Page Turners: Bad Machinery

I am still reading The Emerald Atlas, I planned to be finished by now but then things happened, as they tend to do. So, here's another recommendation!

Bad Machinery

Bad Machinery is the son of Scarey Go Round, which is the son of Bobbins, by John Allison and is about three schoolgirl sleuths and three schoolboy investigators who all attend Griswalds Grammar School in Keane End, Tackleford, West Yorkshire. The students aren't exactly enemies but thanks to a mixture of pride, mistrust and pig-headedness they aren't exactly friends either and are always crossing purposes.

Tackleford is a medium sized West Yorkshire city that has a long history of mystery. It's a hotbed of problems, isues, manifestations, bad deeds, schemes and trouble. Griswalds Grammar School is in the leafy suburbs.

I only discovered Bad Machinery the other day, thanks to Tumblr, so if you're new to it then you can check out the cast here before you take the plunge, and once you're ready you can start reading about this varied cast of amateur detectives.

Here's the page that got me to read the rest:

Listen To This: Lady Gaga/Beyonce

Lady Gaga - Telephone (ft Beyonce)

NSFW!

Sunday Catch Up

I'm having a hard time remembering what I've done this week...I've been trying to track down all the anthology illustrations so that I can add them to the website but one has gone astray, so I'm currently waiting for the art co-ordinator to get back to me. Then I can get that sorted soon.

I've also been arranging via email for two of our friends to come and stay with us for a few days in April, so that'll be lovely! We're going to go to my fiancé's mum's and then all travel back together.

I also had one of those "oh my God my story is awful" moments, to then receive a lovely email from an agent telling me that they really like it. So here's some advice, those voices in your head? Sometimes it's good to ignore them and get a second opinion.

Oh, and my plants are starting to grow so hopefully I'll have some nice herbs, lettuces, tomatoes and strawberries in a few months time!

All images are from weheartit.com

Something For The Weekend

Something to read:

Check out Kate's tumblr, kateordie. She's really funny and a great artist...and I think the above image sums it up pretty well. Some of her comics and drawings are NSFW so view with caution!

Image by vol25

Want to be a writer? Seek out some practical help.

Something to eat:

Try making your own home made pizza, in nine different ways! I'm not a fan of all the toppings myself, seeing as I don't eat meat and I think avocado's taste like candles, but I don't know anyone who doesn't like pizza. Plus, it's more interesting than the bog-standard ones you get in shops!

Something to do:

Image from Charade

What ten things do you love about yourself?

Try the Pomodoro technique and see if you become more efficient, and while your at it, if you're feeling overwhelmed with work then try these tips.

Feature Friday: Bread

I wasn't sure what to feature this week, but seeing as I've already talked about tea and cats in past posts I feel that I can get away with this.

I like bread. I don't eat it all that often because I'm never sure what to actually eat it with. I don't like sandwiches all that much, so I rarely eat those unless it's something delicious like hummus and sweetcorn or cheese toasties. I also never put butter in sandwiches, it's disgusting, but I do like butter on toast and on vegetables. Go figure. As a kid I went through a stage of eating bread and drinking water all the time. I would get slices of bread, pull off the crusts and rolled the bread into a ball, then nibble at it. I have no idea why. I'm pretty sure that's not normal...

So, you've guess it. Today is all about bread!

I have made bread a few times, both in the form of loaves and in the form of pizza bases. I love making bread. There's just something very fun and very satisfying about it. It's also super easy which I love because I hate when things go wrong. I'm one of those people where if a recipe goes wrong I throw down my tools and walk off in a huff to sulk in a corner somewhere. Bread doesn't tend to do that to me. It's generally been well behaved.

There are lots of bread recipes that I really want to try out, such as these delicious looking beauties:

Cinnamon Sugar Pull-apart Bread

Walnut and Carrot Bread

Browned Butter Soda Bread

Pierogi 

Scandinavian Rye Bread

Don't they all look yummy?

Thursday Thought

Image by Austin Kleaon

Coveted Cover: I'll Be There

I'll Be There by Holly Goldberg Sloan

I think that this cover speaks for itself. I haven't read this book but I do want to, mostly because the cover is so pretty but also because it sounds great too and reviews all seem really positive.

From Goodreads:

Sam Border wishes he could escape. Raised by an unstable father, he's spent his life moving from place to place. But he could never abandon his little brother, Riddle.

Riddle Border doesn't talk much. Instead, he draws pictures of the insides of things and waits for the day when the outsides of things will make sense. He worships his older brother. But how can they leave when there's nowhere to go? Then everything changes. Because Sam meets Emily.

Emily Bell believes in destiny. She sings for her church choir, though she doesn't have a particularly good voice. Nothing, she feels, is mere coincidence. And she's singing at the moment she first sees Sam.

Everyone whose path you cross in life has the power to change you--sometimes in small ways, and sometimes in ways greater than you could have ever known. Beautifully written and emotionally profound, Holly Goldberg Sloan's debut novel deftly explores the idea of human connection.