Shivering Shrewsbury

Before I headed up to Manchester I travelled up by train to Shrewsbury. Our carriage was a sauna while the others were really cold, so I stripped down to my T-shirt and ran from one to the other to maintain an even temperature.

As the rain became heavier at Birmingham I caught the 19.33 train onto Shrewsbury (an absolutely disgusting train service run by Arriva - how anyone puts up with such appalling conditions on a daily basis is beyond me. Skank, mank and foul, might cover it). But at Shrewsbury a lovely lady, Lucy Morrison, waited to take me to my hotel. This was all to do with the Shrewsbury Children's Bookfest, and volunteers like Lucy did a lot of running around on the children's behalf, and of course for us authors. So a big 'thank you'.


We had slotted in an extra class and we had a great time. No, this isn't me doing a bit of Shakespeare with a skull - it's the famous Ostrich egg!



Santa's Little Helpers won the first round.








And then The P.I.C.S (haven't decoded that yet!) went into a tie-breaker .




Somebody got their head cut off - sorry, I didn't take the picture.



Thanks to Yvonne for marking the quiz, as well as supplying tea and biscuits with Jo's help - an essential source of food supply for visiting writers.

Team Tizzle

Well that's what they called themselves! R L Tizzle, and they were the winning team during one of my visits to Manchester. This is me telling the 'I Don't Know' team (they chose the name not me!) that basically they don't know any of the answers. It didn't matter. All the lads were great.


Nearly half nine in the morning and here I am waffling on about spids, snakes and spending half my life being scared to death!

Here's a picture of me about to sneeze - or looking gormless - yeah, I know the answer!

Finally we did a quick racing change through the streets to my final school, King David's before leaving Manchester. See the clock? Eleven - and I'd already been talking for half an hour.

Daniel had read all 24 books on the long list of the book award, and that's a feat in itself. Thanks everyone for asking all those questions - it saves me going on and on - and the Wise Irish Burgers team won the T-Shirts. Not sure where their name came from but it was a three-way tie with Mega Super Team and Sag and Ron - and it came down to that final question about the Ostrich egg!

All in all, a great time in Manchester.

Manchester Book Awards

What a party! This has to be the one to beat. You've never seen, felt, heard, so





much enthusiasm - a riotous roar for books. This was great. I loved every minute of it. Thank you Manchester for such an excellent time. It was a marvellous event with schoolchildren taking part at all levels. You read and you picked your winner (Sophie McKenzie) but as far as I'm concerned there were no losers - you made all of the final six authors feel as though we had all won. And the authors got on like old friends meeting at a party. Here's poet Mike Garry starting the proceedings.

The compere, Paul Sleem, was 100% High Octane, and everyone loved him - me too! He high -revved the pace the whole time.


And even the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Councillor Glynn Evans, (and his bling) didn't escape Paul's wicked humour.


Every author had one of their readers give a review of their book and another create a new cover design. My winners were Idiris for the Best Review and Sohail for Best Cover, not only that but out of the six 'Best' covers, Sarah also got Runner Up for another cover of The Devil's Breath.

Here's everyone on stage at the end of the awards. Sophie, Graham, Ally,Catherine, Kevin and moi, with the winners of the various school categories.







And finally, much scribbling.









Check out the whole gig at www.manchesterbookaward.com

Book Signings without Books

Now there's a novel idea - no pun intended - but after travelling hours to speak to the Dorset Teaching Reading Conference it turns out that despite months of warning the booksellers - Borders - had not delivered my book for the signing sessions. Marks out of ten? You must be joking! Here I am pretending that I don't feel a right prat. Not really - more of a Zen moment.

My volunteer photographer did some snapping while I had a captive audience.

Not sure what I was saying here but it might have been 'I don't believe it!' Definitely wasn't 'Hallellujah!'



That aside I was greeted warmly and looked after by Lyn Gaudreau and her team. I had two workshops with an enthusiastic audience of teachers, librarians and volunteer reading helpers. Thank you all for being so friendly and laughing in the right places.


Here's a fine photograph of the back of my head as one of the delegates took pity and asked me to sign a poster for The Devil's Breath.


Anyway, the sun was shining, and I stopped on the way to the conference and had a walk on the Dorset cliffs. So it wasn't all downhill!

Mystery of the Crystal Skull

While researching the latest Danger Zone which was going to be called The Crystal Skull (before Mr Spielberg decided to use it in his title for Indiana Jones) I spent some time in the British Museum researching various elements of the story. So, I thought you would like to see the real thing. It's tucked away in a corner, and might soon be removed from the museum, so I've added my picture to the many that are bound to be out there. (There's one on YouTube).
If you want to find out more here's the link to the British Museum.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aoa/r/rock_crystal_skull.aspx

A Spellbinding Award

Another nomination for The Devil's Breath, which is great news.

Cumbria School Library Service's Spellbinding Award, is a regional award voted for by children from across Cumbria. The schools will vote for their top 3 books from the shortlist between now and May, and will come together for an Awards Day at the end of June where they will discuss the books and decide the winner.

The Devil's Breath is my first book so this is really exciting news for me - to have been chosen is great.

So, we'll see how we get on with the long listing for the Carnegie and the shortlisting for the Manchester Book Award, which is being presented very soon in a very glam ceremony in - where else - Manchester.

Good thing is that I actually go and visit these places. I can't believe how Manchester has changed over the years - I used to go there when I was growing up in Liverpool - and I was there last year talking to schools.

So, a BIG Thank You to Cumbria for putting me on that list. I hope I get to go up there at some stage as it's a stunning place and I think it might even have heavier rainfall than Dartmoor - if that's possible.

Another Cover

It's been a while since I've posted a blog and that's because I've been snowed under with words. I worked through the latest book, Ice Claw, with the copy editors at Puffin, so that was a hundred-odd thousand words, then did the same thing with the American publishers, and finally had to do a couple of rewrites on A Touch of Frost script.

Meanwhile, of course, writing DangerZone3.

So I have just returned from rehearsals of 'Frost', which is pretty gruelling because all the actors, producers and the director expect me to have the answers to any queries they have (and I don't always) and to rewrite the final thoughts and ideas that come out of the rehearsals.

The crazy things is that one of the stories (there's usually at least three in each of my episodes) in this Touch of Frost had to do with credit cards being stolen. When I finally staggered out from rehearsals on Thursday evening - I found the hotel couldn't accept my credit cards. I have a great bank and they phoned me to check up on a few things - and someone had lifted my card numbers and bought more stuff than I could imagine. So everything was stopped. Fortunately I had an emergency card so didn't have to sign up as a chamber maid for the next few weeks.

On a pretty miserable train journey home, where people were standing because of the lack of seats (and this is an inter-city train) I got home to find the German edition's cover waiting for me - so here it is. The title has been translated as - THE FORTRESS/STRONGHOLD OF THE DEVIL.