name on it?  They’re not frowning or tutting or squinching their lips.  I like to think they’re reading the book to you.  And who doesn’t love a bedtime story?

*

WOW. I’ve found my Catcher in the Rye.  I thought Frank Portman’s King Dork might be it, because it’s almost exactly the dry witty sincere hip-not-hipster late teen novel I wanted to read when I was 17 – but now I’ve found Simmone Howell’s Notes on the Teenage Underground, and that, my friends, is the real shiny deal right there.  It’s not only that it’s ‘girls and films’ instead of King Dork’s ‘guys and bands’ (though I’m sure that’s a chunk of it: all hail Gem, a female protagonist who is beset by all the standard friends/virginity/absent dad/what next? trauma of a teen era ending, but who gets the most empowered line of any teen girl in the history of teens and girls without it feeling for an instant like a cliche or a reach or a lecture). Make no mistake: this is a bible of cool AND an emotionally honest, enticing, snort-your-cola funny read.  All those how-to guides that tell you to focus on ‘voice’ when you write?  This is what they mean.  I’m rereading bits already. (I met Simmone a few weeks back, and when reading I can entirely see her impishly grinning from the pages. She’s @postteen on Twitter, and her website is here: go fangirl at her, she’s aces.)

I’m…writing.  I don’t even know what I’m writing, or if any of you will ever see it, but I am writing.  It is a mite worrying how many words I can wring out of describing the Tower of London gift shop in lieu of plot, mind.

Realising that a British barbecue is actually amazingly delicious and involves none of the trad food poisoning/burnage when you put a Galician in charge;  getting very flaily indeed at the prospect of going to Canada in 5 weeks (hooray! oh no, bears! but hooray!); inventing a new approach to cooking which involves making normal food and then putting peas in it.  I do like peas.  They are a bit weird in a bacon sarnie though.

Trailer!

Posted on 31. May, 2010 by susie in blog, books i've been reading, girl meets cake, kids' books i've been reading, my invisible boyfriend, other writers

Yep, that is me blethering away there in the background.  (Even the Mycroft Christie bits.)  That’s my special ‘oh no, I’m talking to myself, let’s try to get this over and done with as quickly as possible’ voice.

MY INVISIBLE BOYFRIEND has now been read by lots of people who aren’t my Mum, including the lovely ABA, who’ve picked it for the Kids’ Indie Next List Summer 2010. (I’m rubbing shoulders with Diana Wynne Jones, David Almond, Mark Haddon, David Levithan… mind officially blown, tyvm.)

And here’s what some other people (who also aren’t my Mum, unless she’s been very busy) thought:

‘quirky, hilarious, and entertaining… Heidi is an unforgettable protagonist that will not fail to make readers laugh with her LOL-worthy shenanigans and escapades’ – The Undercover Book Lover

‘a strong first-person narrative voice that reminds me a little of Georgia in Louise Rennison’s series (Angus, Thongs, and Full-frontal Snogging, etc.)… very funny’ – Book Aunt

‘one darlin’ book that I simply couldn’t get enough of’ – Lauren’s Crammed Bookshelf

‘very, very funny… Every single secondary character (Dai, Ludo, Teddy and Fili especially) comes to life on the page, and I want to be friends with all of them’ – Wondrous Reads (on GIRL MEETS CAKE, the UK/World edition)

‘I just really fell for Heidi and her friends… cute and entertaining, and if you like Brit humor the way I do, like fun romantic comedy-type stories, or like books with a funky and diverse cast of characters, you’ll really get a kick out of it’ – Forever Young

Just in case you were, you know, wondering if it was your cup of tea… :)   I think what’s really stuck out in all the reviews so far is how very British people have found it.  I’m still wondering exactly what that means.  Blog on the subject will ensue, once I’ve pondered some more…

I’m reading a book about faeries – and loving it to pieces (despite being a cynical git who tends to find straight fantasy and ‘magick’ a bit of a stretch) because it’s just that good.  It’s R.J. Anderson’s Knife (published in the US as Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter), which so far is reminding me of The Borrowers: an enticing doll’s house world of tiny furniture and monstrous humans (who might turn out to be allies, after all), and a tough bored girl who wants to see the big wide world.  The prose is glorious too.  Zippy clever stuff for 9+ girls.

Still puttering away at the opening chapters of Exciting New Secret Book Thingy, juggling a few scenes around to get the best fit.  It’s like a jigsaw with a piece missing at the moment (sorry, peanut-butter-in-bra story I borrowed from Girl Scout camp, not sure you’re quite good enough) – but I’m itching to get to the next bit.  Plus coffee with agent, shop-talky dinner with an old mate who’s now commissioning teen lit for a living (small small world), and oceans of tea with awesome writer-buddy Sarah Mussi. That all counts as work, right?

Going out for dinner and ending up dancing to random 60s girl groups in an awesomely manky student nightclub; discovering that the Marylebone Oxfam Bookshop is where Scholastic mock-ups go to die (I found a Philip Pullman with a Big Woo cover, and an Ally Kennen which was Girl Meets Cake on the inside: utterly surreal); eating a lot of peas.  Mmm, peas.

Girls (and dad) Meet Cakes

Posted on 16. Aug, 2009 by susie in books i've been reading, girl meets cake, holidays, kids' books i've been reading, my invisible boyfriend, other writers

How lucky am I?  Not only do I get to write books about cake, but this week I got to have afternoon tea with one of the people who reads them!   The utterly lovely Paige won the Mizz magazine ‘Tea with Susie’ star prize, and she and her family joined me and a few of the divine Scholastic ladies at the Wallace Collection in London.  Much tea, cake, book-talk and giggling was had – not to mention cartwheels in the sunshine (confession: I left that bit to Paige).  Keep up the dancing, Paige, and I hope you’re all having a lovely summer holiday this week!

  Judy Blume, Meg Cabot, and, um, Margery Allingham.  Plus Justine Larbalastier’s original version of this blog post, expressing her frustration at Bloomsbury’s choice of a shockingly disingenous cover for her YA novel Liar.  I’m thrilled to see that sanity has prevailed – and have the utmost respect for her courage in speaking out.

  Ooh!  Aah!  I shall have to be infuriatingly vague (since at the moment it’s still at the back-of-an-envelope stage and I haven’t even decided on the main character’s name yet), but I’m about to start my next book.  (Well, I’m about to go on holiday and do no work on it at all, actually – but after that, workiness will ensue, I promise.)  For the ultra-curious: think Groundhog Year.  Hmm… *plots*

  Frolicking around the Tower of London; building slightly less impressive towers for baby M to knock over; having pretty pictures taken for the My Invisible Boyfriend jacket by my super-talented friend Justa Mili; practising putting up my tent!

Apples and Oranges (and Daleks)

Posted on 06. Apr, 2008 by susie in big woo, books i've been reading, doctor who, kids' books i've been reading, other writers

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.

I went to London and all I got was…

Posted on 28. Feb, 2008 by susie in big woo, books i've been reading, cooking, kids' books i've been reading

…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).