Trick Pony

After I've written a book, I always feel like I've pulled off some sort of black magic that I may never manage again. It's always a panicky, identity-shifting feeling. Who am I if I can't say 'I'm a writer'?

I've been through it enough times now that I know I will have several ideas in between books that won't come to anything. Ideas that aren't really very good, that are too flimsy to sustain an entire book (or my interest). Invariably I will tell people that I'm working very hard on something new, then feel embarrassed when it fades out to nothing. I have abandoned half-books and even whole books before.

This time I've found that I don't care nearly as much. I think I will probably write another book. It's what I do. I only want to do it if I think I have something interesting to say. There are a lot of books in the world.

I think sometimes you know when you're really onto something. The 'breadcrumbs of curiosity' that fall into your life and point you towards what you're supposed to be doing. You can't force it.

I haven't worked on anything in earnest since STAUNCH came out.

Because publishing works very slowly, that means it is well over a year since I wrote anything with the intention of it becoming a book.

Amazingly, for the first time, I'm fine with that. I've had a great time. I've been on loads of holidays. I've read lots of other books. I've taken up knitting again. I've watched loads of TV - I'm more OK than ever with really doing nothing. I've got quite into gardening.

I've given up smoking and cut my hair and moved in with my boyfriend. I've seen a lot of my friends. I've spoken on the phone to my nan most days. I've started taking evening classes.

I have had a lot going on, most of it good, and I now consciously remind myself to be gentle with myself. I try to treat myself as I would a dear friend, a friend who I really love. A friend who I treat with kind care. I tell myself not to panic.

I might or might not have a new idea.

The proof is in

I received proof copies of STAUNCH this week. These are the uncorrected proofs, bound like a book but not quite a finished one yet, which will be sent out to people as pre-publicity for the real book (which comes out in March).

It's a funny feeling. This is the third 'proper' book that I have written by myself (there have also been e-books and collaborative projects and many manuscripts that have never seen the light of day). I tried so hard to have a book published for so long, I thought I would feel very emotional about finally seeing my book as a real object. When it finally happened, there was a lot of other stuff going on and I didn't really give myself enough time or space to feel my feelings - curiously, I felt nothing. I didn't feel any of the validation that I had always assumed I would. I didn't even feel particularly proud of myself. It seemed entirely separate from me. I guess there's a lesson about unfillable spaces and how all the books and boys and drinks in the world won't make a difference.

This time, though, it was different. The box arrived and it took me a little while to open it. I circled it in my kitchen. The cat sat on it. I made myself a cup of coffee. I sat down and opened it slowly.

I bought myself flowers. I ate some cake. I set up a little shrine on my kitchen table, with candles and a few objects I had bought in India.

I sat there at the kitchen table, where I wrote the whole book. I felt really proud of myself. This book came from my guts and I am now actually really excited about it coming out into the world.

My boyfriend came home from work and I wouldn't let him touch it, but we danced around the kitchen.

'I'm proud of you,' he said.

And so am I.

STAUNCH. Coming March 2020.

Inverted Commas I Hope Never To Use Again: an essay about the old internet

‘Writer.* Bass player.** Performance artist.*** Inept office temp.****’

* Had a blog

** Was asked to be in a hypothetical band because I looked like Cat Power; taught to play three basic songs by my friend Sheryl’s boyfriend; never played a gig

*** Pranced about in a Valley of the Dolls nightie for my friend Russell’s art college film

**** Actually quite a conscientious office temp, when not writing my blog, photocopying my fanzine, using the franking machine to send agents my unfinished novel and endlessly refreshing Friendster

I always casually expected to be a child prodigy. I was desperate to be special, but also sort of expected it. At three years old, I was reading the newspaper. In junior school, they gave me tests to see if I had a photographic memory. (It turned out just to be ‘quite good’.) I wrote my first ‘novel’ when I was seven, inspired by the Cottingley Fairies and Anastasia Tsar, painstakingly written out and stapled together.

I guessed it was only a matter of time before someone spotted my rare genius and I became the next Francoise Sagan or similar. As the years went by, I began to wonder how I could speed things up. Time was starting to run out. Maybe I should be… doing something? I just wasn’t sure what. I was full of energy and ideas, with not the slightest clue what to do with them. The frustration began to eat me alive. My skin was perpetually itchy with it.

I was twenty-one. I had failed to work hard at my A-levels and thus finished a course I didn’t enjoy at a mediocre university. I had moved back in with my mum, in a medium-sized town 20 minutes on the train from Paddington.

I wanted to be ‘a writer’ but I had no idea how. I did some office temping and interned on magazines, where I was too self-conscious to speak to anyone and then wondered why they didn’t offer me a permanent job.

I was bulimic. I was desperate for a boyfriend. I wanted to be where the cool kids were, but I had no idea where that was. I wore eyeliner that stretched out into my temples, vintage dresses from Camden Market. My back-combed hair was the size of a small dog.

I went out to Popstarz every Friday night and felt sad when I had to go home to the suburbs. I couldn’t afford to move to London and visibly cringed when anyone asked me where I lived.

I was jealous of everybody else’s small successes: an article in a magazine, a play put on above a pub, an exhibition in a café.

When I interned at The Face for two weeks over the summer, when I was laughed at for thinking that Hedi Slimane was called Heidi, I was asked in an editorial meeting whether I knew anyone who had ‘a weblog’. I promptly went home and started one.

And suddenly I could make my life look however I wanted it to.

A night out at the pub with my similarly floundering friends could look like Andy Warhol’s Factory in the retelling. We now weren’t unemployed dilettantes; we were ‘writers’, ‘filmmakers’ and ‘DJs’. I’d airily refer to friends’ bands with a coyness that suggested they might be very, very famous. I had many ‘secret projects’ on the go, which in reality consisted of drinking cheap wine in friends’ flats and talking about the things we were ‘definitely’ going to do ‘soon’.

That was the summer of blogging, going out every night and writing about it, car boot sales on a Sunday (I would inventory my finds in great detail: old polaroid cameras, horror films on VHS, a lot of 70s costume jewellery), and it was the summer of Friendster.

Like my blog, this started as an attempt to impress people I knew a bit and admired: sort-of friends a year or two older than me, who had flats, boyfriends and cool jobs. I listed myself as a ‘writer’. Exaggerated everything. Posted pouty selfies taken with disposable cameras on nights out.

We read each other’s blogs and left ‘testimonials’ on each other’s Friendster pages. It became a little community of all the acquaintances, semi-friends and boys I had slept with; the thing we had in common was that we all wanted to be ‘something’. On the Internet, we could be.

It actually wasn’t the exaggeration that made me feel better about my small, disappointing life – and I was very careful not to actually lie. This way I could convince myself that my life wasn’t so very far from the one I was presenting. The revelatory bit for me was the uninterrupted viewpoint that was all my very own. I don’t think I’d ever felt that before; I’d been too worried about other people’s interpretations.

And so I could write emotionally about ‘my ex’ without anybody pointing out that, actually, he was just somebody who had sex with me for a couple of months, didn’t like me very much and would have been utterly baffled to have been referred to as ‘my boyfriend’. The emotion was real; I’ve had crushes and outwardly minor disappointments that affected me more than significant adult relationships I’ve had since. Being able to say ‘my ex’ in my own little space made me feel better, somehow. It made me feel like this experience had really happened, my feelings actually mattered.

My family and closest friends didn’t read my blog, so it was fine. The ones who did tended to know me less well, and to have the same attitude towards the dullness of real life, so none of us questioned each other. As long as we didn’t, we could be the stars of this collective little lo-fi soap opera. It suited us to take each other’s fraught, over-dramatic words at face value. I gave everybody pseudonyms – Alabama, Django, Miss Kitty – which not only added to the air of mystery, but made these blurred lines of reality somehow seem more acceptable. It wasn’t quite fiction and it wasn’t quite public oversharing – it was both and neither.

The best thing was, via the magical medium of Friendster, we could broadcast this aspirational life to other people. Not total strangers, so it felt safe but exciting – the best kind of social experimenting. Friendster was based on a degrees-of-separation theory, so it was an acceptable means of stalking friends-of-friends-of-friends. I’d see that my friend Denee’s ex-boyfriend knew a guy who knew the Libertines and looked nice in a stripy T-shirt, so I’d send him a friend request. In later life, I’d agonise over following acquaintances on Instagram and how this might be interpreted, but sending friend requests to tenuously linked strangers on Friendster was not only totally fine but encouraged.

I don’t know if, in that early 00s heady bubble of new social media, everyone was doing the same as me – making themselves sound just a little bit cooler than they were, presenting ourselves like minor celebrities for the first time – but I know a lot that were.

I spent weeks, bored in my dull temp office in Maidenhead, messaging with a guy who didn’t have a picture and claimed to be living in a hotel somewhere out in the wilds of Canary Wharf due to his work. He was amusing and weirdly fancy compared to my friends and me. He sent me long, beautifully written missives about Blixa Bargeld, shopping sprees in Fopp and how the hotel where he lived had ‘an excellent pastry chef’. He was like Patrick Bateman played by Vincent Gallo.

For me, it was a way of passing the time, at least. Someone to test out my arch prose on. Until he eventually sent me an angry all-caps message about how he’d DROPPED SO MANY HINTS ABOUT MEETING BUT YOU NEVER PICK UP ON THEM WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT IF WE’RE NEVER GOING TO SLEEP TOGETHER. I was taken aback. I thought what we were doing was, in and of itself, the point. I deleted him. I was terrified. But undeterred.

I moved on to a boy who was a part-time art student and part-time 50s diner waiter, with great taste in music and a pleasingly gangly frame. We corresponded enthusiastically. He also lived ‘on the outskirts of London’ and had outsize aspirations. I felt like we matched. It began to feel like a real connection.

So, this time, it was me who wanted to escalate the situation. Drunk after my sort-of friend Jo’s birthday party in Spitalfields (she was a year older than me, with a boyfriend, a flat and an editorial assistant job – I hated her a bit), Saturday night was bleeding into Sunday morning and I really, really didn’t want to go home. I informed 50s Diner Waiter (as he was known, of course, in my blog) that I was getting in a taxi and coming to his house to meet him.

My friends told me to stop being so silly, and I rather enjoyed the drama of it all. I had always wanted to flounce into a taxi and never had a legitimate reason to do so. I still didn’t, but I had to take what I could get. I think I restrained myself from telling the driver ‘and don’t spare the horses’ but I can’t be sure.

I’d been texting 50s Diner Waiter so much, my Nokia ran out of credit. When I tried to top it up, I didn’t have enough money in my account. 50s Diner Waiter had been somewhat vague about where he lived, and it was turning out to be a lot further than I had anticipated. I had to ask the taxi driver to stop in the car park of the Bluewater shopping centre so I could try to find a payphone.

50s Diner Waiter walked to the car park to meet me. He looked like his picture, at least. Turned out, he also lived with his parents in a small town quite a long way outside of London, in Kent rather than Berkshire. Fortunately they were away for the weekend. We had nothing much to talk about, so we had sex on their beige sofa and I left very, very early the next morning.

I spent much of the next day on a rail replacement bus, crying behind my enormous sunglasses. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like crafting this into a romantic story for my blog. It was all too depressing. I ate a Big Mac at Paddington and told my mum I’d stayed round at Jo’s. Her nickname for me during this period was Santa: ‘because we never see you, but the food has always disappeared in the morning’.

I needed to get my act together. I couldn’t carry on like this. I turned my blog into a print ‘mini-zine’, which I sent out to all the people I most wanted to write for. It actually sort of worked! I carried on with that blog for about two years, but in the latter portion of that time I also read some books about how to go about writing properly. I bought myself a copy of The Writer’s And Artists’ Yearbook.

I stopped fetishising London and ‘going out’ quite so much. This meant I wasn’t hungover every day, which made me – surprise! – much more productive. I finally managed to land a day job in publishing and I spent all of my spare time trying to write in a way that wasn’t half-arsed and aimless. I started eating properly and going out running.

I met a boy IRL who wore a cardigan and liked PJ Harvey, and who I got on with. We went out for a drink.

The boy in the cardigan and I moved to Brighton. In our little top-floor flat, high up above the Lanes, I wrote a proper, full-length novel for the first time.

It all still took me a while after that. It took me a while to get an agent, and a bit longer than that to get a publisher. When I did, it was with a YA novel I wrote, about a girl who lives outside of London with her mum and escapes from her mundane life through the magical medium of blogging.

So it wasn’t all for nothing, that time. In so many ways. It gave me a safe space to experiment with who I wanted to be. I deleted that early blog, and now I wish I hadn’t. Just like I kind of wish I hadn’t thrown out all those old horror movies on VHS, the vintage dresses, the Barbarella boots, the crazy costume jewellery… But then I guess I don’t know what I’d do with them if they still existed. I guess that blog would be up in the loft somewhere, gathering dust with all the rest of it.

If I could read it now, and see that big-eyed confused selfie girl as she painstakingly detailed her life from 2002 to 2004, kind of as it was and kind of how she wanted it to be – I’d feel hopeful for her. Not sad.

Years later, when I was nearly thirty and writing had become my job, I found myself thinking a lot about that old blog. About the time when writing was pure wish fulfilment and there was nobody to answer to.

I set up a new one, just for fun. Still on Blogger, not Wordpress, for reasons of pure nostalgia. Everyone needs an outlet for their spare thoughts, their unasked-for opinions, their extra feelings. These days, that is not always the Internet. But sometimes it still is.

S-T-A-U-N-C-H

For ages now, I've had a secret. I've been one of those annoying writers with their 'I'm doing a cool thing but I'm not allowed to talk about it yet!' schtick.

Well, let's go back a few steps...

In January 2018 I went to India with my grandmother and two great-aunts. I came back feeling inspired. I met up with my agent at the beginning of February and said I had an idea.

'It's something... different,' I said.

'OMG, write this immediately,' she replied. 'Do it quickly. I want to read it, like, yesterday.'

So I sat at my kitchen table for approximately two months and I wrote a book. It was the easiest and the hardest and the scariest thing I have ever written.

Like all the best things, the words poured out of me with unstoppable force like some kind of weird magic. Then I read it back and wondered if I had actually gone mad, to have put all of this into words. Let alone to consider letting actual people read them.

During that period, I think I only went out once. For a friend's birthday; Sunday lunch in the pub, where I had a cup of tea and hurried home to write some more. That day I met an interesting person with glasses and tattoos and a nice air of kind cleverness.

I finished the book and edited it and then went on holiday to Switzerland with my new friend.

The day after we got back, I had a very nice breakfast at Dishoom with my agent and the publishers who would buy my book.

It's coming out in March 2020 and the nice interesting person and I now live in a house together. I've also given up smoking, cut off all my hair, got some new tattoos and travelled quite a lot. What a time it's been.

Oh, and the book is (of course) called STAUNCH. It's for adults. It's non-fiction. You can find out more about it here and here. I'm excited.

How To Be Luminous

My great friend Harriet Reuter Hapgood writes more beautifully than you can possibly imagine. She recently produced both a book and a baby into the world in the space of one week, that’s the kind of casual over-achiever she is.

Usually, if I read a book and wish I’d written it myself to the point of jealousy, it’s because it has a clever, twisty plot that would be far beyond the limitations of my small brain. However, Harriet could write a book in which nothing happened whatsoever – full of sighs, meaningful glances, no dialogue and solely descriptions of beautiful rooms and outfits – and I would happily spend the rest of my life reading it. I honestly don’t know anyone else on the face of this planet who has her gift for unusual description, unexpected detail and sighingly gorgeous lycricism.

Her new book, HOW TO BE LUMINOUS, tells the story of the three teenage sloe sisters. Their famous artist mother has disappeared and Minnie, the middle sister, has lost her ability to see colour. There are gorgeous boys, even more gorgeous settings, outfits I wish were real and in my wardrobe, fictional artworks that I can see right in front of me, and a rabbit called Salvador Dali. There are roses and sequinned platform shoes and secrets and wild swimming and a thousand shades of bright pink and existential angst.

Her first book, THE SQUARE ROOT OF SUMMER, is also wonderful but I think I love this one even more. I highly recommend reading both. She is frequently compared to Jandy Nelson – company of the highest order and very aptly deserved.

In short. I do not even have the linguistic skills to convey how beautiful Harriet’s writing is. It makes me feel like Georgia O’Keeffe and PJ Harvey and Sylvia Plath do, but about teenage girls in South London. I can’t wait for all the things she’s going to do next. The word ‘humbled’ is overused and I hate it but… yeah, that.

As well as being a very proud friend, I also really like this sensible and wise article on being single by Garance Dore. I think she’s a pretty cool woman.

I also bought some tiny Ivy Park shorts on Depop (I only buy second-hand clothes now). I bought them from a cool teenage girl and now totally feel like one when I’m out running. It’s a great feeling.

I have been drinking a lot of kombucha. Fun. Today I’m 42 days sober (the longest since I was 14 years old) and I’m told this is where it gets really good. Incidentally, I have now not smoked in 9 months. This almost passed me by, and it feels normal now, most of the time.

I presume you already do Yoga With Adriene, but stepping up to doing at least one of her (usually short) videos every day has changed my life for the better.

Last night, we ate pasta sauce made with olives from the garden and few things have ever made me happier.

Things are really not too bad on this humid, London, sleepy, wearing my boyfriend’s shirt to work Monday morning.

Notes from *any* divorce.

I've been thinking a lot about last weekend's Emma Forrest article.

I agree with her wholeheartedly that: 
"The thing I find most painful about divorce is that there is no marked spot at which to leave offerings."

In the end, I can only conclude that the best thing we can do is to write about it.

Emma's writing has always helped me, perhaps because I relate far too heavily to all of it. I have read her memoir Your Voice In My Head probably more times than I've ever read anything else. It's certainly influenced my current writing a lot.

When she got married I literally started a scrapbook of her Elle columns about marriage. 'If she can do it, maybe I can too,' I thought. 'Maybe...' 

However, as always, her words tap into a comforting place, no matter how sad the topic. I was also reminded of the time my friend Ali and I followed a man around Marrakech for an entire afternoon because we thought he might be George Michael. He was not George Michael.

I'd like to be in Marrakech right now. It was a place I long dreamed of before I ever went there. It was more magical than I would ever have expected. For years, I thought I'd end up being like the mum in Hideous Kinky one day. I don't think that any more.

This week a year ago my dog died and I went to Switzerland with a boy I barely knew.

Anyway. Observations today include that spicy-pickling carrots is always an excellent decision. I'm also heavily into aubergines right now (sprinkle them with sumac and roast them). I've been reading about meditation, which I am quite bad at. I'm prepared to try.

Tomorrow I am 30 days sober and have been instructed to buy myself a treat.

My life has been quite small, lately. It's been domestic and cosy, and I have enjoyed it. I'm starting to feel the itch to do bigger work, though. Maybe because I watched Brene Brown last night and... if you know, you know.

Strawberry Fields Whatever

I have alluded here before to how much I adore this blog, but I don't think I have ever directly posted about it. Which I must rectify immediately. It's important.

I think I can say with genuine confidence that Strawberry Fields Whatever is (probably) my favourite blog on all of the Internet. That's a pretty big swing, I know. Just like I can say The Future is my favourite Leonard Cohen song. Except occasionally, when it's I'm Your Man.

Elizabeth Barker is one of my favourite living writers. Yep, she's up there with Emma Forrest and Esther Freud, basically. I love her in the same way I love LA and tacos and Weetzie Bat and crystals and wearing kaftans around the house. I am desperate to go back to LA and her writing makes me feel like I am there.

In fact, it makes me feel very specifically like I am back on that trip there the summer I was 17. When I was kind-of anorexic and totally in love with a boy who was gay, but I was actually pretty happy for those two weeks. We drove from LA to San Francisco. We stayed at the Hollywood Roosevelt and I insisted on going to a place called The Black Magic Voodoo Lounge. I bought a skirt from Rodeo Drive, a dress from Goodwill and a Shonen Knife CD - all of which I still have. I had short hair with an undercut and chipped blue nails. I decided I would live in California one day. I still never have.

Anyway, I think I came to Elizabeth through Evan. It's funny the number of sort-of remote acquaintances who came about that way. It's nice, actually. One of the many reasons I always feel fondly towards him. Elizabeth has the same sort of optimistic/melancholy nostalgic voice that he does. It's my favourite sort of a voice.

(Also, have you noticed how everyone I've name-checked in this little missive has the same first initial? It makes me feel cosy, like going out with another Gemini INFP or something.)

I highly recommend signing up to her mailing list, as it gives me a little surge of joy every time I see that a new, glorious post has landed in my inbox.

Take the opening paragraph of this week's, for instance:

I think an ideal relationship dynamic would be where you're like Iggy Pop and David Bowie on the Dinah Shore Show in 1977 - goofy and a little shy and so sweet with each other, but also categorically wild and aware of your wildness without being all impressed with yourself about it. I mean, you can just feel Iggy and Bowie adoring the hell out of each other, and being slightly amused by the whole situation but never giving off some kind of boring you're-not-in-on-the-joke vibe, like a lot of other assholes would. They're so above that! They're so generous about being the wildest thing in the world.

I mean???!!! Come on. PERFECT.

She goes on to talk about McDonalds and Parker Posey and Kristin Hersh and zines and perfect black jeans, and by now I am literally that emoji of a cat with hearts for eyes.

If you are remotely interested in teenage summers, Desperately Seeking Susan, listening to music while driving, never growing out of having ridiculous crushes and always wanting to wear the perfect pair of just-right black jeans, I suggest you sign up immediately.

In recent days, I have also read Ariel Levy's memoir, which left me in pieces and awestruck all at once. I went to a nice party in the countryside. My new favourite restaurant in Brighton is Cin Cin (thanks to a lovely dinner date with Katherine).

I've been thoroughly enjoying running again now that the weather has turned a bit more autumnal. I'm still wearing sandals and my grandmother's old Laura Ashley sundresses, but I'm looking forward to fires and red wine and baked potatoes and blankets. I love the autumn, as well as writing that makes me feel like summer. Still, tonight I'm making vegan tacos for dinner and pretending I'm in LA.

Potential names for a feminist play you wrote with your best friend*

Tissues and Issues
X and Why
I Solemnly F*cking Swear
Til Death Do Us Part
Lawfully Wedded Spinsters
Feminisn't
Feminasty
What Would Emmeline Pankhurst Do?
What Would Emmeline Pankhurst NOT Do?
The Fempire Strikes Back
Dearly Beloved
Queerly Beloved
10 Things I Hate About Men
That's What She Said
Commitment Fears And Male Tears
Man-Hating Lesbians
That's What She Didn't Say
Men Are Shit
Ms. Angry
Fucking Autocorrect
Ms. Andry
Dying Alone
7 Things To Do With A Penis (That Aren't Sexy)
Fun Things To Fuck When You're Single
Single And Ready To Die Alone
Single-ty Pleasures
To Hate And To Hold
To Hate And Two Holes
You, Me And The Cat
Single Girls At Weddings
I Feel Like These Are Getting Worse The Drunker I Get
Men Are Shit And I'm Going To Die Alone: A Love Story
Bi The Numbers
Menamissed
Hits And Mrs
I Hate Yourself And Want To Cry: A Comedy
His And Hurls
It's Not Me, It's You
Girls Rule! A Sci-Fi Story
You Say 'Misandry' Like It's A Bad Thing
Misandreams
The Girls You've Read About On Bathroom Doors
Splitting The Bill: A Romantic Comedy

*as suggested by the boy you are going out with, late at night while he is drunk at Edinburgh Fringe (although, full disclosure, I wish I could take credit as these are fucking genius and I am definitely nicking at least one of them for this play and possibly future ones as well...)

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.

The Brighton Fanzine Tea Party!

I am extremely excited to announce that - following our wildly brilliant mini-workshop at YALC - Harriet Reuter Hapgood and I are hosting our very own BRIGHTON FANZINE TEA PARTY.

If you'd like to come, you can buy a ticket here!

Here's the deets:

I AM NOT ASHAMED zine (by YA authors Harriet Reuter Hapgood and Eleanor Wood) presents THE BRIGHTON FANZINE TEA PARTY. Come and spend a cosy afternoon with us, making zines and celebrating DIY culture – with cake and music and glitter. Teens welcome!

• Make your own zine
• Chill in the zine library
• Buy personalised zines and books
• Browse the jumble sale
• Drink tea and eat cake

What you get:

• Everything you need to go home with a master copy of your own fanzine
• Zine-making tutorial, advice and all craft materials (much glitter)
• Chat to authors about your book/zine/writing
• Tea and coffee and homemade cake
• Hang out with friendly creative people in a lovely cosy place
• Exclusive I AM NOT ASHAMED party bag

The modern world.

Exciting news, I have made myself a Proper Official Author website!

You can look at it here.  It's very fledgling, so feel free to let me know if you have any comments or suggestions (you can use the handy contact page!), but please be kind.  Technology is not my strongest suit, and neither is self-promotion.  However, I have lots of events and things coming up (more to be announced!) and thought an actual website would be useful for such matters.

I will definitely still be spouting my random thoughts and feelings on things that don't really matter here, in my usual ramshackle and sporadic fashion.  Nil desperandum, obvs.  But please do have a look at my website proper for news, events and official things.

Over and out, more soon.

YALC

So, this year, I will once again be at the Young Adult Literary Convention (YALC), part of the London Film and Comic Con!  I am very excited about this.  Last year I had a great time, did lots of booky things and saw lots of lovely friends, but also sneaked off to see Dolph Lundgren and a Game of Thrones panel.  Dream.

This year, I am extra excited, and with very good reason...  My wonderful friend Harriet Reuter Hapgood and I are hosting a MAKE YOUR OWN YALC ZINE workshop!

Harriet is one of my favourite people in the world to hang out with, and when we do, a lot of our time and chat revolves around zines.  Early in our friendship, we established that we were both former makers of our own 90s lo-fi fanzines.  We talked about how cool it would be to resurrect the scrappy, black-and-white photocopied labours of love from our youth.  We drank some wine, ate a lot of snacks, worked on our novels and sometimes even cut up old copies of Vanity Fair for inspiration.

Then, one sunny Saturday, we spent the day in Harriet's garden with her cat Stanley and we finally put together our new fanzine I AM NOT ASHAMED!  It is a lo-fi wonder, homespun and very much put together in a day, which is how a good proper fanzine should be.

Copies will be available for the first time ever at YALC (each individually decorated and numbered!) and we will also be hosting our workshop on how to make one yourself.  There will be inspo, activities, ideas, snacks, music and LOTS OF GLITTER.

I can't wait.  Hope to see you there... for revolution girl style now!

#authorsforgrenfell

My beautiful and amazing friend Harriet Reuter-Hapgood has organised an online auction to benefit the residents affected by the Grenfell Tower fire in London, with all proceeds going directly to the London Fire Relief Fund.  I am overawed that while I was sitting at home, refreshing the Guardian website and weeping, she has actually organised something brilliant.

You can bid to hang out and talk writing with me and my awesome fellow author pal Jess Vallance in the pub - details here!  Jess (the author of BIRDY and THE YELLOW ROOM) is quite possibly the funniest person I know, and I have literally no filter (plus we both love getting drunk, quite frankly), so I can guarantee it will be great fun and possibly scandalous.  Please bid, because I'm worried nobody will and Jess and I will be sitting about in the pub by ourselves, necking gin and crying (as usual).  Warning: I have never in my life hung out with Jess and not been horribly hungover the next day.  Official fact.  Apologies in advance to the 'lucky' winner.  I can't wait!

There are also loads of other ace bookish things you can bid on, involving writers far more famous and proper than us.  Please do have a look, bid and share - thank you!!!

NB - I would say there are some particularly great opportunities here if you happen to be an unagented/as-yet-unpublished writer.  Agents and editors are offering critiques of manuscripts/submissions that will be worth their weight in FAIRY GOLDDUST.

For more explanation on the topic, Harriet puts it far better than I could, so here are some of her words:

Authors for Grenfell: An Online Auction is now live

This is an online auction of items from authors, agents and editors with all bids going directly to the British Red Cross London Fire Relief Fund, to benefit the survivors of and community around Grenfell Tower.

On offer are signed books, original manuscripts, school visits, meet the author opportunities, query critiques from agents, editorial feedback from editors, and more. New items will be added throughout the week. Famouses are involved.

Bidding opens 1pm BST today (Monday 19 June) and closes 8pm BST Tuesday 27 June.

Many items are open to bids internationally. We want to raise a lot of money.

To be clear: this is the biggest act of criminal negligence and state-sanctioned violence since Hillsborough, and it is fucking appalling that charities and volunteers are cleaning up where the government has barely stepped in. The Red Cross?! In the richest borough in London? C’mon!

Charities, churches, mosques, volunteers and residents should not be cleaning up the state’s mess, nor should we be raising funds this way. But the government has let these people down and we’re doing this anyway.

But I don’t believe Theresa May’s paltry £5m is enough. £5m between 100 displaced residents is £50k each. How does that pay for homes, furniture, food, clothing, replacement possessions? The £5,500 paid out so far is laughably meagre and polices the poor with what they're trusted with.

Money is needed immediately. £3m has been raised by Just Giving but much, much more is needed, as soon as fucking possible. 

Here’s how it works: find something you like, bid on it in the comments. When the auction closes in a week, winners will be contacted by Authors for Grenfell and asked to donate directly to the Red Cross fund.

Here’s how you can help:

Writers, agents, editors: Can you contribute a school or Skype visit, signed copies of your books, editorial feedback? Are you pals with Zoella or JK Rowling and want to give them a nudge to help?

School librarians, teachers, parents: You can bid for in-person classroom visits or even Skype visits from authors such as Angie Thomas, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Hate U Give.

Unagented writers: There are query critiques on offer from The Bent Agency agents Molly Ker Hawn and Gemma Cooper. Gemma sold my book The Square Root of Summer at a multi-publisher auction, so she knows what she’s about. Bid!

Readers: Do you like books? Signed books, dedicated especially to you? Bid! You can bid for personalised copies, original manuscripts, afternoon tea with authors, naming a character in their next book, swag… 

Everyone else: Please share the link on social media, pass on the information to anyone who fits the bill above, hassle the author in your life into donating, bid for stuff, or volunteer to help us out with the back-end admin by emailing authorsforgrenfell@gmail.com 

(Obviously if you know me, Molly Ker Hawn or Sara Barnard you can contact us directly.)

Share widely. Bid bigly. #authorsforgrenfell

And don't f**k it up.

I'm in bed this morning simultaneously writing, watching RuPaul's Drag Race and drinking coffee.  Not even 9am and I've written over 1,000 words before I have to get up and go to Zumba class - not bad.

Drag Race is now into series 9 and obviously I am following it avidly (even though the absence of my bae Santino Rice still looms large in my heart).  In fact, it occurred to me this morning that I have written much of my recent work with RuPaul playing gently in the background.

It only just struck me - is this where the theme of makeover and identity in BECOMING BETTY came from?!

Thanks, Ru (I absolutely adore you).  I would also like to mention that my all-time faves are Pandora Boxx, Sharon Needles, Alaska Thunderfuck 5000, Adore Delano, Jinkx Monsoon, Bianca Del Rio, Kim Chi, Ivy Winters and Jiggly Caliente.

May we all have Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent.  Don't f**k it up.

Betty Stuff

I can't believe that BECOMING BETTY has been out for over a week!  Launching a new book is SO nerve-wracking, so I am incredibly grateful that people have been kind about it.  Seriously.

Thank goodness, people really seem to 'get' the book (sometimes I feel like such a little weirdo, out of step with the world, so this is genuinely a wonderful surprise) and to love Lizzie as much as I do.

Here is a little round-up of some nice blogs and stuff about Betty in the last week.

An interview with the fantastic Jim from YA Yeah Yeah

Lovely little review from 100 or less...

A post by me on the My Kinda Book blog

A guest post and review on the wonderful Tea Party Princess

Lovely review by the lovely Rebecca

A guest post on the power of the makeover with wonderful Kirsty


In other news, I did a very fun Sunday YA chat on BECOMING BETTY (thank you to everyone for all the ace questions and book recs).  Last night I went to the launch night of Acoustic Coffee Club (it was great; if you're in Brighton, you should totally go to the next one).  I just finished reading WHO RUNS THE WORLD? by Virginia Bergin and am full of feels about the future global matriarchy (obvs).  Any free time is currently taken up with trying to write my next book and obsessing over season 9 of RuPaul's Drag Race.  Although, this weekend I also intend to paint a wall.  Exciting times, dear reader.  Exciting times.

Dirty Harriet

IMHO, all the greatest bands are based on great friendships. The band is the ultimate gang – or should be, if it’s done right. The best bands look like a gang of mates having a laugh, not like some slick corporation.

I know all the classic pairings are obviously, like, Lennon/McCartney etc, but the best friendship gangs in the history of music are always girl gangs. It’s why as a teenager I loved Kenickie and Shampoo, and even the early Spice Girls back when they looked like they dyed their own hair and bought their stage outfits from Camden Market, and Geri (my fave) always looked a bit like she’d just fallen over at all times.

My new book BECOMING BETTY features a lot of bands (which makes sense, given that the action centres around a Battle of the Bands contest). My favourite of the lot are the all-girl gang, Dirty Harriet. They have been getting a lot of love from readers, which particularly delights me as they are pretty much my dream girl gang.

I thought 'Dirty Harriet' sounded like such a classic riot grrl band name, like the DIY punk bands I loved as a teenager and still do – like Heavens to Betsy, Bratmobile, 7 Year Bitch or Lunachicks. I googled the name to make sure it hadn’t already been done, and was actually shocked (and pretty delighted, for my purposes) that it hadn’t been used before.

I discovered the original riot grrl bands via reading interviews with Kurt Cobain in NME, in which he sang their praises (many of my early musical discoveries came via my love for Kurt Cobain and his love for generously bigging-up his favourite obscure bands). I discovered a whole world of DIY culture, bands and fanzines, and it was genuinely life-changing. The riot grrl DIY ethos made me feel like I could have a go, create my own culture and get involved – the same message I would love to give readers of BECOMING BETTY.

Dirty Harriet are made up of Harry, Jess and Lola. They are friends first and bandmates second. In fact, Harry and Lola are cousins – an important fact as my cousin is my BFF and it adds to the tight-knit gang mentality (see also: Shampoo made up of cousins Jacqui and Carrie; Throwing Muses revolving around stepsisters Kristin and Tanya). Also, when you're a teenage girl who doesn't have that many friends, having a cousin the same age is really useful (just saying).

Dirty Harriet take their band seriously; music is the most important thing in the world to them and they practise diligently. As they say themselves:

‘Basically, we all have no life. But that’s OK because we didn’t exactly have glittering social lives to begin with. We’re all music geeks.’‘…But that’s OK, because it’s always the music geeks who win in the end. Every cool rock star in the canon was once a music geek. That’s the law.’

 However, they also want to have fun and remember that friendship is more important than anything else. They have their own manifesto to prove it, which covers everything from their influences to gig etiquette to anti-fashion ideas.

Most important, Dirty Harriet are about doing things their own way: playing what they want, wearing what they want and not caring about what anybody else thinks. Just like all the best girl gangs in history.

Here are some of their favourites…