While there are many things and people I could credit for re-fuelling my oomph, I think one of my favourites of August was the unusual launch of an unusual book – everything about it and its author is just really inspiring.  Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex is a cracking book – everything I admire, in fact, in others’ writing.  It’s quirkily mad, wonderfully odd and utterly, utterly compulsive.  From the outset, the cast of misfits and oddities draw us into their bizarre but believable world.

But it’s not just the story that rocks – the most inspiring thing for me is the author. Alice Turing has really slogged to get this book published after it was originally published in Germany in 2009.  I know Alice in Real Life and have been in awe of her juggling a new career with a young family – the fact that her determination has finally meant that I could *actually* read her words that were deemed not commercial enough to find a UK publisher is pretty amazing.  ‘Not commercial enough’ in this case easily translates as ‘a bit too bloody interesting’. Weeks after reading Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex, I’m still fizzling with the excitement of just how fab a film it would make.  I think it’s because I like the characters so much.  And the fact that, beneath the most ordinary veneer of most people lies an extraordinary person.  Alice Turing is one of those people too.  I hope with everything I have that her hard work brings her the recognition as a writer she deserves.  You should buy the book.  You can get it here.  For ten Great British pounds, you could hold in your hand something special and make a lovely lady’s day.  (Alice, I mean, not me.)  Go on.  You won’t regret it. I promise.

Besides, with a title like that, just think how cool your friends will think you are when they spot it on your bookshelf.

I have, I confess, devoured the quite lovely Nik Perring’s Not So Perfect in one decadent, delicious go.  If each perfectly formed nugget were a chocolate, I would have licked it, savoured it, breathed it in.   Anticipated it and wanted it to last forever.  Each story made me gasp, or smile with closed lips turned down with an expulsion of breath.  Too lovely, I’d think.  The next just can’t be as exquisite.  I should save them.  Enjoy one at a time.  Revel in their exquisite beauty.  But I couldn’t.  My fingers touched the white space around the words on the smooth page, luxuriating in each delicate molecule.

For me, there was one moment when I had to stop.  With breathtaking bittersweetness, Where Did He Go, You Wonder left me gasping, tears welling up.  It was the one with the real gold leaf on the top, shimmering subtly with hopeless beauty.

You can buy Not So Perfect at Amazon or The Book Depository.  You must buy it though.  It’s luscious.  And it won’t make you fat. I promise.

Isn’t this the most beautiful thing?  I have never lusted over coloured ink before – quite the opposite, in fact.  I am hopelessly in love with my Mont Blanc fountain pen and slightly lairy brown Waterman ink.  I have been for some years and even take it to work for pleasant message-scribbling. The trouble, is course, is that I have to keep hiding it so that no one else uses it.  I would, unfortunately, have to punch them in they eye if that were to happen.  But look! Here!  Oh my.  I am truly weak with longing.  I need – not want – NEED a Lamy fountain pen.  And even more beauty abounds… Oh, so many colours.   I do believe that my next novel will be weaved in Bleu Myosotis.  *Sigh*  Forget-Me-Not Blue.  Heaven.  The even betterer thing is that, after many swooning visits to this website over the past week, I have finally noticed that this oasis of writerly joy is only half an hour away from me.  I’m weak, I tell you, weak.  How funny that something so delicious was there all the time, I just never knew.  So close, I could have reached out and touched it all along.

So… which colour are you?