Well, holy crap!  To my absolutely delighted astonishment, I've just won the BookTrust Teenage Prize for The Knife of Never Letting Go.  I was dead certain that I wouldn't win (Tanya Landman's Apache is particularly fine and also on the shortlist), so I gave a nicely incoherent speech and smiled like an idiot.

But very nice indeed, I must say, especially as I get my very first coverage on the BBC ever.  A fine day, though one in which I understandably haven't got much writing done.  I've said it before, I'll say it again:  Nifty.

It's all been sort of pushy singing-my-own-praises here lately, hasn't it?  Sorry, but I've been super-busy (still am) and then others keep doing nice things for me.

Like the Independent making The Knife of Never Letting Go one of their 50 Best Winter Reads, along with people like Edith Wharton and Ian Rankin.  See what I mean?  Isn't that nice?

I also just got the first edition of my Spanish translation, El Cuchillo en la Mano, or "The Knife in the Hand", so all you Spanish speakers out there can see if the Independent is right.

Tangentially, I've started to seriously fund-raise for London Marathon, which I'm running in April, so why not sponsor me?  Lots of people have already started, it's for a good cause, and every little helps...

So I'm back from lovely Cornwall, just in time to spend yesterday in Portsmouth, speaking to a very bright and engaged group of students, most of whom on the Master's in Creative Writing course.  I got to be pompous and pontificable for two hours; bliss for any writer.

I've also been getting a lot of queries asking after Book Two of Chaos Walking (i.e., the sequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go).  It's called The Ask and the Answer, comes out in May in the UK (June in Australia, Sept in America), and is remarkably already available for pre-order from amazon, bless them.

In fact, we just finalised the cover for it this past week, and it's a corker.  If you liked the Knife cover, you're gonna love this.

It's a busy week with appearances (see the Events page for details) and the BookTrust Teenage Prize, which is announced at a ceremony on Tuesday.  Quality problems, I know, but I do have a third book to write...

The Cornish writer's break keeps getting interrupted with news on The Knife of Never Letting Go, but it's all good, so I can hardly complain.

After the niceness of the being one of Amazon.com's Best Books of 2008 and the additional pleasure of being on the Carnegie Medal longlist, you can now watch a video-taped interview of me on Borders Books television!

Yes, actual video footage!  Thrill as you listen to my tortured Greg Rusedski accent!  Swoon as you can see just exactly where I'm going to have a double chin in ten years!  Vividly imagine the lengthy interval when we were interrupted by a genial drunken Welshman!

Apparently, I really look like this.

Still in Cornwall and in haste, just to say that The Knife of Never Letting Go has been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, which is a heckuva big honour.  It's the one chosen exclusively by Children's Librarians, so people who really know and believe in their stuff.  It's a long longlist and the shortlist isn't until April, but a nice thing, yesiree.

I write from beautiful Cornwall on Election Day, but I won't write about either.  Nor will I write about the tinnitus that is turning the entire world into a low, vibrating hum.  Weird.

Instead, I write with the lovely and surprising news (I didn't even know they did this) that the good people at Amazon.com (the US version, that is) have made The Knife of Never Letting Go one of its Best Books of 2008.  Which, I must say, is pretty nifty.

It's one of the top ten teen books of the year as well as being on their top 100 books overall.  Excellent stuff, very pleasing, I must say, all the more so for being unexpected.  But then, you can always trust a Seattle company...

I'm off to Cornwall tomorrow for a nicely-timed bit of house-sitting/writer's retreat type thing.  Ever notice how writer's are the only profession that take "retreats"?  You never hear of an accountancy clerk flying out to the Hebrides to do a little bit of private, reflective actuary, do you?

It's not as if I'll be in the hinterlands and will still be electronically active (especially, like most of us, for certain election results), but before I go, I wanted to post some reminders of current things.  First, two events I'm doing in November:  17 November, the UCS Beyond Words Festival and 29 November, the Big Science Read, at Bury Central Library, near Manchester.  See the Events tab for more details.

Next, there's still time (if you're in the UK and between the ages of 5 and 16) to enter the competition they've asked me to set and judge in the Guardian. 

And finally, the paperback of The Knife of Never Letting Go is at last in stores.  I know, because I've seen it, despite what Amazon keeps claiming about it not being out until next week.

Otherwise, happy Halloween and Armistice.  I might write before then, but only if I feel like it.

I've set a competition in today's Guardian for young writers in the UK between the ages of 5 and 16, with some very good prizes.  It's in the Comics page in the Family section, check it out.

I've provided the opening and closing lines, so the young people who enter have to connect the dots in the most interesting and thrilling way.  I get to judge the winner personally, so this ought to be fun.  Good luck!

(Again, though, note the age requirement and that it's for UK residents only (sorry, America and Australia, but I'm working on it...))

By whatever strange alchemy that runs Wikipedia, I now have my very own entry.  It's not especially good yet, as they (whoever "they" ended up being) have pretty much just summarised my biog page from this website. 

I'm sure they meant well, but I have to say, my biog page is sort of friendly and fun; the resulting translation to Wiki loses something and seems oddly accusatory, as if sometime, somewhere, I'd tried to deny these facts.  What are you gonna do?  I should probably start lying in interviews and official sources, see what sticks.  Have I mentioned I'm half Mauritanian?

I'm also on a bit of a roll at the minute with good theatre.  The Walworth Farce at the National is brilliant:  funny and ripely written and very menacing.  Go see it.

Because it won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, my lovely publishers Walker Books have brought the paperback of The Knife of Never Letting Go up to this very week!  Yes, yes, Amazon says 3 Nov still, but it was shipped from the Walker warehouses today (if everything went according to plan), so it should be in bookstores - and at Amazon - by about Wednesday.

And here's a picture of the cover they've done, which looks even better on the real thing because the Noise is covering it in gloss.  Cool stuff.

I've also made a rare update to the Events tab, so take a look.  I'm appearing at the UCS Beyond Words Festival on 17 November, and as part of the Big Science Read in Manchester (actually, Bury for my particular event) on 29 November, which is moderated by Katherine Beacon, one of my favourite people in the world.  How nice if I see you there (and more to come...)