Well, I'm softer than my face would suggest...

Hello pop kids

Firstly, any US readers in the vicinity of Hurricane Katrina, I hope you guys and your families are all well and safe. After a very soggy summer, we've had two glorious days of sunshine in London. Yet, I'm sitting at home on this Bank Holiday Monday, trying desperately to clear up some freelance work. I've just recently started writing a column for ELLE UK called "I wish I didn't..." and I need to write two at once as I'm heading off on my holidays next weekend. There'll be a week in Devon before I fly out to New York for almost a fortnight.

I'll be doing a book reading and signing while I'm there at:

Books Of Wonder, W18th Street
Between 12am and 2pm on Saturday, 17th September

I think some other teen writers will be reading and if anyone's around, hey, come down! I've only ever done a reading once before at the little launch party we had for Guitar Girl at the Boogaloo Bar (favourite haunt of Pete Docherty and Kate Moss!) just up the road from me in Highgate, I had a terrible choking fit somewhere in the middle so I'm hoping there won't be a repeat performance.

What's the next item on the agenda? A question from Rowena:

Dylan and Edie: were these names chosen because of Bob Dylan and Edie Sedgwick, who had were allegedly involved at one point? Just curious.

YES! Yes! Yes! Well, spotted! I was absolutely obsessed with Edie Sedgwick when I was a teenager, after reading this wonderful book, Edie: An American Biography by Jean Stein. So, when it came to writing Diary Of A Crush, I had to call my heroine Edie and Dylan was a natural choice for the love interest. (Incidentally, Rowena, did you know that Dylan's Blonde On Blonde album was meant to have been written for Edie, especially Just Like A Woman?) There's been a renewed interest in Edie Sedgwick, with a film of her life planned called Factory Girl, allegedly starring Sienna MIller and a lot of the catwalk shows for Autumn/Winter 2005 picked Edie as their inspiration. She was tall and skinny with hair dyed silver like her mentor, Andy Warhol, and wore skimpy little t-shirts and thick black tights when she went out. Not a look I could ever carry off!

I'd also like to thank Lady Julieanne for her lovely comment. What happened to J17 was an absolute tragedy. I can say no more. And I was really devestated when I found out this week that Ellegirl UK, which I launched with one of my very dear friends, Sarah Bailey (who gave me my very first full-time job when she edited Just Seventeen as it was then,) and went on to edit, is closing too.

Oh, and I've had to disable anonymous comments on this blog, after it got spam-bombed. But I would encourage all of you to have your own blog, especially if you want to be writers. Sharing your thoughts and feelings every day is great experience.

Anyway, columns to finish, laundry to do.

Be safe, be well, be stylin'!

S x

My turn to spam!

Please tell ten friends to tell ten today! The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on "donating a mammogram" for free (pink window in the middle).

This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising.

Here's the website: http://www.thebreastcancersite.com ! Pass the word, if you're feeling charitable...

I love you but I've chosen dorkness...

Haven't been around much, have I? My current freelance work is keeping me busy and I've just a bit of a giddy social whirl of a week as it was my birthday.

I'm still getting too many spam and chain emails from readers who've added my addresses to their address books (not to mention hysterical emails when I call them on it) so I've had to make the unwelcome decision to stop including my email address in my books. This pisses me off quite a lot as I really like hearing from people who've read my stories but I'm slightly drowning under the sheer weight of the spam that I'm also getting as a result and I'm also aware that it takes me a long time to send out redirect emails to this blog because I'm so busy. Instead I'm going to include the address of this blog so I can still have a dialogue with you guys. (Oh and Hodder, my UK publishers have made me a pretty, little microsite: http://www.hodderkidsauthors.com/manning/) It's a work in progress but there will be more features added soon.

On to happier things. Diary Of A Crush! I think there's a lot of confusion surrounding the different versions of books in the Crush verse. Basically the three white books published by Hodder

Diary Of A Crush: French Kiss
Diary Of A Crush: Kiss And Make Up
Diary Of A Crush: Sealed With A Kiss


are the definitive versions. They contain all the columns from J17, plus the free novels we gave away as well as additional material I wrote to get the books oven ready for publication. These will be published (with different cover artwork) in the States and France next year. There are a few copies lurking about on places like eBay and my bookshelf, which were the free novels given away with J17.

French Kiss (a different cover to the other French Kiss)
Losing It
American Dream

In no version do Edie and Dylan get married. They never will, OK?!

And here is a sneak look at my new book cover, Let's Get Lost out in the UK, in January 2006. I love it! What do you think?