Three Christmas Wishes

Season's greetings and all that stuff. I'm finally starting to feel a bit Christmassy, and doing a spot of shopping and general faffing. In return, here's what I would like for Christmas:

1. I want Woolies not to close. Here I am being a complete hypocrite, for two reasons: firstly, I hardly ever shop there. I just want it to be there, because it's always been there, and I'll miss it if it goes. It's the place I go to for Seasonal stuff: those Lindt bunnies at Easter, emergency picnic plates in the summer, Halloween masks in October, and in the winter nice cheap Christmas wrapping paper. Besides, I find it hard to imagine a world without Pic`n'Mix.

The second reason is that it's all my fault they've got into financial trouble, because one Saturday afternoon in 1973 I nicked some Outdoor Girl eyeshadow from one of their stores. I'm sorry.


2. Still on the subject of shop closures (these are hard times!) I want no more independent bookshops to close. And let's face it, if we don't all make a point of buying things from them, they might. We recently lost one in our neighbourhood, because its landlord decided one day to multiply the rent by three. It closed several months ago and guess what? The shop is still empty. Well, that's doing a power of good to the neighbourhood, isn't it?

We NEED independent bookshops. The best ones become a hub of the community, like the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green does, by inviting local authors to hold book launches in them, give readings to kids from local schools and that sort of thing. Bookworm and The Children's Bookshop are also great for children's events. Hurrah for them!

The greatest ever shop of this sort was the Turret Bookshop that used to be on Lamb's Conduit Street, WC1 (and previous incarnations as well, but that was before my time). Here are some of the people who were regulars there: Carol Ann Duffy, Satoshi Kitamura, Ralph Steadman, Brian Patten, Christopher Logue...and plenty of star-struck nobody hangers-on like me. As you will know if you've checked out my website, I did get to have a book launch there all of my very own (18 years ago!) but the only people who came were my mates, who I then forced to buy copies of my picture book, even though they didn't have any kids. Or know any. Ah, happy memories! Long may there be booksellers with the wit and imagination to do this sort of thing.

3. I want plenty of music. Christmas carols, all that stuff, I love it. Bring on the sleigh bells and the schmaltz. The three most-played albums at Christmas time in this household are:

Elvis Presley, The Wonderful World of Christmas
His Merry Christmas Baby is, without a doubt, the best Christmas song ever.

Bach Christmas Cantatas
One word: heavenly.

...And the one I'm going to tell you about now. For four years, from 2002 until 2006, a friend of mine and her husband got together and wrote and recorded some Christmas songs, which they then sent out in CD form to their friends. Alas, 2006 was the last year as by Christmas 2007 my dear friend was dead. Her name was Siobhan Dowd and in her short life she shot to literary stardom with her novels A Swift, Pure Cry and The London Eye Mystery; Bog Child was published posthumously, and Solace of the Road is out next year. I'm not going to give a biography of any sort here, but do follow the link to read more about her.ANYWAY: lots of people know about her literary talent, but far fewer know what a great singer she was. So go and take a listen to these songs; I'm sure they will brighten your Christmases as they have ours. Floating Snowflakes, in particular, brings me out in goosepimples. I was too sad to listen to her voice last Christmas; this year I definitely will, and raise a glass in her memory.

Merry Christmas!

Lefties Unite


Yes, OK, I admit it: I am getting pretty long in the tooth. I am old enough to remember a time when, if you wanted to change the channel on the TV, you would say, 'let's see what's on the other side.' Because there was only one other channel. Then you would get up, walk over and press a button on the set (it was called a 'television set' in those days, like radio or Meccano) because there was no such thing as a remote. I am old enough to remember the excitement of maybe – maybe – being allowed to stay up so late that I got to witness the end of telly. Because back in those days, telly did have an end; it wasn't the wrap-around, 24-hour thing it is today. And when, around midnight, the end of telly arrived, the man would bid you Good Night from the BBC, and they would play God Save The Queen. I kid you not. And then the telly would emit an eerie alien whine, the screen would go dark, and you were truly alone.

Which brings me to that strange picture at the northern end of this blog post. This features in the BBC test card – which is actually still in use today, but I'm not sure how you would ever see it. But back when I was a kid, that's what was on the screen for hours before the programmes started. If you were really bored, you'd sit and watch it. (Ooh! She moved!' I remember joking to my brother).

What has all this got to do with my heading of "lefties unite", you may wonder. The girl is not even using her left hand to play noughts and crosses! Or is she...? There was a story that went around some years ago that the photo was reversed, because BBC executives belatedly noticed that the girl was in fact using her left hand, and ooh no, we mustn't have a lefty featured in our test card! The story turned out to be a hoax, but it does highlight something about how left-handedness used to be perceived.

At this point I should declare an interest. Sharp-eyed readers of my blog may already have noticed:Yes, I am a lefty. A southpaw. A gibble-fist. And one or two other slang terms I won't mention here. This is something I have in common with US president-elect Barack Obama (excuse me while I just say that again: US president-elect Barack Obama. Ah! It sounds so good!) and, as has been remarked on many times already, four out of the last six presidents of the United States. One of them, Ronald Reagan, started out a lefty, but had it trained out of him. This practice has thankfully gone the way of the test card on your TV screen, but think for a moment just how confusing and awkward that would be. Just try writing in your other hand, and imagine how you would feel if you were made to do that legibly, and somehow learn at the same time. It's cruel! I'm glad to say that my teachers didn't do that to me, but there was one prefect who regularly patrolled the school canteen and made me eat my dessert with my right hand. What WAS her problem?! What earthly difference did it make to her if I held my spoon in my left hand? I bet she's a teacher now, and I bet she's the sort who picks on people for having a squint or curly hair or something. She may even be your teacher, you poor thing.

On the other hand (ha!), maybe she knew one of those insufferable left-handed people who have a hang-up about why the whole world is designed for right-handed people, and is constantly reminding said righties that Leonardo da Vinci and Alexander the Great and Mozart and Einstein were all left-handed. And maybe she was taking that out on me.

It's true that all of the above were lefties, and it's true that we are more likely to think creatively (using the right side of the brain, which is not anchored to words, like the left is), but Jack the Ripper is also reputed to have been a southpaw, and we know that Osama Bin Laden is one. Funny how quiet they seem to keep about that. And some left-handers never grow up. I could be accused of that, as could Bart Simpson (he is left-handed because his creator Matt Groening is). Then there's Ziggy Stardust, who was not only the nazz but similar to a cat from Japan, and a leper messiah to boot.* And if you've figured out whether that's good or bad, you're cleverer than me.

Anyway. I'd be surprised if there are still people around like Ronnie Reagan's teacher and my spoon-interfering prefect. And perhaps people have become more appreciative of those of us who see things a bit differently; another expression is 'living in the mirror'. Like Alice Through the Looking Glass (a book written, incidentally, by Lewis Carroll, another lefty.) There are more of us about now, anyway (Interesting Fact! There are 300 times as many lefties now as there were 100 years ago!)

So I'm glad that people have learned there's nothing sinister about us – even if the word 'sinister' is of Latin origin and means, um, left. And evil. And unlucky. But, huh, what did those Romans know?

* (In case you're too young to know about him, he's a character invented and sung about by David Bowie. Yes, you guessed it; he is also left-handed.)

Let's Get A Norther In

It's a strange job we do, us Northers.

We spend vast amounts of our time all by ourselves, inventing stories and seeing no-one except the man who runs the corner shop and the postman. Then every once in a while, people called Literacy Coordinators start noticing that there's a lot of Literacy about that wants Coordinating, and they gather the other teachers around them and say, 'It's about time we got a Norther in.' And the other teachers say, 'Yay! Good idea; a morning off!'

And then comes Children's Book Week, and you're somehow meant to get all excited about some Norther coming in that you've never heard of. And the Norther will stand there and yammer on about 'I remember when I were a nipper' (they talk like that, Northers) and they'll say things like 'writing is really hard, girls and boys, but it's well brilliant, an' all!' And you're thinking, 'yeah, whatever; I wonder if there'll be sausages for lunch?' And the Norther will say, are there any questions, and you think, might as well ask something, so you stick your hand up and say 'Where'd you get your ideas from?' And then the Norther will say something or other, but you're busy thinking, chocolate pudding. I wonder if there'll be chocolate pudding?

What? It's not like that in your school? Ah, that's because you've got a really GOOD Literacy Coordinator. I met some really good literacy coordinators this week, I'm glad to say. There was Alison Oliver of Farrington's School in Chislehurst, Kent. She was completely FAB, brainy and well-read. And she was incredibly nice and tolerant while I was pacing around like a lunatic during morning break and lunchtime, trying to be a Plumber-and-Electrician Coordinator and failing dismally. The girls were great, too. Here I am with some of them:


Notice how, without knowing it, I dressed in almost the same colour as their uniform...

Then it was off to The Big Green Bookshop which, as anyone in the vicinity of Wood Green knows, is run by two beardy booksellers and literacy coordinators of almost legendary status, Tim and Simon. The shop turned into a Tardis for the morning, somehow accommodating about sixty kids plus me and Simon and several teachers (Tim wisely decamped to Stamford Hill). Here I am with a couple of the kids of Nightingale Primary:


No, their uniform does not involve vintage 1950's sequin jackets; Fifi is wearing an item I brought along for a bit of fun dress-up. Just because I thought it would be fun. And because my Silk Sisters books have a bit of a dress-up theme to them (they also have a sort of surreal futuristic dystopia thing going on, but that doesn't lend itself so readily to props). I've always loved dressing up; let's face it, everyone does. You can't really see, but young Imaani on the left is wearing a very OTT necklace of mine.

Finally, there was Jackie Harding of Cromwell Community College in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. There was a lot of cramming went on there too, but the admirable Ms Harding handled the squeezing of approximately 5,000 pupils into a library space roughly the size of a ping-pong table with humour and aplomb. Here I am with some of those pupils, after they'd somehow unpacked themselves from their confinement:

(Again, note the similarity in colour between their uniform and my sweater. Something's going on here, but I don't know exactly what...)

Some Northers I know – OK, authors – would regard three locations and six talks in a week as fairly routine, but for me that's quite a lot of getting out and about. I have since crawled back into my shell. But I did have a great time meeting the kids from all of these schools;many of them asked really thoughtful, interesting questions, and I'm glad to say that not one of them said, 'where'd you get your ideas from?' Though I can't vouch for whether any of them were thinking about sausages and chocolate pudding...

Teens, Tweens and Queens


When I first started writing longish stories, I thought I was writing for kids aged around eight. Then I was told no, these are 'tweenager' books. It was a term I hadn't come across, meaning in-betweenies, pre-teens, sort of 9-13ies. Then I started finding some of my books in the 'Teen' section of bookshops, and I started to think, hang on, how did that happen? Do I really belong alongside Jennifer Donnelly?? I think not. Then came 'Young Adult', and all of a sudden, 'Teen' started to mean 'Early Teen'. Are you with me so far? I said, are you with me so far?? Oh, you nodded off; sorry. The point is, it's all terribly confusing, if you ask me. And if 'Teen'+'Girls'=snogging, then I'm afraid I score pretty low down on the snogometer. It's not what my books are about.

So when I was asked along to the Queen of Teen awards, I thought, what the hey, okay. Not sure if I qualify, but why not? And if there are 'crossover' children's books that adults enjoy reading, then I'm sure it's possible to crossover from kids' to teen, and I'm only too delighted for that to happen, ladies.

Some are born pink, some achieve pinkness, and some have pinkness thrust upon `em: I literally had pinkness thrust upon me, in the shape of a satin sash; I was then installed beside a pile of copies of the second Lulu Baker book, Cupid Cakes (snogometer alert: one or two very tame references!!) after which even more pinkness was thrust upon me, in the form of the fabbishly attired young ladies you see above (who look a lot like tweenagers to me anyway!)


As a not-quite-teen writer (I'm still only twelve) I didn't expect to win; in fact, I wasn't even shortlisted. But Sophie McKenzie (left) and I were nominated, apparently, so our consolation prize, rather like at the Oscars, was to announce the winner, the truly magnificent Louise Rennison, author of all those Georgia Nicholson books with the wonderful titles like Startled By His Furry Shorts. Here she is (below) looking startled but as far as I know, not because Ted Smart was wearing furry shorts (he was perfectly decently attired when I saw him, in the pinkiest pinkest pink sweater I have EVER seen on a man).

Other nominees included the equally magnifique Dame Jacqueline Wilson and my personal fave, the very funny and gorgeous Diane Keaton lookalike Karen McCombie (left).

From Tiaras to Earrings
I had to run away early because – and this is going to sound appallingly luvvyish – I had a ticket for the West End opening night of the stage adaptation of a truly excellent book, Tracy Chevalier's Girl With A Pearl Earring. Go and see it! You'll love it. It stars Kimberly Nixon and Adrian Dunbar...no, before you ask, I'm not related to him either (see FAQs; previous posts). Although spookily, he is a neighbour of mine. I think I'm beginning to sense a thread on Dunbars I'm Not Related To...

The Telly Thing: an Update


You may remember a while back, I mentioned that some telly people were interested in making a sitcom series based on my Lulu Baker books, but that they'd been thinking about it for approximately three hundred years, and all the indications were that they would continue to do the same for another three hundred or so. Well, finally, I have Some News:

The Telly Thing is Happening

Yes! It's "got the green light", as we people in medialand like to say (and I get to say things like 'we people in medialand'...oh, shut up.)

Unfortunately the lead actress who starred in the pilot is now a forty-seven-year-old mother of five, so she may no longer make a very convincing 13-year-old grappling with evil stepmother issues. So I'm not sure who's going to star in it. But more anon. It's for a cable channel (Nickelodeon), but I don't know yet whether a terrestrial channel or whatever they call them nowadays will buy it too...in any case, it's not due to be aired until about a year from now, by which time you'll probably be all grown up and sophisticated, and more interested in reading Tolstoy and watching Newsnight, so apologies if that seems an awfully long way away.

I also don't know what they're going to do to avoid any confusion between this Jinx and Meg Cabot's book of the same name...or maybe they won't mind.

What I do know is that the telly thing WILL be very different from the book thing. I was a sort of consultant for about five minutes, but actually the series has very little to do with the books; it is a horse of a very different colour indeed...


If you are already a fan of the books, it may take you by surprise; if you haven't read the books but find you enjoy the show, I would definitely encourage you to read the books as well.

The Final Instalment

I've received a proof of the cover for the last title in my Silk Sisters trilogy, and here it is!


It's been a long time coming. This is partly because I was so STUCK on what to call it. I mean really stuck. More stuck than a stick Superglued to another really sticky thing. More stuck than a room full of Stuckists. I was stuck for weeks...months. It invaded my dreams; it very nearly turned me into a teapot. I filled page after page of my notebook with random words that might go well with 'gold' (I knew all along that there would be 'gold' in the title) and also have some relevance to the plot.

I had wanted to call it 'Aurora Gold', but the publishers wouldn't let me. (It's OK, we're still talking to each other.) I think they thought my readers might have difficulty with 'Aurora'...and they may have a point (what do you think?) This reminds me of possibly the funniest ever episode of 30 Rock
(Tina Fey! We love her) in which Jenna thought she'd got her big break in a movie called The Rural Juror, which was awful and a complete flop, not least because saying the title makes it sound as if you have a speech impediment.

ANYWAY...we got there in the end. And how it happened was this: having worked my way steadily through every gold, orange and vaguely yellowish thing under the sun (another yellowish thing) I finally hit on Tiger-Lilies.

Yes! I called up my publisher and yelled, 'Tiger-Lilies! They're an orangey yellowy type thing!' (yes, this is the sort of certifiably lunatic behaviour title crises can lead one to).

Silence.

'Kirsty? Are you there?'

'Fiona,' came the response at last. 'Your story has nothing to do with tiger lilies.'

'Well!' I said. 'we can work on that.'

So I did. Funny how things can sometimes evolve in such unexpected ways. I hope you like the result. Unfortunately it won't be in the shops until next spring (will let you know the date when I have it), but for now you can at least admire the cover.

Endangered SpeciesI'm talking, of course, about librarians. They are disappearing at an alarming rate, and if they are allowed to become extinct, here's what will happen:
– Your local library will turn into a BLOCKBUCKS. This is an alternative to libraries, and is a combination of Blockbuster and Starbucks. Yes, libraries need to move with the times, but these are exciting times where the written word is concerned, full of possibilities. We need to E-X-P-A-N-D choice, not limit it. Think of all the gazillions of books that have been published since 1439, not all of them by Jacqueline Wilson.
– Your school library could disappear overnight. Yes, this could really happen! For all I know, it has already. You need your school library; where else are you going to hide when you haven't done your maths homework?
The good news is, you can do something about it! Check out Alan Gibbons' blog for more info about his Campaign for the Book.

Me and JK Rowling
I know about the Campaign for the Book because I went to a big conference for children's writers at the weekend. We were in a large hall full of some VERY FAMOUS children's writers. Like Philip Pullman! Michael Rosen! Ann Fine! And many, many others, all together in the same place. Just imagine.

Well anyway, I mention this because I'm always being asked if I know JK Rowling. And the answer is no, I'm afraid I don't. In fact, I don't even know anyone who knows her. I think she only hangs out with the Queen and Stephen Fry. But I do know some other wonderful writers and illustrators, and here to prove it are some pics of me with them. That's me with Kath Langrish, Jane Ray and some teacups...

And here I am with Catherine Johnson, Dee Shulman and invisible teacups.

Among other things, I got to hear from Celia Rees about how she does her historical research, and learned all about William Nicholson's career as a novelist and screenwriter. It was tremendous! Oh, and Joyce and Polly Dunbar were there. I'm still not related to them.

Midgets
This is a long post, because I was away in Scotland with my family. A friend told us not to go to Scotland, because it was full of midgets. I said, 'that's OK, I'm vertically challenged myself.'
Then someone else said the same thing.
Then we found practically everyone we met was saying, 'don't go to Scotland, it's full of midgets'.
And I started to feel sorry for all those Scottish midgets, so lonely up there in the blustery braes, with no-one visiting them because everyone's telling them not to. So we jolly well went. And it was FANTASTIC.
We climbed down this (we came back up a different way!).
...And this is what the beaches are like:


But what about those midgets? Well, as those of you who've been to Scotland in the summer/live there will already have guessed, all those people were talking about midges. Yes, there are those too, but it's Not That Bad! And other places have mosquitoes. We had a wonderful time.

We even came across the odd endangered species (see what I did there? Back neatly to my opening theme). Here I am with one very rare beasty:













And finally, here I am with one very wee Scottish person (but not a midget). Her name is Isobel Gunn, she is my oldest cousin, and she is lovely. She ran a shop in Kingussie for sixty years, and still sings in the church choir.

Wow!

Thought I'd give this a plug, and not just because I'm in it. There are 366 reasons to buy this book:

1. It's great reading for the beach, where it might be too hot to focus on anything longer than 366 words (the exact length of every single story in it – yes, really!);
2. £1 of the proceeds from every copy sold goes to the charity Childline;
3. I'm in it;
3(b). Well, not literally. But I wrote a story for it;
4. So did hundreds of other fantabulous writers, too many to mention. And if I do mention any by name I'm bound to offend somebody, so I won't;
5. Even the Prime Minister wrote one!
5 (b) OK, don't let that put you off;
6. Nobody else called Gordon wrote one;
7. There are stories in there by other people with names like Strawberrie, Cherry and Taffy;
8. Some of the stories are very spooky;
9. Some of them are laugh-out-loud funny;
10. Some of them make you go 'aah!';
11. Some of them make you go 'aha!';
12. Some of them make you 'Ick! Yuk! Eurgh!'
13. None of them make you go to the toilet.

...OK, that's enough. There ARE 353 other reasons, but I'm not telling you what they are. Go and buy the book and find out for yourself.

Jinxed

As it's taken me so long to get around to blogging, there's a whole broom cupboard full of Stuff That Hasn't Been Blogged About Yet. And I realise I've never told you about the telly thing. So now, here it is:

The Telly Thing

Actually you see I haven't mentioned it because I was waiting for the Telly Thing to happen. Which it hasn't. Except that a pilot was made.

No, not that sort of pilot; the sort I'm talking about is a single episode, so that one bunch of telly people can show it to another, richer and more powerful bunch of telly people, to help them decide whether they want to make all thirteen episodes or not. That was, um, six months ago. And I've just had some news (drum roll): the big, rich, powerful telly people concerned (that'll be Nickelodeon to you and me) have...

...still not decided.

I had been waiting for news of an actual decision before telling you about it, in the superstitious belief that if I mentioned it any earlier, I would jinx the whole thing. Then I realised that me, my editor and my agent would all look like this if I waited that long:

So I'm telling you about it. And hey, who knows? Perhaps talking about it will make it happen! ANYWAY, I suppose I should mention what sort of telly thing it is. Well, first of all, it's loosely based on my Lulu Baker trilogy. I say loosely, because it's not actually a dramatisation, it's a sitcom version, and they've made quite a lot of changes. Here's a publicity image:

Note the title! I wonder whether we'll have more luck if they change it? That's Lulu on the right, by the way. And the lady on the left is Aunt Cookie. No, don't go rushing to your bookshelves, trying to remind yourself of who she is; she's nowhere to be found in the books! But in the Telly Thing, she's a sort of magical chef-type lady who springs out of Lulu's recipe book.

So there you go; that's the update. I've had a lot of readers ask if a Lulu Baker movie will be made...well, this, so far, is the nearest we've got. So no Cameron Diaz or Queen Latifah yet, alas! (see my FAQs if that makes no sense to you).

I also sometimes get asked if there'll be a film of Toonhead. And I reckon you could do something really interesting with that, along the lines of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or Space Jam.


It's about time there was another live action/ cartoon animation movie, if you ask me.

Lambananas

Do you know what a lambanana is? Half lamb, half banana, of course!

A couple of weeks ago I was in Liverpool...But more about that anon. On the way, I bumped into this lot, from Whitby High School in Ellesmere Port:


They thought Toonhead might be good enough to win the Cheshire book award. It wasn't (Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant was).

Here I am with Jane Peck and Ann Cowsill, the organisers of the award:


Here's just one of the reviews:



Going to Ellesmere Port meant that I got to visit Chester, which looks like this:


All of it. Then it was onto Liverpool, where I was visiting St John Bosco school, along with Frank Cottrell Boyce and Bob Wilson. There I met a pirate, a lot of Pippi Longstockings, and a series of unfortunate wardrobe disasters. That's because they were all dressed up as favourite fictional characters. Oh, and there was a dalek. Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I was very busy and even as recently as this, I had no idea I'd end up blogging about it! I DO, however, have a picture of a lambanana:


It's not great I know – I took the picture from my taxi – but you get the idea. Anyway, Liverpool, 2008 City of Culture, has lambananas round every corner, after the original Super Lamb Banana created by artist Taro Chiezo ten years ago as an ironic comment on the dangers of genetic engineering.

Unexpected Item in Blogging Area

Here is your very own unexpected item!

It's taken me a long time to get around to blogging, I know. That's because I was scared. I thought the blog monster might take over my life, because as everyone knows, blog monsters are very tiny, but once they enter your bloodstream they multiply into squillions of blog monsters, and the next thing you know, you're drinking maximum strength coffee at 2am, staring with bloodshot eyes at the glowing screen, and telling the world about your last irritating encounter with the automatic checkout machine at Tesco's, when NOBODY CARES.

Here is a picture of a Blog Monster:


Beware. It probably will take over my life: if it does, and I do get really boring/pompous/snarky do please tell me off, won't you? Ta.