International Women's Week

It's been quite a week already.

Yesterday, Harriet Reuter Hapgood and I took our magical travelling fanzine roadshow to St Marylebone School in London, where we taught a whole day's worth of zine workshops as part of their International Women's Day week. The students were inspiring, clever, creative and an utter delight. They put together an incredible zine packed full of their feminist heroes: from Beyonce to Virginia Woolf to Ada Lovelace to Billie Holliday to Emma Watson and back again. Absolute joy.

Then, today saw the official cover reveal for FLOORED, the collaborative novel I have been working on with the YA crack team of Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Tanya Byrne, Non Pratt, Melinda Salisbury and Lisa Williamson. It's been a long time in the making, an incredible experience, and it comes out on 12th July.

And (ta-da!) here is the cover. I love it!

What do you think? Isn't it cool?!

Hopefully it gives you a little insight into what it's all about... well, seven lives colliding.

And most importantly... can you guess which shoes are mine?

As if that's not enough excitement to be going with - in a couple of days, I'm off to South Korea. This life is bonkers sometimes. I'm into it.

Life lately

Has involved:

Going away to Qatar for a week.  It was hot (which felt like heaven to me at this time of year) and I love anywhere where there is a call to prayer.  I smoked shisha and ate a lot of hummus, sat on a lot of rooftop terraces.  I watched the Kardashians with Arabic subtitles and sat next to a glorious infinity pool, from which I texted obnoxious photos with captions like 'THIS IS A WORK TRIP WHY DO YOU KEEP CALLING IT A HOLIDAY' from my sun lounger.

Reading 'A Quiet Kind of Thunder' by Sara Barnard in pretty much one sitting, which I really fell swooningly in love with.  Gorgeous.

Also reading 'The Princess Diarist' by Carrie Fisher, which has been a slightly bittersweet experience for obvious reasons.  I still haven't quite processed how I feel about it, and it's made me question a lot of my strongly held beliefs about 'being a writer' (see: the sliver of ice through the heart). Possibly more to follow.

Working on 'Floored' and getting stupidly excited about it.

An evening of 90s goth films ('The Craft', 'The Crow') and absinthe (which apparently really does make the heart grow fonder), which was definitely my best occasion of the year so far.

Going clay pigeon shooting.  Long story.

Watching 'Jackie' followed by 'Manchester by the Sea' in a row on the plane, drinking red wine and weeping copiously.  Having to watch '(500) Days of Summer' to recover and then being forced to question how much I live my life like it's a film and Zooey Deschanel is playing me.

Rewatching 'Funny Girl' and rekindling my childhood crush on Omar Sharif and desperate desire to be Barbra Streisand when I grow up.

Listening to a lot of Marianne Faithfull, after fortuitously finding a cheap copy of 'Broken English' (one of the best albums of all time) on a market stall in Brighton.

FLOORED

Yesterday was a genuinely exciting day, which rarely happens to me.  A TOP SECRET project that I have been working on was announced to the world, so finally I am allowed to talk about it!

The news is that I am working on a very exciting and totally unique collaborative novel with six other brilliant YA writers. I am so hugely honoured and excited to be working with such a wonderful and inspiring group.  I feel incredibly lucky to be involved.

So, the writers are: Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Tanya Byrne, Non Pratt, Melinda Salisbury, Lisa Williamson and me.  The novel is called FLOORED and it will be published next summer (2018). The novel was the brainchild of my brilliant editor Rachel - it is the story of six characters, who meet by chance and whose lives become intertwined.  We're calling it The Breakfast Club meets One Day.

One of my favourite things about this collaboration is that we are not going to tell who wrote which character.  I am fascinated to see if people will be able to guess.

You can find out more information about the project in yesterday's announcement in the Bookseller.  We celebrated the fact that it is no longer a secret by meeting up yesterday for lots of tea and chatting and a lovely lunch.  And taking selfies in a lift.  This gang are the best fun, basically.  I am so incredibly delighted to be a part of it.