Questions, questions...

Cristy Zinn

South African writer and blogger Cristy Zinn got in touch a few weeks back via thesolitarybee@gmail.com.  I've enjoyed my correspondence with her, and I've ended up doing an interview for her newly re-vamped website. 
  
I also went up to Exeter yesterday and spent a very jolly morning talking to Tina, Gill and Abi on The Mighty Book, a monthly books programme on Exeter's community radion station, Phonic FM.  Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on a recording and make it available here.  Likewise the Skype interview I did last week with Bruno Accioly of the Steampunk Council of Brazil, to mark the publication of the Brazilian edition of Mortal Engines.


I enjoy doing interviews, but the trouble is that I keep finding myself saying the same things.  I haven't lead a very eventful life, and people who have read more than a few interviews with me will probably be sick of hearing about how I don't plan my stories out in advance and how I've been influenced by Geraldine McCaughrean and Asterix and Tolkein and Excalibur and Noggin the Nog...  The only solutions I can see are either to actually do something new which I can talk about in future interviews (Bungee jumping?  Ballet?  Learning to drive?) or just lying, which, as a writer, I'm quite good at.  So perhaps in future interviews I'll reveal how I wrote Mortal Engines while sleeping rough on a beach in the Gilbert Islands, and how I spent the Eighties climbing all the most difficult bits of the Andes.  


I might try out this new technique on Sunday next, when I shall be appearing with Candy Gourlay and Lauren St John at the Oxford Literary Festival.

Scrivener's Moon 'Better Than Pancakes' - Official.

Ooh, look: Sarah McIntyre and friend have been tucking into an advance copy of Scrivener's Moon...







...actually I'm not at all sure that dog looks convinced, but since when were Shiba Inus part of my target demographic?  


You can read the full review on Sarah's blog here.

Shiny!

Fever Crumb has just been released in paperback in the United States.  Here's the new cover design, which I think is rather fantastic.  A Web of Air will follow as a hardback in October.

Hello America

I did a question and answer session last week with pupils at  Leesburg, Virginia - my first school event in the USA.  And I didn't even have to leave my own office.  

It was all thanks to the internet and the wonder of Skype, which I'd vaguely heard of but didn't realise was something I could actually do until Renee Kelahan, the librarian at Loudon County Day School, got in touch to ask if I 'skyped'.  Well, I didn't, but it turned out that with a bit of help from her and Sarah McIntyre it was quite easy.  

Lucky Loudon County students listen to my words of wisdom and wonder if there's anything better on another channel...  

The students had been reading Fever Crumb and also doing some tie-in work on genetics in their science lessons - which means they probably know far about both subjects than I do (now that I'm two books further on, it's quite hard to think back to all the things that happened in Fever Crumb.)  It was a bit strange at first to be talking to a picture on a screen, and I kept looking at them instead of into the little camera above my monitor, but I think it went well - at least, the students asked some good questions; whether I gave them good answers or not, you'd have to ask them.  A couple of people wanted to know why I'd killed off certain characters, and I got the impression that they wished I hadn't, which is interesting (though I'm unrepentant).  


Anyway, don't all rush at once, but I guess I am now available for Skype sessions: all enquiries to thesolitarybee@gmail.com