May 2008 Archives

Just got back from the Hay-on-Wye Festival where I appeared to talk about being longlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for The Knife of Never Letting Go.  I can make those links in my sleep by now...

I arrived just after a weekend of torrential rain, so it was pretty much a town full of human-sized dung beetles, pushing around giant balls of clay-coloured mud.  You could only walk on the wooden planking as none of the grassy areas were safe, most festival-goers were wearing wellies, and I even saw two chairs constructed from mud patties.

But the event was great fun.  A good audience with a very nice mixture of ages, asking smart questions about books and writing.  They even put up with my superfast approach to giving readings and some difficult acoustics.  What a nice thing is Hay-on-Wye, eh?  Even when it's mirroring the worst sumps of Glastonbury...

Yes, I have, I've been longlisted for the 2008 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for my new book, The Knife of Never Letting Go.  Nifty.

There's another Knife book on the list, so I'm sure he and I will be correcting people for the next four months, along with a book by the fabulous Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who provided the cover quote for my own book without ever having met me.

I'm also going to be appearing at the famous Hay-on-Wye Book Festival to be interviewed about it on Tuesday, which is also pretty nifty.  I'm event 226, just scroll down the page; I think there are a few tickets still available.

And I exchanged on the house today, too, so I'll be moving the second I get back from Hay.  May has been a ridiculous month, but I'm a longlistee, we can take it...

...which I always thought would be a great title for a memoir.  But I found out yesterday that the very lovely people at the very excellent homeless and housing charity Shelter have accepted my application for a charity place in the 2009 London Marathon.  So, I'll be running it next year and counting on your pennies and pounds to raise money for a very good cause.

I've run two marathons before, one each in London and Dublin, and they're brilliant.  The most uncynical, moving, wonderful things I've ever been a part of.  11 months to prepare, so I ran 10K last night.  Today, I'm tired.

I'm also packing up the house, though not before taking a quick break to see the new Indiana Jones flick.  It doesn't exactly make oodles of sense (how, for example, are the Crystal Skulls supposed to let the Russians take over the world?) and is pleasant enough.  But ask me in a week, I'll bet I'll have forgotten almost all of it.

I'll be moving house over the next couple weeks (all things being well), and for some reason, broadband companies can't manage their product well enough not to have at least a two-week interruption before they can hook you back up.  Why do we put up with service this crappy?  Allegedly, I'll have dial-up (dial-up! dial-up! why don't they just give me two sticks to rub together?), but my updating here could be slowed for a bit. 

In preparation, I give to you the iPod EP of The Way...

Perfect Way by Scritti Politti (if you're of a certain age and a certain exquisite pop taste, this will need no introduction)

She Will Have Her Way by Neil Finn (Neil channels every great song Paul Macartney ever wrote and goes one better)

Something In The Way by Nirvana  (A song for the gloomy teenager in all of us)

The Way by Fastball (one-hit wonders, but what a hit - you could write a heckuva short story from this song)

Way of the World by Max Q  (second dumb dead popstar on the list; Michael Hutchence doing a side project which produced yet another great song for your inner teenager)

And as a bonus track, When Do I Get To Sing 'My Way'? by Sparks, a song blissfully unaware that teenagers even exist...

You know, I was all set to take some minor political stand for or against something, and now that I've sat down to write this, I can't for the life of me remember what it was.  Obviously, my passion and commitment run deep.  Was it China?  Clinton/Obama?  That 6' 6" cow?  Good grief, I understand being busy, but I think chunks of my brain are falling out.

Ah, well, more space to advertise.  The next chapter of Knife of Never Letting Go is up on iTunes, and it looks as if people are actually listening to it (I've got two reviews, even).  And for my Irish reader, erm, readers, it's been made Book of the Month by Dubrays.  Which is excellent and is making me try to wrangle a free trip to Ireland.

And I'm still typing and I STILL can't remember what it was I so deeply believed in/was completely against.  Boris as Mayor?  Inflation?  The big, expensive, naked Lucian Freud woman...

...was good fun.  I was on a panel with Katy Moran, author of Bloodline, and our editor from Walker, Denise Johnstone-Burt.  The evening was called "So You Want To Write For Children?", and it was a good audience, too, about 100 of them and no apparent crazies (there's almost always someone at every literary event who'll ask about, say, Palestine or Nepal, even if the panel's subject is Where's Wally?).

Katy and I both read for a bit, the part I was nervous about, and then the evening just flew by.  People asked good questions, and we sold a few books at the end.  All in all, very good, a very pleasing reflection of the good folks of Brighton.

A big week ahead.  It's crunch time on a house buy so fingers crossed for that, seeing two plays (one at the National, one a revival of Pinter's Birthday Party (making it the fourth Pinter in a year)), and continuing with the rewrite of the next book.  Plus I'll be going into some bookshops to sign copies of The Knife of Never Letting Go, including Harrod's.  I must be moving up in the world...

The busy publishing week continues.  The second part of the podcast is up on iTunes; this time it's the fab actor Michael Jenn reading out a chapter.  Definitely worth a free visit, just search "Knife of Never" and there we are.

And tonight, if you're in the Brighton area, I'm appearing at the Brighton Festival at an event called So You Want to Write for Children?  Tickets still available, I think.  It's at 7.30 in The Old Market.

Last night, I went to see Fram at the National.  Feeling a little wary after learning it was 3 hours long (with an hour and forty minute first act!), then having my stomach sink after the absolutely TERRIBLE prologue dragged on for 25 minutes (the ghost of a poet chatting with the ghost of Sybil Thorndike about "putting on a play!  At the National!  In the Olivier Theatre!" for 25 bloody minutes!), serendipity intervened.

For the first time ever at a play I've been to, a manager came out to apologise that there was a technical problem that they were endeavouring to fix.  After ten minutes waiting, he came out again, said it would be another ten minutes and we should go out into the sun.  My friend and I went out into the sun and never came back.  Who knows, maybe the next 2 1/2 hours were brilliant.  I'll take my chances.

In the extreme rush of this month (still going on: new book on the shelves now, launch happenings tonight, appearing at the Brighton Festival this Friday, trying to rewrite the next book, reviewing a veerrrrrrry long novel for the Guardian, and oh yeah, buying a house and moving in by 31 May), I'd overlooked some recent theatuh.

Saw Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking at the National.  She's an odd actress, isn't she?  Some of the time brilliant, some of the time unwatchably mannered.  The show is too long; after about an hour it starts feeling like a lecture.  Plus, her intonation robs the ending of the huge emotional impact I think it's supposed to have.  I was only moved by the very last thing, a huge photograph of Joan Didion with her husband and daughter. 

Two other things about this:  Redgrave didn't help matters by giving the most pretentiously hammy curtain call I've ever seen.  Would a smile of thanks kill you, love?  And second, the audience was so filled with women of a certain age who'd clearly modelled themselves on Vanessa, I half expected a Spartacus moment:  "I'm Vanessa Redgrave!  No, I'm Vanessa Redgrave!"

Oops, running out of room, except to say I was expecting a bit of a disaster from The City at the Royal Court, but it was gripping stuff.  Go see it.

Seriously, I am.  That podcast I was telling you about is really up, and seems to be up on American iTunes as well.  So if you'd like to hear me jawing (in my tortured, raised-in-America-but-lived-in-England-for-a-decade accent), go to iTunes and just search "knife of never".  Et voila!  Moi.

This is the first of four - the other three will be chapters read by the fantastic Michael Jenn.  You can hear bits of him throughout this first podcast, and he's brilliant when the full chapters are up.

There you go.  Let me know what you think.