New Snow

Here are two pictures to do with the new spate of snow yesterday. I had a day working at home, writing and tinkering - and egging on the snow.

Two more very nice reviews of Hell's Belles have appeared - on 'Groovy Age of Horror' and 'NextRead.'

Something that came up in my Online Novel-Writing workshop the other night: If your novel was a cake, what kind would it be? Got some wonderful answers: tirimasu with sprinkles and glitter and curls of chocolate heaped on; angel cake with splinters of glass; a millefueille with a dozen crisp layers... sharp tangy tarte au citron; squashy Black Forest Gateau with a creamy middle and cherries on top. I love exercises that let people step away from the close-focus of their writing and to talk about it in different ways - using images or other senses all together. It was good fun and it's made me think that I'm in the middle of writing a baked vanilla New York cheesecake. I think the Brenda and Effie's are Yorkshire teabread (there's a word for it - begins with a b?) Or maybe dark, sticky, spicy Parkin. Or cakes out of that brilliant tearoom and bookshop in Whitby - Becketts: the ones with the surprising combinations - apple and Wensleydale cheese, for example. Becketts is great.

Further to my thoughts on The Tales of the Unexpected and the way that Dahl's stories peter out and the old fella is made to introduce stories by other people. Just imagine - an alternate dimension, sometime in 1979 - and the show became 'Angela Carter's Tales of the Unexpected.' If there was any justice in the world and if anyone in telly had any taste, that's just what should have happened. Imagine if they'd adapted some of her stories in those half-hour mostly-studiobound slots? Imagine the Unexpected repertory: Joan Collins, Elaine Stritch, Sian Phillips, Elizabeth Spriggs... appearing in tales such as Carter's 'Lady in the House of Love' or 'The Company of Wolves' or 'The Erl King.' Or Brian Blessed and Susan George in 'The Bloody Chamber'.

I must return to reading Angela Carter again soon. It's been a long time. In the nineties I read everything, again and again, while I was doing my PhD. It must be nineteen years this month since she died? Things seem quiet on the Angela Carter front in the wider world. Where are the films based on her novels? Where are the TV adaptations at Christmas?

They're still scared of her, aren't they? Her wit, her irony, her savagery and daring. This is much more timid age than even the one she lived and wrote in.