I absolutely loved Geek Girl and so I am over the moon to welcome Holly Smale to Books 4 Teens as part of the Geek Girl blog tour to talk about a day in her life

So prepare to smile and over to Holly…

A Day In The Glamorous Life Of Holly Smale

6am – Wake up.

6:02am – Go back to sleep. 6am is far too early to wake up.

8am – Switch on fairy lights. I cannot start a day without fairy lights.

8:01am – Or music.

8:02am – Or coffee.

8:10am – Or a tidy bedroom, organized wardrobe and rearranged toiletries cupboard.

8:40am – Realise that starting a day is a lot harder than it should be.

8:45am – Get dressed, which is just a token gesture because my PJs are actually smarter. Go downstairs to make a bowl of porridge and healthy cup of purifying green tea.

8:55am – Come back upstairs with four slices of peanut butter toast, a toffee yoghurt, Cadburys Cream Egg and another cup of coffee.

9am – Sit at desk. Get peanut butter and melted chocolate all over my keyboard.

9:05am – Check Twitter. And emails. And Facebook. And Twitter. And Facebook. And emails. And Twitter. Send a few messages on all of them in the hope that somebody will engage in conversation.

9:15am – They don’t.

9:20am – Grab list of Things To Do, cross-check with emails and add anything new: guest blog posts to write, Q and As to answer, agent/editor to ring and annoy, interviews to complete, planning and research to do. At the top of this list it says JUST WRITE ANOTHER BOOK followed by an optimistic smiley face.

9:30am – 11:30am – Write Q and A twice: once, making myself sound fabulous and interesting, and again totally honestly. Decide to send boring version (the latter).

11:30am – Ring a writer friend. Ask if they want to go for coffee and talk about writing. They say no: they’re writing.

11:32am – Wonder why I’m not writing.

11:35am – Eat another Cadburys Cream Egg.

11:40am – Gripped by sudden fierce inspiration. Start writing.

5pm – Feel weird. Realise I haven’t eaten lunch, or been to the toilet, or blinked properly in five hours. Look at phone: three missed calls.

5:03pm – Writer friend having nervous breakdown. Go see writer friend. They can’t write. They will never write again. They hate writing. They want to be a fireman. They cry. I cry. We eat more Cadburys Cream Eggs.

6pm – Wander down to the Thames. Look at Big Ben for a few minutes, smile at a dog, blush at a man, realise it’s cold. Come home again.

6:40pm – Sit down at desk. Decide I cannot write and will never write again.

6:45pm – Write.

9:45pm – Feel weird again. Realise I haven’t eaten dinner, or been to the toilet, or blinked properly in another three hours. Wander out of bedroom. Bump into a flatmate, who assumed I was on holiday/dead.

10pm – Go to Pizza Hut. Pick up pizza. Go upstairs. Watch Man Versus Food on telly with flatmates. All agree that we need to cook more and eat less, while shovelling down six different types of takeaway.

11pm – Decide that very, very soon my life is going to become incredibly glamorous, and I should make the most of this precious time when it’s not at all glamorous.

11:05pm – Wish my life was a bit more glamorous.

11:30pm – Fall asleep with slice of black olive stuck to my cheek.

Further Information

“My name is Harriet Manners, and I am a geek.”

Harriet Manners knows that a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a “jiffy” lasts 1/100th of a second, and the average person laughs 15 times per day. She knows that bats always turn left when exiting a cave and that peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

But she doesn’t know why nobody at school seems to like her.

So when Harriet is spotted by a top model agent, she grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Even if it means stealing her best friend’s dream, incurring the wrath of her arch enemy Alexa, and repeatedly humiliating herself in front of impossibly handsome model Nick. Even if it means lying to the people she loves.

Veering from one couture disaster to the next with the help of her overly enthusiastic father and her uber-geeky stalker, Toby, Harriet begins to realise that the world of fashion doesn’t seem to like her any more than the real world did.

As her old life starts to fall apart, will Harriet be able to transform herself before she ruins everything?

Geek Girl by Holly Smale is out on 28th February, published by HarperCollins Children’s Books, £6.99 (PB). Also available in e-book formats.

A massive thank you to Holly Smale for writing this post (and for writing Geek Girl too!) if you’d like to find out more you can follow her on Twitter: @HolSmale