Snog, marry, avoid?

We're all about the puerile games here. But I'm going to give it a literary twist. For those that don't know the rules, the object is to take a selection of three people and, rather chivalrously, decide on which one you would like to have a... ah... romantic liaison with, which you would like to devote the rest of your life to, and who you would push in the opposite direction of the nearest swimming pool if they were on fire.

For instance, from three of Haruki Murakami's books, I would opt for a romantic session with Sputnik Sweetheart, spend from here to eternity with The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and put on a funny accent and pretend I'd moved home if Hard-boiled Wonderland at the End of the World Came knocking.

So here are three options for you.

First, for those what like the ladies, some celebrity women capable of springing more than a couple of their own words together, fashion model and novelist Sophie Dahl, journalist and tv sultry cook Nigella Lawson and comedienne and best-selling author of autobiography of Dear Fatty, Dawn French.

And for those who are more amorously inclined towards the male of the species, you've these literary heavyweight Ians to choose from: Ian McEwan, Iain Banks and Ian Rankin.

And, drop your own in the comments or make a meme, as they say, of this and repost on your own blog.

In limbo

My new manuscript—which from now on I’ll refer to as RD—is finished and has just been set loose on unsuspecting publishing types. While I wait for a response, I’ve tentatively started another book in a similar vein, in the hope I can find a publisher for RD and that they’ll want more of the same, only different.

Like RD, this new book will be fairly complex and no doubt quite difficult to write, but short and probably it’ll be described as ‘literary’. (To give you an idea, Aliya read and critiqued—very very well—RD, and subsequently described it as Ian McEwan mixed with Richard Adams (that’s the fellow who wrote Watership Down). A description I can live with quite happily. In return I attempted to compare the Lena and Pru mysteries with a mix of authors and plumped for Andy McNab meeting Alexander McCall Smith down a dark alley. Can anyone else more widely read than me come up with a better comparison?

Anyway, I digress. As well as starting the new difficult-to-write-Ian McEwan-Richard Adams affair (longhand), I’ve also begun to write another book: what I think is a really strong concept for a sprawling—in that there are a minimum of about a dozen primary players—spec fic book (straight to screen).

I guess I wait to see what happens with RD before committing to one more than the other. In the meantime Aliya and I are writing another story together. Well, when she gets back from Wales.

nb That's not me limbo dancing by the way