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! 🙂

Out on the event trail again today, this time to Borders in Lakeside, Thurrock, for a /particularly/ excellent bookshop-type bash. Seven awesome authors – and me! – were given the opportunity to speak to students from eight schools in the local area. In an unusual twist the audience were divided up into small mixed groups and the authors gave our talks simultaneously, until a whistle blew and everyone changed places. If you examine the photo below – with the eye of faith! – I think you can just about see Stuart Hill doing his stuff for another group in the distance!

The talks were short – half an hour each – and a longish journey meant I only had the chance to do two, but both were great fun. In fact at one point I got so excited that my head exploded.

Ahhh, all right. Technically, it’s true, my head didn’t explode: when this pic was taken I was standing in front of a window, with the sun shining strongly behind me. But I’ve got exactly the kind of dopey, surprised expression that I’m certain I’d be wearing if I ever did get so excited my head exploded. And I was certainly happy enough! 😉

My thanks to Sue for inviting me, and to everyone I spoke to today – but especially to JAKE, pictured here on the far left, for asking some terrific questions and generally being a thoroughly splendid fellow (cheers, Jake!) And thanks, too, to the magnificent Mr Graham Marks, one of the aforementioned awesome authors, for kindly giving me a lift back home. 😉

Today was great, but I’m enormously excited about /tomorrow/. I’ve got another Carnegie event (see previous post) in the morning, which I’m thoroughly looking forward to. Then in the afternoon I’m travelling to Leicester, to attend a fabulous-sounding awards party (there are going to be jugglers, and everything!) where the winner will be announced of the Leicester Book of the Year Award for Teenage Fiction.

And – get this! – Black Tat is on the shortlist! Together with:

BEING by Kevin Brooks

THE ANGEL COLLECTOR by Bali Rai

JUST LISTEN by Sarah Dessen, and-

BERSERK by Ally Kennen.

I have read all the books on this list, and was massively impresssed – not to say intimidated – by every one of them. And Bali Rai and Kevin Brooks are going to be at the do. Wha… [pauses to wave arms in the air like a highly caffeinated Muppet-!] …it should be a brilliant evening! I’ll keep you posted. 😉

This Thursday the winner will be announced of the Carnegie Medal – one of the most prestigious British annual awards for young people’s literature [click on the link above to check out this year’s shortlist]. Schools and libraries all over the UK have been ‘shadowing’ the award – reading the shortlisted books and organising their own events to celebrate and discuss them – and today it was my great pleasure to attend the first of two such do’s I’ve been invited to this week!

Now, I’m not on the list! ;p But as anyone who’s been following this blog will (or should!) know by now, I’m always up for doing anything I can to support the cause of young people reading, especially in my local area. So it was an honour and a privilege to come out to the wonderfully grand Council Chambers of Hackney Town Hall for this terrific event.

Teams of students from schools all over the borough had prepared presentations about the Carnegie shortlisted books. The presentations themselves (particularly, imho, the Cardinal Pole team’s one for Philip Reeve’s HERE LIES ARTHUR – my favourite book from the list!) were all AWESOME. But where I and (pictured) authors Anne Cassidy, Catherine Johnson and Linzi Glass (shortlisted for RUBY RED) came in, was in helping to kick-start the students’ discussion about the books afterwards.

Well they didn’t seem to need much pushing from me, I can tell you! 😉

There’s almost nothing I love more than a spirited exchange of opinions about stories, so witnessing this whole roomful of passionate and enthusiastic young people all arguing their case for which book on this list should win was absolutely brilliant. Just when I thought I had a handle on which one people generally preferred (Tanya Landman’s APACHE say, or Jenny Valentine’s FINDING VIOLET PARK) someone from another group would chime in with another view that would reverse things completely (WHAT I WAS, by Meg Rosoff, or the aforementioned RUBY RED). It was EXCELLENT – not to mention hugely inspiring. My thanks to Jo at Victoria Park Books for inviting me.

Hey!

Writing this at what’s (for me at least) fairly tremendous speed as I’m about to shoot off out the door again, but I’ve just returned from a TERRIFIC school visit, this time to St Augustine’s, in Kilburn, London.

I was booked for two sessions, and spoke to around sixty Year 7 students in each. I also had the chance to chat to some fascinating Sixth Form students at lunchtime. I was enormously impressed throughout my time at this school. Despite it being quite a muggy and hot sort of a day everyone’s attention was impeccable, and the questions were just AWESOME! The standout one – and one of the weirdest for a while! – was “If Philip Pullman asked you for your autograph, what would you do?”

I don’t know. Probably giggle uncontrollably, like the total fanboy I am, and then sign whatever he liked of course. But (heh!) if it ever actually happens, I’ll be sure to let you know! 😉

My thanks to Ms Collins, and everyone I met at St Aug’s. I’m hoping to get the chance to come back for another visit later in the year. Looking forward to it already!

Yesterday I was doing my stuff at The Marlborough School, in Oxfordshire. It was my second visit to the school, and a fantastic day – every bit as good as the first one, maybe even better!

To my great glee and delight, Marlborough’s awesome librarian Alicia Marshall had invited me back for three double sessions – of an hour and a half each – to speak to the whole of Year 8. Now: I don’t normally speak for that long at a stretch, but all sixty students in each group were so attentive, and their questions so good, that the time zipped past just fine. There were just two minor hitches…

In the first session, a member of the audience got a terrible nosebleed and had to rush from the room: I hear she’s fine, no worries, but a casualty in one of my audiences was sort of an unwelcome first for me! And in the third session, my rambling was suddenly interrupted by some ominous DONK DONK DONK-ing sounds coming from the library ceiling.

The culprit turned out to be a crow, pecking on one of the skylights as if trying to get our attention. Well, it worked. Initially I thought that maybe the bird was signalling approval of how the day had been going: appreciative reactions to my work are always welcome, from all species, so I felt kind of pleased. But the true nature of this corvid’s feelings about my bletherings was about to become all too clear. Abruptly the young lady sitting beneath the skylight looked down at me with a terrible look of horror and disgust.

‘What?’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’

‘It pooed,’ she said.

Well, I’m glad I got a better reception from Marlborough’s students than I did from its bird population! ;p

Today’s big Guestbook shout goes out to Katherine, who asks: Why did you want to write?

Hi, Katherine! Thanks for your question.

The reason I wanted to write is the same reason I’m still writing – the reason that being a published author is my dream, and I’m pedalling to keep up with it as fast as I can: I write because I love it.

I love imagining things – making up fantastical situations, characters, stories and, heh, monsters!

I love the way that there’s always something new to learn about writing – new skills and techniques to develop and, one day (I hope, if I’m lucky and work hard enough), to master.

Best of all, I love the effect that good books have on me – and the tantalizing prospect of one of my stories having that effect on someone else.

Writing suits me. It gives me things that seem worth hanging big chunks of my life on. For anyone reading this, I hope you find something that does the same for you.

My thanks to Alicia Marshall for inviting me back, and to the Year 8 students of the Marlborough School for giving me such a warm welcome.

Out on the school visit trail again today, this time to Broxbourne School, in Hertfordshire. In pretty quick succession I did three talks (of around fifty mins each) to sixty Year 9 students, sixty Year 7s, and sixty Year 8s — yep, a hundred and eighty young people in total!

I was delighted and honoured to get the chance to talk to so many…

…and to be honest, when I’d managed to get through all three sessions without spitting on anyone by mistake or spilling my drinking water down myself (both serious dangers with me!) I have to say I felt pretty /relieved/, too! ;p

My thanks to Sue Shaper for kindly inviting me, and to anyone I spoke to who’s reading this, thank you for listening.

At the end of each session I handed out (my latest thing-) some business cards that I’ve had printed up with the Sam Enthoven portal page address on them. This was to encourage anyone who had any follow-up questions to get in touch with me, either through my various social network profiles (see my previous post!) or through the Black Tat and Tim Guestbooks. Speaking of which…

To my great glee, on returning to my desk I discovered some AWESOME new Guestbook entries! Today’s big shout (or giant monster roar) goes out to Sienna from Toronto on the Tim Guestbook (thank you so much, Sienna!) but also to Linda from Germantown, Maryland on the Black Tat one, who writes:

Hey, I LOVED the book. It was imaginative, suspenseful [which, ahem, led me to flip to later events] and just….kinda fills up a little hole in ya,…ya know? And I totally loved the London speeches in it like git. I don’t know if you know it but your humor in the book made me laugh laugh. Not in my mind haha-let’s-read-on.
Anywho, I have a few questions I hope you answer:

1. How do you figure out names or looks for the monsters? Like the Chinj? [They’re actually kinda cute in my mind lol]
2. How do you imagine the dragon’s inside? It seems kind of hard…
3. How do you find a publisher [or agent first?] to read your manuscripts? I know I’m young but I really do plan on becoming an author. Although I’m actually procrastinating quite a bit. But I really wanted to know how to get one and do you have to pay them? Thanks for reading and/or answering my questions! :] LOVED the Black Tattoo. Can you just make a small book about Jagmat coming into Earth and Jack and Esme’s relationship? If you don’t, then, ah well, I tried. 😛

oh P.S I still don’t know what the password’s for!

Hi Linda! Thanks for getting in touch, and thanks so much for the kind words!

1. Thinking up names and looks for monsters is something that I personally don’t find too hard. In fact – as you’ve probably guessed from my stories – there’s almost nothing I love better! Dreaming them up and giving them personalities is an absolute delight, for me. And once you’ve done that, finding names for them is a matter of picking something that best suits that particular monster.

One trick that I found worked well for several of the demons in Black Tat was to write lists of words that /sounded/ close to the sort of effect I was after. I’d then take individual syllables or letters from those words and recombine them in different ways until I had something that fit. ‘Chinj,’ though, came from a billboard ad I passed when I was on the bus one day! The word caught my eye, I did a double-take and realised I’d misread it, but by then the word ‘chinj’ was stuck in my mind – and my weird brain was already whirring into action! Monster names can come from all sorts of places. /Human/ names, however… wow, now those are /hard/. 😉

2. Imagining the Dragon’s insides? Nothing to it: just go to Google Images and type ‘Endoscopy’ – though you’d maybe better not try it if you’re eating. HEE HEE HEE! ;p

3. How do you find a publisher? Or an agent? Hmmmmmmm. Actually, again, ‘finding’ them is easy. There are various books (depending on where in the world you live) which list details of where to send your stuff, and what to send. You should be able to find those in your local public library, or on the internet. Looking at who publishes (and represents) your favourite authors is a pretty good place to start, too.

The hard bit, of course, is getting a publisher or agent to take you on.

First, concentrate on creating the absolute hands-down best book you can possibly write. This, really, is the most important step. Until you get past this stage – and have a complete, finished book that you are proud of and you think might stand up against other books – things like agents and publishers are very unlikely to follow. So, to reiterate: first, write your book.

If your book is good enough and you find a proper publisher who loves it, you won’t need to pay them. Your agent (if you have one – I think they’re crucial, but not everybody agrees) will only be paid when he or she sells your work. This will be in the form of a commission percentage taken from whatever money the publishers pay /you/.

But really, I’m sorry to harp on, but it’s stage one that counts. Write your book. [For some tips about procrastination, click here]. Make your book as good as you can possibly make it. With determination, and luck, everything else comes /afterwards/.

…And the password in Black Tat? Go to the site, click on ‘What Is The Black Tattoo?’ and click on ‘Locked’.

OK Linda, hope that’s helpful! And thanks so much again for getting in touch!

Anyone else want to ask me something…? 😉

To St Bonaventure’s School in Newham today, to speak to around forty Year 8 students. This was an absolute monster of a session: due to some administrative miscommunication I’d found out – yesterday – that instead of (as I’d thought) being booked for two hour-long talks with different groups, in fact I was going to be speaking to the one group for TWO HOURS.

Yikes. Frankly I can’t sit still and listen to one person talk for much more than one hour, let alone two, so the idea of expecting an audience to do so made me pretty nervous, you can imagine. Some kind of “interactive task” was called for – a workshop, in other words – and, as it happens, that’s something I’ve never done before, either! But with a two-hour slot to fill and forty students looking at me expectantly, there was nothing else for it but to screw up my courage and go for it.

And you know what? IT WAS AWESOME.

As anyone who has read the note at the very end of Black Tat will know, the single best piece of writing advice I’ve come across so far is from an interview with brilliant thriller author Lee Child. His words have become something of a mantra for me over the years, and they go like this: “Write the exact book that you yourself would be thrilled to read.”

Keeping my own storytelling preferences under wraps to start with (so as not to prejudice their answers), I asked the young gentlemen of the group what I believe are a couple of the best questions a writer can ask themselves when they sit down to start a new project, namely: If you were to find a book in a bookshop or library that was the ultimate book — one that felt like it had everything you wanted in a story; one that was so exciting that once you started reading it you’d enjoy it so much you might forget to eat or sleep until you finished it — what would that book be like? What would the elements of it be?

And then (HEE HEE HEE!) I asked ’em to write some of it!

I gave them fifteen minutes – which seemed to me to be very stingy, but it had to be that way or I’d never have time to hear and respond to what each student had written. And the results, I have to tell you, were absolutely gobsmacking.

It wasn’t the technical standard of the students’ writing that impressed me most – though that, I have to say, was uniformly EXCELLENT. No: what struck me most powerfully was the variety of material they came up with. There were historical stories. There were political stories. There were murder mysteries, slice-of-life dramas, superheroes, sports stories, and more. And all of them were told with a combination of imaginative ambition yet grab-you-by-the-throat immediacy that I found HUGELY inspiring. In fact, after hearing what the students had produced, when the talk moved on to my own writing I felt like I had to work extra hard to give a good account of myself, in case I ended up being put in the shade – HEE HEE HEE!

If you’re reading this from St Bon’s, thank you. I got a massive kick out of listening to you, and I hope you got something out of listening to me.

This afternoon it was my great privilege to go do my stuff at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school for girls. It’s actually the third time I’ve been invited there; it was a pleasure as always…

…and, also as always at my events, I waved my arms about like a big, black-clad, blond baboon. 😉

Let’s start with a wide shot of me reading from Black Tat – and looking pretty composed and dignified, right?

Maybe so. But the old habits soon set in, and before long…

Then…

And even…

The above, unless I’m very much mistaken, is me acting out the scene from Tim in which the Big Ben Tower is snapped off and tossed like a caber.

Well, I like to put a lot of enthusiasm into my talks! 😉

My thanks to the students I spoke to – your questions were excellent! – and to Ms Cheetham for having me back for what was yet another terrific visit.

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’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! 🙂