First up, my name in print from the Undiscovered Voices anthology – an honourable mention:

So grown up!

It really is thrilling and I can’t wait to hear some superb news from the honourary mentions and those in the anthology.  I’ve had the chance to speak to a few editors since the UV antho went out and I know they are all looking forward to reading the extracts and speaking to the writers.

The start of the year has seen the first SCBWI event – Editor’s Night at the Bullfrog near Charing Cross.  Caroline Hooton (or The Hooton as I call her) has written a superb write-up about it and it’s the above link.  Really one of the best panels I’ve been to and also really nice to see so many SCBWI peeps in attendance with a lot of interesting questions.

It’s also been exciting to see Amanda Rutter’s first aquisitions as commissioning editor for Strange Chemistry - am very proud of her, both as a friend and on a professional basis.  Amanda has followed her dream – a massive step – and remains an inspiration to me.

I attended the Chickenhouse breakfast on Friday past and as usual, it was a superb event hosted by Barry Cunningham and his team.  They have a new crop of writers out this year and new titles from existing authors, and I’m genuinely excited about them all.  I just have to somehow make sure I make time to read the titles I want to get to!

Chicken House Titles

Similarly, Saturday was the Random House Bloggers Brunch and the editorial team and publicity girls blew us away with a fabulous presentation packed full of great titles coming from them this year.  Got to meet a personal hero of mine: Bali Rai.  He is genuinely lovely and so down to earth and deeply funny.  I’m particularly excited about his upcoming new book from them this year – the cover looks gorgeous!

These are some of the books that came in on Saturday:

Variety of bought & review titles

Similarly, some of these are titles I picked up on the brunch at RHCB.  Starters looks very good as does The Brides of Rollrock Island.  The cover is also too lovely for words.

Bayou Moon and Fate’s Edge – I bought in from Forbidden Planet after a flying visit.  I’ve only recently discovered Ilona Andrews thanks to a tweet by Kaz Mahoney.  She mentioned On The Edge’s superb world-building and as that is something I’m working on at the moment, I picked up a copy of it and fell so hard for Ilona Andrews’ characters and world, my bones are still sore! I’m currently reading Bayou Moon, which is the second book in the Edge series and it is as much fun as the first one.  Although Rose, Declan, Georgie and especially Jack have stolen my heart; I get tears in my eyes thinking of the scene between Jack and William (with William being one of the MC’s in Bayou Moon) when Jack shows him his room and William sees how loved Jack is.  Man, no one whose not read the book will know what I’m on about, but it is just superb writing.  *nips a tear*

Sunday saw us walking for miles and miles around London and taking photos.  I had a superb time and Mark was a great tour-guide. Here are some arty photos I took with my Hipstamatic app on my iphone.

Tower Bridge

St Michael at St Michael's on Cornhill

Temple Church

The big plan for 2012 for me as aspiring writer: rewrite Grimm into first person (which I’m loving) and then revising it a couple of kazillion times and sending it out to agents.  Also re-read Curse of the Djinn and rewrite that as I’ve had some invaluable feedback which completely gelled.  So, a lot of writing and reading and hopefully one or two creative projects if I can get my mind around it.

Mark and I are attending the London Super Comic Con at the end of February and also Black Library Live in March.  I’ll be spending time at the SCBWI writers retreat in May and I think there is another Black Library event in November which I’m hoping to go to, as well as the SCBWI conference.  I am praying that these two events do not clash!

It’s a busy year, full of amazing things.  And words.  Lots of words.  Is that ever a Bad Thing?

I wrote this blogpost and completely forgot to set it “live”.  Sigh.  Where is my head?

Wow, what a fab weekend.  Mark and I trained it up to Leeds and it all went so well.  Got to write and edit for just over 2 hours, so that was superb.  Also, first class travel was super.  It basically meant no screaming babies and people streaming past and landing on your work as the train rocketed along.

We booked ourselves in to our hotel nice and early then headed off to the Armouries.

WOW.

What a fascinating place! We walked around for a good couple of hours and watched a samurai display which was hugely interesting.  I took copious photos and wrote down some story ideas.  We had a quick snack and then I bowed out to go and crash for a few hours as I felt a bit like I was getting a headcold.  And probably just needed the sleep.

Mark completed the rest of the museum on his own and also visited The Travelling Man and OK comic shops – waves – before we headed into Leeds for dinner.  We hit The Cattle Grid – gorgeous steak and ribs and scrummy chips – before going off to the pre-launch party for Thoughtbubble at the Marriott.

I got to chat to the superbly lovely Ian Edginton about comics and writing for younger readers and we discovered that we both adore Philip Reeve.  He introduced us to a chap called Matt and it took a few moments for us to realise it was D’Isreali himself we were standing beside!!! Gaah – cue fan-girl squealing moment.  I curtsied at Mr. D’Isreali and he in turn bowed.  Mark just grinned in adoration.

Loot!

Saturday was a busy day of standing in queues and getting artwork done.  I met the lovely Jenni aka JuniperJungle and we hung out for several hours walking around looking at artwork and just chatting about books and writing and such.  It was so fab to meet her in real life.  We’ve been talking on Twitter for ages now so it was great to be able to just hang out in real life rather than just electronically.

We waved goodbye to each other at the end of the day and Mark and I headed for a light dinner at Mumtaz and then went to the main Thoughtbubble party where we stayed for a few hours before heading to YumYum deli near our hotel where we are scrummy hot chocolates as a nightcap.

Sunday we waved goodbye to Leeds till 2012 and headed home where another marathon session of writing and editing took up all our time. 

All in all it was a fab weekend.  I got some great artwork from Duncan Fegredo (Hellboy) and other bits and pieces, including the first 3 books in the Jack of Fables spin-off series.  I felt bad that I did not attend any talks this year but honestly, it was fab just being there as a punter and fan-girl.

Snapshot of GoodReads shelves

Is sometimes the easiest thing to do.

I’m talking about GoodReads.  I’ve eventually signed up for it.  Not just to add MFB reviews, but also to get MORE reccommendations and to read other reviews and be alerted to upcoming titles I may want to pop over onto my Amazon wishlist.  So if you haven’t already, be sure to find me on there, I am MFBLiz.

I feel a bit like I’ve come home, but also a bit like I should have done this a long long time ago.  I think that I’ll create a 2012 shelf and add the books I receive from publishers onto that so MFB can keep track of what’s come in.  It would be very interesting.  This of course means I will have to check books I’ve already received for next year.  It is exciting and scary.  Which seems to be my mantra these days: exciting but scary.  *pretends to be mysteriously mysterious*

Hellboy

I get to geek at Duncan Fegredo this weekend.  Who? I hear you ask.  Well, Duncan Fegredo is a graphic novel artist whose work I love.  I am a big Hellboy fan, as you know, Bob, and at this coming weekend’s Thoughtbubble festival, Duncan will be in attendance.  He is one of the Hellboy artists but has also done a great deal of other great covers and artwork.  But Hellboy and Lucifer by Mike Carey has to be my all-time fave covers by him.

Lucifer Graphic Novel, art by Duncan Fegredo

And what makes it cooler still is that Mike Carey will be there too.  His graphic novels The Unwritten are very close to my heart and I recommend them highly.  In fact, if you’re not a graphic novels fan, do check out his Felix Castor books, published here in the UK by Orbit, an imprint of Little, Brown. 

Mike had been a writer on the Hellblazer/John Constantine graphic novel books for a while and then decided to play around with writing a full-on novel.  He set about creating a modern day exorcist and out came Felix Castor.  It’s very much London in the now or the near future and weird things are out and about.  Full of many layers and great mythology, Mike’s Fix Castor novels are my lost island books choice.  That and the Illiad.  Be sure to check them out if you can.  His last book’s ending made me swear, out loud, on the train.  I could not believe he had the guts to do what he did.  That Mike is a clever guy and devious.  I like it.

Official poster

Watched the trailer for Snow White and the Huntsman last night.  And squirmed with pent up joy.  Charlize Theron gets to play the Evil Queen with such style and grace and wickedness – I am won over.

Sadly, poor Kirsten is cast in the role of Victim a k a Snow White, but hopefully the script writers have given her a meatier role.  In fact, they must have, as she’s actually seems active and not simpering.  She does seem to run a lot.  And wear armour.  And look pale.  Dammit! I hope she kicks ass in this movie in her own right. 

However! This photo made me grin – in fact, I posted it on Twitter because old Chris and R-Patz just couldn’t be more different and oddly, I feel no compulsion to fall for the undead sparkling boy.

And as someone pointed out, it even looks like the little girl is checking him out!

 And here is the trailer - the battle scenes look good fun too.  I am genuinely looking forward to seeing this.  I hope it turns out ace.

I’m not sure if Once Upon A Time will come to the UK or not, but I love this poster for the series:

Also, the trailer looks very interesting.  And yet I can’t shake the feeling, no matter how much the creators deny it, that it has nothing to do with my favourite graphic novel series of all time, Fables.

If you’ve never heard about Fables and you inaccurately think it may be for kids only, you cannot be more wrong.  The series, published by DC’s imprint Vertigo and created by Bill Willingham is centred around various well known (and lesser known) fairy tale characters but also characters from folklore and mythology.  They collectively call themselves The Fables and have been on the run from an unknown Adversary who has taken over their Homelands.  They escape to New York where live beside us in a community called Fabletown.   Those who are unable to blend in with humanity get to live at The Farm, outside of New York.

The stories and layers are rich and deep and Bill Willinham seems to have endless amounts of fun creating and dissecting their worlds, spinning them round and round and creating new fairy stories and mythologies for the reader to explore and fall in love with. 

But anyway, Once Upon A Time’s premise runs very close to that of Fables and I remain torn – my allegiance to Fables is unquestionable yet there is a curiosity about Once Upon A Time that is undeniable. 

Anyway, here is the OUAT trailer.  You decide.

 

Sourced from http://petedadds.com/

Mark and I are both on a very strict diet – but that has not stopped us from becoming slaves to the food channel and in particular to Nigel Slater and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s shows, whom we’ve liked a lot in the past, but sort of now have come to appreciate them more fully.  I don’t know why, okay?  Bear with me.  There is a skewed logic to this post.

What I love about Hugh and Nigel is their passion for their subject – for the food, the preparation, the growing and cultivation of good ingredients.  They make making food an event, something cool to do, something fun to do.

And it is incredibly inspiring. 

It is inspiring on a foodie level – face it, there is a reason I am a rotund little piglet – but also on a creative level.  They take ingredients and with care and dilligence they do “magic” and the result is something delicious and masterful.

Sourced from The Guardian Website

And I think that is the same with writing.  I know a lot of writers, some are friends, some I admire greatly from a distance and have the opportunity to talk to them on Twitter or interview them over at MFB and I have to say, you watch them create this bit of magic with nothing else but a few books for research here and there, their hands, a notebook or a keyboard and their minds and it makes you stand in awe a little.

So far I’ve managed to do this successfully twice – and the feeling is incredible.  Now I’m having “down time” to do research and work up ideas for the next meal aka book I’d like to work on.  And the same breathless feeling of anticipation is there in this planning stage for me, as deciding to have friends over for a lovely sit down lunch or dinner.  What will I make? How will the food compliment each other?  What shall I serve as the starter and what wine? 

It’s a bit random, but it does work for me.  So thank you, Hugh and Nigel, for not just being foodies and making me want to make gorgeous scrummy meals to share with friends, but also for whetting creative appetities and for making me think about writing and planning meals as exactly the same thing.

I’ll take two of those leek and onion pies now, thank you.

Speaking of bags.  I am sure others are the same.  I am always on the lookout for the bag.  The bag that is stylish and lovely that I can fit everything in.  And by everything I mean:

• at LEAST four moleskines – large
• at least one paperback novel
• the kindle
• my phone(s) & earphones
• my various tickets and passes for everyday life to get to work / home
• keys
• make-up bag
• small umbrella
• laptop
• sundries

I initially thought I had found this bag in the shape of the the Kath Kidston box bag.  Turns out, I was around 95% correct. 

My obsessive “bagging” of moleskines was creating a problem – I had issues with the zip.  Most items fitted, without a problem but because I’ve now started placing my moleskines and pens into a clear zip bag, they no longer fitted into the box bag.  So I ended up buying a messenger bag instead.

And guess what?  The pockets on both the inside and the outside of the messenger bag, fits my moleskines and kindle! That’s a bit of a result, right?

My only issue with this bag is that it doesn’t have a zip at the top but a magnetic button – this makes me feel a bit unsafe.  Any person can dip their hand in and nab my book or umbrella!

The New Bag

I know, the things I obsess about.

The other thing I’ve started worrying about is – apart from finishing off tweaking Grimm, of course - is what I should do next?  I have a notebook full of ideas where they are only that: ideas.  A core concept or a cool character or sometimes just a description of something.  I’ve also got several partial bits that I’ve written in the past. My crit buddies are all keen to see more of one specific partial they’ve read, roughly called “Pink Girl” which is something completely new for me – contemporary every day with no hint of supernatural shananigans.  Well, not yet.  No dragons, fae, ghosts, werewolves, nothing.  And it feels weird.  But fun. Also, no guns, no swords, no knives.  Instead there may be surfboards, boogie boards, sand and sea.  And rock music.  *head bangs to imaginary playlist* 

And of course, the word on everyone else’s lips: Nanowrimo.  Can I afford to be obsessed about something else? Thinking about Nano gives me shivers.  There is a great zeitgeist to Nano but with how busy work is at the moment, everything that’s happening re Undiscovered Voices, do I want to fling myself into trying to write 50k in a month?  I’ve done it in the past.  But I didn’t enjoy it – it felt like work.  So I think this year, whilst I will be writing during November and Nanowrimo, I will mostly do my own thing.

I am sure that by the end of the week I’ll have something else to obsess about.  Because that’s how I roll, yo.

Matt Damon

This is a speech Matt Damon gave over in the States as part of their “Save our Schools” march in protest against Obama and the US government’s attempt to standardise tests in schools and in support of teachers. 

I flew overnight from Vancouver to be with you today. I landed in New York a few hours ago and caught a flight down here because I needed to tell you all in person that I think you’re awesome.

I was raised by a teacher. My mother is a professor of early childhood education. And from the time I went to kindergarten through my senior year in high school, I went to public schools. I wouldn’t trade that education and experience for anything.

I had incredible teachers. As I look at my life today, the things I value most about myself — my imagination, my love of acting, my passion for writing, my love of learning, my curiosity — all come from how I was parented and taught.

And none of these qualities that I’ve just mentioned — none of these qualities that I prize so deeply, that have brought me so much joy, that have brought me so much professional success — none of these qualities that make me who I am … can be tested. 

I said before that I had incredible teachers. And that’s true. But it’s more than that. My teachers were EMPOWERED to teach me. Their time wasn’t taken up with a bunch of test prep — this silly drill and kill nonsense that any serious person knows doesn’t promote real learning. No, my teachers were free to approach me and every other kid in that classroom like an individual puzzle. They took so much care in figuring out who we were and how to best make the lessons resonate with each of us. They were empowered to unlock our potential. They were allowed to be teachers.

Now don’t get me wrong. I did have a brush with standardized tests at one point. I remember because my mom went to the principal’s office and said, ‘My kid ain’t taking that. It’s stupid, it won’t tell you anything and it’ll just make him nervous.’ That was in the ’70s when you could talk like that.

I shudder to think that these tests are being used today to control where funding goes.

I don’t know where I would be today if my teachers’ job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test. If their very survival as teachers was based on whether I actually fell in love with the process of learning but rather if I could fill in the right bubble on a test. If they had to spend most of their time desperately drilling us and less time encouraging creativity and original ideas; less time knowing who we were, seeing our strengths and helping us realize our talents.

I honestly don’t know where I’d be today if that was the type of education I had. I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. I do know that.

This has been a horrible decade for teachers. I can’t imagine how demoralized you must feel. But I came here today to deliver an important message to you: As I get older, I appreciate more and more the teachers that I had growing up. And I’m not alone. There are millions of people just like me.

So the next time you’re feeling down, or exhausted, or unappreciated, or at the end of your rope; the next time you turn on the TV and see yourself called “overpaid;” the next time you encounter some simple-minded, punitive policy that’s been driven into your life by some corporate reformer who has literally never taught anyone anything. … Please know that there are millions of us behind you. You have an army of regular people standing right behind you, and our appreciation for what you do is so deeply felt. We love you, we thank you and we will always have your back.

The above is from the Washington Post with the video of his speech.  I read this then watched the video and I am blow away.  I love that everything he says basically echoes my feeling towards teachers I met growing up.  Occasionally, there was the odd one who had stopped caring, but overall, my teachers were fab.

Specifically my English teachers in high school.  All of them.  Supportive, intelligent, funny, encouraging and strict, they genuinely pressurised me to write the best stories and essays I could produce.  They introduced me to a wide range of authors, both classical and modern.  They did not laugh at my cowboy book obsession, knowing that Louis L’Amour plotted and created intricate worlds and great characters.  They introduced me to Alistair MacLean’s books that taught me plotting and plunged me into stories so intricate, you got palpitations reading them. I read my first fantasy novels in that class, The Belgariad books, and right then, I knew that writing is what I wanted to do when I’m grown up. 

I still believe that.

I love the DLR and think it’s superbly futuristic, especially when it starts going through the Docklands and Canary Wharf.  It makes me feel like I’m in a Batman movie, in Gotham, riding the uni-rail or even in Blade Runner, only without the androids…for now…

So whenever we head out that way, we take one of our cameras with us or, like I did this Sunday past, went a bit crazy with my iphone and Hipstamatic packs.

This is the result:

The Journey Starts

Chugging along nicely

Pretty lights

Phantom reflections

Destination

I am of course talking about the riots that took place on the 8th August.

I try not to get too involved in the news – I always get shouty, but these past few days things have not been a good time for London and the UK.  I feel embarrassed, angered and heartsore that a country and a city that is one of the most incredible in the world, can be brought low by a bunch of well organised yobs. 

Where we live, which is theoretically Kent although the suburb / area we live in is smack bang on the border between London and the county of Kent, we are very much aware of idiocy.  Beckenham and Bromley are genuinely nice places to live and to visit, but there are elements that tend to get shipped in via the tramlink from Croydon and by buses from surrounding areas like Penge, Lewisham and Catford, who make Beckenham and especially Bromley not safe places to be in the evenings, especially during the summer and on Fridays and Saturdays.

Because these two places are so accessible, Mark and I suspected that things may kick off and although loads of hoodies turned up in both Becks and Brommels, the police kept the order.  A handful of windows were smashed and some idiot tried breaking into a bank.  Really?  The bank? 

We stood outside last night at around eleven and just listened.  We are far off the main throughfare, but traffic noise carries.  And there was no traffic noise at all.  Nothing.  Except, after a few minutes there was the sound of a single emergency vehicle siren in the far off distance.

Against the night sky, to the right of our house, just beneath the moon we could see whispy dark clouds and a tang of smoke in the air.  This was from the fires in Croydon. 

We went back inside, sat on the couch and watched BBC News Live and Sky News Live and my heart cried.  Mostly out shock and disbelief.  But I also felt so much anger towards these people out there who were taking this opportunity to become lower than the lowest mongrel there is, by become thieves and looters.  And robbing independent stores who are struggling at the best of time.  And then the destruction of cars and busses?  How pointlessly blind and stupid.

Your actions are not great.  They are not good.  You deserve to be shut away and made to pay for what you’ve created.  That fire in Croydon? That was five generations of hard working normal people’s livelihood that went up in flames.  That jewellery shop that you robbed in Beckenham? A regular guy who is trying to make a living and perhaps living a bit of his own dream.

Lucy Coates has written this amazing blogpost and I am far from as eloquent so all I can say is yes, I agree.

We are all leaving early from work tonight as various train services shut down stations last night for fear of damage and helping the undesireables getting to their chosen target destinations.  And you know what?  I absolutely hate it.  Because of a few, I have to change everything, and feel afraid.  It is reprehensible and I honestly hope that it does not kick off yet again tonight. 

To all my friends who live in and around London and other affected areas – be careful out there.

Mark made an interesting comment the other day, saying that he was in a coffee shop to grab a quick drink and to maybe get a few minutes worth of writing done during lunch, when he had his iPhone out, checking twitter and his emails (i.e. procrastinating). When unexpectedly his “writing playlist” came on. He then automatically turned off his phone and powered up his laptop and got writing.

I can completely relate because the same thing happens to me. I listen to my ipod during commute and usually it is the usual indie / rock / pop tunes but as soon as any of my writing playlist OST scores come on, my mind immediately heads towards Grimm, its characters, world and writing.

I don’t think this is a bad thing. But it makes me wonder about something else that Keris Stainton recently mentioned on her very excellent blog: Do You Ever Switch Off?

The blogpost came as a bit of a shock because I’ve never really thought about it or thought about how much I think about writing. Which is basically all the time. I have created this life for me – apart from my Real Day Job – where I am surrounded by writers and books. I review books, I love and cherish them. I think about other people’s writing. I obsess about my own characters and my own writing. When I read something that gets me in the knees, I make notes about it. I am good friends with some booksellers and we send emails back and forth about pretty books and pretty boys (don’t ask) and things we love and hate. I have a great many blogging friends who are all keen readers and I belong to SCBWI and am forever chatting to my little group of critique partners about writing (it is so hard/i hate it/i love it/it is crap/i’ll never write a thing again / i have a kazillion more ideas etc). It literally is non-stop. And it’s made me realise that I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Writing and reading has become a way of life.  And I couldn’t be happier. 

A quote I found over at Advice To Writers sums up what I feel perfectly: