Royal Mail Book Award!

I have had the most perfect day. Shortlisted for this wonderful award , The Royal Mail Scottish Childrens Book Award, was great enough, but winning it. That was fantastic. The whole day had a circus theme, and I almost fell over a girl on stilts when I walked into the Tramway Theatre in Glasgow. Everyone was in circus mode. Children were dressed up, and so were the staff of the Book Trust. The bearded lady looked so authentic I almost pulled her beard just to make sure.I half expected the authors to be fired from the cannon to get us into the auditorium.  I so hope the young people who were there, and a lot of them had travelled a long way to get to Glasgow, enjoyed the day as much as I did.
     I have come home to a fish supper and a glass of champage. High living, eh? But if I had a five star day, then it was only the icing on the cake of a five star weekend. I spent it with Katie in Madrid.( this was her Christmas present to me)  We stayed in a lovely hotel on the Gran Via, a perfect location, and on Friday night we had tapas in a little Spanish bar. We had planned to go back to the hotel and change to go out again. Instead we found a restaurant with a bay window looking out over the street. We could people watch to our hearts' content there. The young couple who couldn't stop kissing, until they realised we were watching them, and then they giggled and waved and moved on. The other couple who parked their car halfway on the street, with the hazard lights flashing. He got out of the car, a poor soul, walked with a limp. He took the cases out of the boot while his girlfriend haughtily lit a cigaretter and made a call on her mobile phone.Then he dragged and lifted the cases towards a hotel further up the street. She totally ignored him. Too busy on her moblie, while he kept having to stop for a rest, shifting the weight of the cases before he moved on. She was still on the phone, and with her fag in her mouth when he returned. We expected, hoped I think, he would snatch the cigarette crush it underfoot. But he didn't. Instead, they both began walking towards the hotel. Then, suddenly, the worm turned. He said something, she snapped back and the next thing, she was striding away from him. and he was walking in the opposite direction. Only thing was, she was heading for the hotel, and he was going back to the car. We will never know the end of that story. But that is the wonderful thing about people watching. You can make up your own ending. And, did I really see Danny Boyle, the Greenock scriptwriter, walking with his wife? I could have sworn I did.
    Moments like these made up the weekend.  But the best of all was what happened on the way to the airport on Sunday. I looked out of the taxi window as we were stopped at traffic lights, and there on the top of a tourist bus going in the opposie direction.,was a young boy. When he saw me he smiled, and I smiled back and waved. The lights changed, and as we moved away from each other we waved again.
   Ships passing in the night, as they say? Not a bit of it. At Liverpool airport as we were waiting to go through customs, a boy in front turned to me. " Did I see you in Madrid today?" He asked. The same boy.His name was Sam, a lovely boy, on holdiay with his family for half term. Imagine remembering my face in a taxi window?
   Another small moment that made the weekend. And a big moment, to make my day today!

catching up

Ages since I wrote in here. No excuse, just couldn't get in to actually post a blog. Another resolution, learn more about technology! But here I am, have had such a wonderful January, I didn't win the Southern Schools Book Award, but I met such lovely people there. I love meeting other writers, hearing how they go about writing, where they get their ideas, asking all the questions that seem to annoy people because they get asked them so much! I did, however, win the Red Book Award. They really know how to host an awards celebration. Everyone has to wear something red. My daughter Sarah bought me a lovely red flowy top, just right for the occasion...it was my birthday the day before, so winning was just about the best birthday present I could get. It was such a fun day. Then, I was off to Liverpool and my daughter Katie and her family. I love driving and listening to the radio as I go. Heard a great play on the way home, a dramatisation of The Big Sleep, seems Radio 4 are doing a Raymond Chandler season. All the time I listened I was sure I knew the actor's voice who was playing Philip Marlowe. The play was almost finished when it came to me. It was the detective out of Medium. The news came on just after it finished. There was an item about a sex offender in Carstairs who took his case ot the European Court. He was being fed a healthy diet and said it was against his human rights, because he wanted junk food....and he won! Law and Order UK, eh?  But, it gave me an idea for a story. Schools are making sure pupils are eating a healthy diet, aren't they? What if they, en masse, started protesting, they want their chips. Took their case to the European Court, would they win too? Why shouldn't they? We might have protests like the ones wer'e seeing in Cairo!
   January over already. It's February, and I have so much to look forward to this month too.  

Southern Schools Book Award

I was shortlisted for this award two years ago, and never got to the award ceremony, not that I won, but I was so looking forward to going. Hurricane like winds stopped me, and the trains, but maybe everything happens for a reason. I had got as far as Preston, when we were all taken off the train and onto buses for the next part of the journey. I sat beside an American, who turned out to be one of the most interesting men I have ever met. I was writing the Nemesis series at the time, and as we talked he began to tell me of his most interesting life. He was involved with US homeland security, so he gave me lots of tips about the conspiracy I was writing about in the series. He was also a writer himself,  had plays produced, loved writing, but at the moment his other career had taken over. Though it was hard to give writing up. Writing is a drug, he told me. In fact, he told me so much I was sure he must have been making half of it up, so I Googled him as soon as I got home, and actually he had been really modest. He's very well known, well thought of, and ...you think I am going to tell you his name. Forget it, he is my Dark Man. We still keep in touch, now and then.
   So who knows who I might meet on my journey to Brighton tomorrow? I am so looking forward to going, meeting the other shortlisted authors and the readers too. My son says you should fill your life with 5star days, I am going to make tomorrow one of them.

New Year

I love New Year. My daughter Katie and I always write out our New Year resolutions, our goals for the next year, our plans for the future. And when we look at last year's resolutions it is amazing how many of them we have acheived. I'm one of those really boring people who believes in writing lists, and ticking them off. But it has always worked for me. You don't just write out your goals of course, You have to take the steps to get there. If I am going to write a certain book, it doesn't just appear in front of me, I have to start with that first page. I have lots to do next year, lots to look forward to. I have another blog to write, about a book that means a lot to me. The book I have chosen is Therese Raquin, lust, passion, ghosts and murder, what more could you ask for in a book? Another Me is being made into a film. I have my next Bloomsbury book to deliver, It Walks Among Us, I love that title. Hope my readers do too. Another Tyler Lawless book to write, and the first, Out of The Depths, coming out later next year.  My cup runneth over. How lucky am I?
   So, this will be my last blog until 2011, and I wish everyone a wonderful time, and a fantastic 2011. 

catching up

I haven't written here for a while. A very personal loss stopped everything. I was down in Stockport and I so wanted to thank everyone for the wonderful time they gave us there. They really do know how to put on an awards presentation. The prize is a fantastic piece of art from a student, and I am so delighted with mine. It hangs in pride of place beside the first prize I won at Stockport. My thanks to Louisa Diep for the terrific scene from Grass which she painted. I think all the writers enjoyed that evening, and next day we were taken to different schools to meet and talk to pupils. And both schools gave me such a wonderful welcome. I was going to Liverpool that night  and my plan was to tell all in this blog, but sometimes fate changes everything. I had to race home, and I missed an event in Wigan the following week too.
   So I have to get back into work now, and this blog is going to help me do that, I hope. At the moment, I can't even face my diary, and I love keeping that diary. But I did manage a visit to London this week, meeting up with my editor and discussing the new covers my publishers plan for my books when my new one comes out next year.  I also met the producers of Another Me, so much is happening there. But I am not going to speak of it for now. Within the next few weeks, there will be lots of news about the film, which I will happily share.
   And thank you everyone for the lovely cards of sympathy I have received.

ideas

Yesterday at the Greenwood Centre in Dreghon with Debi Gliori and some wonderful librarians, so enthusiastic about childrens books. I shouldn't say children's books, because they are enthusiastic about books in general. We don't realise how lucky we are to have librarians like that.  Debi Gliori is always fun to be with, and at one point, one of the librarians told us a story about her son. A fantastic story, and both Debi and I leapt on it. That would make a great plot! But it was Debi who was the first to say, " Can I use that?" and I bet she will. And me, being the lady I am, will let her. Only if some terrible misfortune befalls her...and these things can happen...especially if I am the cause of the terrible misfortune, only then will I steal it. But it just proves the point I m always making in schools. Writers seem to have a wee invisible aerial that searches out ideas for stories. And I believe you can train your brain to find them.
   But here is another thought. Perhaps Debi and I can both use the idea? There is a wonderful movie, Throw Momma from a Train, about a writer who just can't get past that first sentence in his novel. His student, Danny De Vito wants him to kill his momma, and he will kill the writer's wife...a kind of Strangers n a Train scenario.( See, ideas are recycled all the time) but after all they go through together, the writer can finally finish his story using what's happened to them, Throw Momma From a Train,only to find his student has written the same story. But his is a picture book, very gentle and funny. Totally different. I really recommend writers to see this movie, so many ideas are in there.So perhaps, Debi could use the idea in one of her wonderful picture books, or even in a dark comic fantasy, and I could use it in a ghostly supernatural thriller? Then, again, maybe not. Debi is great fun, but I think she could trail me anytime!

imagination!

I haven't been able to get into my blogs. But here I am, back, just home from a wonderful day at schools. How's this for imagination ? All I gave the primary school at Bankhead was a key. What can a key open? And it opened the floodgates of their imagination. The key to Doomsday. The key to Oblivion. The Key to the Underworld, where you unleash all the demons and there is a race against time to get them back in, save the world, lock the Underworld again. Or the key to a Golden House, where everything you touch turns to gold, and the golden statues inside the house, are real people turned to gold. That one even spawned sequels, the House of Silver. The House of Bronze. I was amazed, as I always am, by their imagination. One of the other ideas I threw at them was a football shirt pinned on a tree trunk. A tribute to a dead boy. I got a detective story out of that, a mystery story, and a ghost story. And once again these wonderful children then decided this could be a series. So we ended up with The Enchanted Underpants. The Spooky Socks, and even the Terrifying Toothbrush. I find these days inspires my imagination as much as theirs!  I'm going to Drreghorn on Friday, so I think I will let you know the imagination and the stories I get out of those pupils.