I’m waving my arms about and grinning – yes, even more than usual – because last Friday I was presented with THIS:

Yep, it’s an award! For one of my books! As voted for by young readers from Wigan! HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE! 😀

Ahem. ‘Scuse me, I’m rather excited. 😉

This is Wigan’s Explore Book Award. It’s a brand new award – in fact this is the very first year it has been given! And Black Tat won the Teen category. It’s an enormous honour to have my name on the prize in its inaugural year, one I’ll do my best to live up to for the rest of my writing life.

The awards ceremony was held at St Edmund Arrowsmith High School: I’d spoken to some students from there when I visited Wigan back in April. On that same visit I happened to mention a certain anecdote from when I was writing Black Tat: for the five years it took I was pretty short of cash, living basically off instant noodles and whatever past-its-best veg produce was being sold off knock-down cheap at the supermarket. One night (I was writing the Akachash at the time!) I opened the fridge door and realized I had nothing left to eat except PARNSIPS. This story must have made an impression, because once I’d received the above award (and said a few words of thanks) I was then suddenly presented with a second, namely… THIS:

Yep: it’s a GOLDEN PARSNIP!

A GARGANTUAN THANK YOU to the readers of Wigan who voted for Black Tat, and to the whole team at the Wigan School Libraries Service for organising what I’m certain will become one of the UK’s most prestigious awards for young people’s literature (that’s, erm, the Explore Book Award, not the Parsnip – but I guess you never know! ;p) I’d especially like to thank KATHY WILLIAMS and ROB SANDERSON for their kindness, hospitality and all-round awesomeness. I’ll treasure BOTH these awards, always. 🙂

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