...Which Was Nice

If you're one of my younger readers, you may be little more than vaguely familiar with one of my favourite comedy programmes of recent years, The Fast Show. It has come to mind as I write this blog, because whenever I have something to boast about, I get a bit embarrassed and think I sound like the character from that show called Patrick Nice. Patrick is always shown chatting to the camera in his kitchen; after a totally preposterous boast, along the lines of "...'...and I was rummaging around in the attic and I found the original copy of the Bible,' he will round it off with "Which was nice," said in that way that posh actors are wont to do, when mentioning awards and things.

Well, I don't have any awards to mention, but I did get a couple of NICE things in the mail while I was away on holiday, which makes a pleasant change from letters threatening to cut off my electricity, or parking ticket reminders. One was a renewed contract for the TV show Jinx (see previous blog posts), which will now...*fanfare*...be screened by the BBC, not Nickelodeon. I've known about this for some time, but the news was Top Secret, so I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, not even my neighbour's deaf dog. But it's public now, so I can blog about it. And tell the deaf dog, who as yet has not become a follower of my blog. (Actually, I cheated: I told her already...)

Also, rather excitingly, Orchard are bringing out BRAND NEW EDITIONS of all three of my Lulu Baker books, to tie in with the series (which will be screened in the autumn)! And yes, even though the TV series is VERY different from my books (again, see my previous comments on this) it's great to see those words "Now a Major CBBC TV Series!" (Incidentally, has anyone ever seen a tie-in book cover with the words "Now a Minor TV Series/Motion Picture!" on the front? No, neither have I).

There have been some changes to the production; I shall be very curious to see the

finished thing. One change I'm REALLY pleased about is that the 'Aunt Cookie' character that was in the original has been changed to simply 'Cookie', and has gone from being a white, matronly figure, to a funky young black lady:

This is especially good from my point of view because, as anyone familiar with my Lulu Baker books will know, I had a very central, important black character in them, Cassandra. She was ditched for the TV series; they were thinking at one point that they might make Frenchy black, but then this happened instead. Which is interesting because things have almost come full circle in that Cookie, like my Cassandra, is a sort of muse figure. I have no idea whether Glynnie, my Indian character, will feature.

Oh, and speaking of covers, you may be amused to see these new Japanese editions of Pink Chameleon and Blue Gene Baby:

Groovy, huh? Google translates them as the "Lolly & Elsie Magic Fashionable" books. I came across these when I Googled myself recently (in case you're wondering, I only did it because a writer friend Facebooked something funny she'd found while self-Googling, and NOT because I'm an egomaniac, OK?) I also found a review of Chocolate Wishes in Hungarian; here, Google's translating skills were taxed even further, resulting in many hilarious bilingual phrases such as "plenty of exciting kötetéből", which I have since adopted as my favourite quote about my books.

OK, so I mentioned there was something else in the mail, and...ah, no, I can't tell you about that yet. Because it was just an email about something ELSE that I'm hoping will arrive in the snail mail shortly. And when it does, I'll tell you about it. Meanwhile, here's me on holiday in some rocky place.

We hiked, cycled, body-boarded and ate an enormous number of clotted cream teas. We found baby crabs, and random teddies perched on lobster pots. I alone made arrangements out of seaweed.

And we took in views like this one:

Which was nice.

Oh, and PS: If you ARE a regular reader of my blog, I'd really like to know about it! Add yourself to my list of followers: just click on the button that says "follow" at the top left of the page. Thanks!

The Spirit of the Times


Zeitgeist [tsite-guyst]

Noun

the spirit or general outlook of a specific time or period [German, literally: time spirit]
(Image from artwork for The Smashing Pumpkins' album, 'Zeitgeist'.)

A Facebook friend of mine posts daily updates, giving his favourite word for that day, like 'corpuscle' or 'quango'. Funny how we form attachments to certain words just because we enjoy saying them, regardless of their associations. 'Zeitgeist' is one that has this effect on me – though it's not a word I routinely drop into my conversation, as I suspect that if I did that I'd sound pompous and high-falutin' (two other terms, incidentally, that have a high Fun Factor).

My agent and Orchard editors have often described my writing as 'zeitgeisty', i.e. it embodies the spirit of the times – which is a jolly good thing, I reckon. This is at least partly due to the fact that I absorb huge amounts of daily STUFF, good, bad and indifferent, from newspapers, TV, the Internet, books, magazines...the lot. And lately, events have been occurring that seem like something out of one of one of my books.

Take the Susan Boyle phenomenon. In the sort of alternate-future world of my Silk Sisters books, 'celebrities' have become so disposable that the only way to deal with the has-beens is to dump them all in a sort of Disneyland 'Beverly Hills' pumped full of happy drugs, so that they can go on believing they still have hordes of adoring fans.
Now, Susan still has plenty of fans, but the past week has been something of a nightmare for her. 'Boyle has simply suffered a more accelerated version of a common musical journey, from unknown to Priory in seven weeks rather than the months it takes hardened professionals,' said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. 'Television, most voracious of mediums, just chewed and spat out another innocent,' said Quentin Letts; similarly, a Yahoo journalist said she was 'just another victim of the celebrity machine. It sucks them in, uses them, and then spits them out: used and worthless.' (Incidentally, the best article I've read on the subject of Susan Boyle is by Howard Jacobson and can be found here .) Well folks, you saw it all here first, in the character of Gula in the Silk Sisters trilogy!

In my Lulu Baker trilogy I have, in the character of Varaminta le Bone, another washed-up 'celebrity'; an over-the-hill supermodel, desperate to cling onto the limelight (don'tcha just love mixing your metaphors?) After disappointing sales of her diet book 'How To Be As Thin As Me', she turns to the celebrity magazines in an attempt to gain publicity. Trouble is, she needs to DO something in order to interest them, so she decides to Have a Wedding; all she needs next is to find a candidate for Husband. This is where poor Lulu's dad comes in, the unwitting pawn in Varaminta's game. The role of celebrity magazines (something which didn't exist in my youth) in the lives of some prominent figures (pun intended) is quite disturbing; witness the recent collapse of the marriage between Jordan/Katie Price/Whatever and Peter Andre. Having your every waking moment recorded for public consumption seems to become, for some people, the only reason to do anything in the first place, and the price (oh dear, another pun) of such a lifestyle can be great.
In contrast, I notice something happening in the fashion world that's actually positive; in this instance, a TV programme that carries the same message as The Silk Sisters: namely, can we stop just throwing stuff away, please? Hurray, then, for Mary Queen of Charity Shops! Mary Portas, probably the nearest thing we have to my fictional character Nolita Newbuck in my Silk Sisters books, says 'People are aware of the need for sustainability, the importance of re-use, the greener option. So why are charity shops failing to perform well?’ She's out to do something about that.

I'm grateful to John Lloyd of Bookbag for his very positive and thoughtful review of Tiger-Lily Gold; however, I do have to take issue with one of his comments: 'This could have been a stinging rant against modern celeb-culture...Instead it uses those when it needs to...there is [no] serious attempt to get readers to abandon their weekly shopping trips and think again.' No?? OK, I don't want to give away the ending, but hang on a minute! The public are increasingly at the mercy of powerful corporate machine Rexco, which is robbing them of their identities. This is in part down to the rampant consumerism they generate: you are what you buy. It defines you. So that's the baddy; the goodies are the parents of Rorie and Elsie who, just before they go missing, were on the point of introducing revolutionary Smart clothing technology capable of transforming itself into different styles and renewing its cellular structure, thus dramatically reducing the need for new clothing production. There is absolutely NO DOUBT as to whose side I'm on, and I would hope the dramatic events provoke some thought on the subject!

It's true that I don't want to kill fashion: I love it! Any idea that it should be done away with is preposterous. What I hate is the accelerated consumer machine it has become, the third-world sweat shops producing bargain clothes for decadent westerners to wear for a season and discard.

Anyway, off the soapbox now. My primary aim is to entertain, but if I haven't also made you think a bit about these wider issues, then I haven't succeeded in what I set out to do. It's all very well embodying the zeitgeist, but simply mirroring the world around you is a singularly uninteresting thing to do; you need teeth. So...over to you. Did I succeed or fail? Am I toothless, or do I have bite?

IDEAS!!
Revealed at last!
Where I get my ideas from.

PLUS: Your ideas!



I've made a movie! Of course, it's not the first. I was in a film called The Music Machine (1979. "So bad it's good!"*) but seeing as that came and went faster than a recent glimmer of economic hope, and as I'm one of about 200 dancers and on screen for all of about five seconds, you could be forgiven for having missed that one. [If your mum happens to be Patti Boulaye and you have a copy, I'm the one in the moss-green pencil skirt suit from Bus Stop, and some highly impractical heels.]

The great thing about the world of YouTube is that you get to make your own movie, and be the STAR!! Nobody out-shines me in this film, because...well, because there's nobody else in it. Though the editor, Candy Gourlay, is the hidden star and it would have been rubbish without her wit and technical wizardry. *Little bit of trivia*: the music is by a band called Bon Bon Kaotikai, featuring, on the accordion, Geoff Morgan, the widower of the lovely late author Siobhan Dowd. Here are the Bon Bons playing in their swimming costumes, like you do:

Anyway, do take a look at my vid. And I'd love it if you posted a comment too!

*Wrong. So bad it's bad, actually.

You Clever Lot

Well done to all of you who won copies of Tiger-Lily Gold! I hope you enjoy the final romp home, and all the surprises along the way...well, I certainly hope they are surprises. Some of you also submitted your ideas about what might happen in this book. Thank you; I enjoyed reading them and can reveal this much: you're all wrong, ha ha! But you are also very clever in that you've really thought about all aspects of the plot so far, and have some interesting angles on the possibilities:

"Rorie and Elsie escape again and they steal more worn clothes and more types of transportation, this time they take Nolita with them and they continue on their quest to find their parents. On the way they get caught stealing something and it goes to the police, Nolita has to go to court, but with a helping hand Rorie and Elsie manage to smuggle her out. Once they have tiptoed past the rexco guards, they find their parents, but it isn't that easy to do. After a day of planning they manage to break in and reunite with their parents!"

Jessica Lavery, Chorley Lancashire

"I'm going to work with what i know as i've only read the first book (Excellent book by the way). I think maybe the silk sisters might go on the hunt for another relative or discover something else Rorie can do with her abilities. Maybe Rorie might have a problem keeping her secret or they might find another lead which will take them closer to the mystery of their parents...The list is endless really!"

Hannah Abban, Hackney, London

"I think that Nolita Newbuck played a part in their parents disappearance because I have always thought that she seemed a bit suspicious and thinking about it now, I think that she heard about them inventing really cool clothes, therefore seeing it as a threat to her that they might become bigger and better than her and become the new King and Queen of fashion instead of her!!"

Charlotte Mullarkey, Exeter, Devon

"I think that Rorie & Elsie will look every-where for their parents and uncover some awful secrets about Uncle Harris, Rexco, the machine that robs people of their identities, Minimerica and maybe more about Nolita Newbuck! And when they can’t find their parents, inspector Dixon will say in the news that they have miraculously appeared in their own home and when Rorie & Elsie see them again and they’ll say, “We’ve been here all the time!”And they will both wake up from their wonderful dream, and realise that they are once more in the back of a car, but their parents rescue them with their new invention."

Madeline Helyar, Wagga Wagga, Australia* *Madeline qualified as she is visiting relatives in London, where her copy has been sent. But I love the fact that it will end up in Wagga Wagga.

Good Intentions







This is how most of my emails and letters to fans begin:

'I'm really sorry it's taken me so long to write...'

And it does; it takes me ages. So I'm writing this blog as a general grovelling apology to all of you who are currently waiting for a reply/did wait a long time, then got bored and went off me completely/are now twenty-seven years old and not really interested any more. It's still January, just (have you ever noticed how January lasts approximately three times as long as the other months?) so I will stick my neck out and say I'm making a New Year resolution to get up-to-date with my fan mail, and stay that way. There, I've said it. No going back now: I'm committed.

Here are some other bad habits I'm going to ditch: eating cake, sleeping at all the wrong times of the day, eating cookies, avoiding stuff, drinking Champagne, and cheating.
















Still on the subject of mail, a recent one (I'm going to answer soon, really I am!) says:

"I was wondering if you were going to write a book , that actually is The Apple Star. I think that it would a good idea if you wrote it because, I for one who likes the Lulu Baker Trilogy, definitely buy the book. Just an idea I had. Tell me if you like by replying."

Big thanks to Whitney Duggan from Australia for this question, as it reminds me that I also need to update my FAQs. Because this question comes up a lot – Whitney, it's a great idea: so great in fact, that many other people have also come up with it! Including me. For anyone vague of memory, or who STILL hasn't read my Lulu Baker trilogy (you haven't?!), let me explain: The Apple Star is Lulu's magic recipe book. I 'quote' from it frequently throughout the trilogy, though of course the book is a figment of my imagination (though I also get mail from readers who ask where they can buy it, so I'm quite flattered by that!) The recipes are also made from ingredients that don't exist.

I would have fun writing such a book – though I think I would want to team up with a researcher. But, lovely idea though it is, my publishers have yet to be convinced. Maybe if the Telly Thing (see previous blog posts) becomes a big success, leading to massively increased sales of my Lulu Baker books – maybe then they'll think it's worth doing. So I'm not giving up hope. Of course, if I DO write it, it will be necessary for me to experiment with lots of cake and cookie recipes. In fact, I'd better get in practice now, just in case, and taste them as I go along.

Lots of people ask me HOW I write. They ask me WHERE I write, and if they don't know me from a hole in the ground, they might even ask me WHAT I write. But one question that doesn't tend to come up is WHY I write. Which I suppose is fair enough: it might seem a bit rude to ask that, as if they're saying, 'what do you want to go and do that for?' or 'must you persist with that annoying habit?' But it is a question I sometimes ask myself, and at this point I find I have noticed a pattern. Going over the seven novels I've published to date (I'm cheating slightly here, as I'm counting the one that's out in May, Tiger Lily Gold. Break out the Champagne!) it seems that I write about stuff instead of doing it. So with the Lulu Baker books I was writing about cake instead of baking; with Toonhead, I was writing about art instead of drawing, and with the Silk Sisters books I was writing about fashion instead of creating my own designs. All things that I'd like to do, but which I've been channeling into my chosen art form, because I can't be a celebrity chef and a great artist and a famous fashion designer. Oh, or save the world from corporate greed (there's quite a bit of that in Silk Sisters too).

Whew! I'm exhausted just from thinking about all that, so I think I'll have to go and have a lie down.

I know what you're thinking: isn't she going to lead on to what's coming next? Gosh, is that the time? I've got to go.

Erm. You may have spotted some broken resolutions along the way here. But I PROMISE you, I won't break the one about answering my fanmail :-).

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...