Meg Rosoff's Blog, page 13

My good side.

Before I'd ever been photographed professionally, I didn't realize I had a good side and a bad side. I figured I was just completely unphotogenic. My husband (in how-hard-can-it-be? mode) once took an entire 36 picture roll of film that we still refer to fondly as World of Potatoes. It was quite impressive to discover [...]

The best teacher I ever had was a paedophile.

Yup. Best ever. He's the teacher I still think about, though I haven't seen him for 44 years. You might call that making an impression. I didn't find out what became of him until a few years ago, when I was at the Children's Literature New England conference and met a woman from the teensy [...]

I've been to a marvellous party.

It felt as if all the stars in the universe aligned at Voewood this weekend. And I don't mean literary or music stars, though there were plenty of those too. Voewood House, a stunning Arts and Crafts pile in deepest Norfolk, was last weekend the site of the first annual Voewood literary/music/art festival and garden [...]

Writer's Secret Revealed: The Muse is a Bastard.

Sure, finding a voice is difficult. Sure, getting published can be a real trial. Sure, all the stumping around for publicity (or worse, lack thereof) can wear you out. But at least the writing gets easier after the first few books, right? Pshaw. Not just any writer would tell you this (it's an admission of [...]

My Friend Chester.

My father's name was Chester. But this is another Chester, a big chestnut Irish Sport x Thoroughbred. He's keen and willing and sane, which makes a nice change from one or two of the other horses I've ridden over the past few years, and better yet, he's mine till the end of the summer. Last [...]

The Good Life.

Remember Tom and Barbara (Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall) who gave up their lucrative city life to set up a smallholding in Surbiton? If you're not English, The Good Life (or Good Neighbors as it was retitled for the U.S.) was a British sitcom from the 1970s about a middle aged man who quits his [...]

Edinburgh, ho.

The train ride beckons (I love the train from London to Edinburgh — very scenic and dreamy), as does the yurt (will they have reinstated the 10am whiskey? I can only hope…) and the chance to talk about new books with old friends. Last year at the Edinburgh festival I stood on a street corner [...]

And then you read a review that makes you really happy.

I've had some very nice early reviews in the British press, and more to come I hope (the lovely sort, that is). But sometimes you just come across a reader who makes you want to fly over to Canada and deliver a great huge kiss. Not only because what she's said is lovely, but because [...]

This is how I'd like to write my next book.

A story I once heard about Philip Johnson, the famous American architect, made a permanent impression on me. According to this story, Johnson was at lunch in NYC one day when he had the idea to build a skyscraper with a Chippendale pediment on the top (for those of you having difficulties picturing a Chippendale [...]

The American Edit

What with the American credit rating downgrade, the stock market plummeting and riots all over London, I'm grateful to have an American edit at all.  I mean, who's got time to think about publishing books when our time would be better spent digging Anderson shelters in the back garden and stocking them with canned goods? [...]