This wolf has just turned up.  She’s not meant to be in the fourth First Aid novel, but she’s just sitting there.  Looking at me.  She won’t even turn into human form so I can argue with her.  AAAARGH.  I don’t have a quest for her.  She doesn’t have a role in this book.  But she’s here.  And I can tell she’s not going to go away.

She was exactly like this in the last book she was in.  Sylvie was meant to be fluffy and sweet and prove how wrong it was to assume all wolves are sleekit, sneaky, untrustworthy and dangerous.  Aye right.  If you read Wolf Notes, you can see how she turned out.

Now she’s here again. And I didn’t invite her.  And she’s LOOKING AT ME…

I thought it was going to be the centaur I had trouble with this time.

I put together playlists for each novel I write, not for listening to when I’m sitting and writing (I need a bit of peace and quiet then, or at least noise I can tune out) but for listening to when I’m running and thinking.  It’s usually fun finding the right songs, songs which mean the right things to me and push me in the right direction for the story.

Storm Singing’s playlist included Hurricane Drunk by Florence and the Machine, Take Me to the River by Talking Heads, This is the Sea by the Waterboys, and Closer by the Kings of Leon.  Lots of water and weather, but lots of other stuff too.

I have to like the songs on the playlist, but that’s not the most important thing – the lyrics, the words of the song, have to connect to the plot or the characters or how I feel about the book as I’m researching and writing it.

Right now I’m struggling with a playlist for First Aid Four though – mainly because it would contain almost every song on the Foo Fighters’ Wasted Light (the lyrics of a couple of songs sound exactly like Yann giving me a hard time), and almost no other songs.  So at the moment I’m just listening to the album…

But there must be appropriate songs out there – about monsters and baddies and taking over the world, injuries and healing, cliffs and waterfalls, traps and sacrifices, rescues and riddles… I’d better not say any more or I’ll give away the plot!

Any ideas, let me know.  And when I’ve written the book, I’ll let you know what songs I actually listened to and you can see if you can find any echoes of them in the book!

I’ve been worrying about minions recently. I know the baddy for the next book, I’ve been working out his evil plan for a while, but I’ve been struggling with his minions. He’s a loner, you see, the only one of his kind, so he doesn’t have a ready-made band of followers or family like the Faery Queen had her footsoldiers in Wolf Notes or the Sea-through had his bloom of jellyfish in Storm Singing.

I kept thinking that I was getting stuck at an early piece of action in First Aid Four because I couldn’t see the next location (one of the dangers of a location competition – you have to wait until you’ve got the winner to write the next bit.) Now I’ve realised the problem was that I couldn’t see who or what was with the baddie, I couldn’t see who was attacking Helen and Yann. So all I have to do is find out who his army are, then the action can rattle on again.

I need some minions.

I asked the kids I met at the Wigtown Book Festival today if they could suggest any good minions, and got some truly splendid answers including fireproof snails, secret agent rabbits and haggises with fangs, which may not be perfect for a Fabled Beast adventure, but certainly got me thinking.

Mostly thinking about what makes a good minion. Sneaky? Smaller than the boss? Violent but not deadly? Daft? (Or cleverer than the boss? I think either works…) Lots of them, so you can lose a few?

And specifically, what do I want for this book? Probably creatures from Scottish myth and folklore, and preferably ones who haven’t had starring roles in too many other books.

So, if you have a perfect minion’s job description, or if you have any excellent minions you could suggest to carry out my evil plan, do let me know. Otherwise, I’ll just ask a few more kids, or else get in about my collection of Scottish folklore as soon as I get home …

That’s not a comment on any weird weather, more a comment on my weird state of mind as a writer.
All the First Aid for Fairies books are set at particularly ‘magical’ times of year: midwinter, midsummer, autumn equinox and spring equinox. But I never seem to WRITE them at the appropriate time of year.
It’s Autumn Equinox time (half way between midsummer and midwinter, which is when Storm Singing is set), and yet I’m writing First Aid Four, which is meant to be set at the Spring Equinox.
This poses a few basic research problems, like when I go on location I have to imagine what the landscape will look like with more flowers, or fewer leaves, or different heights of grass.
But it also makes me very confused. I’ve spent a lot of this week living on the 20th of March, because counting back, that’s when the fabled beasts’ quest will have to start in order to end on the Spring Equinox. Which means when I come out of the house after writing for a day and the leaves are turning brown, I get a bit of a shock. In my head, it’s springtime; but outside my head, it’s autumn. And I was trying to explain something about flowers to one of my daughters when we were out for a walk, and I realised that I was talking complete nonsense, because I was talking about spring, and shoots, and daffodils. In September.
So, living in stories can make you a bit confused. But it also means I’m smelling flowers when everyone else is shivering in autumn gales!

Nope. Blogging is not enough apparently.

I was at a brilliant Society of Authors in Scotland conference yesterday in Edinburgh, all about how writers need to embrace e-books, and build an online platform for themselves. It was quite terrifying actually, with branding wheels, and landing pages, and hash tags, and publishers looking nervous, and some writers looking empowered and other writers (me mostly) looking a bit inadequate.

So. Blogging once in a wee while is not enough. I need to twitter. I need to join online forums. I need to be on Linkedin. (Actually, I am on Linkedin, but I have no idea how to work it or what to do with it, so I need to practise being me online.)

And I need to put multimedia stuff up on this blog. The occasional photo is not enough. I should be doing audio and video and links. (So, that’s a whole new set of skills I have to learn…)

The only problem is, I WANT TO WRITE A BOOK! I went to the first likely location for First Aid Four last weekend. I have a whole shelf of research books now, and lots of bits of coloured paper sticking out of the most exciting pages. I have more baddies than I can cope with (so I’ll be needing a lot of help from Yann this time round). So I really can’t be bothered creating an online me, when I’d rather be creating cliffhangers.

But, apparently, to be a writer these days, you also have to spend time “being a writer.” If you don’t get out there and shout about your books, no-one will read them. And then there would be no point in writing them.

So – would you like to follow me on Twitter, or would you prefer to like me on Facebook? Do you have the foggiest idea what Linkedin is for? Are there any good online forums about kids’ books or fantasy or myths and legends you think I’d enjoy? Or would you rather I just got on with writing…? Do let me know!