every day should be a susie day

In honour of Heidi’s imaginary boyfriend in GIRL MEETS CAKE, here’s a challenge for you: why not make your own yummy gingerbread boyfriend? (Or girlfriend, or entirely platonic buddy who you might have a bit of a crush on…) Bake yourself a boy, decorate him in suitably delicious fashion, and send me a photo of the results – I’ll be putting up a gallery of your tastiest creations! Personally, I’m planning to make a Gingerbread Avon at my Publication Day tea party this weekend. Silver balls and black food colouring at the ready! Although now I think of it, a gingerbread Tenth Doctor might be quite cute…

Here’s my favourite Gingerbread Men recipe to get you started: they’re soft and bready, so cook them for a few extra minutes if you like them super-crunchy!

125g butter
100g brown sugar
125ml (half a cup) golden syrup (or half syrup, half black treacle)
1 egg yolk
375g plain flour
1-2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Also needed: gingerbread man cookie cutter (or other shapes), rolling pin (I use a wine bottle!), baking sheets, wire rack for cooling – and whatever you’d like to use for decoration: icing, chocolate buttons, etc

• preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F
• beat butter and sugar together until pale and creamy
• add the syrup and the egg yolk, and beat together
• with a wooden spoon, stir in the flour, ginger, spice, and bicarb: then turn it onto a floured surface and knead until smooth
• roll out until about 7mm thick, then place on a greased baking tray
• cook for 7 minutes for soft gingerbread men, 10 minutes for dunk-them-in-tea-or-they’ll-break-your-teeth ones
• cool on a wire rack
• decorate! and don’t forget to snap a photo before he disappears! Email your photos to me here: susie at susieday.com

   I’m actually re-reading Virginia Woolf’s Orlando at the moment, which is covered in my studenty scribbles – but I didn’t get the chance to babble about MG Harris’ second Joshua Files book Ice Shock when I read the proof, and now it’s out! If you’ve been blinded by a neon yellow book cover lately, that’ll be the one – and the inside is every bit as striking. The first book, Invisible City, threw Josh into some uncomfy situations, but this time the sense of peril is relentless. After some very hairy moments locked in a cellar, Josh ends up hiding out back in Mexico with the magnificently unimpressable Ixchel, where he discovers that he might not just be in danger from the present, but the past as well. From night-time pursuits through freezing Oxford rivers to Lara Croft-style rock-hopping in a Mayan temple, all the way to the heartstopping ‘ice shock’ at the end, this is a top-notch thriller that is absolutely impossible to put down. Loved it!

Girl Meets Cake is officially out on Monday, wheee! So I’ve been rather busy giving susieday.com a cakey makeover (look! innit pretty!), and adding some new stuff for you lovely readery people. You’ll also see interviews with me popping up on a few YA sites soon (or you will, if I can whittle my answer to ‘What is your favourite cake?’ down to just the one paragraph). And in the meantime, I’m feeling increasingly gleeful about New Book, which is still just some ideas on a few bits of paper, but, you know, I think they might be good ideas…

watching Blake’s 7 (only the final episode to go, oh no!); inventing a new sandwich by accident (blue cheese on a cinnamon raisin bagel: somehow both disgusting and nice at the same time); loving In Bruges much more than I expected, and hating Watchmen much more than I expected; missing people who are far away.

I’ve less than no idea how it got to be March, but apparently time does this ‘moving forwards’ thing while you aren’t looking.  Who knew?  I’ve also heard it rumoured that if you just sit completely still all through March, this thing called ‘April’ (like the girls’ name: crazy, huh?) rocks up to replace it, and with April comes the publication day of GIRL MEETS CAKE!  (And probably some rain and stuff too.  Sorry about that.  Still, GIRL MEETS CAKE!  Eeeee!  Woooo!  Noises!)

It’s your average everyday story of love, lies, and gingerbread boyfriends – and I hope it makes you giggle.  Coo, it’s so pretty.  Every time I look at it, I want to snap off a chunk and eat it.  (Don’t consider that an author-recommended tactic, by the way: reading is definitely the way to go with this baby.)  And it’s going to be in actual shops from April 6th, so please begin making fluttery eyes at whoever buys the books in your house ASAP.

New book means you’ll be seeing a few changes around the site over the next few weeks, so do check back to see www.susieday.com after her makeover.  If you’d like to lay your hands on a free copy of Girl Meets Cake (not to mention a yummy basket of cupcakes!), then hurry on over to this fab Scholastic competition.  UK girlies, keep an eye out for Mizz magazine, for another competition with a rather exciting prize (for me as well as you!)…

  Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer: classic kidlit which I intended to reread for The Book That Never Was.  I recall adoring it when I was 11 or so: partly because I knew I was supposed to like this sort of thing (it’s all a bit Blue Peter), partly because the heroine’s last name is Makepeace, like her in Dempsey & Makepeace, which I loved with a flamey burny love.  To grown-up-me, it’s both brilliant and maddening: a clever tale of a time-slip, where two girls switch places between 1918 and 1960 and cope with fabulous phlegm – but also a missed opportunity, since the 1960s girl seems so Edwardian to the modern reader that the contrast in the two girls’ lives gets lost.  Sigh.  Still, the nostalgia made me giddy: a round bedpost that unscrews to reveal a hidden hiding place, monkey puzzle trees, ‘snubs to you and utterly squash’… *flails*  Also: Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Framed, a tale of thrilling juvenile art theft in North Wales which is beguiling, hilarious, and adorable all at once and should be read as soon as you can plausibly find a bookshop. Oh, and at last I can blether about M.G. Harris‘s Ice Shock, the second in her Joshua Files series, which manages to take everything you liked about the first one and then turn it up to 11…proper review next time, I promise!

  Surreally enough, I’m currently rewriting bits of Girl Meets Cake for the US edition – which will be called My Invisible Boyfriend, and available sometime in 2010.  Not Americanifying it: just tinkering with a thing or two to make the whole thing even more delicious (I hope!).  It’s a bit odd, being able to check different drafts against an actual proper book-shaped version, but I’m having fun dipping a toe back into Finchworld and reacquainting myself with geeky Heidi, and Mysterious E, and the endless references to cake…

  Baking blueberry muffins; eating scones with chestnut jam (yummy!) while watching Wales playing atrocious rugby; marvelling at how epically late 70s/early 80s telly fails even when it’s trying really hard to be feminist (Blake’s 7, I’m looking at you).

I mentioned I was scrabbling around for a suitable ‘work-in-progress’ title for my next book, and now, alas, I seem to have one – although The Book That Someone Else Has Just Written And Will Be Published Next Year Sometime, Thus Making Your Effort A Bit Pointless might be more accurate.  Catchy, eh?  Yep, the one thing that can absolutely scupper a book has happened: someone else has got there first.

But if I can ignore the petrol-flavoured grey Slush Puppie currently dribbled all over Oxford’s pavements because it was lovely pristine crunchy white snow before that, I can continue to look on the bright side:

•  presumably it was quite a good idea for a book, then
• I’ve found out now (at the outline stage), not 50,000 words too late
• I get to read it, without the tiresome inconvenience of writing it first (and I don’t even know how this one ends!)
• tomorrow, I’m going to eat some cake while thinking up some daft new idea to play with

Anyone wishing to contribute an inspirational random word (or cake) to facilitate the latter activity, please comment away.  Otherwise I might run with the female Mexican wrestling team who are actually undercover teenage spies.  In space.  I’m fairly sure no one’s written that one yet.

  I’m adoring and envying The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, to the point where I hardly dare pick it up again in case I accidentally finish it, and then it’ll be over.  Spooky, and funny, with a keen child’s-eye view for the peculiarities of the adult world (whether it’s peopled by the living or the dead).  And it just won the Newbery.  See, everyone else thinks you should read it too.  Go on, go on, go on…

  So, undercover wrestlers in space, right?  Meanwhile, Girl Meets Cake is still coming out in the UK in April, and apparently my US publishers are plotting… something. I like it when they do that.

  Devouring S1 of The Wire, which is every bit as remarkable as everyone has told you (grown-ups only, sorry); enjoying Slumdog Millionaire (though the first half is the best bit); perfecting my linguine gamberi; entertaining Extra Small Person and his lovely mummy, who should come back soon for more Pad Thai and learning how to roll over.

Surefire way to avoid the post-Christmas blues: go on holiday. OK, so the part where it was -7°C wasn't entirely part of the plan, but Paris in the snow turns out to be absurdly lovely. And it gives one an excellent excuse to drink the utterly decadent hot chocolate at Angelina while thawing...

  Georgette Heyer, wheeee! And Russell T. Davies' A Writer's Tale, which (being about both writing and Doctor Who) was clearly cooked up in the 'things which exist purely to please Susie' cauldron. TARDISes aside, Davies has been responsible for some of the most cheerfully thought-provoking telly of the last 10 years – and he's every bit as entertaining and insightful on the page as you'd hope. I'm finding his reluctant commitment to prevarication until utter terror forces him to start working deeply reassuring, though he's emphatically wary about assuming any writer's method as a template. Always have an ending in mind! Only write in the mornings! In pencil, on the backs of envelopes, while drinking nothing but squid ink! He's right: we all want to have our hands held, to believe there's a secret trick to it, but sometimes the best advice really is to ignore whatever anyone tells you and just get on with it. Though of course you'll have to take my word for that...

  Next Book* is at the vertiginous decision-making stage. There are so many ways to write this story: whether it works depends entirely on me picking the right one. Actually, that's rubbish. No decisions are final: sometimes you have to write it 'wrong' before you can see how to write it 'right'. (If you're me, anyway.) It does help if you can spot the 'right' early on, though: Girl Meets Cake got to 55,000 words of Mostly Wrong, which was a bit wearing to sort out. Speaking of which: look! OK, so you still can't have it until April – but magnificent cover, no?

* Next Book (ie not the Next Book for you lot, the one I haven't written yet but hopefully might come out in 2010) needs a 'Biscuits & Lies'-style working title.  It's got a working working title, but that tells you the whole plot in one go, so we can't have that.  Hmm...bear with me?

  Drinking gallons of tea from my Christmas Blake's 7 mug; seeing in the New Year with Spaniards and grapes (twelve of 'em); pondering the many ways in which The Other Boleyn Girl is terrible; plotting a Prisoner marathon in honour of the *sniffles* late, great McGoohan.

Oliver Postgate has died.  Like every Brit of a certain age, his was the voice of my childhood.  Smallfilms (Postgate, animator Peter Firmin, and various handy people who were good at knitting) made telly out of bits of string in a shed at the bottom of the garden, with such obvious love and care that I feel teary just thinking about it.  His imagination contributed every bit as much of my kidly fondness for stories as Blyton and Kipling and Dahl.

So, for your nostalgic viewing pleasure, here are the singing mice from Bagpuss,  the Welshest episode of Ivor the Engine ever, soup (and the soup dragon) with The Clangers (spillage at 6.40!), a glimpse of Nogbad from Noggin the Nog, and some magnificently scary-looking pictures from Tottie (which we used to mock mercilessly, but secretly I adored it).  Oh, I am a tiny person all over again, just listening to him…  Farewell, Post, you’ll not be forgot.

  I’ve mostly been reading unpublished things, which is fun except you can’t talk about them.   Am now on Andrea Levy’s Small Island, though, which is masterful.

  Proof-correction time for Girl Meets Cake!  I love this bit: it’s so nearly a book, and those final little tweaks and checks are amusing.  Though I’m dithering over a section where my girls greet each other with the always-friendly catalogue of insults (tart, whore, that kind of thing).  I know why I wrote it like that: there are legitimate, meaningful, textual reasons for those words to be there.  But Tina Fey’s character in Mean Girls bellows ‘Y’all have to stop calling each other sluts and whores, because it just makes it OK for guys to call you sluts and whores‘, and she has a point.  Decisions, decisions…

Visiting Narnia (well, nearly: sooo pretty), nearly killing myself with undercooked chicken (I knew there was a reason I used to be veggie), continuing my helpless obsession with Gilmore Girls, despite it being all twee and goofy.