July 2009 Archives

I'm over-doing the exclamation points, but yes, Monday is the day I reveal the title of book 3. 

On this very website. 

So.  Any guesses?

Just a quick swoop in to update you on a few things.  First up, I've updated the Events page with details of upcoming appearances at the Edinburgh Festival and the Bath Festival of Children's Literature, so if you're around either place, come along!

I've also received confirmation that I'll be touring Australia in Feb/March 2010 for several weeks, so stay tuned for details about that, too.  Looks like I'll be traversing the place, so I'll finally get to meet some of the Australians who've written in!  Very exciting.

And finally, I've got an actual date for you!  I'll be announcing the secret-secret-secret title of Book Three of Chaos Walking on this very website on 3 August.  So keep checking back!  And in the meantime, have you read the free Viola short story yet?  Why not?

(PS I guess this website's looking a little odd in Explorer 7; it looks fine in Explorer 8, but I'll see what I can do)

So I'd said awhile ago that I'd won the James Tiptree Award, presented at the WisCon convention in Madison, Wisconsin.  It's an award for depiction and exploration of gender, particularly in science fiction.  I was delighedt to have won it and very bummed that I couldn't fly to Madison to pick up the award.  I did try, but the scheduling was impossible.

Well the Tiptree people decided to do just the nicest thing instead.  One of the coordinators of the award, Debbie Notkin, came to London over the weekend and asked if I'd come to a little get-together with her and her partner and some key people associated with the award and the convention, and be presented with the award there instead.

That happened at lunch yesterday, and it was just a relaxing delight.  I've always said sci-fi people are the best company in all of publishing, and I'm right.  A table full of smart, funny, interesting, broad-minded (and may I say again, smart) people nattering away over a very good pub lunch on Fleet Street.  Really, really great stuff, and such a generous idea of theirs to do it.  A pleasure all around.

As I surface very occasionally from the middle of this third draft I'm writing, just a note to say I've posted a new blog up on the Booktrust site where I'm Writer in Residence (and it's about, guess what, the third draft!). 

That's really what my summer's been like, by the way.  I had one week off in France, and the rest is hard graft to get this third draft done before I head to my high school reunion in the US at the end of August (yes, they really do have them in America; yes, I really am going, more as an excuse to visit the family, though).

But the results of all this hard work will be a whopper of a conclusion to the Chaos Walking trilogy, I promise.  It's coming together.  Boy, is it ever...

Right then, very busy and deep inside the third draft (and not emerging for a good while yet).  But there's just time to say that I've writting a new set of writers' tips (let's go with that) on the Booktrust site.  Check 'em out if you're interested.  And the brand new free Chaos Walking short story is still available there, too, naturally.

I've been letting the new, exclusive and FREE Chaos Walking short story sit here for a while, just to make sure everyone gets a good chance to read it, but that's made me wait until today to remind Australian readers that The Ask and the Answer is out there now.

And also today, I had the astonishing and very sad news that my foreign rights agent, Paul Marsh, has died suddenly, which is just an unbelievable shock.  A really lovely man, with wonderful children who he brought to my events.  Very, very sad indeed.

I just found out that The Ask and the Answer is on the longlist for the 2009 Booktrust Teenage Prize, which is really cool.  A whole lot of other good books on the list, too, so get reading!  There's also a young judges competition you might be interested in.

Oh, and, yes, I also got a nice review in the Sunday Times this week, too.

And in case you missed it, there's a brand new, FREE short story of mine here, that Chaos Walking fans might find interesting...