You know you're long overdue a blog post when people are leaving gentle reminders on my Twitter asking me when I'm going to update. Ooops!
Anyway, here I am with a few snippets of news and links and some stuff for you to look at. I'm deep in the first draft hinterlands for my second grown-up book, which is not going to be called Lightweight anymore. It's going to be called something else but I need to check that TPTB are completely happy with the new title, before you guys can be the first to know what it is. I'm on a very tight deadline for this book so my whole world has shrunk down to chapter outline, whiteboard and word count.
Here's a picture of my lovely whiteboard, with the next few chapter sketched out. Main plot in blue marker pen, sub-plot in green, purposely taken from a long distance so I don't give away any secrets:
And here is my lovely word count envelope. Every day when I open up Microsoft Word, I look at my word count and then scribble the number down on the back of an envelope. I don't know why I can't just use a pristine piece of paper, it always seems to be the back of an envelope. You can see that some days are more productive than others.
Apart from frantic book writing, I'm getting the next teen book, Nobody's Girl, oven-ready. Just waiting for the copy-edited proofs to come in and the latest version of the cover - I can say no more than that, otherwise I'll probably start crying. And I'm percolating the teen book after that and the third grown-up novel. It's very busy in my head right now. But rest assured, there will be both teen and grown-up books in my future. As long as people want to publish them, I'll keep writing them.
Talking of which, I wanted to show you the French covers for Fashionistas: Laura and Fashionistas: Hadley.
Tres jolie, mais non?
There are also Brazilian editions of Fashionistas to come and Italian Diary Of A Crushes. There are no plans for foreign editions of Unsticky just yet, though the English edition is on sale in Australia, New Zealand and India. Global recession, don't you know. Let's not talk about that but move on to happier things like links!
An interview I did for the Australian magazine and website, Mindfood.
A lovely girl called Lucy made a trailer for Pretty Things using the characters from the show, Almost Famous. Yes, there's a bit of artistic license (never a bad thing in my book) but I think she did a fantastic job.
And as ever, I am on Twitter. I update far too much during the course of a day and this is the only place where you can get in touch with me and have a good chance of getting a reply. Though if it's to ask for sequels of anything or writing tips, then I will just direct you to the tags on the left hand side of this here blog, because there's only so much a girl can say in 140 characters.
One of these days I need to make a proper website with an FAQ but we're talking time, money and technical skills, none of which I have!
OK, I think that was everything I needed to tell you. Sorry I've been such a slacker of late but I'm all tunnel vision girl with writing the second grown-up book at the moment and nursing the big toe on my right foot. Had to have the toenail removed after too much working out at the gym, then stubbing my toe so hard that the nail lifted up. Hurt like a beeyacth, let me tell you!
If I haven't updated in a couple of weeks, nag me. I respond very well to the right kind of pressure.
Live on
Sarra x
