Monday, December 28, 2009

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Once upon a time (no better intro, sticking to classics), there's a young man named Johnny Boy. Well, i called him Johnny Boy because i just absolutely love typing.....

So Johnny was like walking on the beach one day, collecting sea shells and watching birds suffocate and die in oil spills. The sun was shining, like...hell. So, walking along the beach Johnny did, and shine in the sand did Johnny saw. A shine which caught his human eye, of a lens circled by his coloured iris. It was not the shine of the reflection of the sunlight on a diamond, or a polished shell, but a shine of an object of old age, eaten away chemically by the salt content of sea water. And walked towards the object with naked feet did Johnny did. No, naked feet of Johnny dance towards the curious shine. No, Johnny walked towards the shinny object...that's it.

Johnny found his toes facing the shinny object. Well, his toes don't really have faces.....and after the blinding shine of the sun disappears from his bodily shadow....the shadow of his body.... did Johnny found what was the cause of the shine, an old wine bottle which have drifted on the sandy shore. Picked the wine bottle Johnny did.....this is annoying.....Johnny picked the bottle, with his hands of course, as he is human. A bottle of wine, green is it's colour. It does not look that old. There was no sticker label on the bottle. It might get washed away in the waters anyway. A large imprint "PORTO" was on the other side of the bottle. "It's recent" Johnny thought. Nothing precious of an object. Was it worth to be made a part of his collection of things Johnny himself finds on the shores of his beach? The bottle fell back on the sand, where it was last picked up of.

So walk Johnny did...continued...whatever....
But then, a sudden pause pulled Johnny's feet towards the ground....gravity perhaps...A turned Johnny did. He turned and stared at the shine-ness of the bottle. Johnny gave the abandoned wine bottle a pregnant stare, a stare that lasted for nine months.....A pause enough to send signals to his male brain to connect a folder of previous memories. Then, of all memories scanned, a slide was played, of his father once read him a story of pirates and sailors, or adventures idiots, lost in sea, and sending their messages of distress as written pity beggars stuffed in a wine bottle.

Then, Johnny ran. Ran towards the bottle he did. Again he picked the same bottle. Well, that's the only bottle we know in this story. The bottle, carried by his two hands, was tilted at a higher degree, carried above the level of his head actually, stretching his arms towards the cloudless sky, in an alignment with the sun. In the semi transparent bottle of green pigment (note: this bottle cannot photosynthesise) did Johnny had sight of a small note. A note dry, well rolled and preserved from the salty sea water by its tight cork. No time to hesitate, Johnny brought the bottle to the level of his chest. With his wits, twisted the cork did Johnny did, and as hard as he could. Finally, Johnny won the battle.

He then tilted the bottle and the note slided easily out of the neck of the bottle. Johnny held the note in his hands. The bottle soon found where it started with Johnny, the sand. It means, Johnny dropped the bottle......Is it a note of a call of help? S.O.S? A secret about an anonymous mafia group? A treasure map perhaps?! His breathing accelerates. He's taking in a little more oxygen than he usually does. The adrenalin level in his blood increases. His fingers then worked on the note, moving to roll out the yellowish paper, to see its contents. Then, Johnny saw, the small paper, stained with blacked ink, hand written, in English, of romanize letters, a message for sure, which Johnny had prophesied from the beginning a message which he now reads in that burning afternoon, on that very beach...a message...to all.

"HAVE A BLESSED NEW YEAR (2010)"
"TheLaVa"

Saturday, December 26, 2009

SPCA

Right....
i have no stories yet, but i do have something to tell you

Once upon a time.....no, one day.....no, once,there was a....no....whatever...

about two weeks ago, TheLaVa was sitting at home...doing whatever, i cant exactly remember....
Then, her mom, who was out for a while gave a wild whacked on the door!!...no, just kidding....she gave a knocked on the door. TheLaVa opened the door.

Mom: Look, there's a young cat in front of our house and he's injured. i think he broke his leg. He could not move much.

TheLaVa: the fellow OK or not??

Mom: Well, he could not move much....we should do something

And so TheLaVa set on a journey to inspect the cat, and to find it well, healthy, but had snapped his bone
She carried him to a corner for warmth and served milk.


In SPCA office, the phone rang...

Lady: hello, spca jalan Ampang, can i help you?

TheLaVa: hello lady, theres a cat in front of my house, he broke his leg. some fellow thrown him from god knows what floor. come help.

Lady: i cannot come there miss, you have to send the cat here

TheLaVa: Then what are you going to do with him?

Lady; we'll put it to sleep.

TheLaVa: lady, you serious?? he just broke one leg!!! just help me balut the leg!!!

Lady: but we will still put it to sleep

TheLaVa: the fellow is drinking milk, sitting down happily with his gooooooogly eyes, and you want to put him to sleep??

Lady: we have no choice, that's what we will do

TheLaVa: why. cant you just balut his leg?

Lady: we will balut his leg...then put him to sleep

TheLaVa: why you have to do that?

Lady: because...theres too many cats here....

TheLaVa: so, if i broke my leg...then was sent to a hospital, they will put me to sleep because theres too many people?

Lady:........
Then, she hung up.....
Go SPCA!!!!!!

p.s cat is fine, able to walk slowly, thanks to....MILK!!!!!!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Yes! Finally it's the Annual Chrismukkah/Festivus/Holidays competition.

Happy Holidays, dear sweet readersI hope whatever your religious affiliations (even if it's to the Great God of eating so many mince pies that you hurl) you have a wondrous time over the break and that 2010 will be your best year ever. (By the way I'm calling the new decade The Terrible Teens, please join me!)Anyways, onto more important stuff. I have a great competition lined up for you. There

Friday, December 18, 2009

Strictly filler post...

Just wanted you to know that a) I'm still alive and b) I will be posting news of my usual Chrismukkah competition very soon. You will collectively pee your pants when you find out what the prizes are. (Or at least I hope you will, but I'm talking about metaphorical pee, if you will.)The reason for the delay is boring and technical. I use this comment aggregator thingy but now it's been bought by

Monday, October 26, 2009

Tweeting Nobody's Girl

Greetings my little choux bunsI have, not more than an hour ago, finished going through the page proofs for Nobody's Girl (out February 4th.) Then I got to thinking as I'm wont to do of a way to give you a teaser ahead of publication, so...Every day from now until publication, I'm going to Tweet a random line from Nobody's Girl on my Twitter. Here's the link. Of course, my tweets show up on this

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

First look: Nobody's Girl cover

Hola!Wanted you guys to be the firs to see the cover for Nobody's Girl. The cover that's circulating on the interwebz is not the correct cover. Sigh. Let's not even go there, otherwise I will have a rage blackout!Anyway, I hope you like it.Live onSarra x

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Nobody's Girl synopsis and cover news

Just to let you know that the Nobody's Girl cover that's up on Waterstones and Amazon and the blogs is an early, rough version of the cover and not the finished product.As soon as I get a jpeg of the right cover, I'll post it here! But here is the full synopsis:Bea thinks she's the most boring seventeen-year-old in the world. She's not pretty or popular or funny, unlike her mother who had Bea

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

And the title is...

Peeps,I can exclusively reveal that the title of my second grown-up novel will be: You Don't Have To Say You Love MeYes, after the Dusty Springfield song because Dusty makes everything better.On the teen front, the synopsis for Nobody's Girl is now up on Amazon.co.ukAlso, if you are a serious producer interested in the film rights to any of my novels, you need to get in touch with my film and TV

Sunday, August 16, 2009

So, how have you been?

You know you're long overdue a blog post when people are leaving gentle reminders on my Twitter asking me when I'm going to update. Ooops!Anyway, here I am with a few snippets of news and links and some stuff for you to look at. I'm deep in the first draft hinterlands for my second grown-up book, which is not going to be called Lightweight anymore. It's going to be called something else but I

Friday, June 26, 2009

It's been too long...

Hola! Holla!I know I've been absent from this blog for a while. I wish I could tell you that I was doing all sorts of glamorous things, but sadly the truth is that my adsl has been wonky for weeks. In fact it's been one of those months where I should have taken to my bed and refused to move.There's been flooding (my washing machine,) fire (someone set my fully laden recycling bin on fire so I had

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Unsticky out today in paperback!

Hullo!Finally, the day is come when the paperback of Unsticky goes on sale in the UK! Hurrah! It is my first grown-up book and not wholly suitable for under sixteens but YMMV.And I've just finished and delivered my next teen book, Nobody's Girl, so that will be out in February 2010. Now, run, don't walk... in fact, don't even run but sprint full pelt to your nearest bookshop and buy a copy of

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Mostly housekeeping...

Sunny salutations, sweet readersNothing much to report from round these parts. I'm a mere handful of days away from delivering my next teen book, Nobody's Girl, and am actually writing the first three chapters of my teen book after that, as inspiration has struck and I don't want to forget it all. But I will be writing my second adult book first.I got my first proper paperback copy of Unsticky in

Friday, March 20, 2009

This is not a test...

Bonsoir mes amisI bring you news. Exciting news from London town. I have just finished the first draft of my next teen opus and it will be published in February of next year in the UK. It's also going to be called Nobody's Girl. Well, it is at the moment. I'm not sure that I love that title but have yet to come up with anything better. I'm not sure if I nabbed it from one of your shuffle

Sunday, February 22, 2009

First look at the Unsticky cover...

Sunday salutationsI've been very quiet of late, I know. I have some family stuff that's taking up a lot of my time right now, but I am twittering frequently and you can follow my tweets right here.I am still hard at work on my next teen opus and still mulling over titles, but mostly I'm gearing up for the publication of my grown-up book, Unsticky, which comes out in April in hardback and in May

Monday, January 26, 2009

All Manning, all of the time...

My ladyfingerlingsThank you so, so, so much for all your shuffle suggestions. I am blown away by the response and also in awe of your eclectic and deeply cool song stylings. There are a couple I'm quite taken with and a couple I came up with all my by very own. I will keep you posted. And you know how I said that my new teen book (they very one, which I don't have a title for!) would be out next

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Competition winners and reader-generated content!

May I introduce you to the two winners of my Chrismukkah quiz? All hail Ella McBride from Blighty and Kathryn Piekkala in Australia, which is going to cost me a small fortune in postage!Ella and Kathryn won because they had the most right answers, I liked their tie-breaker answers and they also went above and beyond in getting round blogger's maximum wordage in comments rules. Ella's tie-breaker