Insert amusing subject line right here...

I'm posting because I try to post every Saturday but I'm afraid I have nothing much to report.

My deadlines have been pushed up so I'm racing to try and get the second draft of my new book (which I'm still not allowed to tell anyone about) done for early next week. The good news is that I had a breakthrough moment at precisely 11.56 pm on Wednesday night and the book actually has proper plot points and an emotional resolution now. All good things. The bad news is that this is the not so fun part of being a writer; where you're fighting the clock and your own little, nagging voice of doubt, which is trying to persuade you to curl up on the sofa and watch telly instead of getting to the end of the next scene.

So, this is just a brief intermission to let you guys know what's happening in my world this week. Would it be boring to plug the US release of the Diary Of A Crush trilogy again? Probably but, hey, go and buy them!

OK, chapter whatever (this is how they are listed in the draft as I can't keep track of the numbers) beckons...


(Cross-posted to http://blog.myspace.com/sarramanning)

Come on, England!

I'm a very bad person. I will not be watching England vs Paraguay in the World Cup, in favour of slaving away on the revisions for my new opus. Which have reached the excruciating "My God, why am I doing this?" stage. But all the windows are open so if England score, I'm confident that I will hear a roar rise up from the streets.

It's very hot here. After weeks of whining about how cold and damp it is, I now feel duty bound to moan about the sunny skies and the ever increasing temperature. But there are reasons to cheer!

Diary Of A Crush went on sale in the US a couple of days ago so I'd like to say a big howdy to new readers who are here via the link in the books. If you haven't bought them yet, then I implore you to go now to your nearest book emporium and purchase them. They're all cute-sized paperbacks and won't break the bank.

And for the benefit of UK readers, I thought I'd post the US covers, which are very different to the UK ones. I think I might actually like them more. Possibly. But don't quote me on that!

Diary Of A Crush 1: French Kiss



Diary Of A Crush 2: Kiss And Make Up



Diary Of A Crush 3: Sealed With A Kiss



Though I'm bracing myself for a veritable slew of "But when is Book 4 coming out?" emails, I can't wait to hear what you think of them. And remember, nothing says you care more than posting a review at Amazon or Barnes & Noble!

The only thing left to do is to send out positive thoughts and good wishes to anyone who's neck deep in exams and cramming at the moment.

This post officially sponsored by the fungal infection under my right, big toenail. Ewww!

(Cross-posted to http:blog.myspace.com/sarramanning)

Here's One I Made Earlier

This is really a drive-by post with a little compendium of favourite things I compiled earlier in the week. I have a friend staying from New York so I've actually taken the weekend off from writing (don't tell my editor) to make the most of the glorious weather.

Yesterday I walked over seven miles taking in the green and rustic charms of Highgate and Hampstead and today, we hang out on the South Bank and visited the Tate Modern, which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite places on earth.

And now I'm about to soak my aching tootsies so I leave you with all the stuff that's getting me through the fraught and tricksome second draft. Thank goodness for distractions!

(Also I know I need to post a lot of replies to comments, but time keeps running away from me. I will do my best to try to address them next week. I really will!)

I'm reading

The Lost Art Of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice - This is such a sweet book (the pages are pink!) set in the 1950's about a girl who lives in a big, crumbling house, is obsessed with a popstar called Johnnie Ray and has her life changed when she meets the irrepressible Charlotte and her cousin Harry. It really reminds me of two of my favourite books, Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford and I Capture The Castle by Dodie SMith, which is definitely on my list of top five favourite books of all time. You have to read it! The last page always makes me weep every time.

Snow Flower And The Secret Fan by Lisa See - I picked this for our book group to read and it's one of those birth to death stories set in China about 150 years ago about two girls who grow up together. It was a beautiful story but the descriptions of foot-binding are beyond gross. Ick!

I'm listening to

Lets Get Out Of The Country by Camera Obscura - This is their new album, which isn't out yet but one of my friends is their publicist so I got an early copy. It's gorgeous. A little bit country, a little bit rock 'n' roll and a girl who sings the saddest songs in the saddest chords. My favourite track right now is probably Country Mile.

Cannibal Sea by The Essex Green - TEG were one of my discoveries of a couple of years ago when I picked up thei second album, The Long Goodbye. They don't really sound like anyone else, but this is music for late nights, dark rooms and mix tapes that you send your ex boyfriend to explain why he was wrong to ever let you go.

Lucky Soul - I'm a huge fan of 60's girl groups like The Shangri Las, The Ronettes and Pixies Three. My friend NK introduced me to Lucky Soul, from Britain who are taking up the torch and they make these great tear-drenched ballads or dizzy, big sound pop numbers that you can "sha la la la" to. They are a gazillion times better than The Pipettes who aren't fit to wear polka dots! You can check out some of Lucky Soul's songs here But can I just say that if you like their songs, please pay to download them from iTunes because small bands need all the money they can get!

I'm watching

Nick And Jessica - Newlyweds

I never saw it on when it was on the telly so now I'm mainlining the DVDs in almost disbelief. My God, I thought I whined a lot but Jessica Simpson has me beat. And I actually liked Nick Lachey more than I thought I would. It's sad though that I know that they're going to split up so watching Season 3 is particularly poignant as you can see the cracks!

Grey's Anatomy

Did the entire two series in a fortnight and now I'm jonesing for my next fix, which is weird as there's absolutely nobody I fancy in this show. Especially not McDreamy. (Though I would hate anyone to think that I'm so shallow that I only watch TV shows that feature good-looking popsies.

Alias

I started re-watching it last night, mainly because I want Mr Vaughn to be my Baby!Daddy. (Maybe I actually am that shallow!)

I'm also

Thinking about getting a new dog

Either a miniature Schnauzer or a Cockapoo

Learning to knit

I've almost finished making the longest scarf in the world, and I only dropped about five stitches. I have a feeling this will be my new obsession. I'm already thinking about taking a class so I can learn to knit on circular needles and make a hat with ears.


(Cross-posted to http://blog.myspace.com/sarramanning)

Love in a freezing cold climate...

I can't believe that June is only three days away. London is wet and grey and I'm really going to have to turn the central heating on after I've finished my blogging duties.

It's been a busy week. On Tuesday I was involved in two events as part of the Birmingham Young Readers' festival. I took part in a live debate in the morning - I was speaking for the motion that Text Speak Is Destroying the Engligh Language and lost, but I was blown away by all the schools who took part. I was shaking so hard I could hardly hold my microphone, but the teenagers who came on stage to speak for and against the motion were confident and articulate and impressed the hell out of me. And hi to Bethany and her friends!

I've also learnt to knit this week. I've been wanting to learn for years and I knew the only way I'd get round to it was to have a deadline. I'm so goal-orientated! So I pitched a feature about knitting to a magazine and was then told I had four weeks to knit "a really long scarf." I'm also writing something that may never see the light of the day and my main protagonist is a passionate knitter so it was a good way of getting inside her head. It was all going horribly wrong, I couldn't even cast on and then yesterday I had a crash course in the basics from a friend who used to be a knitwear designer. Now I can cast on, cast off, do knit stitch and purl and add in new colours of yarn. I think I might be hooked!

I also took delivery this morning of a hard copy of the first draft of what will be my new book. I always prefer to read on the page and my little printer certainly can't cope with 322 pages, so my editor prints it out for me so I can scribble all over it and scratch out great chunks with my scary red editing pen. I've got a lot of work ahead of me...

And next week I'll be recording a podcast for my US publisher (note to self: try not to swear!) and I'll give you all the details once it's up on the interpipe. I have a horrible speaking voice. I sound like I'm five!

One last thing, I got a comment from someone (sorry, I can't remember your name) asking if I see the covers of my foreign editions? The answer is no! I have a lot of input and creative involvement with my UK covers, get consulted on my US covers, but my actual foreign editions suddenly arrive on my doorstep and that's the first time I get to see the covers. It's just the way it is!

And actually this really is the last thing, anyone who wants to add me as a friend on MySpace, you don't need to ask, just go ahead! 99.9% of the time I will add you back but MySpace pages that take several millenia to load do make both me and my computer cry!

(Why do I feel the need to end all my paragraphs with an exclamation mark?)

Until next week, my sweets

Love

Sarra

(cross-posted to http://blog.myspace.com/sarramanning)

Oh, how I adore you, Dory Previn...

Salut pop kids!

So, can I just say that excerpt is spelt just like that. Your task for this week is to spell it correctly and use it in at least one email/text/essay/whatever! And yes, there will be more posted in the coming weeks.

In reply to some of your questions:

* The readers event in Birmingham that I'm taking part in on Tuesday is only for pupils in the schools are are participating in the Young Readers Programme, and tickets are all gone now. Sorry.

* There will be no new books from me until Spring 2007 if you live in the UK. I finished the first draft this week and am just psyching myself up for the Herculean task of actually sprinkling on the re-write dust and making it readable! Of course, if you live in the States, you will be getting new books from me as Diary Of A Crush and Let's Get Lost are out in June and October respectively.

* I'm also getting a lot of emails from girls who live in countries where my books aren't available yet. My publishers are working on various deals around the globe, but all my books are available at www.amazon.co.uk who ship internationally.

* I'm really glad that I'm no alone in my deep dislike of black cherry and the other red-headed step-children of the yoghurt family. My friend Andrea did turn me on to the hard-to-find pink grapefruit flavour. And I'll always be a slut for raspberry!

In other news, Amazon.com are now rolling out a new authors' area on their site. You can check out my profile and blog right here. It's probably stuff you already know, but, hey, it's worth checking out.

I'm expecting a marked downturn in my productivity levels now that Big Brother has started in the UK. Every year I promise that I won't get sucked in to watching a bunch of sociopathic, exhibitionistic wannabes for 13 weeks, but I always do. Isn't Shahbaz the most annoying man alive. And I want to whack Nicky over the head with her bunny ears.

And now I must go. I have books to write and a Eurovision Song Contest shindig to get pretty for...

Love

Sarra


(Cross-posted to http://blog.myspace.com/sarramanning)

A message from the bunker...

Hola!

I'm in deep hibernation mode at the moment. I go to the gym in the morning so I don't actually take root behind my desk, then get home and stare at my computer screen for hours. I even write some words! At the moment I'm racing to get the first draft of my new book (part of a four book sequential series) done by about the middle of next week. It's meant to be 65,000 words, but will probably be nearer 75,000 before I start editing and re-writing and cutting huge swathes of it. This means that the DSL cable gets unplugged so I'm not distracted by the interpipe. It's a very solitary existence. I think writing is one of the few occupations where you never get rid of that "I haven't done my homework" feeling.

But as ever, I have stuff to say!

* Thanks for all your comments about the Let's Get Lost excerpt. I always over-write so even though I had to cut about 30,000 words, the book was a lot longer than most teen novels. The 30,000 words didn't really add anything to the story, it was more a case of quantity rather than quality and by cutting out all the extraneous stuff, I think it reads better. I will post a few more excerpts though if you're interested.

* I'd like to officially welcome all my new MySpace buddies! Thank you for all your comments and messages. There's nothing more heart-warming when I'm struggling to write (yesterday I spent three hours on one sentence!) to get a message from one of you. Fr'instance Lauren's comment of yesterday inspired me to bash out another 1000 words, so thanks!

* Both my books and I contain language that some people find offensive. I'm guessing you guys are the same!

* The US editions of Diary Of A Crush are now available to pre-order.

* I'm doing two events at the Birmingham Young Reader's programme on May 23rd. I'm speaking for the motion: Text speak is destroying the English Language for a debate in the morning and then doing a presentation in the afternoon on erm, I think what inspires me. Note to self: Find out for sure. If you're going to be there, please come and say hello. I promise you that my state of nerves will be far worse than yours.

* You all have to go out and buy the new Camera Obscura single, Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken. If you love Belle And Sebastian, then the Cameras will become your new favourite band. I'm going to see them tomorrow night in London and I'm already giddy with excitement.

OK, I have to go now. My goal for today is 5000 words but I'll leave you with my own profound thought of today. Why is it that those four packs of yoghurt always have one flavour that's totally rank? Black Cherry? I'm not feeling it. Mango? Get it out of here.

Apart from that, I got nothing!

Love

Sarra x

(Cross-posted to http://blog.myspace.com/sarramanning)

Let's Get Lost - excerpt

I'm behind schedule on my writing, which means I've had to cancel all my plans for the weekend. So instead of a post telling you all of my thrilling adventures in typing, I thought I'd let you read this extract that was cut from the final version of Let's Get Lost. It came in at 20,000 words over, so a lot had to go.

This was a scene with Isabel and her clueless guidance consellor. Hope you enjoy it, even if you haven't read the book yet!



Only two things got me through Friday: Smith's unfeigned delight when I told him that I'd engineered a whole weekend together and the holdall I had stuffed in my locker which contained everything I needed to maintain his delight.

It even got me through another session with Claire who kept prodding and prodding at me as if I was a sleeping dog she was trying to wake up.

Thankfully she'd abandoned her little scheme to have me spilling my guts and copious tears all over her kilim rug and decided to talk about what a mean, old bully I was.

"You seem to have quite a fierce reputation among your peers, why do you think that is," she asked, gimlet eyes fixed steadily on me. I made a mental note to find out if Lily was seeing her too. "Sometimes when people are in pain, they transfer it on to those around them, don't they, Isabel?"

I crossed my legs and tried to decide whether I should wear my vintage little black dress or my other vintage little black dress when we went up to London tomorrow. It was such a tough decision that I could almost tune out the sound of Claire's voice buzzing vaguely around the periphery of my senses.

"… and you wrote such a beautiful essay about The Great Gatsby. Mrs Phillips told me that you have a very advanced understanding of the themes of the novel for your age. You're not immature, Isabel, quite the contrary, so I'd really like to know your thoughts on your behaviour over the last year. What do you think are the underlying reasons for your problems with socialisation?"

I blinked at her. Maybe the silent thing was getting old. And maybe I could befuddle her with some dense psychobabble. Because one thing was for sure, she didn't want to know the truth.

"I guess…" I began uncertainly and she leaned forward with an obscenely eager expression.

"Yes, Isabel?"

"Well, it's like in The Great Gatsby when Nick idealises Daisy as this perfect woman and she isn't. And she didn't ask for it, but she takes advantage of his love all the same. Nobody ever knows what someone else is like. Not really. They just end up projecting all this crap onto the other person, you know?"

Claire was staring at me blankly and it was pretty obvious that she didn't know. She was the Grand Pooba of cluelessness.

"I see," she said, nodding frantically and I stared at the box of tissues and wondered if I could get her to cry. It would be my greatest triumph.

"I don't mean to be rude, but have you actually read The Great Gatsby?"

That stopped her in her tracks. She fingered her spectacles chain and licked her thin lips nervously. "Well, many years ago. Or was that The Fountainhead?"

"The Fountainhead is by Ayn Rand, F Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby," I told her kindly. "They're two completely different books. Gatsby's about the death of the American dream and The Fountainhead is about the theory of objectivism and the strength of the individual. They couldn't be more different," I finished scathingly and I'd missed this.

Before, Dad would pick out novels for me to read, then he'd take me out to Mrs Hudson's on Sydney Street for apple pie and we'd discuss each book in detail. But it had stopped, after Mrs Cohen got all antsy that I was developing too far ahead of the curriculum because God forbid that I should actually be bored in class because I'd read the set text three times before and debated it with a Professor of Literature. And Mrs Hudson's had the best apple pie.

"Goodness, Isabel, you can be quite strident," Claire breathed. "Are you this forceful with your friends? Maybe if you were a little gentler with your opinions, then people would be less intimidated by you."

I think it was that patronising little speech that made me swear a solemn vow that I'd have her crying like a little baby before the end of term.

"Really? Do I come across as intimidating? How weird. Am I intimidating you, Claire? 'Cause if I am, I'm very sorry."

She gave a nervous laugh. "No, of course not. It's lovely to have you participating in the session."

"Why?"

"Why what, Isabel?"

"Why is it lovely to have me participating in the session?" It was a fair question because it wasn't lovely for me. It ranked somewhere below rectal surgery.

It was a totally moot point, which one of us was more relieved when the final bell sounded.

"4 o'clock already?" Claire cried, scooping up her papers and almost falling over her Earth shoes in her haste to put as much distance between us as possible. "Have a wonderful weekend. I'll see you next Friday."

I stayed sitting down long enough for her to start getting this haunted look at the possibility that I might want to stay and chat, before I slowly uncoiled myself out of the chair. Then I sauntered towards the door, taking my sweet time about it and it wasn't until I closed the door behind me that I let myself break into a mad sprint so I could throw my books into my locker, grab my bag and get the hell out of Dodge before The Trio Of Doom caught up with me.


Cross-posted to http://blog.myspace.com/sarramanning

Yes, Lloyd, I'm so ready to be heartbroken...

It's gloriously sunny in London Town. All the windows are open, the first application of Nivea Holiday Sun Body Lotion has gone on to my translucent legs and maybe winter is finally over.

Alas, I spend most of my days chained to my temperamental Mac banging out between 1000 to 3500 words a day, depending on how motivated I can be. I'm now over the halfway hump on the first book of my new series and learning lots og fun facts about the fall of Communism in the former Soviet Union. I can say no more!

What I will say is that I recently did an interview with the Young Scotsman, which you can find here and that you all have to go and download this song because it's adorable.

Oh yes, and the new issue of ELLE UK? The one with Paris Hilton on the cover? I actually went to LA to meet Ms Hilton and write that piece, so you might want to check it out.

Now I'm turning off the computer and going to spend the rest of the weekend hanging with my friends who are starting to think that I've fallen off the edge of the world. So, see you next week.

And remember to wear sun block!

Love

Sarra x

(Cross-posted to http://blog.myspace.com/sarramanning)

Every day I write the book...

Happy Easter/Happy Passover Ladies

Though actually I never understood the concept behind Jesus is risen so let's all go and eat eggs made of chocolate. It could be because I'm Jewish or it could be that I don't eat anything made of chocolate, but I just don't understand the connection.

So, I'm slightly mopey on this Sunday afternoon because I have a Pilates-related injury and can't see a blessed thing. I wear these strange contact lenses at night so I can see during the day but lately they've been giving me all kinds of grief. Apparently, I have a problem with my tears. Not the quantity, you understand, as I can weep during a particularly traumatic episode of The OC, but the quality of my tears is shoddy and sub-standard. Hence, Sahara-dry eyes and problems with my special lenses.

I have just completed a gargantuan project to turn the 25,000 words already written of the first book in my new series from the first person to the third person. It might comfort aspiring writers to know that I still suck when it comes to the basic rules of grammar. Tenses confuse me. Like a lot. And I have a post-it note stuck to my computer to remind me of the difference between 'who's' and 'whose'. Today I even got an email from a friend explaining the different between 'she' and 'her'. But I am really good with spelling so I guess it all balances out.

Thanks for all your comments, especially my new friends from My Space. Thanks also for your book recs. I saw Sugar Rush and it was better than the book, which wasn't saying that much and I don't do fantasy, though I met David Almond once and he was a lovely bloke who bought me a drink. At the moment, I have a teetering two piles of books that I'm planning to read. A lot of them are teen titles that I bought as far back as September when I was last in New York, but I never read teen fiction while I'm writing as I'm too aware that I get influenced very easily.

What else? No, no sequels to anything. I do say this every time, but it doesn't seem to be registering. I write a book, tell the story and that's it. Done. Dusted. I'm incredibly flattered that you enjoy the books so much that you want more, but I have so many ideas in my head and I'm rather create new characters and worlds, than revisit old ones. And for advice on writing, it's worth going to sarramanning.blogspot.com and scrolling back through the archive.

One final thing. beyourowngirl, this is your last call! You were the joint winner of the movie cast contest but if you don't leave your email addy in the next week, then you've had it! PennyLane someone from my publisher will be contacting you to get your snailmail addy so they can send on the Let's Get Lost vest.

I hope I don't sound too cranky in this post. Maybe the not eating chocolate is getting to me…

Love

Sarra x



Cross-posted to http://blog.myspace.com/sarramanning)

There's too much love...

Just eating a late lunch and drinking a glass of Welch's grape juice, which has this really gross undertaste of scented erasers. Ick!

Not much to report really. I'm hard at work on the first book in my new four-volume series, which will be published next year and the year after! I'm averaging about 3000 words a day at the moment, which is kinda lame for me but I do faff about a lot on MySpace and sending stupid emails to 6 Music. I'm distracto girl!

I would like to thank everyone who's left comments on blogspot and My Space. It's probably worth repeating to any newcomers that there are NO plans to write sequels to Diary Of A Crush, Guitar Girl or any of my other books. What you've got is what you're going to get, I'm afraid. I'm also quite amused by the reviews for Guitar Girl on amazon.com that are obsessing about how the book was based on the Sex Pistols, or No Doubt or Babes In Toyland. To which I have to officially say, not even! I was a music journalist for three years and Molly's story is the classic story of any wide-eyed kid that gets thrown into the music industry too far and too fast. Yes, it's easy to read the book and then find a real-life person in a band and draw paralells (hmmm, that's not spelt right) because evil managers and screwed up relationships with other band members and the like happens all the time. Sorry for the rant, but I'm always upfront about my influences and inspirations, and those reviews have really been bugging me.

So because all I do all day is write and not actually have a life, I thought I'd post about a few things I'm into at the moment.

I'm reading...

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

He's such a funny writer and this is the perfect book to read before I snuggle down for the night.

Cooking With Fernet Branca by James somebody or other

I had to read this for my book group and it's awful. Easily on my top three list of worst books I've ever had to read. It has all these reviews on the back about how funny it is. But they lie. Boy, how they do lie!

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

When I was in the States, I did my usual trip to Borders to stock up on interesting looking books - usually teen stuff and books about hipsters who dress really well while they try to find themselves. I picked this up and can't wait to read it.

The Nightwatch by Sarah Waters

I love her books, even though I couldn't finish Affinity because I got too scared.


I'm listening to...

Belle And Sebastian

Mainly because I'm always listening to Belle And Sebastian and their new single is out this week.

My new work-out playlist

Which is all the really fast bits from the last Go!Team and Goldfrapp albums.

The Essex Green - The Cannibal Sea

I heart this band. Gorgeous vocals and they're a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n' roll, a little bit magical.

The Priscillas

One of my best friends is in this band (in fact, she's cooking me dinner tonight before she tries to kick my arse in Scrabble.) They have really big hair and they rock. No, my mistake, THEY ROCK!!!!!!!!


I'm watching...

The OC

I'm mid-way through a big project to re-watch every single episode of The O.C because OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seth + Summer 4EVA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Supernatural

But I might have to give it up because I really do get too frightened . I should probably point out that I'm the most fraidy person in the world. Even a car back-firing in the street sends me into conniptions.

America's Next Top Model

This is my total TV crack. I love this show so much that if it wasn't completely illegal I'd be downloading the newly airing US series off the interpipe. Not that I am because it would be wrong. But, hey, if I was - what is Jade's problem? Qu'elle une bitch!

Veronica Mars

She's my second favourite, tiny blonde ass-kicker after Buffy.



And now I need to get back to my contractually obligated 3000 words. I'm still waiting for the other competition winner (that movie cast promo I ran) to leave me her email. I can't remember your name, but hey, step to it!

This grape juice really is disgusting...

Live on

Sarra

(cross-posted to http://blog.myspace.com/sarramanning)

Calm down, dears

Ladies, please

I'm not going anywhere! I will be cross-posting my blog entries both to blogspot (ie, right here) and MySpace.

Be cool

Sarra x

Because Friendster is so three years ago...

http://myspace.com/sarramanning

Yes, my friends I've given into the evil lure of My Space! I had a huge batch of emails forwarded to me by my publishers and I realise that some of you are replying to posts I've made here, and even entering some of the competitions I've run, by email to the books with bite addy. That doesn't actually work so well. If you've received my long 'bounce-back' email you'll know that I can't reply to emails for a variety of reasons.

But I am aware that blogspot can be a bit problematic. Because I was getting so much comment spam, I had to set up this blog so that only people with blogspot membership could reply. Now I'm passionate about blogging but I realise that some of you aren't but it also means that I can't leave comments on your blogs because you've already deleted them.

So, my cunning solution to all of this is to have a My Space page. I'm guessing that a lot of you are on there too and it's much easier to leave comments and Friend people. All the entries I make here will now be cross-posted to My Space and I would love, love, love it if you could come and Friend me and I will Friend you back. The MySpace blog will only be open to people who are on my Friends Space but I think it's a much cooler, user-friendly place than maybe blogspot is.

So, come on. I have to get more Friends that my RL friends, some of whom are in bands!

In other business, I'm sorry but there are no plans for me to travel around the country doing book signings. I'm way low down on the famous author's ladder and it would cost more to stick me on a train, then the booksellers would get back from people buying books for me to sign. It's a sad but true state of affairs. I will be doing a whole day at the Birmingham Young Readers Week on Tuesday 23rd, so if you're from Brum and your school wants to know if you're interested in any events going on, sign up! I'm taking part in a debate about text speak (so very against it!) in the morning and then in the afternoon I'm giving a talk about what inspires me. Y'know, the usual, The OC blah blah blah, My So-Called Life blah blah blah. You can pretty much guess what I'll say!

Also, illnevertell, I might be able to do an interview via email. Possibly. Have you got an URL for the e-zine?

And now I need to get back to that difficult chapter four.

Laters!

Love

Sarra

I'm in love with illusion, so saw me in half...

Salut, mes petites cheres

Finally I'm home from my travels and hopefully staying put in London for a while so I can get on with the book writing. I really hope to be able to tell you officially and properly about my new project soon. I'm very excited about it.

Paris was wonderful. It was a real thrill to go to FNAC (the French version of Borders) and see Diary Of A Crush (or Journal d'un Coup de Foudre as it's known over there) on the shelves, as well as meeting my French publishers and some readers at the Salon du Livre event. Not so fun was throwing up in a Parisian street - I suffer from really bad food allergies to some quite obscure ingredients and after being taken out for l'experience gastronomique, I was knocked for six. It was beyond embarassing.

At the moment I have a friend from LA staying and it's been wonderful to see London as a tourist. We went on the Highgate Cemetary Tour (which is very near where I live and if any of you ever come to London, I implore you to wander around the overgrown grounds and marvel at the magnificient mausoleums.) We also shopped because a week without a visit to Dorothy Perkins (it's the new Topshop) is a week wasted. Then tomorrow we're off for a bit of culture and will visit the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. But mostly today I slumped in Carphone Warehouse, signing half my life away so I could get my hot hands on the new Nokia Chic phone because it's gold and it has pretty flowers on it and I'm such a girl.

Anyway, from next week, there should be the resumption of normal service round these parts. But while I've been away, you lot have certainly been busy! What a veritable slew of comments. So, please try and bear with me as I reply to them here and I will be trying to leave a few comments in your blogs over the next few days too.

So, firstly thanks to everyone who've left comments about Let's Get Lost especially Ellie (I'm afraid I haven't got time to give you any specific writing tips but if you have a poke through my blog archives, I did write a long post on this very topic.) Thanks also to Beth, the eloquent miss_teen_angst and Michelle and yes, the film Virgin Suicides, which came out quite a few years ago now, is based on the book of the same name and actually you've inspired me to re-watch it this weekend. And extra special thanks to Abby - I'm always on the lookout for new bands to fall in love with so I will definitely check out both your blog and your recs. And re: Dylan? They do? Then my work here is done!

And now the results of the film cast competition! Thank you to everyone who entered. Your responses made me smile and in a couple of instances, actually squeak in horror! For what it's worth, I'm impressed at your choices as I couldn't think of anyone who'd I cast as everytime the subject comes up I have such a clear idea of what my characters look like, I get quite side-tracked. The only person that was based on a character from TV was Isabel's Dad who was inspired by the dour and dark Wesley Wyndam-Pryce from the TV show, Angel, but from the later seasons when he was all conflicted and stubbly. Just so you know! Anyway, the winners, after much deliberation are...

PennyLane

I really was taken with the notion of Emily Browning (who I loved in the Lemony Snickert movie) as Molly and I was re-watching an episode of The OC this lunch-time and swooning over the actor who plays Trey!

Beyourowngirl

Again, I adore Evan Rachel Wood for not fitting the mould of most young Hollywood actresses, James Franco is possibly too good-looking to play Smith but he is a fox and you got extra points for Michelle Trachtenberg as Ice Princess is one of my guilty pleasures!

If you haven't left me your email addy, then leave me a comment so I can get your address and limited edition LGL vests will be winging their way to you.

I am going to run another competition with more vest giveaways in the next week or so, so don't be disheartened. And thanks again, to everyone who entered.

Now I think dinner is almost ready and I want to watch Veronica Mars so I bid you au revoir!

Love


Sarra x

Writer sans borders...

Just poking my head round the door before I leave to catch the Eurostar to say hi. LA was a blast and I'll post about that soon but I just wanted to remind les jeunes filles francais that I'll be doing a signing on Saturday morning at the Salon de Livre in Paris, please come and say, "Bonjour!"

And keep those competition entries coming. So far your answers have thrilled and horrified me in equal measure!

Au revoir

Sarra x

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

Hello pretty things

Writing this at twice the speed of light because I need to jump in the shower and wash off the gym sweat. I have a friend coming over this evening and there will be fish and chips with so much vinegar on them that it will hurt to eat them. There'll be some DVDs, possibly It Happened One Night and lots of wine, as I'm well over the legal drinking age! Ah, sleepovers never stop being fun.

So, before I say anything else, I just wanted to say a big thank you to HeartsOnFire and i'llnevertell for the beautiful comments about Let's Get Lost that you left on my last entry. I was deeply touched and also blushed a little. As I keep saying, it's a hugely personal book for me so I really appreciate it when it strikes such a resonant note with other people.

Now, I've been promising you a competition and I always try to keep my promises. My publishers have given me three very limited edition Let's Get Lost vests to give away. They're black, rather on the small side, with the cover image on them. To win one leave a comment telling me who you'd cast if you were making a movie from one of my books. Not just the boy and girl but any of the supporting characters too. Think about it because the prizes will go for the most original or interesting answers. And nobody is allowed to say that Adam Brody should play Smith! And don't forget to leave an email addy so I know where to contact you.

I'm afraid that I might not be able to update next Saturday as I'll be in LA interviewing someone for ELLE UK. But I might see if I can get access to a computer so one of my blog entries can be from somewhere glamorous! Then I'm in Paris after that. It all sounds impossibly cool I know, but not so much really. Especially as I spend most of my time in old jeans and a holey jumpers tapping away on my computer instead of going out and having adventures.

I'm now hard at work on my first book in a four book series. It's starting to come together, though a lot of what I'm writing now will probably get scraped as it's more important at this stage to just get the right voice going. But, hey, look how much I've written!

9,198 / 65,000 (14.2%)

Love you, mean it!

S x

He likes to read books written for girls...

Salut, ma petits anges...

I'm practising for my trip to Paris. My first ever press trip where I'll be doing a bunch of interviews (with a translator because I think doing an interview is a bit more hardcore than ordering une verre du vin blanc, s'il vous plait) and appearing at Salon de Livre on Saturday March 18th to do a signing. If any of you happen to be in Paris then, please come along!

In other news, I've now started writing my next book. In fact, I've written 5003 words exactly. It won't be out until next year and it's the first novel in a four book series. I think it's safe to tell you that, though unfortunately I can't go into more detail as yet. What I can tell you is that you'll get three books from me next year and the last book in the series at the beginning of 2008. If I stick to my deadlines. But as I'm pretty goal orientated I'm hoping that won't be a problem.

And of course, Diary Of A Crush and Let's Get Lost will be out in the States in June and um, October respectively.

But if you're missing my 'bitching' prose style (yes, those were sarcastic quote marks), I do write a monthly column for British ELLE, as well as various features for them. And there's a review and a short interview with me at the end of it, here: http://www.pink-world.co.uk/zine_readinggroup.html Please follow the exact link (you'll have to cut and paste it), otherwise you'll end up on a porn site!

So, onto your questions:

girl_with_the_most_cake: The LGL preview is a PDF file. I'm on a Mac so it just opens immediately but you might need to open the PDF application and then manually open the LGL chapter in that. I hope that makes sense. As far as I know there are no plans, as yet, to preview DOAC. That would be up to my US publishers.

Paint_box_pastel: Hopefully I've already answered most of your questions. You can find out more about the mysterious Emily Strange at www.emilystrange.com. Google is our friend!

So, that's it from me this week. I love that I'm sticking to my weekly updates

Live on

Sarra x

You Are What You Love...

Hello my little zabagliones...

The state of the Manning at this time on a Saturday is hungover and aching. We had a little Ellegirl reunion last night, which incidentally was probably one of the happiest periods of my life when I was shut in a room for six months, with some of my favourite people in the world, working on the first issue. There was much wine and reminiscing last night and I remember managing to set fire to the leather wallet that the check came in but after that it's all a blur. Then this morning I started on the running machine and weight reps at the gym and am in a thousand agonies. I'm fit for nothing, I tell you. Nothing!

So, I want to thank dreamer, Natasha, Stacey, Ellie, mutilated_bliss (I hope that's not your real name!) and Le-anne for being so effusive in your praise of Let's Get Lost. I'm still getting a real kick out of seeing it on the shelves in the various bookshops I've been in to and then re-arranging it into a more prominent position. I think all authors do that and if they say they don't, then they have to be lying!

Stacey - I know there are glitches on the microsite but thank you for pointing that one out because it had escaped me. They promise that they're working to fix it.

Le-anne - I think Nina meant to post your wonderful review at my microsite, although the automated star-letter thingy doesn't seem to be working.

Princess-rosie - Gosh I can't even remember what I was listeneing to when I wrote LGL. But I was definitely listening to Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People, which is why Anthems For The Seventeen Year Old Girl because the theme tune for the book. I was listening to a lot of emo stuff though; Death Cab For Cutie, Modest Mouse etc. Seth Cohen and I share the same record collection.

girl-with-the-the-most-cake - I was planning to give away a couple of signed copies of the book but now I'm hoping to get a couple of promo items from my publishers instead, which you won't be able to buy in the shop. Watch this space! And I got spoiled for this series of ANTM so I know who wins. Glad it wasn't that awful pageant girl who refused to cut her hair or Lisa who bugs me in a really special way. You're getting the new series this week, which I'm so jealous about!

lady_julieanne - I posted the CDs on Thursday night so they should be turning up imminently. And I'll let graceofmyheart go but I know for a fact that anyone who has the email cutiesnowgirl has to have got it from DOAC because it was an obscure in-joke between me and my friend, Sarah. Kinda funny though!

Nothing much else to report because my brain is really not working like it should. But I've finished full-time work for the time being so I can get up at nine every morning and on Monday I start my next book. I hope I can tell you a bit more next time I post.

Be good

Sarra x

If I could have a second skin I'd probably dress up in you...

Greetings

Especially if you're here for the first time and found this blog address in the back of Let's Get Lost. I want to thank you for all the comments you've left about the book. If you want to rave about it on amazon.co.uk, that would be cool with me too!

London is grey and rain-soaked today. But I'm back from the gym, all freshly showered, freshly pyjama-ed, listening to the new Belle And Sebastian album and with four episodes of The OC to watch after I've made some toast, so life is good.

A few things I need to say. My microsite: http://www.hodderkidsauthors.com/manning/ has been re-designed and updated. There's an interview with Molly from Guitar Girl, an article about crushing from Edie of Diary Of A Crush fame and an excerpt from Let's Get Lost up there too.

What else? I got an email from Nissa telling me about an IM chat she had with a boy from Egypt who has the same email address as Dylan in the DOAC books and that he's been bombarded with emails from my readers, some of whom have been to visit him. I'm quite concerned about this. Dylan is a fictional character. That means he's not real and not real boys do not have email addresses. Certainly when the books were first written, that email address was not operational. The books have now sold thousands of copies here in the UK and in France and Sweden and are just about to come out in the States. The email address can't be changed. But I hope that all of you would exercise caution on the internet and wouldn't email or chat with people you don't know. There are some really freaky types out there. This boy seems harmless enough but the thought that anyone would be irresponsible enough to meet up with someone anywhere just because they share an email address with a character in a book is seriously not cool. Please, please, please be careful.

OK, lecture over now. Josie and Lady Julieanne, sorry, I still haven't got those CDs in the post because I'm lame. I will make it happen this week.

Now Seth Cohen is calling to me and I'm powerless to resist...

Love Sarra x

Let's Get Lost goes on sale in the UK tomorrow!

I'm proud to announce that Let's Get Lost is available to buy from all good bookshops tomorrow, including Ottakers where it's Book Of The Month.

Although I love all my books equally, I'm especially proud of Let's Get Lost as there were times when I thought I'd never finish it. I guess this is the book that most made me feel like a proper writer as I put so much of myself in to it.

It's about a girl called Isabel who doesn't seem very likeable. She's one of the popular girls at school, the meanest of the mean girls. She rules her friends with an iron fist and a divide and rule philosophy. Despises her family. Keeps herself heartless and hard. Then she meets a boy called Smith and begins to unravel. All of us like to present a front to the world and keep the undesirable stuff hidden, but Isabel has it the wrong way round. And Smith finds her gooey soft centre, stirs it around and all of her secrets start spilling out.

I started the book about three months after my mother died and it was too painful and difficult to write. So I took a break to get Diary Of A Crush ready for publication, wrote Pretty Things and then took another look at Let's Get Lost. It's taken me three years to write, gone through about ten different drafts and if I'm brutally honest I cried every day as I wrote the last three chapters. But it's not all doom and gloom and woe is me. Like, all my books you'll find enough to make you smile including caustic one liners, smirky, know-it-all boys and tons of references to The OC.

I'd really love to know what you think of the book and Isabel, in particular. Be sure to review me on Amazon and/or leave a comment here. And Let's Get Lost will be out in the US and Canada in October, I think, of this year.



Smith walked fast with a loping gait, almost bouncing on the soles of his sneakers and I liked that he was so free, so unaware, not knowing that I was looking at him. Like when you’re on the bus and you stare into someone’s front room and you see them watching television or slumped on the sofa and it’s like you’re taking a tiny piece of them home with you.

He ambled into a couple of charity shops and rifled through battered piles of vinyl records and tattered paperbacks. I loitered by the racks of musty smelling polyester dresses - I was going for this whole melting into the walls vibe but I just looked really shifty if the suspicious attention I was getting from the blue rinse brigade manning the tills was anything to go by.

I hadn’t been able to get a good look at him before. It had been dark and there had been quantities of alcohol involved but daylight softened out the slant of his cheekbones and the hard lines of his jaw, so he looked less thuggish. Didn't know anything to lessen the effect of his nose. If you were being kind you'd call it aquiline, if you weren't, you'd call it beaky. And I could see those lips that I'd kissed - how they looked as pillowy as they'd felt. His hair was still ridiculous, he'd obviously never got intimate with a pair of straightening irons. But what I liked about him (and I did appear to like him, even though he had a stupid name and needed to stop kissing girls at parties because he thought they were other girls he'd kissed at other parties) was his serenity. There was something utterly calm about him, no matter how fast his elegant hands leafed through records or pored over books. It was if everything was out of focus except him.

He brushed past me on his way towards the door and I pressed myself against a rail of coats. I waited for the door to shut behind him, then cautiously slunk out in time to see him disappearing into the newsagents next door.

Luckily, I could pretend to read the ads for exotic Swedish massages while I peered through the window and watched Smith buy a packet of cigarettes and some chewing gum. As he was walking down the length of the shop, I realised my cover would be blown so I dived into the nearest doorway, which happened to be a hardware shop and looked with feigned interest at the display of screwdrivers and oooh, power saws. Imagine the damage I could do with one of them.

At first I thought it was the wind brushing against me, but then it happened again, someone was tapping me on the shoulder. Even before I turned round I knew it was him.

I’d forgotten how blue his eyes were. I wanted to compose sonnets in my head about ocean depths and cloudless skies because I was obviously suffering from severe sleep deprivation. He was frowning at me, this little furrowed line popping up between his eyebrows.

I felt like I’d finally been caught shoplifting. My cheeks were burning traffic light red as he fixed me with an intractable look. “Are you following me?”

Happy new year, you funny little frogs...

Ah, lots of reasons to cheer in 2006. One of my friends tells me that Nostradamus predicted that the world was going to end in August (hopefully not before my birthday on the 8th) but right now I'm excited that the new series of America's Next Top Model is showing in the UK, a new Belle And Sebastian album is coming out next month and Let's Get Lost finally goes on sale on February 6th, I think.It's Book Of The Month at Ottakers so go and buy it there!

I've also heard that it will keep that title when it comes out in the States in October, which I'm really chuffed about. And Diary Of A Crush is being published en Francais by the lovely people at Pocket Jeunesse in March, and I'm being sent to Paris to do some press. Oh la la!

I'm also likely to be doing a panel or something similar in May at the Birmingham Young Readers Event and I hope to be out and about later in the year, possibly at the Edinburgh Festival in August (apocalypses not with standing!)

I've been getting a lot of letters asking for biographical information for book reports. Sadly, my age and marital status are between me and my God, but there is a ton of info about me all over the interpipe. If you google my name, using speechmarks, the first page that comes up has links to an live chat I did with the BBC's Blast programme (and all spelling mistakes and bad punctuation are there's), my US author page at Penguin which has an interview with me and if you go to http://www.hodderkidsauthors.com/manning/, you'll find my very own microsite, which has all sorts of lovely content about my books and will soon have a sneak preview of the first chapter of Let's Get Lost. There really isn't that much else to know about me. I'm a very boring person in real life. Right now, it's Saturday night and I'm about to eat lots of vegetables and watch an old black and white movie (All Aout Eve.)

Oh, and the winners of the haiku competition were.... dum, dum dum... LadyJulieanne and Josie. I'll be emailing you in the next couple of days. And if you were unlucky, turn that frown upside down because I'll do a new competition in the next week or so to win a signed copy of Let's Get Lost.

Keep on keeping on!

Love

Sarra x

And so the year turns a full circle...

Happy Holidays, gentle readers

I hope you all have a stress-free Crimbo, get tons of wonderful gifts and eat as much as you like without feeling bilious.

I'm going to my Dad, who lives about six miles away, and will be cooking Christmas dinner for him and my sister, nieces, maybe my brother and anyone else who's around. Note to self: Remember to pick up the turkey you ordered from M & S.

It's been a very exciting end of year for me as I signed with an agent on Monday. I've never had one, though most writers do, but I seemed to spend so much time doing boring business things and not enough time writing. I now have a film and TV agent too so hopefully this time next year I'll be in Hollywood asking Jake Gyllenhaal if he wouldn't mind just whipping off his top before he auditions. I wish!

I thought it would be sweet to do a little round-up of all my favourite things of the year for your reading pleasure...

Favourite tunes

Milk Bottle Symphony - Saint Etienne

I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star - The Boy Least Likely To

I Never - Rilo Kiley

Hung Up - Madonna

The Only One - Ready Made FC

Travellin' Song - Bright Eyes

Another Sunny Day - Belle And Sebastian


Favourite Books

The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Here Kitty Kitty by Jardine Libaire

Twins by Marcy Dermansky

Hairstyles Of The Damned by Joe Meno

Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland


Favourite TV shows

Veronica Mars

Lost

The O.C (Seth + Summer 4 Eva!)

Gilmore Girls

House

Little Britain

Alias

(God, I love my US TV!)


Favourite films

Serenity

Me, You And Everyone We Know

2046

Sin City


I haven't seen a lot of films this year, mostly DVDs but there are a ton coming out in the UK soon that I want to seel I Walk The Line, Capote, Brokeback Mountain, The Producers, Memoirs Of A Geisha and March Of The Penguins, aw!


So, as I draw to a close, I wanted to do something a little special to finish my last post of the year. I always make a mix CD that I send out with my Christmas cards that has my favourite songs from the year. All the tunes I mentioned above are on the 2005 one, plus some others and you could win a copy of it. Yes, you! All I want you to do is leave a comment but it has to be a haiku about one of your favourite things of the year. Don't know what a haiku is? Look it up in a dictionary. And don't forget to include your email address. (There could be more than one winner too!)

So, happy holidays once again and see you in the New Year.

Love

Sarra

Well, it must be Saturday...

I'm actually remembering to update in a timely, every seven days fashion this week. I could be looking at tiles in a big bathroom shop on the Holloway Road (my shower cubicle is on the verge of imminent collapse) but instead I'm munching toast and staying indoors where it's warm and I can rip some tunes (currently Snow Patrol) on to my iPod. Actually I've just come back from the gym and I have that annoying, post-swim closed up ear thing going on. I know when I least expect it a warm trickle of water will suddenly run out of my ear, which usually feels quite pleasant.

I'm gearing up for the end of the year, in that I'm thinking about all the great songs and books and films I've seen so I can do a great, big list for my last post of 2005. But when I'm not doing that, I'm very hard at work. I've just had the outline for my next book approved and I'm going to start on that this week. I don't want to give too much away but it's going to be a little lighter than Let's Get Lost and I'm going to write it from the boy's POV. Except it's not so much boy meets girl as boy is related to girl and she's driving him to an early grave. There probably won't be as much dry humping in this book as my other ones but I hope that won't put you off.

And now my sofa and the evil crack this is Sudoku is calling to me...

Love

Sarra x

Stop, look and listen...

Obviously my vow to be more diligent about posting here went horribly wrong. But it's late Saturday afternoon, the central heating's toasty, I'm in my Old Navy micro-fleece PJ bottoms and the most wild thing I'm going to do this evening is order a Chinese even though I didn't go to the gym today. It's like emo never happened!

If that sounds terribly unglam, I did go to LA a couple of weeks ago to write a piece for British ELLE. It took almost a day to get threre door to door, I stayed in Hollywood for 48 hours, then took another day to get home. And woah, the jetlag!

At the moment I'm working on an outline for my next book. I know a lot of you are interested in being writers so you might find this useful but when I want my publishers to approve my next idea I give them a chapter by chapter synopsis of what the book will be about and also use that as my outline for when I write the book. I start off with the title, then the basic premise (which is a paragraph summing up the entire book in a couple of lines) and then do a really detailed breakdown of what happens in each chapter. This is a really good way of getting your idea right and thinking about how you want to layer the plot and build the suspense. When I'm doing my outlines, I usually find myself coming up with actual bits of dialogue and stuff (why, yes that would be the technical term!) that usually end up in the book too.

The basic premise for Let's Get Lost was this:

This is a poignant but snarky story about losing your mother, when you’ve just started the necessary process of pushing her away in order to discover who you are. It’s not page after page of weepy moping and whining. Isabel is queen bee of a posse of teen divas, in embroiled in a dirtybadwrong love affair with an older boy and has a bratty little brother to deal with. But her biggest stumbling block is a father who can’t handle a teenage daughter and always observes a six inch personal space bubble every time they’re in the same room but at the heart of it all, is a story about a girl trying to find sense in something that is completely senseless.

Talking of Let's Get Lost, the cover is now my user pic. And the book is available for pre-order on www.amazon.co.uk. And that's about all the news that's fit to print...

Love

Sarra x

So, tonight that I might see...

Hello Ladies

Not much has been happening chez Manning. I'm wading through proofs of Diary Of A Crush to get them ready for US publication next summer. The three books look so cute! They'll totally rock any bookshelf!

Mostly I've been trying to ignore the loud bang of fireworks and squinting a lot. I've started this new Ortho K treament to correct my blind as a batness because I was riskng life and limb every time I took my glasses off to go swimming. I didn't fancy laser surgery but found that I could wear these special lenses at night while I sleep and then during the day I can actualy see. Well, I will be able to actually see. I started it on Friday night and I now have near perfect vision in my right eye,; my left eye is very weak so it will take more work. It's very strange not to be wearing my Enid Coleslaw specs.

Also, I'm getting comment spam from some stupid person with a 'make money from home' website. Does anyone know how to block users from your blog? I already work from home quite happily without signing up for some bogus get rich quick scheme!

Love

Sarra x

Things that go ker-thump in the night

Happy Halloween, gentle readers.

Instead of doing anything constructive I thought I'd post a list of things that scare the living crap out of me. (Yes, I do contain language that some people might find offensive!)

1. Anything with mustard, sunflower seeds or poppy seeds in them.
Violently allergic, you see.

2. Poltergeists.
Writing in blood on people's walls and moving the furniture round is not cool.

3. The Bush administration
Any girl should have nightmares about losing her personal freedoms and reproductive rights.

4. Queens Avenue
The street behind me which has very poor lighting and is rumoured to be cursed. I NEVER walk down it late at night.

5. Adam Sandler
Urgh! His smug, smirky face gives me the heebie jeebies.

6. Minnie The Moocher by Cab Calloway
When I was little I used to cry every time I heard this song because it's so creepy.

7. Every horror film ever made.
Even the really rubbish ones. I shriek and scream everytime there's a bang or someone jumps out on the stupid teenagers who know there's a homicidal, axe-wielding maniac on the lose but still decide to split up and look for him. Like, whatever!

So, what makes you frightened?

Love S x

The wanderer returns...

Greetings, girls

I am a bad blogger, or an infrequent one. Either way I haven't been updating this as regularly as I should. But I solemnly promise to do better. Especially as I'm finishing up a work thing early this week and will then be at home on a "writing vacation." I'm taking the rest of the year off from full-time work to make a start on my grown-up book, get an agent (I don't have one of them but I hear they're handy to have around) and top hopefull start my next teen book. I'm working on a proposal for my publisher right now and I hope they like it too because I'm pretty excited about it.

We're just putting the finishing touches to Let's Get Lost for publication in the UK next February. You can pre-order it from Amazon right now! Though I'm reliably informed that the title is unsuitable for the US market so will change before it gets published over there. We're looking at different options right now. Sigh...

So, yeah, just letting you know I'm still alive and that I haven't been mown down by a lorry or caught bird flu. And I will endeavour to be better at updating in the coming weeks.

Love

S x

Strictly filler...

Hello pop tarts

Y'know, I realised I hadn't posted here for a while and now I'm staring at a blank screen and can't think of anything interesting to tell you.

Hmmm, well, Diary Of A Crush is being prepared for its US debut. The three books will be coming out in, I think, July 2006, just after Pretty Things is being released in paperback. You've probably read me answering questions about the Crush trilogy on this blog but you'll finally get a chance to read it.

This is the blurb that will go at the back of the book:

Sarra Manning says: "Diary Of A Crush started out as a fictional column for the now sadly defunct, J17, a British teen mag where I spent four happy years. I got to write about some of my favourite things in DOAC: art boys, vintage dresses and heart-stopping kisses and was amazed when I realised that the J17 readers shared my obsessions.

I think Edie struck a chord with so many girls because she's not perfect. She's awkward and shy and her hair never does what she wants it too. But she doesn't stay the same – during the course of the three books, she starts to grow up and take charge of her life and her relationship with Dylan, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I wrote Diary Of A Crush over four years and it was a wonderful experience that led to many amazing things, including a book deal and this moment on a sunny Sunday afternoon as I write these words and pinch myself at the thought that Diary Of A Crush is now going global and that American readers will have a chance to hopefully fall in love with Edie and Dylan."

The Diary Of A Crush trilogy are Sarra Manning's latest novels, preceeded by the books Guitar Girl and Pretty Things. Her varied career has included a long stint as entertainment editor on J17, launching and then editing Ellegirl UK, before becoming editor of BBC's What To Wear magazine. She now writes for many UK publications including The Guardian, ELLE, Red, and Grazia, and also works as a consultant for a number of UK magazine publishers.

Ms Manning lives in London with her disobedient dog, Dino, a mongrel whom she saved from an uncertain future.

And Let's Get Lost, or the Big, Depressed Teen Novel, as I like to call it, will be out in the UK in February and out in the States in November 2006 (in hardback.)

I'm prouder of this than just about anything I've ever written. It's quite dark and you probably won't like Isabel, the heroine, an awful lot at the start of the book. But I think she'll end up tugging at your hearts. This is the official description that will be sent out - you get to see here it first!

Some girls are born to be bad...Isabel is one of them. Her
friends are terrified of her, her teachers can't get through to her...her
family doesn't understand her. And that's just the way she likes it. See,
when no one can get near you, no one will know what keeps you awake at
night, what you're afraid of, what has broken your heart...But then Isabel meets
the enigmatic Smith, who can see right through her act. Bit by bit he
chips away at her armour, and though she fights hard to keep hold of her
cool, and her secrets, Isabel's falling for him, and coming apart
at the seams when she does...A poignant, sometimes dark, and utterly
heart-breaking novel, told with all the author's trademark wit and sharp observation...

Nothing else to say but that you should all go and see Serenity at your local picture house and I'll be at the Cheltenham Literary Festival this Saturday to run a workshop on magazine journalism. All the places are booked but if you're already in the workshop, don't be shy. And please laugh at all my crap jokes.

Love, love, love

Sarra x

Oh, the things I have seen...

Back from my travels to NYC now. And though I'm barely lucid, I wanted to do a quick post. Firstly to thank Eve, the one reader who actually turned up to the signing that never was (loved your legwarmers) and secondly to give you a heads up that I'm doing a workshop on magazine (and maybe tawdry teen fiction) writing at the Cheltenham Literary Festival on October 8th. I can't work out for the life of me how to make active links on this blog but if you go to: http://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/whats_on/literature_festival.html, you should be able to find out the relevant details. I think there's only a few places left so hurry!

And I was going to tell you all about going to the freak show at Coney Island and how Bethany Hamilton is one of the rudest madams I've ever come across but my jet lag, it kills me.

(Message to Rhi: You should be able to find my email addy in the back of my books.)

Are we there yet?

Just emerging from packing hell (where is my huge fold-out wash bag that I bought specifically for this kind of occasion?) to remind you that I'll be at Books Of Wonder on West 18th Street, NYC between 12 am and 2pm this Saturday (September 17th) to a brief talk, a question and answer session and signing. Please, come along if you're in town. Bring your friends! Go to www.booksofwonder.net for more details.

See you on the other side...

Urgh! Getting up early on a Sunday sucks. But I'm guzzling coffee, should be making sandwiches and waiting for my Dad to come and pick me up as we're going on our annual jaunt to Devon.

I know that going on holiday with your Dad sounds uncool but for a week I get to channel my inner Seth Cohen and live like a pensioner for a week. Long drives, regular rest breaks, a bit of Scrabble. Though last time we went I was hopelessly behind on Pretty Things and had to take my laptop. And lo, Walker and Daisy's road trip was born! This time I'm taking some new teen novels I wanted to check out and far too many Sudoku puzzles. We'll be listening to an eclectic mix of CDs in the car: Frank SInatra, Bobbie Gentry, Saint Etienne and The Boy Most Likely To and I really need some more coffee...

Be good!

Sarra x

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?

Diary Of A Crush - I gave you the best years of my life...

I spent over four years writing Diary Of A Crush as a column (and three cover-mounted books) for the fantastic and now sadly departed J17 magazine.

I fell totally in love with Dylan and Edie and loved living in their world and getting to tell their story and watch them grow up. The column led to some great things for me; mainly my book deal. I was also so pleased when I finally got to rework the series slightly and have it on sale in bookshops.

It's slightly strange to me that a lot of the letters I get about the trilogy all ask when I'm going to write the next book in the series because they want to know what happens to Dylan and Edie. I'm like, you've already had three books. That's your lot! The series finished at a definite cutting-off point with Edie and Dylan as a couple who were moving in different directions but staying together. And as I've said so many times that I think the words might be stuck on my forehead, it's a teen series and writing about a pair of 20-somethings is moving DOAC somewhere that it shouldn't go.

For a long time I didn't even own the copyright to DOAC, which meant that if the copyright owners had got someone else in to write more books there wouldn't have been anything I could have done about it. I do now own the copyright but I still feel very strongly that I have nothing left to write about Edie and Dylan and there are other stories that I want to tell more. If I did to write some more books in the Crush 'verse as I call it, they certainly wouldn't have Edie and Dylan in the starring roles. And more books would only happen if the trilogy does amazingly well when it gets released in the States next year.

So when I get asked if Dylan and Edie are still together or if they got married, I'm not really sure how to answer. To me, they're frozen in time on Camden Road, Dylan's head stuck out of the window as Edie runs after the car until it's a little speck in the distance. I know people love happy endings, I don't. I like slightly messy, ambiguous endings. Edie and Dylan got their happy ending and what happened next is as much up to you guys and the little daydreams you have about them, like I have my little daydreams about what happened after the credits started rolling at the end of Lost In Translation.

Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love that Diary Of A Crush has had such an amazing effect on the people who've read it. Dylan and Edie are hugely important to me, but their moment has passed. And being ornery and difficult, when I get emails telling me that if I "fob" you off with any more "excuses" about why I won't write any more DOAC books and that you'll write to my publishers and complain about me, it has the opposite effect.

So, to sum up. No more Edie and Dylan. Maybe some more Diary Of A Crush in the dim and distant future. Don't hurt my feelings with really aggressive emails. And stop sending me chain and spam emails before the back of my head explodes!

Love

Sarra x

A lazy girl writes

Hello Ladies

Sorry for being such a lame slacker and not posting for a while. I've been really busy - not with the book writing but with work stuff. Sadly, I still have to work for living! At the moment I'm doing some freelance shifts at Grazia magazine as well as writing a column for Elle UK and doing my first piece for The Guardian. Then it's a month doing some development work on a new magazine. Luckily I'm taking most of September off so I can have two holidays because I'm greedy. A week in Devon with my Dad who'll let me hog the car CD player and doesn't get angry if I want to read a book instead of talking to him and then nearly a fortnight in New York City where I'll be popping in to see my publishers but also doing lots of shopping and hanging out with some of my best friends. Roll on September.

I'm waiting for page proofs of Let's Get Lost to come back from the copy editor and if I can work out how to do it, I'll give you a sneak preview of the UK cover next time I post. It's by Ray Smith who did the UK cover of Pretty Things, which you should be able to see on this page, and it's so beautiful it makes me want to cry.

Finally, can I just put on my stern hat for a moment? I love getting your emails and I do read them all. I also love getting the comments that you post. But I don't love getting spam emails about software doodads or chain letters or getting added to IM buddy lists. So, please don't send them to me! There, lecture over.

And now I have to go and empty all the pots and pans out of my kitchen cupboard so I can mend the carousel which collapsed last night. My life is decidedly lacking in excitement.

Love

Sarra x

London calling...

Hey pop kids

I hope everyone's well after the awful tragedy of yesterday. I had a very slow journey into work on the bus as the tube station was closed, saw lots of ambulances and police cars outside University College Hospital on Gower Street but didn't discover what had happened until I got to the office and watched it unfold on the TV.

It was shocking to see familiar scenes of the city I've lived in all my life wrecked by bombs and panic. I hope all of you and your loved ones are safe. I spent the entire day phoning and emailing my friends, and getting a ton of emails back especially as friends in America woke up to the news. Then a long trek home. Got a lift, walked a mile or so and then got another lift from my sister who'd driven six miles in from the suburbs so she could take me back to my house.

I love London more than anything. My family came here as immigrants from Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century to escape persecution and I feel the city flowing through my veins. It's where my family live, where most of my friends are and it inspires me. Now that Let's Get Lost is finally finished I'm working on my first grown-up book and it's all about my London from the Camden clubs of my wild teenage years to the Soho drinking dens of my early 20's and beyond to right now where I live in a beautiful part of North London, a few miles from where I grew up and on a summer's day I can look out and see the whole city laid out before me, sun glinting off the buildings, red brick Edwardian houses all lined up but beautiful woods five minutes away.

And being a Londoner is to be special. To be unflappable and practical in the face of whatever anyone wants to throw at us and to never lose that dry sense of humour that sees us through the bad times. I love London...

Post and run...

A real quickie while I guzzle down some coffee as I'm doing some part-time work on a magazine at the moment. The early mornings are not pretty when I've got used to getting up at 9.30 every day. Oh dear...

Anyway, someone (very sorry but I can't remember your name) asked if Diary Of A Crush was available in the States. Well, you can buy it on import from Amazon.com but it is actually going to be released by my US paperback publishers, Puffin early next year. They're just sorting out the artwork at the moment!

And now I must have more coffee before I brave the tube in rush hour. Have a good day.

S x

Nothing short of total procrastination...

If I put my mind to it, I'll have finished the final draft of Let's Get Lost tomorrow and can spend Sunday doing fun things like going to the cinema. Instead I'm sitting here and staring out of the window at a grey sky as it tries really hard to thunderstorm and realise that I've just spent two hours faffing about now 5 minutes actually working on the book. That's not a good work/faffing about ratio!

In order to waste even more time, here are some things that I'm really obsessed about right now.

TomKat

That would be the weird, whirlwind romance of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. I'm sorry, Kate Holmes - she's officially changing her name. I don't know. What ever would Pacey say.

Tales From Turnpike House - Saint Etienne

This is the new CD from Saint Etienne, one of my favourite bands. It tells the story of 24 hours in the life of a block of flats and the people who live there. I love the way Saint Etienne are, for me, the sound of London; they're dirty pop, sad love songs, bleak optimism.

Lost

This is a drama series that's been on in the States that I did not download from the internet because that's illegal and wrong. It's by the guy who made Alias and it's about the plane that crashes onto this weird tropical island and it's all spooky and the survivors all seem to be there for a specific reason. I think they're going to show it on Channel Four soon.

Gmail

Email from Google. It's so sleek and shiny and Hotmail is so 1999!

People thinking that The Faders inspired Guitar Girl

Whatever! Ever think that maybe Guitar Girl inspired The Faders?!


OK, I really should go and work on the book until it's time for Big Brother...

S x

Happy Father's Day!

Hello pop kids

I guess, like most of you, I'm going to be celebrating Father's Day with my Dad, and the rest of my family. We'll eat some food, share some stories and probably have at least one argument before we part company. It's kinda what families do. Though I'll be having a dad/daughter movie and meal bonding event later on in the week, when it's just the two of us.

But right now I must get back to the new and final draft of Let's Get Lost, which I should have delivered to my publishers early next week. Then there might actually be some fun entries on this blog, instead of boring you all with tales of editing down my convoluted sentences.

Hope you and your Dads have a great day.

S x

Things that make my heart go pitter patter

* First cup of coffee of the day.

* Being in the pool on a sunny day and swimming right under the skylight where the water's sun-dappled.

* Being all clean and post-showered with just-shaved legs and then sliding into a freshly laundered bed and snuggling down with a good book as the rain pelts against the Velux windows.

* Hanging out with good friends and giggling at whatever DVD we're watching before we raid the fridge for Munchies.

* Watching my niece come into the world.

* The smell of freesias first thing in the morning.

* French Disko by Stereolab on my iPod and bouncing down the road, or a long bus journey so I can get in one complete play of If You're Feeling Sinister.

* When I lose weight and my jeans get too big and slip down my hips.

* Good hair days, good eyebrow days, good fashion ensemble days and my signature slash of red lipstick.

* Emails from teenage girls who completely understand.

* Still being able to believe in love.

* Anything with polka dots.

* Walking through Highgate Woods and feeling at one with nature before getting the bus the rest of the way home.

* Aw, dogs sitting in cars with their heads stuck out of the window and their tongues wagging in the breeze.

* Imagining the boy who hasn't given up on finding me.

* The last paragraph of Guitar Girl.

* My rich, inner life...

Drive-by posting...

Just a quickie because I have to hand in a big article first thing tomorrow morning for a magazine and I need to get back to it - though actually being a writer is one of those jobs where you never shake that Sunday afternoon feeling of having too much homework!

I forgot to mention for anyone here from the US or Canada that Pretty Things is now available to buy in the shops or on the interpipe. And I'm absolutely obsessed with the new Saint Etienne single, Side Streets. In fact, I've just made the fatal mistake of setting up an account at the Apples iTunes store, which makes it far too easy to purchase huge amounts of music at the click of my mouse.

Anyway, back to the grindstone...

From your head to the page...

Hello

It's a glorious sunny day in London. I've just been for a walk through Highgate Woods with a friend and now I'm back at my desk getting ready to hunker down for the afternoon with the manuscript for Let's Get Lost. Really though, I want to go outside and play!

Time to answer a question though. SweetSugarRush asked: I write stories, well try to, and i have great plots for them in my head but i can't seem to get them off the ground. Do you have any ideas which could help me get them off the ground and onto my paper?

I know exactly what you mean! I carried Guitar Girl around in my head for years before I ever got a chance to write it and I learnt so much during the process. Sometimes writing can seem like this big, mystical thing when actually I've found that I need to be really organised about it.

So the first thing I do is write a really detailed chapter by chapter synopsis. I usually know where the story is going to start and where it's going to end and vaguely how it's going to get there but it needs to be fleshed out. So for Guitar Girl, my chapter synopsis started like this:

Chapter one
Molly starts a band as a laugh to play a birthday party for a friend. It’s just her, Jane and Tara. Molly writes a bunch of songs about everything from secretly being a superhero to the crush she has on the boy who works in her local corner shop. They go down a storm.

Chapter two
They actually get a proper paid gig and at the end of it, Dean approaches Molly and basically tells her that he’s joining the band. They arrange an audition/rehearsal and he turns up with T. It sounds better, almost like a proper band and the two boys are in. They even decide on a name, The Hormones
They take a while to get used to being in a band. The three girls are still at school and Dean and T have McJobs. Molly concentrates on studying for her A-levels and writing songs about mermaids and the little toys that you get in those plastic eggs outside supermarkets, while Dean helps her with the guitar parts.


You don't have to follow it to the letter and you'll probably discover that as you start writing, the story may just decide to tell itself.

The other thing I do is little character sketches so I know exactly who I'm writing about. So, again for Guitar Girl, I started with:

Molly, 17. Not one of the in-crowd at school but secure in the knowledge that she’s her own person. She’s quirky, very funny, has her own style and her own little clique of friends. She plays guitar, sings and writes a lot of the songs.
Jane is Molly’s best friend. She plays keyboards, tambourine and anything else that’s needed. She’s pretty and flaky.
Dean, 20. Other guitarist. Meets Molly at a gig and they decide to form a band. They argue all the time but also seem to really connect.
T, 20, is Dean’s friend and gets drafted in to play bass at the eleventh hours. He’s very cynical and withdrawn.
Tara is a friend of Molly’s who plays the drums. She’s the one constant element in the band and always tries to keep the peace and not take sides. She’s secretly in love with Molly.
Paul is in his late 20’s and becomes the band’s manager once they become quite well known.


But before I start writing, I go into more detail so I think about what books my characters are reading, what they're listening to, where they buy clothes, what they do on a Saturday night and so it almost feels like they're in the room with me or a voice in my head saying, "I would never talk like that!"

Another cool thing to do is to make a mix CD of the songs that you characters would listen to or that you think really captures their essence.

These are all good little tactics that you can use to plan out your story and take it a stage where it's not just an idea in your head but something that demands to be told. When it actually comes to writing, though everyone's different. Some writers I know set aside a certain amount of time every day to write and are really strict about the amount they write. And others are quite happy to sprawl out on the sofa, with the TV on and their laptops perched on the coffee table.

One cute thing I like to do though is measure my word count on a little bar so I can keep track of how I'm doing. I like this one best of all:

754 / 2,000 (37.0%)

You can change the colour and post your word count in your blog so your friends can cheer you on!

I hope that helps. These are all the devices I use but every writer finds things that works for them. Just remember there's no right or wrong way to do it, it's whatever you're happiest doing that makes your story come alive.

Good luck!

Books Written For Girls - part one

Hey ladies

Sorry I haven't been around for a few days. I have quite severe food allergies and had a bad attack on Friday morning, which kinda knocked the stuffing out of me. I'm fine now - in fact, I've just finished lying on my living room floor doing a Pilates workout and before I head back to book revisions, Josie posted that: ive read all the books i own and im stuck for a new one to read, as im just reading the end of Pretty things and its an amazing book, so do you have any good books to recommend that are in the same style as your own?

Well, I don't know about in the same style as me, simply because I don't read a lot of teen fiction. Mostly because I find that when I'm writing, I don't want to be accidentally influenced by the books I'm reading, especially if they're in a similar genre. And the other reason is that I don't like a lot of teen fiction and find it really obviously written by adults who wouldn't know what to say to a fifteen-year-old girl if she bit them on the nose. How controversial!

Anyway, having said that this is the first in an occasional series of books written for and about teenagers that I really love. Some you might have heard of, some you might not but they all mean a lot to me. (Oh, and they should all be available through Amazon.)

Girl by Blake Nelson
"And then I felt daring and wrote how Carla had been so nice and how me and Rebecca thought she was such a bitch because we were afraid of her and how people always hate each other if they're dressed cooler than them or if they're artsy or pretentious or whatever. But then I crossed the Carla part out and recopied the page but then I decided to leave it in and I had to recopy it again. It took two frozen yoghurts and three coffees to get it all done but I was so excited and I signed it, "See you" and kissed every corner of the page. And then I ran down to the post office and kissed the enevelope ten more times and drew some flowers on it and dropped it in. And the minute it fell through the slot I felt sick from nerves and caffiene and yoghurt."

Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
"We knew the pain of winter wind rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuritating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt so compelled to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were. We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colours went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fahtom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them."

Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
"I met Cyril lin the wood as arranged. I told him what to do next. He listened to me with a mixture of dread and admiration. The he took me in his arms, but I could not stay, as it was getting late. I was surprised to find that I did not want to leave him. If he had been searching for some means of attaching me to himself, he had certainly found it. I kissed him passionately. I even longed to hurt him, so that he woould not be able to forget me for a single moment all the evening, and dream of me all night long. I could not bear the thought of the night without him."


I'll be reccing more books in the future. And over the next week, I'll try to answer some of the questions you've left for me. Have a sunny Sunday!