Kittens, I have an announcement.

The series-previously-known-as-UNION-STREET is now called BROOKLYN GIRLS.
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Caveat! This isn’t the real cover. We’re still finalising the image and design, and it will be something very similar to this. But this cover is already on Amazon as a sort of placeholder, so I thought why the fuh not throw it on the ol’ blog, hmm?

BROOKLYN GIRLS. Doesn’t it just reek bestseller?

Kat just sent me this to remind me that I am a shitty blogger. I was like dude I know, I’m sorry, I suck…

I’ve said this before, but whenever I think of something I might blog about, my next thought is ‘why would anyone care what I think about that?’ so I don’t write it. Let’s face it, my opinions are just not that damn interesting. And when I see bloggers who are actually elevating blogging to an art, blogs that bubble and fizz with ideas and new things and old things (even if it’s just about lipstick and how to make the perfect pancake or 1930s advertisements for deodorant), I think, well, they’re doing it the way it should be done, but that takes hours and hours and ultimately it’s not what I do. Like Cup Of Joe, Into The Gloss, AfterDRK, Le Fashion, Refinery29, Retronaut, Sighs And Whispers, Smitten Kitchen and Humans Of New York.  Well written, smart, interesting… These are the crème de la crème of blogs. Mine is not.

So, now that I’ve given this blog post the most exciting intro ever (“my blog sucks, you’ll probably hate it”) what should I tell you about, my loves? I’ve been pretty busy writing. The problem with writing is that it’s totally internal, totally passive. I sit down, and I write. Then I stare into space for a while, and I think. Then I write some more. If I think I’ve written something funny I high five myself. If I can’t get something just how I want it, I get up and go for a walk. Every now and again I have some Lindt dark chocolate with sea salt, or Finns Crisps with Barneys Almond Butter, or blueberries, or this French tea that I love.  Then I sit back down and write some more.

After a while, I have a book, or a screenplay, or a TV show, and then I show it to some people who are much smarter than me, and we talk about it and then I go and think and work on it some more.

I like writing.

We have an amazing sitter called Riikka who makes it possible for me to do all that thinking and writing, and the rest of the time I hang out with Fox and lovely little Errol and our friends.  We go to the playground to practice Errol’s walking (he walks like a small drunk man), and to cafes, where he talks to everyone in gobbledygook and flirts with brunettes (only ever the brunettes). The other day we went to Murrays Cheese, where he had his first gourmet grilled cheese sandwich. It had pumpkin béchamel and sage and sunflower seeds. Insanely good. He has also started dancing whenever he hears music – sort of a bobbing shuffle. It is the most adorable thing I have ever seen.

Inspired by the marvellous Cup Of Joe’s Friday Round-Up Posts, here’s what else I’ve been up to…

Watching this. (Actually, I’ve been watching the All Stars, but if you haven’t seen it before, you need to start with season one.)

Drinking wine here and here.

Going to storytime here.

Eating dinner here and here and brunch here and by the way, just order the French toast when you go to Jane. I running late and just texted my sister what to order for me, I didn’t even need to see a menu, because last time I ordered a salad or something boring like that and saw it going past and thought ‘next time you are MINE, motherfucker’. And it was so.

See? Best French toast ever. Right, back to the list.

Buying these jeans for me and these PJs for Errol. (Little foxes!)

Helping with this. (Spread the word.)

Taking the baby to this. (It’s awesome.)

Reading this. (It’s also awesome.)

And you know, just thinking and writing. Above everything else I am always writing and thinking and writing and thinking and writing. Thinking and writing is boring to talk about, it’s boring to watch, but it’s wonderful to do.

What about you guys?

x

PS Oh, and I’m preparing some BIG announcements about the upcoming book series launch. But for that, sugarnutses, you’ll have to wait a little teeny weeny bit longer…

It’s been a hell of a week in Manhattan. Obviously. Fox was away for work, so it was just Errol and I huddling together in the dark while the storm raged… I’d been totally blase about it, too, and hadn’t even bothered to charge my phone. I know. Every time I think about it, I hit myself on the forehead. Thtoopid.

But we were so lucky… We only had one night without power / phone reception / water, we were never in any real danger, and while I write to you now warm and clean in an uptown hotel room, with the baby asleep and Foxy landing at JFK in just a few hours and everything just hunkygoddamndory, thousands and thousands of other people just like you and me are still in their cold dark homes (or temporary shelters as their homes were blown away entirely), with no phones, no power, no showers, nothing… Every time I think about the past week, I feel so lucky. So goddamn lucky.

Anyway. Enough about me. Here’s some stuff about Sandy you might like.

I just read Lightening Rods by Helen DeWitt and loved it.

And lastly, Martin Short as Jiminy Glick interviewing Alec Baldwin is the funniest thing I have seen in ages. I can’t stop watching it. Enjoy. xx

For the first year of Errol’s life, I ignored my nails. I kept them very very short, bare and buffed to a lovely shininess. Something was too fake and chemically about nail polish to be around my tiny perfect baby. Ditto perfume. Ditto lipstick.

But he’s one now. He’s a toddler. So bring on the fakey chemicals / scent / slap, my friends.

I wrote a piece about nails for Tatler just before Errol was born. (You can read ithere.) In it, I came down with all the righteous fury I could muster on the Marie Antoinette-ship-in-the-hair-like trend towards ricockulous nail art. Think about it: how idle must we be if we can spend six hours a week getting tiny 3-D Hello Kitty dolls mounted onto our nails?

You thought I was kidding about the Hello Kitty thing, didn’t you? Ha.

I believe this is inspired by Japan’s natural beauty. That’s a heron. And that’s a lady in a kimono taking a walk with a parasol.

Fuck’s sake.

In case you haven’t seen the ship-in-the-hair thing, this was Marie Antoinette’s favourite coif. Shortly before the rest of France decided to kill her. And some day soon, some chick is going to wake up thinking ‘screw it, I’m gonna glue a fucking cruise ship to my pinky’.

Even at the less extreme end of things, nail art is bizarre. Tiny charms, mirrors, bells, flowers… you name it, some one out there right now is sitting down with some superglue and way too much time on their hands. Literally.

So I stand firm on my stance on extreme nail art. It’s fucking stupid.

But then last week I was getting my nails done – fifteen minutes, a quick file and two coats of pale-pink-nude Sugar Daddy, the most boring-sorry-I-mean-chic-yeah-chic shade you can possibly get – and I saw this.

ESSIE Luxeffects in Set In Stones. Great gallumphing chunks of shiny silver sparkles. And I asked the nice nail lady to paint it on the lower third of my nails over the Sugar Daddy.

PRETTY!

Every time I looked at my nails I thought OH MY GOD MY HANDS ARE SO PRETTY. There’s nothing subtle or understated about this glitter: it’s chunky and fat and gorgeous and very-nearly-3D. Like Cinderella fairy godmother wish sparkles had drifted down and collected at the bottom of my digits. Like Tinkerbell kisses. Like disco snowflakes. Like Disney had taken a big poo on my hands, basically.

I didn’t take a decent photo, but here’s one I found online of someone else doing the same thing over a grey base shade.

This week I got my little mani with OPI Black Onyx. (I pretty much only wear nude or black these days.) They didn’t have the Luxeffects in this particular nail salon, so I went to the nearest big Duane Reade and bought it myself, and when I get time today, I’m going to paint Essie Luxeffects Set In Stones over the top. Yeah, it’s immature, and yeah, it’s probably one step down the short road towards full ship-in-the-hair pointless vanity. I don’t care. I am PSYCHED.

PS You can buy Essie Luxeffects online here with international free delivery.

I HATE naming. Those of you who have known me a while already know this.

I’m not very good at it, and I tend to change my characters’ names constantly throughout the writing process till I land on one that works.

Recently I realised that I’d called a dude in one of my manuscripts Ali, without even thinking for a second about the fact that one of my best friends from college, a girl, is called Ali, and I had to go back and change it.

So I thought perhaps we could go through the process of who I named and how I named them, if you’re interested in this sort of thing.
Let’s start with The Dating Detox.

SASS. This is another of my college friends. I only gave the character in The Dating Detox a name at the eleventh hour and it’s just a fucking cool name, non? I asked permission, and she didn’t mind, lucky for me.

JAKE. After Jake Ryan. In Sixteen Candles. Obviouslah.

RICK. Originally he was called JJ, a similar name to a particular idiot I dated in my mid-twenties. Then Leo, for a while (though thank God I didn’t stick with that as my friend Sarah’s baby boy is called Leo and it’s a gorgeous name). Then Rick, as that was the bastard ex of a friend.

BLOOMIE. I wanted a name that was an abbreviation of a surname, as my girlfriends and I call each other by our surnames a lot. I think it makes us feel like marines or something, I don’t know.

KATE. This is my middle name. I really love the names Kate and Katie. I have three girlfriends called Kate too, and I just think it’s one of the prettiest names in the history of names. It’s kind of my go-to name whenever I’m writing about a girl I like, and I have to go back afterwards and think about it properly and change it.

MITCH. Actually, he was called John for a long long time. Then someone said it was too similar to Jake and I realised, ah yes, a variety of names – the sound of them, the length of them, the number of syllables, the hardness of the consonants and the softness of the vowels – makes them easy to remember when you have a lot of characters. Boom.

Some names just plain work with whatever character you’re creating. Harriet is a good name for a really sporty, competitive girl. I watched a bit of the London Marathon once and they all have little labels on their vests, and I swear to God, all the girls were called Harriet and Rachel and all the guys were called Tim and Richard. I don’t understand the draw of doing shit like marathons at ALL by the way. They should time people to read War And Peace instead, it’d be far better for their brains and lives then running stupidly till their nipples bleed and they spontaneously poo and they nearly die. But I digress.

And now, A Girl Like You.

ABIGAIL. Again, just one of my favourite girls names. No particular reason.

PLUM. This was a name suggested by the gorgeous @larawilliamson when I was asking Twitter for help one night. Plum had previously been two characters that I’d decided to amalgamate into one, and when you do something like that I find it helps to get an entirely new name so you can give them a new personality in your head. This also helps when you’re bored with where you’re taking a character, or not sure what you’re doing with them. New name = new lease on life.

ROBERT. I don’t know where this came from. It was just always his name. When I first met Fox I thought his name was Bob, maybe it’s that. His name is actually Paul, but it was a very loud bar, and when he said ‘Paul’ in an Irish accent I thought he said Bob. I called him that for a quite a long time, and he’s still in my phone as Bob. (Gosh! I am interesting, aren’t I?)

SOPHIE Another ridiculously pretty name that I basically chose because started with a letter at the other end of the alphabet to Abigail and had a nice softness that the name ‘Plum’ doesn’t. I’ve worked with some lovely girls called Sophie. My cousin is called Sophie. It’s just sort of a win name for me.

LUKE. A nice solid name, with a sort of spikiness to the consonants.

DAVE. This was the winner of the ‘name that bastard’ online campaign thingy I did. You wouldn’t think it, but there are a LOT of bastards called Dave out there. Before this, his name was Felix, which I was aware was kind of a cheat as it’s just the sort of name that bastards in chicklit are always called. I quite like the innocuous innocence of Dave. (By the way I have several friends called Dave, I don’t think they read this blog anyway but just in case: dudes, you are not bastards.) (Or ARE you?)

VIX. I have two friends called Victoria, and they are both very cool and funny. Neither of them abbreviate their names to Vix, but I needed a really short spiky name.

And for the other characters… I just really like the names Charlotte, Bella and Henry, I don’t think there was any reason why. Particularly Henry, actually. I was gunning to call my baby Henry for a long time – Hank for short – but Fox refused. And so we chose Errol. Every now and again I think to myself ‘Fuck me, I called my kid Errol.’

My current characters in BEGINNER’S LUCK and the subsequent novels in the UNION STREET series are called:

PIA. I went to school with a girl called Pia in Hong Kong, though she spelled it Piya, and it’s just a lovely name. Nice and short, too. I think it means ‘darling’.

MADELEINE. I needed a really long name that wasn’t flowery the way so many long names are.

JULIA. A sort of bossy, solid name. Another marathon runner’s name.

ANGIE. Whenever I hear the name Angie I think of angels.

COCO. I love this name, so cute and eclectic. It’s not after Coco Chanel, who everyone should just stop fucking obsessing about, because she was a horrible old Nazi peasant with an eating disorder.

But for more on those characters, you’ll have to wait just a leeeeetle while longer…

PS Love love loved this from Rinniez – and hell to the yes, I’m going to put her in a book. Sounds like just my kind of girl. x

My friend Caroline is scared of velvet. No, really, I’m serious, she has a phobia. Even saying the word ‘velvet’ makes her start hyperventilating and clutching at her neck. It’s hilarious, obviously, but it honestly upsets her, so I’ve never even entertained the idea of wearing the velvet shorts and blazers that have been around the last year or two.

However, since we live in different countries now, I think I could get away with these Klaude Stud slippers from Topshop. (Caroline is going to FREAK OUT if she reads this. Very Scottish accent: “I’m not going to come and see you in New York if you get them Gemma!” Yes you are Caroline. Come for New Year’s Eve. Screw Hogmanay.)

I am dying to get this eyeshadow palette from NARS. No, I don’t need it. That is not the point. (That is NEVER the point.)

I love COS. It’s H&M;’s big sister, but where H&M; is increasingly hookertastic, COS is increasingly awesome, and everything that it stocks is just my style. Lovelovelove. Anyway, they are not in NYC. I do not know why the hell they are not in NYC, it’s goddamn ridiculous, but they are not. They are, however, all over Europe and even in Hong Kong. So if I REALLY love something I get it delivered to my mother in HK or girlfriends in London and Dublin. (Clothes addiction combined with a touch of OCD makes you ingenious at this sort of thing. I could source anything from anywhere. If this was 1942 I would be the goddamn black market queen.) And this is the perfect example of Cos perfection.

I’ve never worn Uggs-style boots. I think they’re, hmm, how can I put this… fucking revolting. (And this made me laugh so much, in case you missed it.) But I can’t decide if it would be acceptable to wear these boots from Mou, JUST INSIDE, I promise, because I get really cold feet in winter, and it would be easier than keeping track of dozens of thermal socks. Thermal socks are also the size of soccer balls when they’re folded, which takes up too much room in the drawer, which really gets on my tits. They’re wayyy more than I’d usually spend on, essentially, slippers, but when you consider that I’m a writer and at home 23hrs a day, they make more sense, right? And these are a teeny bit more chic than Uggs, aren’t they?

Confession: I already bought this lipstick.

It’s Chanel Culte, and it’s like no lipstick shade I’ve ever seen – sort of super-sophisticated purply/browny/rose, ultra-moisturising but matte. It makes your skin glowy and your eyes clear and boosts your brain power by 12.5 per cent. It reminds me of Linda Evangelista in the 90s, and early Bobbi Brown and Kevyn Aucoin features in Allure magazine, and everything that made me love make-up. Oh, and it’s just the perfect shade for the autumn / fall / whatever you want to call it. I’m wearing it to a wedding in Ireland in a couple of weeks. Will report back on how it performs. (Oh, of course I won’t, who am I kidding, that is a big fat lie. This isn’t a beauty blog and you don’t care that much, do you? But I will be wearing it. That much is true.)

NARS Exhibit A blush. BEAR WITH ME. I know. I know. It looks like a Kabuki drag queen’s idea of Sunday best. And it is the most pigmented blush in the history of blushes. But this is what you must do: take a big blush brush, a teeeeeeny tiny swish (one, no more than one) of it, then swirl the brush on the back of your hand (to get rid of excess) and then splodge it – GENTLY! – on your cheek. Once. Only once. Voila: Snow White cheeks. I have (dramatic and incredibly superficial statement incoming) never seen anything like it. Best blush ever.

And lastly. After decades of Converse dedication, I growned-up myself to Superga this summer. I was pronouncing it SOOO-per-gah. Then yesterday my super-stylish friend Amy, who works in fashion, told me that her young, cool colleagues told her it’s pronounced ‘Sah-pur-GAAH’. I laughed my ass off. Can anyone confirm if this is true?

This makes me laugh so much. I have watched it twice a day for about four days. So it’s high time I shared it with you.