Latest posts

•  Is my pink princess a black swan at heart?
  Only yesterday I wrote about My Clockwork Child and how she discovered her pink chromosome after turning four. Then, just last night, I saw something that reassured me that pink is perhaps the new black... it comes to something when a car advert, of all things, is reassuring about gender politics: ...
  Sun, 20 May 2012 20:45:43
•  My Clockwork Child
  In The Child Whisperer, Tracy Hogg describes the ?textbook baby?, the one who develops new skills right on cue, exactly when the manual said they would. My Curly Girlie just turned four and, like clockwork, she?s turned into a little girl. Make that Little Girl - there?s a definite capital-G in ...
  Sat, 19 May 2012 11:54:57
•  Toddler Tales
  It?s all about the conflict. No, not raising toddlers. Raising toddlers is mostly about conflict, but writing fiction is all about the conflict. This is what I?m learning on the Masters that I?m currently studying. Every story involves conflict, every character has some kind of thwarted desire, a...
  Sun, 13 May 2012 19:07:48
•  The state of Swiss mothers
  Parents in Scandinavia can rest easy in their saunas tonight. Save the Children?s snappily-titled State of the World?s Mothers Report (I?m glad they didn?t come round here, cos this mother is a right state) listed Norway as the best place to be Mum. Niger, where most mothers lose a baby at some time...
  Thu, 10 May 2012 20:07:03
•  These things Maurice Sendak taught my kids (and me too)
  There are some authors that strike terror into me: not a Stephen King-style fear of the dark, but a kind of awe-struck horrified acceptance that I could never write anything of such depth and wisdom and authorial cunning. (Stephen King qualifies as a scare-monger on the latter point for sure.) I wa...
  Wed, 09 May 2012 06:23:57