It is a truth universally acknowledged that I am too short and my hair is too mental for me to ever make it on TV. I am, however, an old hack at the radio lark, having done time (too much time) as the breakfast show newsreader on a popular London radio station (output consists of Lighthouse Family, Sting, and Leann Rimes. Can you guess what it is yet?). But this is me on the other side of the microphone, as it were, being interviewed about Paradise, politics and My So Called Life, on last week’s Litopia After Dark literary salon (no absinthe, or tortured poets in this one though, just me and the amazing-accented, and one man e-book phenomenon Scott Nicholson):
http://litopia.tv/kh
A face for radio
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Book club blues…
Past book club victims
Ever have trouble deciding what you’re going to read next? Yup, me too. But imagine if every time you had to choose a book, seven of your best friends had to agree that they wanted to read it that week, too. If you are or have ever been in a book group you will understand my plight. If not, then I will try to elaborate.
I am in two book groups. One, the ‘grown-up’ group, exists mostly to allow five erstwhile devoted mothers/wives/girlfriends to eat way too many Pringles and moan about what their husband/partner/child has done that week. We talk about a ‘grown-up’ book for about three minutes (once we made it to four but that was mainly because we were waiting for Pappadums, and Deborah, to arrive before we could start serious gossiping).
The other, definitely-not-grown-up, group, exists to allow seven writers, editors, critics and general book obsessives to spend three hours dissecting, defending or destroying the latest children’s or teen novel. Pringle-eating occurs, but purely in between arguing over whether angels are the new vampires and if so, why. All jolly good fun, until it comes to choosing next month’s book. Which is when everyone turns into children, and starts sulking, huffing, and refusing to do their homework, because, like, it’s just NOT FAIR.
And here is why (am using pseudonyms because you know and love these writers, and, I do not want that to change based on their weird fondness for trolls):
K: Books must have feisty heroine. And preferably paranormal romance. And possible death.
Other K: Under no circumstances must anyone die. ESPECIALLY if it is a dog. And DOUBLE ESPECIALLY if it is a Labrador.
L: Must have Vikings. Or trolls. Or, better, a Viking troll.
J: No Vikings or trolls. Also no fairies, elves, vampires, angels, ghosts or anything else MADE UP. Also no books by men writing in voice of girl. Is just weird.
I could go on. But I think you get my drift. So I’m ending with a plea: can someone, ANYONE, come up with a book that is going to satisfy all of us? Or at least not cause one of us to threaten to chew our own arm off if we have to read it. It would save me an awful lot of bother. And Pringles.
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There’s no place like….
So my smelly little brother has washed the last of the Glastonbury filth off himself, and Andy Murray is yet again making me lose the ability to write in the afternoon, which can mean only one thing: the summer holidays are nearly here.
Only I am not really allowed a holiday this year. Not because I have been bad. But because I have spent the hundreds of pounds that would have whisked me and the menace off to the Maldives, or more realistically Minehead, on a new kitchen. Which, like, I KNOW. How grown-up am I?
And yet my heart isn’t breaking. Because the thing is, I’ve always been more of a home girl. Partly because sleeping in a bed that someone else has just departed is a bit icky unless for some reason it is in a very expensive hotel, and I don’t do camping for about a bazillion reasons. But also because I just don’t feel the need to escape; I’ve always found I can do just that in the comfort of my non-sleeping bagged home via the amazing teleporting invention that is called THE BOOK.
I have spent weeks in Paris thanks to Sarra Manning’s Nobody’s Girl, and several years in New York being guided by Anna Godberson and her addictive Luxe series.
And so these are my holiday destinations this year. Some I’ve never seen, some I’ll be staying with old friends. And if I run out of places to visit, I’m sure I can find plenty more on the shelves at Mr B’s Book Emporium.
Where will your books take you this summer?
I AM Buttercup Jones (and Lola, and quite a few other characters too)
It’s the nature of writing that every heroine I have conjured up, from Penny Dreadful to Rachel Riley has a little of me in her. In the case of Rachel, pretty much all of me. So much so, that when I started writing about the freakishly tall and misfortune-prone Buttercup Jones, who desperately wishes her life and looks weren’t quite so, well, weird, I really believed that, like Frankenstein, I had invented a whole new person. Until I began to take stock of my own, Buttercuppish moments: 
- When I was fifteen I looked like a man in a permed wig. I am NOT EVEN JOKING. Google Robert Plant and you can see for yourself.
- The following year I tap danced on stage to New York New York in a peach lycra body con dress with 32DD breasts and a very unsupportive bra.
And I’m still doing them, although more in a kind of Lola Jones i.e. Buttercup’s mum) way now:
- The first time I was supposed to meet the Prime Minister, I got banned and had to hide in the toilets because I was wearing combat trousers, a see-through top and a silver puffa jacket (I know, war crime outfit, but it was 1998).
- The first time I did meet the Prime Minister I curtsied. YES, actually factually curtsied. Although at least my top wasn’t see through.
- Last year I did the shopping in a gold lame ballgown under my parka, because I could not be bothered to get changed.
- I am still so short that my daughter asked me if she “will grow up to be a midget too?”
See? Buttercup. But life’s kind of more interesting that way. And I hope it stays like that.
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Buttercup Jones meet the World
OMG. Buttercup Mash is published, like, TODAY, and I am NOT EVEN JOKING. It’s on bookshelves in shops, and on Amazon, and everything, which, like I KNOW. I mean, seriously, have they no IDEA how OFF THE SCALE this is. I swear I almost did a bit of pee in my pants when I found out. And Imogen is like, totally UNDONE. Thank God for Stan. He’s still playing Ramble On in the cellar and watching an anime marathon. *SIGH*
Penny Dreadful is unleashed
Not content with appearing at Hay not once, but twice this week, I also have a sickening three books out, the first of which, Penny Dreadful, is unleashed on an unsuspecting public today. 
Her name isn’t actually Dreadful, it’s Jones. The Dreadful is just her dad’s joke. She knows it is a joke because when he says it he laughs like a honking goose, but she does not see the funny side. Plus it is not even true that she is dreadful. It is like Gran says, she is just a MAGNET FOR DISASTER. It is already being described as a ‘Horrid Henry for girls’ (and not just by my mum, but by The Bookseller, who have actually read both, unlike my mum who prefers a bit of Maeve Binchy). So what are you waiting for…?
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Making Hay (and the sun had better shine)
I love being a writer. I love being able to wear my pyjamas or a ballgown to work (and believe me, I have done both), without anyone but a seven year old telling me I am dressing inappropriately (although usually it is merely to add a feather boa and a bikini top to the ensemble). I especially love working when I want and where I want, e.g. in the corner of a dimly-lit cafe, or in the back row of the cinema, or in front of a rerun of Dawson’s Creek (research, OBVIOUSLY). And best of all I love that I work on my own with no one watching over my shoulder, or telling me I am doing it wrong. Which I have had more than my fair share of in the past – from both Mrs Nadin snr, and the Prime Minister (and I am sure I don’t need to tell you which one was scarier). But every so often, I am dragged from the comforting gloom, to emerge blinking into the light, and talk about why I would prefer to be back in the darkened room. These are called Literary Festivals, the biggest and loveliest (and scariest) of which is the Hay Festival, which is where I am heading in 17 hours and 37 minutes. Not that I am counting. Last time I was there, I managed to sit in Jeremy Paxman’s seat by mistake. Though I did manage not to say the word ‘penis’ in front of a room of ten year olds, so it is swings and roundabouts in the embarrassment stakes. Obviously I am trying to focus on the good bits and have compiled a list to remind me, every hour, on the hour, when I am utterly not counting down until D-Day:
1. I get to meet people who have actually read my books and who aren’t the menace, my boyfriend, his sisters, or my parents. Although the menace is coming. And the boyfriend’s sisters. Though mercifully not the parents, who are banned for various misdemeanors, including: issuing corrections, heckling, and saying ‘that’s my daughter’ at inappropriate moments.
2. I get to wear a sticky out dress and very tall shoes, and not just in my front room. In fact, I get to buy a special sticky out dress just to make myself feel better (it is bright red and more sticky out than any previous concoctions).
3. I get to hang out with lots of other pale reclusive writers who spend all their time in darkened rooms hunched over keyboards. And Philip Ardagh, who seems to spend all his time in fancy hotels, showing off his tremendous beard. When he actually writes is a mystery. It is my suspicion that he gets Toto the houseboy to do it all for him.
4. I get paid, in champagne. And I am NOT EVEN JOKING.
5. See point 4.
Yup, I feel better already, and only 17 hours and 35 minutes to go now…
So if you do like the books, or just like seeing sticky out dresses, or very nervous authors falling over their tall shoes and tripping over TV anchormen, then I will be on the Starlight Stage at 4pm on Wednesday 1st June talking about Buttercup Mash (with the very funny Tamsyn Murray), and at 1pm on Thursday 2nd June talking about Penny Dreadful.
That’s if I can find my dark glasses. I hear it’s almost summer out in the real world…
Richard and Judy
There is no way of saying this without blowing my own trumpet, so cover your ears if you don’t like the noise, but ‘Spies, Dad, Big Lauren and Me has been picked for the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club, which is kind of a big thing. Huge, really. Not least because it’s on a list with Joan Aiken’s ‘Arabel’s Raven’, which is the reason I write at all, and Frank Cottrell Boyce’s ‘Cosmic’, which is the reason I wrote about Billy Grimshaw.
And I always hearted Richard and Judy. I hearted them when it was cool to heart them i.e. twenty years ago, when I was supposed to be writing a dissertation on circuses, but instead was lying on the swirly carpet of 408 Beverley Road, eating endless bowls of Rice Krispies and watching their first ever broadcast on a portable black and white. Then I hearted them when it was uncool to heart them, i.e. when I was working in politics, where you are only supposed to listen to Radio 4 and watch Paxo, or at least, that’s all you are allowed to admit to (political geeks don’t even do ‘ironic’). I hearted them when Judy’s boob fell out on prime time telly, and I hearted them when they got moved to the back of beyond where no one would ever see their boobs again.
And it turns out they heart me too. Aw, thanks, guys. You are like the parents I never had. In fact you are quite like the parents I do have. Especially Richard, who I just know would do an embarrassing dad dance across the floor if he ever had to pick me up from Wimbish Village Disco.
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Buttercup 2: Return of the crazy
Dear Dr Sven
OK, so it’s, like, nine days until publication, not that I’m counting or anything, but, well, yes I am actually, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s the biggest thing to happen to me since Rachel Riley messed it up with Jack (again) and so OBVIOUSLY I’m, like, excited. Even more excited than when I thought I had found that chocolate raisin I had lost two days ago under the table and ate it, only it turned out not to be chocolate at all, which kind of disproves my point, which is that the SECOND Buttercup Mash trailer thing is up on Youtube, which, like, I KNOW! And it so IS NOT a fake chocolate raisin which turns out to be possibly poo only from what I have no idea and do not WANT to know. It is the Gleetastical REAL DEAL. And I am NOT EVEN JOKING! See?
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Tagged Buttercup Mash, Glee, Joanna Nadin, new book, Rachel Riley, teen book
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Officially me
After years of woeful neglect (tumbleweed rolling across the ether, broken bottles, possibly dog poo lurking at the edges), my website has been given a much-needed makeover and update. You can find out more about me, Rachel Riley, and my new characters Buttercup Jones and Billie Paradise; find links to my Facebook and Twitter, and my other blog (sshhh, is not two-timing, honest). You can also let me know what you think please! (Unless you are my mother, in which case, put the red pen away!) Go on, you know you want to: http://www.joannanadin.com
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Joanna Nadin 