The Awkward Girl's Guide to the Week | In Which There Are No Sequins
Or not for boys, anyway...
Hi, it’s Amber, with The Awkward Girl’s Guide to the Week: your regular look at what I’ve been reading, watching, and otherwise getting up to lately. These posts are free to all subscribers, but a paid subscription will help keep me out of the Victorian workhouse, allow me to continue creating content for you, and also give you really great hair.1 And who wouldn’t want really great hair?
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Today is Comic Relief here in the UK: an event which I’m ashamed to admit would have totally passed me by, were it not for Max’s school, and its cheerful insistence that we enter into madcap fun to celebrate and raise money.
This year, they decided the children should mark the occasion by wearing sequins to school; and if you happen to have a Boy Child, like I do, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you just how difficult it is to find sequins for boys at short notice. Or at all, really, because not only do clothing retailers hate catering to Boy Children in general, they particularly hate making anything that doesn’t have Minecraft or superheroes on it for them, and they definitely don’t want to make sequins. (Unless it’s a sequined superhero jumper, obvs, in which case, DUH.)
It was OK, though, said the school: if, by some chance we happened not to have sparkly boy clothes in stock, like most people, we were welcome to send our children to school in non-sparkly party clothes, instead. Which would’ve been great, except Max doesn’t have any non-sparkly party clothes either, on account of him being 5, and only ever being invited to parties in places like soft play centres and … well, soft play centres, really. It’s not really a varied social-scene in P2/3, tbh.
“I’m not buying him something new,” I told my husband, logging onto the H&M kids section and frantically typing the words “boy sequins” into the search box. “Max does’t care what he wears, and we’ll be donating to Comic Relief anyway, so that’s enough money for one week.”
Then I ordered him a shirt, shoes, and finally a sequined bow tie on Amazon, which didn’t arrive on time, so now we just have a ridiculous, comedically large bow tie, and the planet will most likely die because of my cavalier approach to sequin consumption.
Anyway, I asked the Substack AI to generate an image of a pink sequin bow tie to illustrate this post, and this is what it came up with:
Other Things That Were Awkward This Week:
Mis-timing my hair-washing schedule and having to go to an event at Max’s school with 3-day hair.
Just… having to go to an event at Max’s school, really. Being inside schools always makes me feel like I have to be really, really good so the teacher will like me the most, and this is why I was never popular at school, tbh.
Not wearing contact lenses to the AGM of the street’s resident’s association (Another story for another time…), and not recognizing the people who were sitting opposite me, who I have, in fact, known for many years now. This is why I’m not popular anywhere, really.
Forgetting how to spell “recognize” in the sentence above because I’ve been using US spelling for my books for so long now that the Zs have started to look more normal to me, so when I try to switch back to UK English I have to keep Googling words I’ve been writing for years without even thinking about them.
Having to film Christmas content for a December blog collaboration and ending up with ‘Rocking Around the Christmas Tree’ as this week’s earworm. WHO EVEN AM I?
Taylor Swift changing the lyrics to ‘Karma’ to make it about Travis Kelce rather than Joe Alwyn. I mean, I really want to believe in this relationship, and Ima let her finish, but I just… I can’t stop cringing and thinking it’s all directed at Joe. WHAT DID YOU DO, JOE?
READING
How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
I’ll be honest: I bought this book purely for the cover, and because I thought it would be hilarious to leave it lying around any time family members came over. No, YOU’RE a terrible host…
I didn’t want to actually read it, though. I mean, I thought I probably should, because it gets amazing reviews and was # 2 on the bestseller list, but, also, it was about killing your family, and I just …. I’m not sure how much empathy I can dredge up for serial killers, you know? (See last week’s newsletter, about how I can really only handle the most lighthearted of light reads these days…)
Anyway, I’m almost at the bottom of my TBR pile, so I picked it up, hoping the title might just turn out to be some kind of in-joke, and not actually an indication of subject matter. But nope, it’s right enough. It’s about a woman who sets out to kill her entire family. Woe!
I’ve only just started it, and the killing hasn’t got started yet, so I’m not qualified to say much more than that, so all I’ll say for now is that it’s very well written, and I’m enjoying it so far, while secretly hoping I’m still wrong, and she’s not really going to kill anyone; tune in next week for more ill-formed thoughts on this!
WATCHING
The Sister (Netflix)
Speaking of Things That Are Not Particularly Lighthearted Really, this is the fun tale of a man who accidentally kills a woman during a night out, then marries her sister. So, actually, I was talking rubbish about me only reading/watching “light” stuff, wasn’t I?
The thing is, though, I do love a good thriller, and this was a pretty good one, which included the “large modern house with extremely big windows that don’t have any coverings and make you feel like you’re being watched when you sit in front of them at night” trope, which is a niche favourite of mine.
Some thoughts:
The lead character behaved so oddly throughout that he may as well have had a sign on his forehead saying, “It’s me! I’m the one who killed your sister!” Amazed she married him, really.
His mate Bob, who appeared to be cosplaying Russell Brand a lot of the time. Odd choice.
I know it’s very sad and all, but covering almost every wall in your house with photos of your dead sister is weird. I’m sorry, but it is.
Troy-from-Benidorm. Who I can never see as anyone other than Troy-from-Benidorm, so every scene he was in became unintentionally comedic for me. Sorry, Troy-from-Benidorm.
TRYING
I’m currently 55,000 words into writing book # 5, which is still known on Amazon simply as “Lexie’s Story Continues”, because it doesn’t have a “proper” title yet. (I’ve been calling it “Acting Lessons” on my NaNoWriMo page, but Terry thinks it needs to start with the words “The Actress…” to blend with the rest of the series, so we’re currently at a standoff.) I really need to get on that, don’t I?
Anyway, the thing about writing a 6-book series is that:
a) You should never do that. 3/10 Do Not Recommend.
b) It starts to get really hard to keep track of stupid details, like what colour are Jack’s eyes (Answer: blue, like a Taylor Swift song, obviously), and what was the name of the woman who works in the post office, who was only briefly mentioned in book 1, and played no role in it whatsoever, but who everyone will nevertheless instantly remember was called Doreen if I refer to her as Carol in book 5?
I tried various different techniques to keep track of all of these little details, but nothing really seemed to work for me until this week, when I discovered Nuclino, which is basically your own personal Wiki. I set one up for Heather Bay (the location of this series), and spent an not-unpleasant hour or so inputting all the details, so now if I’m wondering what the name of the dentist in book 2 was, say, I can just type the word “dentist” into the search bar and be immediately reminded that his name is Mike.
Oh, and it also creates this little map, which I find quite pleasing, even though I have no idea what I’d need it for:
This is obviously a very niche recommendation, which will be of limited use to those of you who don’t have to somehow keep track of hundreds of pointless details about totally imaginary towns and people, but it’s not actually designed for novelists, so I’m assuming there must be lots of other ways you could use it, too.
WRITING
As well as continuing to work hard on Book 5, I also just published this new post at Forever Amber. It’s sponsored, which means it’s probably destined to get very little in the way of attention on the site, but sponsored posts have been very hard to come by this year, and this one was particularly challenging as we had to take the photos for it in the worst possible light (Direct sunlight combined with the darkest of shadows, which means I either get to look like Voldemort, or disappear entirely into the blackness), so if you’re able to give it some love, it would be very much appreciated.
Meanwhile, this week’s paid post is this one, and you can upgrade your subscription below if you’d like to read it:
The Awkward Girl's Guide to Small Towns
I’m going to call the village Direbury. That’s not its real name, obviously: I got it from one of those online name generators I use when I’m writing my books (Alternative suggestions: Grimebreak; Curseguard; Snakevale; Roguemere…), so I can pretend it’s a town in a Lucy Score novel, say, where everyone has a weird, made-up name, and is almost freakishly attractive.
Until next week, folks,
Not really.