Floof. I feel like I’m still recovering. What a day it was!

First up was my second (see Monday’s post) Carnegie Shadowing event of the week, which took place at City University in the London borough of Islington. Schools from all around the area sent teams of keen young readers to make presentations about the books on the shortlist, and thrash out the knotty issues of which one they thought should be the winner.

The official Carnegie winner has just been announced – about two hours ago, as I’m typing this! If you don’t know the result already then I’ll say something about it at the end of this post. Yesterday’s favourite was APACHE, by Tanya Landman. That’s fine book, but I think the reason it won the biggest share of audience votes was largely thanks to a particularly brilliant and spirited presentation by these students from Stoke Newington School…!

It was a pleasure to act as master of ceremonies at this terrific event. A resounding HURRAH! to everyone who took part, and my thanks to Pam and the Islington Education Libraries Service team for inviting me along.

Next for me, however, it was off to spiffy new St Pancras station to catch a train to The Leicester Book of the Year Award for Teenage Fiction!

This was a WONDERFUL event. In fact I found myself grinning and giggling pretty much constantly for the entire evening: if anyone there found that alarming I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it, I was having so much fun! Students from no less than FIFTEEN schools in the Leicester area were involved, and the results of everyone’s hard work were spectacular. Here are some more pics to give you a flavour…

Here (above) is a shot from a glorious stage re-enactment of a scene from Black Tat – hee hee hee! The young gentleman on the left is called Nahid: see that white waistcoat he’s wearing? More of that in a second…

Here are (l-r) Kevin Brooks, Bali Rai, some grinning lunatic, and Ally Kennen…

…and here’s Ally Kennen, author of BERSERK, looking understandably thrilled after the Lord Mayor of Leicester has just presented her with this AWESOME award!

I’d’ve loved Black Tat to win, of course. But I’ve read all the other books that were shortlisted, they’re all terrific, so I’d’ve been every bit as chuffed and honoured and happy however this turned out. YAY! 🙂

Here (above) are those jugglers I mentioned, doing their stuff Poi-style. And here…

Here (above) is what Nahid had on his back! Even though I’d been asked to do it, I felt quite bad desecrating this beautiful piece of art with my ‘orrible ‘andwriting, But I tried to write something to show how I felt about it – and, indeed, this whole party. 😉

A HUGE thank you to Alison and Daisy for organising this fantastic evening, and to everyone who was there for their lovely warm welcome. This was my first time in Leicester, but I hope to come back very soon!

It’s been quite a mad week for me what with one thing and another. It’s also, frankly, high time that I got back on the case with Phase Three! But before I crawl back under my stone to play with my imaginary friends again (hur hur hur!) I just want to write a quick word on the book that was the winner of this year’s Carnegie Prize. It was HERE LIES ARTHUR, by Philip Reeve.

This was definitely my favourite book on the Carnegie shortlist, so I’m absolutely delighted that it won. The list seemed strongly skewed towards historical fiction this year, a style of writing that’s not normally (the magnificent FLASHMAN excepted!) my personal cup of dinosaur. But where one or two others on the list – mentioning no names! – got a little too tied up in exhaustive period detail for my tastes, HERE LIES ARTHUR was, I thought, a thoroughly rocking good read. The narrative voice was compelling, the characters were strong, the sense of time and place (and smell!) was wonderfully vivid and Mr Reeve’s take on the Arthur stories was refreshingly modern and subversive. But what struck me most of all with this book – and the reason, imho, that it deserved to win – was that all these elements were bound together by a rigorously disciplined focus on PACE.

On top of everything else it does, HERE LIES ARTHUR is a fast, exciting story. That, to me, is the mark of the best kind of storytelling — and as long as awards like the Carnegie and The Leicester Teenage Fiction Prize continue to help young people to discover great, thrilling books then it’s a huge delight and honour for me to be involved with them.

Thank you! 🙂

Right! Realising (ahem!) that I haven’t given it a kick up the bum in – yikes! how did that happen?? – nearly eighteen months, I’ve just posted about half a dozen more little blurb wossnames on my LibraryThing Review Page.

I’d hold up anything on that Five Hundred Fine Books list as being well worth checking out – that’s the idea! But if it’s more detailed book recommendations you’re after, by any chance, then I reckon that review page is a good place to start. Heh: the right hand side of the page even displays reviews of the FHFBs by other readers (isn’t LibraryThing great??) — so you don’t even just have to take my word that these are good books, if you don’t want to! ;p

Anyway, do take a look. And if you do, don’t forget to leave me a message on my profile page!

Favourite human words of the day: STALWART; STANCHION [yeah, been thinking of the bridge scene from Cloverfield! 😉 -And, particularly pleasing to say…] SMOLT

OK! On top of MySpace, LibraryThing, ContactAnAuthor and the new Bebo spot, as of this week I’m now also on Facebook, Flickr and – my favourite toy at the moment! – LastFM.

Yes, it’s “Jagmat 2.0”! ;p

Heh. Well, anyway-! I haven’t got ’em all set up exactly how I want ’em just yet, but if you want to get in touch with me then now you’ve got a few other choices besides the Guestbooks. Like I say, leave a message after the imaginary beep…!

Favourite human words of the day: PAUCITY; INCORRIGIBLE; CLENCH

Currently reading: DMZ VOL 3 – PUBLIC WORKS, by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli. There’s been an awesome-comics-series-shaped hole in my life since Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: THE LAST MAN finished, and DMZ is shaping up for the job NICELY. Huzzah! 🙂

Hello! Yes – you, reading this! Are you on Bebo, by any chance??

I ask, because – encouraged by how well fings’ve been going as Jagmat (while at the same time, sigh, waiting for the Guestbook snafu to get sorted so folks can send me messages again) – I’ve just today taken my first clumsy baby Tyrannosaur steps towards fixing up a Bebo profile, here.

Now, be patient with me! That page is every bit as raw and tender right now as if it really had just heaved its way out of its egg. It’s got some pics, and that old (’06) Black Tat YouTube clip of me with the strange disappearing hair (hee hee hee!) – and that, frankly, is about it for today. But it’s a start. So: on Bebo? Want to be my very first Bebo buddy? Your time starts… now.

Favourite human words of the day: GAUDY; CONNIPTION; PRANG.

Currently reading: THE LUCIFER EFFECT – HOW GOOD PEOPLE TURN EVIL, by Philip Zimbardo. And let me tell you, it is fascinating.

Q&A time again. My thanks and best wishes today to Edward Z, who asks: Is any of the stuff about nanobots in Tim actually true, or are nanobots in general just a completely made up concept used only for literature and film purposes? I know there is nanotechnology, but actual nano robots?

Hey Edward! Sorry it’s taken me a few days to get back to you, I’m hard at work on the next book. Glad you liked the sound of that, by the way – I’m excited, too!

Nanobots are, at the moment, entirely fictional – or as far as we know (secret experiments notwithstanding!) at least! HOWEVER: the ideas that fed into (Tim’s nemesis-!) Professor Mallahide and his talents are most definitely based on real things, and the work of two men in particular.

One is K. Eric Drexler. The current state of play about the feasibility (or otherwise!) of nanobots is nicely summarized in a Wikipedia article about him, here.

Another is Hans Moravec. Mallahide’s ideas about the essential crumminess of the human body as a means of carrying us around in the world (ideas I happen to agree with) were definitely inspired by Moravec. Here’s a link to his page on Wikipedia. His interviews are always good fun, too, full of all sorts of mind-bending notions: here’s one that I dug up from Google just now.

I’m not a scientist. Far from it. I just want to write fun stories, so the big impetus with me is less to do with what human technology is currently or actually capable of, and more to do with the magical and inspiring question of ‘WHAT IF…?’ And of course, I’m not the only one. There’s already quite a solid tradition of nanobots in fiction: PREY, by Michael Crichton, is tremendous fun, and BLOOD MUSIC by Greg Bear is absolutely amazing.

Anyway, if you fancy some follow-up reading, the above should be enough to get you started. 🙂

Hey there!

Just surfacing briefly from deep-drilling work on PHASE THREE to tell you about the excellent weekend I just had. Spent a lot of it on TRAINS, but it was definitely worth it!

On Saturday I got up at stupid o’clock to catch my first train of the weekend, going from London’s King’s Cross to LINCOLN where they were having a literary festival – AND I WAS ON THE BILL!

See? Halfway down? That’s my name! On the bill! At a literary festival!

Ahem. ‘Scuse me. 😉

Being a public (as opposed to a school-) event my talk was kind of low-key. [No Rowling-style queues round the block – YET!] But the group of people I spoke to were GREAT — full of questions, opinions, suggestions, and, sometimes (thanks, AIMEE!!) what felt like all three at same time!

From Lincoln I hopped another train back to London before heading out again on yet a /third/, this time to BRISTOL for the INTERNATIONAL COMICS EXPO.

This (above) is from Sunday. The gentleman standing beside me in this pic is BARNABY RICHARDS, who, as well as being a splendid fellow and an old friend of mine, is an absolutely wonderful artist. He’s just recently started a webcomic called RADBOD, and it’s shaping up very, very nicely: do click on the link to check it out, and don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list.

The Expo was, unsurprisingly, quite a restrained affair compared to the recent New York shenanigans. But it was great fun. The awesome ROGER LANGRIDGE was there, who is always a pleasure to speak to (though possibly not for him – he looked a bit knackered!) And a particular highlight for me was meeting one half of the creative partnership that is Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, who are responsible for some of the finest comics I’ve read over the last six months (SCARLET TRACES, LEVIATHAN and KINGDOM OF THE WICKED, to name a few). Typically, I chose the moment to make a complete fool of myself: recognizing him from a photo in one of his books (or so I thought) I marched straight up to Mr Edginton at the Dark Horse stall and congratulated him profusely on his thrilling writing. Of course it wasn’t him, it was D’Israeli, the artist. -AARRGH!

Here, by way of an apology to him, is a link to D’Israeli’s blog. And do check out the titles above, they’re all absolutely phenomenal! 😉

I’m here, I’m alive but I’m incredibly dopey, and I’m horribly SHORT OF KIP.

It’s my own fault, of course. I sat up late into last night reading, utterly gripped, first by George Pelecanos‘ majestic mystery novel HELL TO PAY. And then, once that reached its wonderful conclusion, like the story-addicted fool that I am I decided I’d take a ‘quick peek’ at the opening pages of LITTLE BROTHER by Cory Doctorow…

Now, in case you haven’t heard of it yet, LITTLE BROTHER is probably the ‘buzziest’ YA novel of the summer, with praise on its back cover from a whole slew of my favourite writers including Neil Gaiman, Scott Westerfeld and Brian K Vaughan. I’ve been a fan of Boing Boing, a website to which Mr Doctorow is one of the major contributors, for a long time now – but ever since since hearing him and (the also awesome) China Mieville discuss political writing in books for young people at Eastercon some weeks back, I’ve been positively RAVENING to get my hands on this book. I was hoping to pick it up while I was in New York, but the launch date wasn’t until a week after I left – and the British edition doesn’t come out for another SIX MONTHS! But I did get one shipped over ‘specially, soon as possible, and it got here just yesterday.

Was it worth the wait and the fuss? Well, let’s just say it looks VERY promising so far. In fact, the story took off at such a good clip that my ‘sneak peak’ turned into a further two-hour binge that – if a certain person in the room with me hadn’t woken up and told me in very strong terms to stop – would probably have continued right through until morning! As it was I only put my head down for about three hours before it was time to get up and work, and folks, I’m an eight-hour type of demon. I’ve had a brain like a wind-sock (like, even more than usual) ever since.

Man, I love discovering fine new books to read. HEE HEE HEE! 🙂

For more recommendations, check out my list of Five Hundred Fine Books on my LibraryThing profile.

I’ve just come back from my second official visit to Hornsey Library, in Crouch End, North London – lair of supreme ninja librarian Sean Edwards and his excellent Chatterbooks Reading Group!

I’ve spoken to this reading group before, back in October 06, and while (most of!) the faces have changed, the feeling has not: their tastes are highly sophisticated – terrifyingly so, to me, I don’t mind admitting – and they’re not afraid to voice their opinions. But once (thanks, Thomas!) I’d established that I don’t work for MI6 (or do I?? ;p) the group’s members were very welcoming and were scrupulously polite listeners. If anyone who was there is reading this, thank you!

I particularly enjoyed getting the chance to mention one of my obsessions, namely creatures that inhabit the deep sea. Now: as you may have gathered(!) I love monsters – I love hearing about them, reading about them, and thinking about them for stories. But I tell you, the wildest and weirdest imaginings of my or anyone else’s mind are nothing, nothing – I’m delighted to say – compared to the kinds of real creatures that human science is only now beginning to discover in the deep darkness of the Earth’s oceans. My current favourite book on the subject (it’s on my LibraryThing Five Hundred Fine Books List) is a beautiful tome called THE DEEP: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss, by Claire Nouvian. It’s absolutely breathtaking, and I heartily recommend you check it out: click on the link above to go to a special website dedicated to the book.

Meanwhile thanks again, Sean, for having me along! 🙂

I tell yer: assuming someone’s identity? It ain’t all gravy.

Apologies for lately bloglack, but last weekend I made a grisly discovery: turns out that, before (heh!) his life-plans were suddenly and fundamentally changed by yours truly [see ‘THE ENTHOVEN IS DEAD’, right], unbeknownst to me the Enthoven happened to be having a problem with, of all things, one of his /fangs/. Imagine my surprise on Saturday morning, when I found myself in a cab at six am on my way to a hospital for an appointment to have one of ‘is WISDOM TEETH REMOVED.

Got to say, you humans have got some grand surgical facilities on your planet. The staff at Homerton Hospital, Hackney, were a model of efficiency and solicitousness. So great was their efficiency, however, that by the time I thought to protest at what was going on I’d already been sedated and anaesthetized: I awoke on a trolley, with only a row of neat sutures to mark the spot where latterly had been one of the back-fangs I’d grown to mimic the Enthoven’s wonky jawline. I don’t know what they did with the tooth. I was worried fer a while: separated from the rest of me, it was only a matter of time before it stopped looking like a tooth and returned to its natural, undifferentiated, blancmange-like state. But, figuring more enquiries would only incriminate me, I quit the scene as soon as the nurse allowed me – and the last few days I’ve been stuck waiting for the stitches to grow out, the bruises to fade, the swelling to subside and (yeah) yer impressively powerful human /drugs/ to wear off.

On the plus side, bein’ under the weather gave me a chance to catch up on some quality human READING, this time in the shape of the quite gobsmackingly good THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU, by H. G. WELLS.

That Wells was a visionary, and one of the most far-sighted and innovative writers of imaginative literature the human race has ever produced… well, everyone says that, and it’s a bit of a cliche. What’s worth knowing about his stuff (and a lot of critics seem to underplay this) is that lots of his books are just REALLY GOOD FUN – and folks, THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU is a fine example. For a novel written more than a hundred and ten years ago it goes at a cracking pace: by just five pages in the characters are stranded at sea, starving and drawing lots over who’s going to be cannibalized – and, amazingly, the book never really lets up from there. It’s like a fever-dream of vivisection and mutants and horror, all filtered through a contagious atmosphere of shimmering jungle heat. The ideas are great, sure, but the real triumph, it seems to me, is in how sure-footedly punchy and unpretentious the writing is: it’s wild and mad and deliriously evocative, but in its understated way it’s also REAL, it’s fierce, and it’s all over-and-out in just a hair under two hundred pages, without ever having lost its initial intensity. It’s the second time I’ve read this now and – like malaria – I fully expect to face bouts of reading it again and again every so often for the rest of my life. All I can say is, lucky me. And if you haven’t read THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU yet, lucky /you/.

For further details of this and other d&mn fine books, check the Enthoven’s LibraryThing profile.

Friday 4^th January 2008

Well here we are folks, a brand new year. I’m now back from my hols and beginning – beginning, mind – to get my head around it. 2007 was such a mad year for me and my lovely girlfriend Laura that we found we had to spend the last couple of weeks in total hibernation to recover. For Christmas we rented a cottage on the UK’s Cornish coast, and spent a week basically alternating between looking at the sea and looking at the insides of our eyelids – it was wonderful. In fact even since we got back I’ve been sleeping about ten hours a night, snoozing like it’s an Olympic sport! But now, like some unwieldy bear-creature, I’m stretching, groaning, yawning, and gradually pulling myself together for the year ahead – which is a bit daft really, because my next book is going to be published this Jan 17^th. Yikes!

Before we crack back on to business again with that, I’ve just got to tell you about a couple of particular highlights from my HOLIDAY READING (hurrah!) These were:

THE FADE, by Chris Wooding. This guy is simply one of the best fantastical action thriller writers around: when I saw he’d got a new one out I pounced on it with great glee, and let me tell you, I wasn’t disappointed. THE FADE has echoes of classic old-school prison-break stories like Papillon or even The Great Escape. But the book’s fantasy setting and its hard-as-nails female assassin narrator make it something else again. Fast, fresh and very VERY cool, this will grab you from page one and never let you go. And-

THE PYRATES, by George MacDonald Fraser. I’m a huge FLASHMAN fan so I’d been meaning to catch up with this one for ages. I’m happy to tell you it was an absolute hoot from start to finish. Wipe those lacklustre ‘Caribbean sequels from your mind: if you’ve got a Piratical itch to scratch this book has got THE LOT – swordfights, sea battles, dashing heroes, dastardly villains and of course, shiploads of rascally bewhiskered rapscallions who say ‘ARR!’ To my dismay, on my return to t’internet I discovered that the author has recently died [there’s an obituary here]. But he’s left the world a stack of wonderful books to enjoy. Hope I get the chance to do even half as much before my time comes.

For details of these and other book recommendations, check out my LibraryThing Five Hundred Fine Books profile.