Berkshire and back

My journey to and from Eagle House school yesterday was a bit of a nightmare. People clearly were trying to get home to watch the football, but so many of them were doing this, that they effectively snarled up the road network. It was better coming back, because most people had set off early, but I almost did not get to the event - and I had allowed myself a couple of hours.

They have had quite a list of authors - a bill that many large festivals would be envious of. Sally Nicholls and Marcus Sedgewick had both been there earlier in the week and my talk was followed by former children's laureate Anne Fine.

I had never met Anne Fine before but she was good fun and a very supportive presence in the marquee where I gave my talk. I chatted about how I came to be a writer and did some reading. It all seemed to go reasonably well and the children asked lots of good questions afterwards. Then I signed some books alongside Anne Fine. Her queue lasted much longer than mine and she was still signing when it was time for her to go and do her talk.

I would have liked to have stayed and listened to Anne but I figured - rightly as it happened - that I ought to get going in case the roads were bad again. The traffic wasn't as bad, but it was still to be a long and tiring journey. I said my goodbyes, bolted down a sandwich and even got a rather lovely paperweight as a memento. Thanks to all the Eagle House festival organisers and staff and - most of all - the children for being such a great audience. Good to meet you all.

Sadly, though - I did not entirely miss the England v Algeria match. I managed to see the last, tedious twenty minutes or so of perhaps the worst football of a pretty dull World Cup, so far.

If only the traffic had been worse.

Swedish tunnel

I had some more good news on the foreign rights front today. My Swedish publisher - Raben and Sjogren - are taking Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. I'm hoping this means that the other two have done reasonably well.

And Thailand is taking The Dead of Winter. It's always exciting to sell foreign rights to a book before its even been published here. I wrote a little about bound proofs for the Writers and Artists website recently and this shows their importance.

Publishing still moves very slowly and bound proofs prevent us from having to wait until a book is published before it can be shown to booksellers, reviewers and foreign publishers. And the more foreign sales, the faster you are going to pay off the publishers advance and start earning some money in royalties.

I'm not ready for my close-up. . .

Last Friday I went to London to do a spot of filming for the Booked Up website. I traveled down by train from Cambridge and met my Bloomsbury publicist, Ian Lamb at Victoria station. We traveled the next short train journey to Wandsworth together and walked to the studio, arriving just as if began to rain.

Authors were in and out all day in a seemingly endless cycle. I arrived with enough time for a very swift chat with and a chance to see the little video that they'd already taken of a boy being very sweetly enthusiastic about my book, before I had to do my bit.

It didn't go very well. I don't mean that I was awful - I just mean that I wasn't good. We were each given a 45 second slot to introduce the book and for some reason this just didn't work for me. I'm not entirely sure why.

I think it may because I allowed myself to be too influenced by the director when she said that 'Everyone else has been saying. . .' Also the boy I saw in the clip had effectively given an introduction and it seemed to make me doing the same a little pointless. But also I did not quite prepare for the task properly. I normally just do whatever feels right at that moment, but with 45 seconds there just wasn't time for that. It needed precision and, though I hate doing it, on balance it would have been simpler to just write something and stick to it. In the end, it comes down to me. I did not get it right.

I had scribbled something down in my notebook but I chickened out. As soon as I was on the train home I realised that it would have been much better to say that. But these things are over in a flash. You get one chance to shine and it's gone.

That said, I do hate talking to a camera. Who feels natural doing that? People who work in TV, but no one else. Perhaps I just have to accept that the format did me no favours. If I was writing funny stories it would probably have been a doddle. But this is all part and parcel of being an author these days and I need to sort it out.

My publicist said that he felt a bit bad asking authors to do these things - even though it was his job - but I really don't mind. I just don't want to do anything unless I can do it well. Ian is always so incredibly enthusiastic - I felt like I'd let him down. I've been cross about it ever since.

Sometimes being OK isn't enough.

Vlag & Wimpels van de Griffeljury

I had some nice news on Monday. My Dutch publishers, Pimento, got in touch via Bloomsbury to tell me that the Dutch translation of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship has won a special mention - called the Vlag & Wimpels (Flag and Pennants) - in the Gouden Griffel awards. The translator clearly did a fantastic job and I am really honoured to get this. I am also very pleased to have been invited over for the ceremony in October. More about that nearer the time.

Booked up

I had a call from Ian Lamb, my publicity person at Bloomsbury, a while back. He told me some news but also told me to keep it to myself because it was not going to be officially announced until June. Well, here we are. It is June 7 and the Booked Up list is officially announced and I am very pleased to say that Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror is one of the books. It is a real honour to be chosen.

For those of you who are not in the UK or who have missed the scheme, Booked Up is a government funded programme, in association with publishers, to provide a free book to every child starting secondary school. It is an initiative that aims to kick start a love of reading for pleasure. It is a wonderful idea and I'm very proud to be part of it.

I'm off to London on Thursday to do some filming for the website.

Robot rampage

I came back to lots of mail and emails. I have to say that I hate it when I go away and come back to no mail, but it does seem to take an age to go through it all.

I received disappointing news from the Royal Academy Summer Show: my two paintings did not get in. I rang John hoping that at least he would have got in, but sadly his painting wasn't accepted either. It's a shame, but open exhibitions are a lottery. Or at least that's what we say when we don't get in.

My son rushed excitedly to retrieve a parcel from our neighbors across the road, thinking it was a birthday present for him, but it turned out to be a set of the OUP books I did a while back. I did two books in their Project X series. They are for the Oxford Reading Tree scheme and look a little bizarre on my shelves to be honest - they are so different from everything I have been doing for the last few years. But they were fun to do. The characters already existed and so did the major plot movers, so it was more as I imagine it must be like writing for an existing TV programme or for a comic with established characters.

I had an email from Bloomsbury telling me that Tudem, my Turkish publisher for Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror and Tales of Terror from the Black Ship, has also decided to take Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. Which is great news.


And speaking of Tunnel's Mouth, I had the paperback covers through the post before I went away. It has a great quote from my erstwhile employer, The Independent -

'...it's genuinely, thrillingly horrible. And I mean that in a good way.'

The paperback is out in October this year.

I also had an email from the Eagle House School near Sandhurst where I am doing an event the week after next. They are having a Celebration of Children's Literature Festival and I'm very much looking forward to meeting everyone there.

I have some other news, but I am not allowed to tell you until tomorrow. . .

Wales

I have been in Wales with my wife and son all last week. We were staying in a cottage near Dolgellau. The cottage was in a lovely setting and we had glorious weather. We climbed Cadair Idris, visited crazy Portmeirion (setting for the cult 1960s series The Prisoner), walked besides waterfalls, rode on a narrow gauge steam train, strolled beneath the giant clipped yews of Powis Castle Gardens and saw so much wildlife. It was great.

But now its back to the real world. . .