Loser (continued)

So once again I lose. Six award nominations for Uncle Montague. Six! And not one win. Come on. That can't be right surely.

The shortlist for the Calderdale Book of the Year (primary section) consisted of me (for Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror), Matt Haig for Shadow Forrest, Tom Palmer for Foul Play, Brian Keaney for The Haunting of Nathaniel Wolf and Joshua Lacey for Bearkeeper. Matt Haig was the winner. Well done to him. No, really (mutter, mutter, mutter).

And thanks to all the librarians and staff at the library in Halifax for organising the event and looking after us so well. Well done to the children for sitting through such a long day with such a great attitude. Everyone was really excited but also incredibly attentive during the author sessions and there were lots of great questions.

I arrived in Halifax in a terrific rainstorm yesterday evening and checked in to find a note at reception from Josh asking if I wanted to join him for something to eat. I'd met Josh a few years ago at an author event in Heffers in Cambridge (during another rainstorm) when he was promoting A Dog Called Grk. I bought a copy and my son was henceforth a big fan of the Grk books. Josh is such a nice guy. And I'm not just saying because he might check this blog.

Our fellow shortlistee, Brian Keaney, was also at the hotel and having found his room number we went to collect him and went for a meal in the dining room. Publishers and agents should never allow authors to meet because when they do, there is invariably a long and sustained bitching session about all aspects of the writing business. All except the writing itself, of course. Writers love writing. Or they should.

I was alone among the three of us in thinking that it was in any way odd that adults (who weren't parents of children of the appropriate age, or teachers, or librarians or other children's authors) should read children's books in preference to adult novels. This did not strike me as especially controversial, but it was interesting to hear two intelligent adults state a contrary view. Brian wondered why I wrote for children - as if by saying that I preferred, as an adult, to read adult literature, that I was somehow denigrating children's literature. But I really wasn't.

There are some incredible books for children and I love writing for them. I love their enthusiasm and I know how important books can be in the life of a child. I would die a happy man indeed if I wrote just one book of the quality of say, Tom's Midnight Garden. I am against age-banding and I am happy for anyone of any age to read any of my books. But I do definitely write them for children. And though I do read a lot of children's books, I do so because I work in children's books, not because I buy into the notion that children's literature is the 'home of the story'. I do not share that distrust of the modern novel. And even if I did, there are just so many classic novels I have yet to read. Adult fiction is not 'better' than children's fiction. But it is different for a reason.

Speaking of which, the tediously long rail journey from Cambridge to Halifax (four hours, two changes) did at least provide me with a good chance to read a novel from cover to cover. Cormac McCarthy's The Road has been on my shelf for a while and I've taken a couple of nibbles at it in the last few months. But this is a book best swallowed in one, I think. It is so bleak, so merciless, that I'm not sure that I would have kept going. In a post-apocalyptic America, a father and son walk south under perpetual cloud through a dead landscape covered in ash, trying against all the odds to avoid starvation and the attentions of the 'bad guys'; trying to survive with their humanity intact .


That doesn't sound like much of a review, I grant you, but if you love Cormac McCarthy's writing - and I do - then it doesn't get much better than this. And I would also make the point that the interaction and dialogue between the father and son is perhaps the most convincing I've ever read. Without that at its heart the book would fall apart.

In children's literature we talk - obsess even - about plot much of the time, but there is also the strange alchemy that occurs when the way a book is written seems to shimmer and take on a life of its own. McCarthy does divide people - some will not get past the absence of speech marks or apostrophes - but his work excites me in a way that few other authors do. It is a tough book to read, but its worth it. McCarthy is right up there with any great writer you care to mention. And this book is up there with any classic novel you can think of - of any genre, of any period.

My one warning would be that if you are a father of a son then be ready to cry.

Midday crisis

Francis Mosley got in touch yesterday and showed me some recent paintings. I also had an email conversation with John Clark who also sent some pics of his recent work. It all makes me very eager to get some of my own painting done. Andrew and Lynette, my other studio mates, are away in Australia for the month and it means I have the place to myself (John mainly coming in before he goes to work at Sony).

Francis asked me if I was showing any signs of a mid-life crisis and I said no (with the caveat that I have been in a perpetual state of crisis since I was a teenager) but then promptly became incredibly depressed.

I have a bit of rule with myself that I try not to worry about things I can't effect, but I don't always maintain discipline on this and yesterday was one of those days.

There is something about receiving bad news, as I did yesterday, that makes trivial things even more annoying. Or at least that is the effect it has on me. I lose what little patience I had with the nonsense of life and then get angry with myself for letting it bother me. And depressed if I have made the mistake - as I often do - of mentioning that annoyance to someone else.

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that people who think the world is inherently fair are more likely to be depressed than those who take a more jaded view. I certainly don't think the world is fair (and I do not suffer from depression as a rule) but I do make the mistake of thinking that everything can be resolved by talking. It can't. In fact talking often makes things worse. In fact many of the world's problems could be resolved if all those in positions of power simply shut up for a couple of years.

The great Jules Feiffer called one of his collection of strips cartoons The Explainers. That's what I am - I am an explainer. But explaining can often be just another kind of complaining.

But hey, I'm an artist and I'm a writer. It goes with the territory. We are screwed up so you don't have to be.

You're welcome.

Calderdale children's book (or rather books) of the year

I should have mentioned that we were at the annual concert of pupils organised by my son's piano teacher, Anne Marsh-Penton. As usual it was held in the chapel at Churchill College (with its beautiful John Piper windows) on a lovely summer evening, with cricket being played in the distance, long shadows and great globes of mistletoe in the trees outside. The quality of the playing from the young performers was very inspiring. I always come away with the urge to learn.

I'm off to Halifax tomorrow for the awards celebration for the Calderdale Children's Book of the Year. I have not been able to find anything about who else is on the shortlist, but it is a little confusing as the Calderdale Children's Book of the Year was awarded to Sally Nicholls in June. It seems I am in the primary age range category (though they both seem to be called the Calderdale Children's Book of the Year). Confusing, no?

Perhaps all will become clear on Wednesday at the event. I hope so. I'm staying overnight tomorrow, attending the event, and the coming back Wednesday. The journey is rather convoluted and involves three changes. It takes about four hours.

And the answer is. . .

This chirpy chap is, of course, Edgar Alan Poe. He is a writer most people have heard of without having necessarily read his work. If you haven't read his short stories, then you really should. I would recommend The Fall of the House of Usher, William Wilson or the Tell-Tale Heart to get you going. Edgar in Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror is named in his honour and Pitch in Tales of Terror from the Black Ship is a deliberate homage to the great man.

This is H H Munroe, who wrote as Saki. His short stories often feature child protagonists who are tormented by maiden aunts, just as Saki was as a boy. Unlike Saki, though, his characters wreak their revenge.

This is Robert Louis Stevenson. I am a huge fan of all his work, but The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is what gets him a mention here. Again it is a work that everyone 'knows' without having necessarily read it. If you haven't, you should.

This is the great M R James, sitting in his study at King's College, the scene of his Christmas Eve ghost story sessions. That's King's College Chapel through the window. Uncle Montague is named in his honour and he set a kind of gold standard for the art of telling creepy stories.

This woman should be instantly recognisable given the incredible fame of her creation. She is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and teenage author of the amazing Frankenstein.


This is another person whose face really ought to be more recognisable than it is. He is Bram Stoker, author of Dracula.

Name that author

I was on another school visit today - to Parkside School, here in Cambridge.

Parkside sits next to the big green space of Parker's Piece and is the school my son now attends. I was doubly pleased therefore to find that the children were incredibly attentive and well-behaved. It was an early start - my first session was at 9.40am - and it was horribly hot and stuffy, but they were great. Thanks to all the children and staff, particularly Ms Minett and Ms Andre for organising the visit and looking after me so well.

Of course, my PowerPoint didn't work here either. After much Googling I have discovered why: you have to have the movie clips in the same folder as the PowerPoint and reinforce the links by erasing the clips and then reinserting them. Sounds more trouble than its worth, mind you.

I read The Black Ship from Tales of Terror from the Black Ship, as it is a story about storytelling and you could have heard a pin drop both times. I then went through some of the slides in the Powerpoint. I showed the children some of the authors who have inspired me to write creepy stories. They are at the top of this post.

See how many you can recognise.

Answers tomorrow. . .

Night of the hunter

Another hot and sweaty day, made all the sweatier by my being sat over a computer - or rather two computers.

My laptop has finally come back from Dell. Having replaced the DVD drive some time ago, they have replaced it once again, replaced the touch pad, the hinge with its touch sensitive buttons and the microphone socket. They also replaced the hard drive so I have spent all of today replacing the software they wiped when they took it off.

And when I wasn't doing that I was looking at my PowerPoint show and trying - with the input of my son - to figure out why it seems to work perfectly well on my computer at home. It must have been the computer at Oundle, I figured and rejigged it for my talk at Parkside School tomorrow.

I watched Night of the Hunter last night. I bought the DVD ages ago but have only just got round to watching it. Night of the Hunter had a big impact on me when I first saw it - I'm not sure how old I was. The sequence of the children drifting downstream in that boat has stayed with me all these years. It is magical - more like animation than live action. Charles Laughton sadly only directed this one movie. The critics hated it and he never recovered from the disappointment.

Night of the Hunter is always teetering on the edge of going completely over the top. Robert Mitcham's performance is bizarre (but fantastic at the same time) and the filming is so stylised it is almost like a silent movie from the German expressionist era. This is emphasised by the presence of silent screen star Lilian Gish as the force for good who stands in the way of Mitcham's demonic preacher. If you haven't seen it, I'd urge you to grab a copy and see something truly original.

Oundle

I went to Oundle School today, in Oundle, Northamptonshire. It was a horrible drive - very hot and along the hideous A14 for a lot of the way, with its roadside billboards stating just how many people have died in accidents in the previous months.

I had never been to Oundle before. It is a pretty little town that had a bit of a Cotswold feel about it. The school library I was visiting is in the churchyard of a lovely spired medieval church. All rather different to my own school experience I have to say.

I gave a talk to a large group of Year 7 and Year 8 children. I had spent a lot of time on a PowerPoint presentation and had made little videos in Photoshop and embedded them in the slides. It was going to be amazing.

But of course it didn't work.

I still went through the slides and the talk went well enough. The children seemed engaged and certainly asked a lot of very good questions. But it was annoying all the same. The thing is, you just have to forget something like that and move on. Never make your whole show based on something that might not work. You have to be flexible.

After the talk I signed and sold copies of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror and Tales of Terror from the Black Ship and then did a couple of workshops in the library. We talked about creepy stories and how they work and what kind of things you have to consider when writing one. Then we tried to come up with one.

I had a chance to have a brief chat with a boy whom my son used to know when we lived in Norfolk, but missed his twin brother. It was lovely to see him and triggered a bit of nostalgia I have to say.

All in all a pretty intensive morning but it is always a privilege to meet bright children and hear what they have to say. A pleasure too to meet another great librarian in Leigh Giurlando, who I had assumed from the name during our email conversations to be a man, but is in fact a woman - and an American at that. As always I feel I have to point out how lucky any school is to have a good library and person like Leigh who knows about and cares about books.

Once again - librarians rock.