We’ve all heard the well-worn metaphor about how books are like babies. We create them, nurture them, and (if we’re lucky) finally bring them proudly out into the world for all to coo over and marvel at. Or, if they’re rather more “difficult” babies, to flat-out ignore and shoot evil glances at when they scream the house down. And write bad reviews about on Amazon… okay, the metaphor rather breaks down there I grant you. In fact, I’m here today to tell you exactly why books are nothing like babies...

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Five cherry stones lay at the bottom of the winter white glazed bowl amid the dregs of single cream that had evaded the attentions of my spoon in spite of my best efforts.



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Today's World Book Day event was a success. And it was enjoyable. We had a decent turnout for the reading, which was good. And they all seemed to like my stories and the one, written for World Book Day here in the north west, by Zoe Lambert.

I think the most pleasing thing from my point of view was how well the writing group members read - they were all really great. So well done, them.

It was also pleasing to raise almost £80 for Book Aid - that's a fair few books.

So thanks to all who came, who gave up their Thursday lunchtimes and to all you supercool authors who donated books.

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Today has been a long and intense one, and I will blog about it at some point, but in the meantime, one more comp:

March 30th: Short FICTION Third Annual New Writer competition: Prize is £300 plus publication in Issue 3 of Short FICTION (due out September 2009). Writers without fiction book publication (of novel or short stories) are eligible. Entries must be of previously unpublished work (in magazine or online). Submitted stories must be under 5000 words. There is no theme restriction.
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Phillipa Ashley is a freelance copywriter/journalist and talented author of contemporary romantic fiction. Her first novel won the Romantic Novelist Association’s Joan Hessayon New Writers Award, and The Little Black Dress imprint will publish her latest book, ‘It Should Have Been Me’, today!


Which 3 writers, dead or alive, would you invite to dinner?
Jane Austen, Ian Rankin and Bill Bryson

Favourite desktop snack?
My daughter’s home made cakes or a Snickers flapjack.

Longhand first or straight to computer?
Straight to computer unless I’m on holiday. Otherwise longhand.

A writer should never…
Let other people’s prejudices prevent them from writing the kind of books they want to.



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On Monday I was at the Royal Society, as Pepys might have said, always being at the cutting edge of the establishment of his day, for the launch of a book co-written by a friend of mine, Nicholas Beale, with the particle physicist Professor John Polkinghorne. I've not often been to that wonderfully grand, white building in Carlton House Terrace, but I never cease to be awed - once I've recovered from entering under the gaze of its founder, one of my favourite monarchs, Charles II - at the history of science which surrounds you: Newton looking mad, Faraday looking sensible, Wren, Hooke, Davy, Huxley, Kelvin, Rutherford, and so on, portrait after portrait, room after room. The book, Questions of Truth, is about the interface between two belief systems which attempt to make sense of the universe: religion and science. And the launch took the form of a fascinating panel discussion between distinguished scientists, none of whom had any difficulty in reconciling the two by virtue of having thought long and hard and clearly about what that reconciliation consisted of. There were then questions from the floor, which were, for the most part, civilised and scholarly versions (as befitted a room and a platform full of FRSs) of the usual debates.

But one answer really caught my interest. The question concerned the reductiveness of a certain kind of science, which believes that everything which matters about the world and human experience can - or will be - explained, if we can only break things down into small enough particles. And one of the speakers described how Nobel laureate physicist Martin Nowak has said that science has spent the last forty years doing just that, and now it's time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again: to reassemble everything that we now understand so much better, and try to see what we've actually got, and how it explains the world we experience.


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I've been thinking a lot lately about why I write. Like any good narrative psychologist I automatically turned to the story of my life and tried to remember when I first loved writing. I cast my mind back to school, as far back as I could remember into the blue and green splattered paint, the sparkling new decimal coins in their blue plastic folder and the tick-tick-tick of a measuring wheel until I reached a poem.
I was six years old and I wrote this poem:

In winter trees are bare
And robins are in the air
Children sledge on a hill
Hurray, hurray,
Off, off and away.
And what a lovely sight,
Snowflakes are falling
All gentle and white.

I can remember my teacher blushing pink and taking the poem from me, asking my mother who had written it. Of course, she too thought I had copied it from somewhere and rushed me home to scan the only poetry book we owned, by Patience Strong. I was punished for lying about that poem. I did write it.



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The publicity and posters and listings and stuff for the local festival are all out. Which is good for raising awareness and promoting the festival and the great people coming here to read and perform.

But.

It's also meant that over the past couple of weeks, since said promo's been out there, I've been asked what I'm doing for the festival, more and more, - a question quickly followed by: Why Not?

When I was first asked it was easy to be polite and diplomatic. But as I'm getting the same question more frequently it's becoming that little bit more difficult to maintain that level of un-grumpiness. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind people asking, I'm certainly not grumpy with them. I just wish I could tell them something more positive. Something other than I'd have loved to be involved and I did try.

Some of you might remember I drew a line under it a little while ago.

Anyway.

On a more positive note, I'm back on the radio tomorrow (at a little after 10 am - you can listen online) via telephone, burbling more about the World Book Day event, which starts at 11.

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I was recently interviewed by Falcata Times (I knew I'd make it into the FT one day) about how I came to write Changeling, what my influences were, my loves and hates, my favourite characters to write for, and how fish show me nothing but disdain.

To get a pre-publication look at the interview, you can go to

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Yes, Ghent is fabulous and not because it seems to have a chocolate-shop-to-person ratio of 1:1, but because it has a coffee shop with Free WiFi!

Yay, back to my own keyboard, back to Google and Facebook not in Flemish (that was tough). I came here for the day, and despite the persistent drizzle, had a lovely wander in the older part of town, which has, of course, been overtaken by MacDonalds et al, but still retains great charm.

Unfortunately, the anxiety I have been suffering from for the past few months at home, related to the thyroid and hormone fluctuations, has followed me here. It means, as a very wise friend told me, that where before I may have felt a tiny amount of anxiety in, say, a new place, now that the anxiety "tap" has been loosened, that same situation releases a flood of it. It's strange and uncomfortable, but being online and doing the things I am used to doing definitely helps calm me. I am sure it will pass, as I get the hormonal and glandular stuff under control.

A quick, highly scientific observation from three days in Belgium: all the people, almost without exception, are skinny. Not slim, skinny. And there are chocolates everywhere. Conclusion: chocolate makes you thin. You heard it here first.........

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