November 2011
8 posts
French Award for Solomon!
Fine news over the weekend. The Ring of Solomon has been awarded the Prix Millepages 2011. This is a prize given by a prominent French bookstore, Millepages in Vincennes. More details soon!
Also, I’ve done a new interview with Writing.ie, in which I chat in detail about the process of writing my novels. Check it out now at...
Adventures in Oldenburg
I’m just back from the KIBUM Children’s Book Festival in Oldenburg, Germany. It was a flying 24-hour visit and, as always, I wish I could have stayed longer. But I packed lots of good things into my stay, namely two lovely events on stage in the company of the actor Rainer Rudloff. Rainer was my translator, but also the reader of several excerpts from Amulet of Samarkand and Ring of...
Detective Stories and Lectures
I’m typing this at the airport, on my way to Germany for the KIBUM Festival of Children’s Literature in Oldenburg. This’ll be my second day of events in the last week - last Friday I had a great morning at the Hemel Hempstead School. In addition to talking about my books I also did a workshop about detective stories. Discussed the rules of the genre, then got the students to...
Deeper into autumn
Outside my window, the lawn is clogged with orange carpets of fallen leaves; and also zigzagged by a mysterious series of giant grey toadstools, grown out of nowhere, seemingly following some hidden fissure in the earth.
Still writing. Sometimes I feel like a look-out strapped to the mast of some ship, staring through the fog, waiting for the promised land of the next novel to suddenly take shape...
