Happy Halloween!
Usually on a Halloween evening I would be lurking in full costume, waiting to dole out sweets to trick-or-treaters. (I usually end up eating quite a lot of them myself. The sweets, not the trick-or-treaters.) This year, however, I am instead heading to Brighton for the World Fantasy Convention!
On the Friday, from 4pm until 5pm, I will be appearing on a panel with a stellar collection of YA authors – Garth Nix, Sarah Reese Brenna, Chris Priestley, Holly Black and Chris Wooding. The title is “Not in Front of the Children: How far should you go in YA Fiction?” and the panel will be discussing how far sex, drugs, violence, etc. have a place in Young Adult fiction.
On the Sunday between 11am and 12am I will be joining a group of seven other writers of children’s fantasy: Emma Barnes, C J Busby, Teresa Flavin, Amy Greenfield, Katherine Langrish, Katherine Roberts and Linda Strachan. We will each be giving a short five minute reading from one of our books.
Meanwhile, my good friend Rhiannon Lassiter is holding her own online Halloween party. It’s a blog party celebrating the release of Little Witches Bewitched, a collection of short stories about two young people who remain admirably good-natured and level-headed when somebody transforms them into witches in a fit of pique. (Just for Halloween, you can buy the book at a reduced price.)
Have a wonderful Halloween, everybody, and hope to see some of you at the World Fantasy Convention!
Twisted Winter
There is something eerie about the onset of winter that cannot be fully explained even by the longer nights, the stark trees or the chill. Winter is more than just an absence of light, life and heat. It has its own presence and mystery. Humanity withdraws to its little pools of warmth and illumination, and dark, ancient forces walk abroad…
Today sees the publication of Twisted Winter, a collection of creepy winter stories edited by Catherine Butler. One of the seven tales is mine, and I am lucky enough to share the anthology with six very talented authors – Katherine Langrish (the Trollfell trilogy), Catherine Butler (Teaching Children’s Fiction), Frances Thomas (I Found Your Diary and The Blindfold Track), my writing buddy Rhiannon Lassiter (Ghost of a Chance and Bad Blood), Liz Williams (the Inspector Chen series) and the legendary Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising series).
Before you ask, no, this isn’t a tinselly gaggle of twee Christmas ghost stories. Every story handles wintry menace in a different way.
A teenage boy creeps out at night, for no ordinary delinquency. On the darkening marshes, a bully goes too far. A young girl makes an eerie journey of the spirit and imagination in her quest to understand her dead father. Complacent and greedy adults hold a Halloween party, and are visited by ancient forces. The discoloured light from street lamps bathes a graveyard encounter. A teenage girl reaches a fateful agreement with a snow-pure visitor. Persephone slips away from her summer abode, back to the lands of the dead.
On a personal note, Susan Cooper is a writer I have admired since I was nine years old. When my father captivated us by reading aloud the entirety of the Dark is Rising series, I never imagined that one day I would find myself writing for the same anthology as the author.
My current feelings are best summarised as follows:
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Edinburgh International Book Festival 2013
I love Edinburgh. Whoever designed it apparently decided that you would be able to to see all the dramatic buildings much better if you crumpled the landscape like this.
It’s a beautifully precipitous city, with lots of drops, leaps and skylines standing on tiptoe.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival celebrated its 30th year by featuring unprecedented amounts of me. (Translation: it was the first time I’d been invited.)
The “Spiegeltent”
As authors we got our own private yurt. (I don’t have pictures of it, since nobody was allowed to take photos inside. As shy, retiring little animals, we had to be allowed a shady, comfortable retreat where we could graze in peace without being startled by photography.)
On Saturday 17th I was lucky enough to appear on panel with the brilliant China Miéville (author of Railsea, Un Lun Dun and The City and the City). The event was expertly chaired by Charlie Fletcher (author of the Stoneheart trilogy). We discussed the joys of the subterreanean, ampersands, divination through theft, railway tracks as symbols of infinite possibility, YA fantasy as rebellion against over-protection, skewing a reader’s sense of the normal and the role of romance in fantasy.
With China Miéville
Signing after the panel event
Later that afternoon, I took part in the Imprisoned Writers Series, organised by Amnesty International and Scottish Pen. This daily event gives attending authors the chance to show solidarity with persecuted, imprisoned or censored writers around the world, by reading out their work or a piece about their lives.
The evening was spent at the Macmillan Children’s Books Edinburgh Festival Summer Party. Fireworks from the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo were just visible through the window, and I lost track of time while comparing volcano reminiscences with Rebecca Cobb.
Over the weekend, I even had time to see a Fringe comedy show with the lovely people from Macmillan, and catch some of the street performers…
The “Unbalanced Hat”
The Royal Mile, Fringe-ified
Some travelling street musicians think big
A wonderful weekend, though I’m still sorry that I missed these beautiful and mysterious book-birds.
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Cirencester Children’s Literary Festival
On Tuesday 13th August I turned up at Cirencester Library to take part in the brand new Cirencester Children’s Literary Festival. The audience were very tolerant of my charming new huskiness, and my not so charming new cough.
I also may have spent some time cackling insanely, to judge by this photo.
“Mwahahaha! Behind my wall of books I am invincible!”
Books for the signing were ably supplied by staff from Octavia’s Bookshop, which is working alongside Cirencester Library to organise the festival. (Octavia’s Bookshop is The Bookseller Best Independent Children’s Bookseller 2013.)
Amongst the interesting questions at the event:
Q: Do you control your characters, or do they take control sometimes?
A: We’re in… negotiation?
Q: When you write, do you visualise each scene as part of a film?
A: Not exactly, no. A lot happens inside my main characters’ heads, and it’s hard to translate that to film. But some of the tricks I use are inspired by films I love, such as Hitchcock thrillers and film noir.
The Cirencester Children’s Literary Festival will be continuing for the rest of the week. All proceeds go to the Bingham Library Trust, to support its work in the community.
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“Now That You’ve Died”
Imagine this. You’re at a play. You don’t have to worry about getting a seat with a good view. There are no seats. There is no view. There’s a stage of sorts. You’re standing in the middle of it.
The play starts with a death. Yours.
“Now That You’ve Died” is an ingenious and powerful walk-through story-telling, written by Carnegie winner Patrick Ness, directed by Hector Harkness and Kate Hargreaves and narrated by Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who, Song for Marion).
Our tiny audience group numbered eight in total. We were first led through a desolate-looking basement, were the disembodied voice of Mr Eccleston told us (without ceremony but with a degree of wry humour) that we were all dead. We were welcome in the afterlife, but we would have to move on quickly. Thousands more new and hungry dead would soon be piling in after us, and we were not safe from them. Like well-behaved recently-deceased, we stepped into the waiting lift, which quickly succumbed to utter darkness…
…and remained dark until the end of the play.
Artist’s impression of the play
This was a play for every sense except sight. We were intensely focussed on the subtle and unpredictable motions of our ‘lift’, faint whiffs of smoke, the taste of our rations and of course the voice of Eccleston, talking us through our afterlife journey with a beautifully judged mixture of sympathy, cynicism, black humour and menace. We imagined things too, as our minds tried to fill the void, seeing non-existent shapes in the darkness and feeling the warmth from unreal flames.
Darkness isn’t just an inconvenience. It afflicts your mind, making you feel powerless. The narrator and his comrades were invisible to us, the only glimpses of them offered through spoken descriptions, in a chilling accumulation of detail. But the narrator made it very plain that they could see us. They could see not only what we were doing, but everything we’d ever done, felt or thought.
Darkness isolates. There were no ghost train shrieks or giggles as our strange vessel ground, glided and shook along its mysterious route. None of us could exchange glances or smirks to forge a sense of wry camraderie. We were all trapped in our own heads, forced into introspection.
When you’re stranded with only a voice for company, you can’t help giving it your full attention, and letting its words play out across the stage of your mind. How far will you let that all-powerful voice lead you, as it tells you to cast aside everything that belongs to your old life – memory, regret, guilt and love? And at what point, in the quiet of your own head, do you start to rebel?
Despite the ominous theme, the final effect of the play was actually very uplifting. It was a story about resilience in darkness, about what is kept when all is lost, about what is important and what is not.
After a temporary darkness had affected me so powerfully, it was humbling to be reminded that a very large number of people handle loss of vision on a daily basis. In fact, this was the point of the event. The performance had been arranged by the RNIB to raise awareness of Read for RNIB Day on 11th October.
For the curious, here’s a behind the scenes video about “Now That You’ve Died”, including an interview with Christopher Eccleston.
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UKLA Award Ceremony and Party
On 5th July I headed to Liverpool for the UKLA Book Award Ceremony, since A Face Like Glass was one of the shortlisted books for the 7-11 category.
All the shortlisted books (A Face Like Glass is on the left and at an angle)
With my editor Rachel Petty
I didn’t win the award, but all the authors on the shortlists were presented with certificates and had a fuss made of us. The prize for my category went to the excellent The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan. (The Weight of Water is a verse novel, which makes it particularly unusual. It’s good to see the prize going to such an adventurous and interesting book!)
With winner Sarah Crossan (left) and Nicky Singer (right), author of the brilliant The Flask
After a lovely dinner spent gossipping with some of the judges (who were all exceptionally good fun) I headed to the bar for the poetry readings. There were some excellent offerings from the talented Claire Kirwan of the Dead Good Poets Society (great name), but lots of other people also stepped up to read poems, including a show-stopping demonstration of ‘baby rap’ by Rebecca Patterson.
I can neither confirm nor deny rumours of a late night slumber party involving giggling and false moustaches.
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English Graduate Conference Keynote Speech
Once upon a time, *coughcough* years ago, I studied English Literature and Language at Oxford University, coming away with a BA and a Master of Studies. It never really crossed my mind that I would find myself back in the lecture theatres of the English Faculty again.
It certainly didn’t occur to me that, the next time I visited Lecture Room 2, I would be standing at the podium rather than sitting in the audience.
Waiting for people to arrive…
On Friday 31st, I had the great honour of giving the keynote speech at the Oxford University’s English Graduate Conference. The theme of the conference was ‘Object’ – not exactly a narrow topic.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the ‘objects’ I chose to discuss were my own books.
Books are contrary objects – peculiar, manipulative, aggressive, untameable, dangerous and wonderful. In the Fractured Realm, the setting for my books Fly by Night and Twilight Robbery, most people are terrified of the printed word. There’s a fear that books will indelibly imprint dangerous, maddening notions onto the waiting page of the reader’s brain. In Fly by Night, the people of the city of Mandelion are being terrorised by a monster – not a creature of claw and sinew, but a thing of iron and ink. It’s a rogue printing press, and fear of its presence is tearing the city apart.
Printing Press in Oxford’s Story Museum, photo taken by Erin Johnson
People are used to the idea that books change readers, for better or worse. I went on to talk, however, about the way in which books can also change the very person that is creating them. I am no longer precisely the individual who wrote Fly by Night all those years ago. The very process of writing the book, the watershed of getting published, my life since as a professional author and the bizarre process of creating a ‘public author profile’ have all changed me. In a way, I have been reshaped and rewritten by my own book.
Fortunately, I don’t mind. I can’t wait to see how my future books rewrite me…
Many thanks to Erin Johnson for inviting me to give the speech, Alex Paddock for organising the conference, and all the other attendees for making me feel so welcome! It was also lovely to meet the conference’s panelists, Stephen Walter (artist and ‘psychogeographer’), Nick Cross (Digital Product Manager at OUP and Undiscovered Voices winner) and Dr Paul Nash (Oxford University”s chief Printing Tutor and winner of the 2013 CILIP Walford Award).
Better still, the organisers gave me presents
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Matthew Arnold School Visit
On Thursday 16th May, I visited Matthew Arnold School in Oxford, accompanied by Moira da Costa of the Oxford Children’s Book Group, who had kindly arranged the event.
With Moira da Costa in the school library
Over lunch, I chatted with half a dozen Year 10 students from the school’s very active book group. Most were keen and dedicated writers themselves, and had many good questions about publication, the craft of writing, motivation and how to form dislocated ideas into a coherent plot during the brainstorming stage.
Afterwards, I talked to two different groups taken from Years 7 and 8 in the school’s spacious, comfortable library.
Memorable Questions:
Q: Is it scary to see a book you wrote in a shop?
A: No – not for me, anyway. The other customers might be a bit unnerved to see me bouncing up and down with glee.
Q: How does it feel when you’re writing?
A: It depends how it’s going. When it’s flowing well and the ideas keep coming it’s the best feeling in the world (though I do need someone to remind me to eat). When I have writer’s block, it’s depressing and frustrating. When I ‘block’ it doesn’t stop me being able to write, but I end up rewriting the same section over and over without finding something that works. When I’m near a deadline, on the other hand, I write like crazy and get through cauldrons of tea. That stage is invigorating, in a panicky sort of way…
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Dark Societies
Everybody loves a good dystopia, whether it’s a glossy techno-paradise masquerading as the ideal state, a grimly militant regime set up after a zombie apocalypse, or futures where society has found solutions far worse than its original problems. Many serve as dark warnings, or comments on the world’s current course. A surprising number are hopeful, showing human courage and resourcefulness winning out against a dark and fallen world.
On 2nd May at Waterstones Piccadilly, The Post Apocalyptic Book Club hosted “Dark Societies”, a panel event discussing books about Societies Gone Bad.
The panel was ably moderated by Leila Abu El Hawa, and consisted of Tom Hunter (Director of The Arthur C Clarke Award for Science Fiction), Robert Grant (Literary Editor of Sci-Fi London and Juror of the Clarke Awards), Anne C Perry (Assistant Editor at Hodder & Stoughton and co-founder of the wonderful Kitschies Awards), Adam Roberts (author of BSFA award-winning Jack Glass
We discussed this year’s Clarke Award shortlist and winner, the importance of awards and the vogues for different dark futures. (Zombies are still ‘in’, but the fashion may well change.)
Given the many threats to humanity, Adam Roberts offered to take over the Earth as supreme leader so that he could hold all the dark futures at bay. I was quickly sworn in as his Commander-in-Chief and Minister in Charge of Hats.
Plotting to take over the world. For altruistic reasons.
Lots of really excellent (and sometimes daunting) questions from the audience about the politics of dystopian writing, whether it is fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic, etc. I hope everybody else enjoyed the event as much as I did. I certainly learnt a lot from my fellow panelists.
From left to right: Anne Perry, me, Leila Abu El Hawa, Jeff Norton and Adam Roberts.
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School Visits with Just Imagine
On 30th April, I visited Chelmsford for some school visits arranged by Just Imagine Story Centre.
At Tyrrells Primary, I ran a character design workshop for Year 6 students from Tyrrels, The Bishops’ School and Springfield Primary (nothing to do with The Simpsons).
The group came up with some amazingly original characters, including a kind-hearted pygmy elephant, a leprechaun who would rather kill children than see them upset, a sock-hating forest being who had to cross an ocean to rescue her family from a museum, an animated gargoyle who could pick locks with his teeth, a youthful criminal mastermind, a girl who turned into a marshmallow due to an extreme allergic reaction, an unpronounceable alien and many more. I really hope that some of those ideas become stories!
With students from The Bishops’ School
After lunch we traveled to Felsted Primary, where I gave a talk in the music room, followed by a signing in the sunshine.
A couple of Victorian tiles depicting Aesop’s Fables, over the fireplace in Felsted’s music room
