Dagbook

I was woken up by the postman today who delivered five copies of the Swedish edition of Diary of A Crush or as they call it, Edies Dagbook. If you happen to be holidaying in Stockholm, you should go into a bookshop and check out the cover!

I just have time to answer a question from Josie who wanted to know: if you could tell us what Lets Get Lost is about?

Well, I don't want to give away too much of the story but it's probably my darkest book to date. Way darker than Guitar Girl and the heroine, Isabel, isn't very nice. In actual fact, she's a self-admitted "nasty bitch." But as you probably know from my books, what you see on the surface is not what's really going on underneath.

Anyway, hot off the press, this is the back cover copy of Let's Get Lost, which I've just approved:

Isabel rules her school with an iron fist and a gang of minions to do her bidding. Her mates are frightened of her, the teachers can’t get through to her, and no one, but no one, is ever going to discover her dark, sad secrets.
But then she meets Smith, and her life starts coming apart...

"Girls like you don't have off days," Smith said. "You're pretty and and popular and you can have anything or anyone that you want."

I wanted to be that girl. The girl he thought I was. Who had nothing else to angst about but how her hair looked and why nobody understood her.

Josie also asked me if I had any book recommendations as she's run out of things to read so I'll be compiling a list and posting it in the next couple of days. Watch this space!

S x

Happy Bank Holiday!

Just popping in to wish you all a Happy Bank/Memorial Day (delete where applicable) and commiserations if you didn't get today off.

I'm a very lazy writer so I have spent most of the day playing the time-sucking demon that is Snood (www.snood.com) but I have started the rewrite on Let's Get Lost. I always love having the chance to go back and rip out all those awful sentences I shoved in first time round. Filling up the plotholes. Realising that I've put the phrase "his eyes blazed with fury" in each chapter and trying to come up with something else. I think there should be a re-write option in real life too.

I also went to the supermarket and did some laundry. Being writer is really unglamorous 99% of the time...

Is this thing on?

Hello! Hola! Greetings!

Yes, this is really Sarra Manning, author of Guitar Girl, Pretty Things and the Diary Of A Crush trilogy.

I wanted to have a blog so I can let you know what I'm up to, what I'm into and have a chance to meet some of my readers and answer your questions on my books and anything else you want to know about. I've had so many emails that I've been too snowed under to answer so I thought that having a blog might be the ideal solution.

I'm going to post pretty regularly and also hope to give you sneak previews of Let's Get Lost, my next book, which will be out in the UK in January 2006 and in June of the same year in the States.

So, don't be shy. I don't bite. Come on in and say hello.

S x