My new room

I can show you my working space because it's just been cleared and decorated. Three weeks ago, it looked like a paper recycling centre, with too many pictures and photograhs on the wall to see what colour the paint was. I know for sure it will look like that again in the future so I am posting this now before that happens.

A dear friend gave us the desk, and Dave, my husband, made me a larger top for it. He also made the stained glass piece on the windowsill. The photo on the desk is of him putting in the floor of our extension.

Jane (Linfoot) gave me the cherub on the windowsill: for some weird reason, we both love cherubs. Actually, it's not weird for me, as I'm a soppy date, but I always think it's strange for Jane to like cherubs, because she's a stylish architect with leanings to minimalism, and not in the least bit soppy.

My father gave me the silver spoon on the windowsill. His grandfather gave it to him and engraved it with both their initials. I had it engraved with my father's and mine - FJW to SJH.

There are lots of things behind me and to the side, that I might show you another time. And this week I shall be putting photographs of my family back on the wall.

Fact? Fiction?

My sister-in-law rang last night and asked if Dave, my husband, had been bidding on eBAY for a guitar.

"No," I said. "Why?"

"It's just that Sally's Gus was bidding for a Fender," she said.

"The trouble is," I said later to Dave, "people forget that most of Sally's Blog is fiction. They get muddled as to where the fact ends and the fiction starts."

"So do you," he said.

Pictures from Zuzu's Petals

Quaker Meeting House, Bainbridge

Zuzu's Petals is set in Sheffield and Wensleydale, and I am trying to collect photographs of places that are mentioned in the book so I can show you on my website - just as I did for Plotting for Beginners. Here's a start - pictures from Wensleydale - all of them are places mentioned in ZP. (Click on a pic to enlarge it.) Don't you like the Jacob sheep in front of the Meeting House?

A distant view of Bolton Castle

Bainbridge village green

The Fox and Hounds in West Burton Lady Hill Lambs on a footpath to Aysgarth Falls

Clutter

Why, oh why do I need so many jiffy bags under my desk? Gone are the days of posting off manuscripts to six literary agents at a time. I do still deal in manuscripts , of course, but Snowbooks (bless their little cotton socks) only deal in digital, so when I want to send them something I just line it up and click the mouse.

After years of printing out double-spaced, single-sided sheets, parcelling them up in a jiffy bag with another jiffy bag inside stamped with return postage, it is sooohhh restful. When I tidy my room this week, I shall throw away the jiffy bags (or put them in the attic until I need them for Christmas presents. I mean, come on, you can't actually throw a jiffy bag away, can you?)

OK, I admit it!

OK, I admit it, sometimes there is a confusion between Sally Howe and me. I realise this on the rare occasions when I have an idea for a blog post and I can't decide whether to post it on this site, or whether Sally should post it on hers. Today was just such an occasion. I gave it to her, and she posted it.

Sally and Gus Again

An odd thing happened this morning. I was writing. I was writing a scene in the sequel to Plotting for Beginners, in which Sally and Gus have a big row. I was batting out the dialogue, hell for leather like I usually do, not worrying about quotation marks, or any other punctuation for that matter, just typing the lines as they came into my head, but then I had to stop. I was too upset by the row between these two characters that I'm so fond of, too upset by the rift that was opening up between them. These are fictional characters on my laptop screen: am I nuts?

Please help the people of Gaza

I try to restrict my blog to the subjects of writing and books, and assorted gentle musings, but I am so overwhelmed by the latest news about the suffering of the people of Gaza that I have to mention it.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is the worst it has been since Israel first occupied the territory in 1967. More than 80% of Palestinians in Gaza rely on humanitarian assistance; travel in and out of Gaza is all but impossible; and supplies of food and water, as well as sewage treatment and basic healthcare are severely restricted.

Between 25-30% of the population of the Gaza Strip do not receive running water at home because electricity is not available for pumping. About 30-40 million litres of sewage flows untreated into the sea every day.

Half the poulation in Gaza are children, and their education as well as their mental health is being damaged by the cumulative effects of the occupation, closures, poverty and violence. All of this is documented in a report drawn up by charities such as Save the Children, Amnesty International and Christian Aid. See this report on the BBC website.

In the short term you can help to improve the wellbeing of the Palestinian people by donating money to the UK-based charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians.

In the longer term, you can help by by writing to the foreign secretary and the prime minister, asking them to bring pressure to bear on Israel to abide by international law, and to find a just settlement for the Palestinian people.

UPDATE

I wrote the post above in March 2008 - when the siege was on but the bombing was not. I have written more up-to-date posts on the suffering of the people of Gaza and how you can help them.

Click here to start reading them.

Proofs

I was falling apart with excitement the first time I held my brand new copy of Plotting for Beginners before publication day, two years ago. Last week, Anna (at Snowbooks) sent me the type set proofs for Zuzu's Petals and that was pretty nice, too. The hardback is out in May and the paperback is out on the 3rd July. It seems like an age to me, but then I am not renowned for my patience.

Bakewell

I don't see why Sally Howe should get all the photographs of Bakewell bridge on her blog, so here's one I took earlier today. (click on it to enlarge it.)

A couple of weeks ago, Carol from Bakewell library rang to ask me a question about Plotting for Beginners. Two readers had been in to see her and said they had managed to identify everywhere mentioned in PfB, except for one - the pub called the Derbyshire Heifer. Where was it? The answer is that it's the only place mentioned that doesn't have a real life counterpart. I felt as though I had let them down.

Sally and me - competition

Sometimes people ask if Sally Howe is me. The answer is that we have some things in common, but no, she's not me. She is more optimistic, less serious, more fun, but has a tendency to be vapid. I have just read her answers to twenty questions that her agent sent her, and my answers would be different from hers to all but one of the questions.

The baby and the fire

Wasn't that an amazing piece of news about the baby dropped from a third floor window by her parents, and caught safely by someone below?

And wasn't the photograph in the paper even more amazing? The first time I saw it, I felt the weirdest cocktail of horror and relief, and I still feel strange every time I look at it.

Devious

Last week, a who-dunnit writer friend asked me to read and comment on the manuscript of her latest book. She brought the book round and said she'd run out of paper so would it be OK if she sent the last chapter by email?

"Yes - fine," I said.

Later that day I found in my inbox an email with the chapter attached but didn't bother to open it. I sat down that evening to begin her book. Last night I got to the last twenty pages of what she had given me, and went to bed thinking I would finish it in the morning. I woke up early and read the last pages and then got up - at 6.15, mark you - because I was desperate to read the climax of the book. I opened her email and tried to open the attachment but no joy. It was in a weird kind of file that my computer didn't recognise, so I bashed out an email to her, begging for the denouement of her book in a form I could read. "I want to know what happens!" I said.

Now all I can do is wait. What I want to know is - was this a ploy to see how gripped I was by the book? These crime writers are devious types...not like romantic comedy writers who are utterly straightforward, and also all sweetness and light.

Yippee for Scarthin Books!

Scarthin Books, where my writing group meets, and where Jane and I had our launch for Plotting for Beginners, has been named in the Guardian Unlimited as one of the ten Best Bookshops in the World. Congratulations, everyone at Scarthin. You deserve it.

Pictures from our launch at Scarthin...

Groovy plant, eh?

Don't you just love the cover?

I do!

Thank you Anna, at Snowbooks.

Ten things

Ten things to be thankful for (in no particular order):

1/ I adore the cover for my new book Zuzu's Petals which my editor, Anna, has designed; but I can't show you it until it's absolutely decided.

2/ I've finally decided on the next book I'm going to write (gosh, it was painful) - a sequel to Plotting for Beginners.

3/ Our log burning stove.

4/ A warm bed.

5/ My two grandchildren - I have someone to read pre-school stories to, and someone who's excited about Christmas.

6/ My Christmas present to myself: More Bad Housekeeping by Sue Limb. I have recently discovered her fictional anti-heroine Dulcie Domum. I bought Bad Housekeeping in November and devoured it over a weekend, and tomorrow I shall gobble up the sequel.

7/ My family.

8/ My new breast prosthesis (falsie en famille) because it's self-adhesive and perky. It's perkier than my remaining breast - maybe I'll have that removed and then I can have two perky breasts (only joking.)

9/ The Christmas tree mobile my husband made me this morning.

10/ My friends.

Poor Sally

I have been getting ready for Christmas and worrying about Sally. How is she getting on in this season where Gus is the biggest misery guts in the world? Is she managing to keep her spirits up? I just popped over to see if she's started blogging again, and there are two new posts. Check out her blog. The question mark in the title says it all...

Snowbiscuit

Look what I got in the Christmas post! A unique, handbaked Snowcookie from Em and Anna and Rob at Snowbooks. Aren't they the funkiest publishers on the planet?

Maybe the fairies have the answer

At last, the Christmas fairies are swinging into action at our house - abseiling down from who knows where... Maybe they will know who should star in the next book - Kate and Jerry, or Sally and Gus?

Clean sweep?

I had to stop writing about Sally and Gus in Sally's Blog because the characters were taking up too much space in my head. Since I batted them out of the way a little I've begun, at last, to have ideas for a new book. Last Friday I began some rudimentary plotting and the book has been simmering away all weekend. I've just opened up my planning file to do some more work and what do I see? The names of Sally and Gus. Yes, there are the names of the two new principal characters at various points on the page, but when I have added notes throughout, it's the names Sally and Gus that appear. Bah! Should I definitively kill the reprobates off somehow - maybe on Sally's Blog? Or should I give in and make the next book about them, a sequel to Plotting for Beginners perhaps?

I miss Sally and Gus

It's such a shame that Sally is no longer here. There is so much in my daily life I'd like to hear her comments on.

For example...I had a mastectomy some time ago, and this week my breast prosthesis started leaking (yikh!) so I had to zip into the hospital and order a new one. This time they're giving me a super dooper self adhesive one. Brilliant! No more embarrassment as I lean over in the supermarket and the falsie slips out of my bra. No more annoyance when I'm weeding and the falsie goes plop in the flowerbed. No more pink squishiness sidling out of my bra when I am mother-of-the-groom in a low cut affair.

But Sally isn't here to add her two penn'orth (sp?) and neither is Gus to offer a description of the new prosthesis...that the bumps on the back of it and the colour and consistency make it look like an invertebrate that someone's dredged up from the seabed. If you're not fainthearted, see here.

Mother-of-the-groom

My son recently got married to wonderful wacky Wendy, whom we all love to bits, and I have been emailing wedding pics to my friends. They all say how glamorous I looked in my wedding gear, so I thought I'd make the most of this rare record of me as glamorous mother-of-the-groom, and post it here.

Nit-picking

Anna, my editor at Snowbooks, has gone through my manuscript for Zuzu's Petals and marked where she thinks there should be a comma, or shouldn't be a comma, where I have used too many ands, where she wants me to use a capital letter - etc, etc, etc - and then sent me the marked manuscript for me to agree or disagree with each of her changes.

When she did this for Plotting for Beginners, she seemed to want a lot of changes, and I argued with many. Poor Anna. There are half as many changes this time, and I've argued with only a handful. What's happened in the last two years? Am I less precious and more pragmatic? Am I a better writer or less opinionated? Or have I changed to be more like Anna? You're supposed to grow to be like your pet. Do writers become more like their editors?

A (non-writing) friend said to me "How can you bear to have someone picking over your writing like that, criticising it, wanting to make changes? Don't you feel incredibly annoyed?"

The answer is no. I love the process of going through the book with Anna. It feels so good to have someone caring about my book as much as I do - every sentence, every word, every full stop. She loves the book and she wants it to be the best it can be. And so do I.

Zuzu's Petals will be published next May. Hooray!

On quite another tack, our cat Chione came to live with us 2 years ago today. Isn't she beautiful?

First Aid in English

I was chatting to my husband recently about the sad state of primary education - too much testing, too much pressure, no time for creativity or learning by doing, a concentration on literacy basics but no time to read the children a story at the end of the day and give them a passion for stories and reading...and too many other problems to mention here. Eventually we moved on to talking about when we were at primary school in the fifties.

We lived in different places and went to different schools but we both had to work from a book called First Aid in English. I can't speak for the current edition, but in the one I worked from, students were taught standard similes. We weren't taught what a simile was, and then encouraged to make up our own. No, we had to finish the simile they printed on the page, as in As white as... As black as... As cold as ... and so on... If you didn't get the answer right (respectively snow, soot, ice) then you didn't get a mark. How sad is that? How unimaginative, dull and constraining is that?

Blurbs

I'm still glowing from a recent weekend away up North. The first stop was at the waterfront in Newcastle to see the Millennium Bridge. It's brilliant. Unfortunately there weren't any ships coming up the Tyne that day so we didn't see it swing up to let them through.

For the last ten days, including the weekend away, I've been trying to write the blurb for the back cover of my new book Zuzu's Petals. (For much of the motorway journey I was reading out versions to my family and they nearly left me behind at a service station, just to get some peace.)

It's so hard to write a winning blurb. The book is light, with a serious heart to it and I am trying to get over this fact in the tone of the writing. I have to give a taste of the story and the characters, to lure readers into buying the book, but I can't give the plot away. The language has to be concise and vivid and descriptive which makes the exercise like writing a poem. And I'm not a poet.

My favourite hat