All Manning, all of the time...

My ladyfingerlings

Thank you so, so, so much for all your shuffle suggestions. I am blown away by the response and also in awe of your eclectic and deeply cool song stylings. There are a couple I'm quite taken with and a couple I came up with all my by very own. I will keep you posted. And you know how I said that my new teen book (they very one, which I don't have a title for!) would be out next September? Er, apparently not. More like Spring 2010. I know! I know! I have very little control over these decisions.

What I really wanted to say is that I'm now on Twitter. If my infrequent blog posts aren't enough Manning for y'all, you can now follow my very drab, very humdrum life 24/7. Or like maybe 16/7 'cause I need to sleep and stuff.

You can find me HERE Please do 'follow' me, or whatever the approved twitter speak is for adding me to the list of people whose tweets you read.

But even if you dodn't twitter me, I'll be back here soon enough.

Live on


Sarra x

Competition winners and reader-generated content!

May I introduce you to the two winners of my Chrismukkah quiz? All hail Ella McBride from Blighty and Kathryn Piekkala in Australia, which is going to cost me a small fortune in postage!

Ella and Kathryn won because they had the most right answers, I liked their tie-breaker answers and they also went above and beyond in getting round blogger's maximum wordage in comments rules.

Ella's tie-breaker answer:

QUESTION If you could be any character in any one of Sarra's books, who would you be and why?

I found this a really tough question because you have created so many amazing characters in your books, and I see elements of who I'd like to be in lots of them. I think the character I identify the most with is probably Edie, because I think she's the girl I really want to be. I just love her entire style, the way she thinks, the way she can be shallow and deep, how she wears her heart on her sleeve despite having it broken, and always throws herself back into the world, each time a little stronger. Plus she has awesome hair ! I would choose Edie from the second book, Kiss And Make Up, because I feel this was her darkest hour, and she still came through. I really empathised with her all the way through the book and I really loved the festival, especially Veronique in a pit of poo =]. Ooh! And those hotel scenes ! They really made me smile, my favourite bit was "When Artboys Attack" :)

Kathryn's tie-breaker answer:

If you could be any character in any one of Sarra's books, who would you be and why?

I think that of all the characters in your books I was most envious of Edie and Brie. I love the way you create your characters with such depth and I felt that Edie (more specifically toward the end of the diary of a crush trilogy) and Brie both had the lighthearted personality I don’t share. I relate more to Isabel in the way that she reserves her trust for a select few and keeps her emotions bottled up inside until it’s impossible not to explode. I would much prefer their characteristics over my own however having said that...you always want what you don’t have and if I was like that I would probably want it back the other way. I love the unintentional humor of Edie and just Brie in general.

Apart from that......I have always wanted to live in London and work in a cafe and be in a band and go on a roadtrip and definitely have a Dylan. =D


I may be a bit sparse with the updates at the moment - I have some personal stuff that's all consuming and I'm beavering away of my next teen opus, due out in the UK in September. Except I don't have a title and I'm this close to putting my iTunes on shuffle and choosing the fifth song that comes up as the name of my book. Seriously!


Live on

Sarra x


EDITED TO ADD: Kind and attentive regular, Koko has just left me a comment, which has inspired me. Readers, friends of mine, people, run to your iTunes, stick it on shuffle and tell me what the fifth song is. It might well be the title of my next book! Me? I'm off to rummage through Serge Gainsbourg's back catalogue and see if anything there will do at a pinch.