News

October 2008

It’s almost Hallowe’en, and I haven’t updated you with any news for months. You must think I’ve died. But no, I’m just rubbish at keeping in touch, although I always answer any e mails that come through my website contact form. So, if you have contacted me and haven’t received a reply, it’s because it has bounced back to me. Not because I haven’t bothered to reply. I’d never do that! And some of the e mails I have sent have come back to me, no matter how often I send them! Please try again. Especially all the boys who asked me about TRIBES. I’ve sent those replies so often, and they just won’t go through. So please try again. I love answering your questions about my books.

Ride of Death, the final instalment of the Nemesis series came out in May. I’m going to miss writing about Ram. I have grown very fond of him over the course of those four books, although if you read them, the action takes place over just one month. I did that deliberately, because I wanted the books to be fast moving and exciting, and also because I wanted Ram to get his memory back in the final book! Sometimes, you write something, or you come up with a phrase and feel it sums up everything you want to say about a character. For Ram, that phrase appears in Ride of Death.

‘ I lost my memory and found my conscience.’

But, as soon as I finished Ride of Death, I started on a new project. Grass, my next Bloomsbury book which will be out next year. Do you think that’s a good title? Does it intrigue you? I’m not going to tell you about it. Not yet. Just to say, I loved writing it.

I’ve also just finished another book. It will come out next year too. I found it really exciting to write this book, because I wrote it from someone else’s blurb. A blurb which won a competition. This competition was the brainchild of two librarians in Dundee. It involved the High School pupils in Dundee producing a blurb for a book. We had over 1500 entries! Some of them were brilliant, it was difficult whittling them down to a longlist of 18, then a shortlist of 5. I would love to have written a book from all five of those blurbs they were so good, but we had to choose just one. It’s a ghost story with a twist, I so hope you like it when it comes out. It is called...Hide and Seek? What kind of book would you write with a title like that?

I am definitely going to do better at keeping touch. So many exciting things are happening.

I’m off to America in November. And I promise I will update you then!