US dead of winter

Here is the cover for the US edition of The Dead of Winter that will be published next spring.  It looks good I think.  I like the quote they've picked out for the back.

Carnegie nomination

I was very pleased to learn that The Dead of Winter has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal.  It is a very long and very strong list and I will be incredibly proud if I progress onto the shortlist.  As always, I must say how fantastic it feels to be noticed and appreciated in amongst the wealth of wonderful books out there.

Good luck to everyone else on the longlist.  I am genuinely excited to be in such illustrious company.

StarLit, starstruck

I was in London today.  I was doing an event as part of the StarLit Festival organised by the Shoreditch Trust.  A group of Year 4, 5 and 6 primary school children from Queensbridge School came to see me at the Waterside Restaurant.  They asked lots of very good questions and were a pleasure to be with.  We had a lot of fun and then we got to eat some nice food for lunch.  It was all very civilised.

I went from there to Soho where I was to have a meeting about. . .well, actually I'm not going to say what it was about because it is at such an early stage I might frighten it away if I breathe too hard.  If it becomes a bit more solid I will never stop talking about it!

At this point all I will say is that involves the possibility of getting one of my books onto the stage, which would be fantastic obviously.  And I also got to meet someone whose work I've enjoyed for a long time and was a little bit over-excited.  I just hope she will take the project on.

Fingers crossed.

Uncanny

I have been writing blogs and articles all week.  I thought I'd share a couple with you.

I have my Top Ten list of scary short stories on the Guardian website.  This took longer than I thought it would to compile.  It was so hard to narrow it down to ten.

I am also 'guest editor' on the National Short Story Week website where I have written a short piece about uncanny fiction.  I am also on there website taking part in a Write Lines podcast discussion chaired by Sue Cook and featuring Joe Craig, Tamsyn Murray and Jon Mayhew.

Have a listen.  We're the ones yacking about children's books.