Yes, I know it's tooting my own horn (but if not me, who?), but last night I - or I should say, my book, The Knife of Never Letting Go - won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.  Which is astonishing (it was a very strong shortlist) but, as you might expect, very pleasing.

And what a fun evening!  They'd invited along all the winners of the Young Critics' Competition, so there were lots of bright and articulate young people and their proud parents, which made for a great atmosphere.  And I got to sign a lot of autographs, too.  And they all laughed at my jokes during my speech, which is pretty much all I really cared about.

There's more about it at the Guardian books site (though I didn't quite say that it was a story that needed to be "shouted from the rooftops"; what I said was that, if you treat teenagers with respect, then they'll be more willing to follow you to far-off places and that means you can really "swing for the rafters" - which sort of morphed, I guess, into "shouted from the rooftops" - but that's fine, I'll happily be shouting from the rooftops for a couple days...