Marcus Sedgwick

The Dead Days

2011-12-22T15:46:00.002Z

Many years ago (as a nice story should start), I wrote a book called The Book of Dead Days. I wrote it from a feeling, a feeling that I'd had since I was a child, about why it feels so weird between Christmas and New Year.

When you're a kid, there's all that time over the Christmas holidays, and after the excitement of the big day, there's that strange time until New Year's Eve, when not much goes on. When I grew up, and worked in publishing (and therefore had even more time off ;-) ) that feeling just got stronger.

It always felt to me like a time outside of time, and I started to think how it might be a book. The Book of Dead Days, a couple and a half hundred pages of running around in snow-covered graveyards, is the result, my take on the Faust legend.

In writing it, and researching ideas around it, I was pleased when to discover that I wasn't the first person to think these days were different from the others, at least in principle. The Aztecs and the Egyptians both used calendars of 12 months of 30 days, and then added in 5 inter-calendrical days to make up the rest of the year. While these days don't of course relate to the notion of Christmas itself, they did feel that these days were something out of time, in fact, days of ill omen. And that is a notion found in the Christian canon, since the 28th is Childermass, known as the unluckiest day of the year. Something to do with the slaughter of the innocents...

I still love the days between Boxing Day and New Year's Eve, and with that time approaching again, it's time to find something good to read, something warming to drink and to be with the people you love.

Yuletide Greetings to one and all. I have to say that as the heathen in me likes to remember that midwinter festivals go way, way back.

Why I like this book :-)

2011-10-25T11:22:00.003+01:00

There were vampire novels before Dracula, there have been many since, and there will undoubtedly be more to come in the future, but I doubt Dracula will ever be bettered. Why? Largely because it’s a product of the time it was written, and the man who wrote it - Bram Stoker, a member of high society in Victorian Dublin.

Stoker is the epitome of Victorian society - clearly a rather repressed and oppressed individual on the surface, his fiction betrays a rather different character, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, full of sexualities of dubious natures.

And this is at the heart of why Dracula was, and is, so successful - it strikes to the very core of the contradiction that is the vampire - the attraction to something potentially fatal, not just to your mortal self, but your immortal soul as well.

True, the charisma of the vampire had been set up by Polidori’s allusions to Byron, and another Dubliner, Sheridan Lefanu had already thrown Lesbian vampires into the mix in Carmilla, but Stoker worked these themes, and more, up into a slow burn of a novel that arrives in a final frenzy of blood-letting.

Along the way it uses multiple narratives, a relatively novel technique at the time, to weave a story of obsession, lust, menace and the supernatural.

It is one of the few books I have read several times, and every time I do, I enjoy it more, and it horrifies me more, not just as a reader, but as a writer too, because nothing else that Stoker wrote, before or after Dracula, comes close. He worked for years on the book that was to become his masterpiece, and it’s a frightening thought for a writer to fear that real creativity might abandon you altogether.

This is a guest post that first appeared on Varsity Online...

Symbols and folklore

2011-10-11T14:05:00.000+01:00

first posted at MY FAVOURITE BOOKS

If it was up to me, I would write folk and fairy tales. Really. But I can’t, because it’s not up to me. Or rather, I could do if I wanted to, but no one would buy them. Rather like the short story, folk and fairy tales are generally considered hard to publish these days, and to sell, with a few notable exceptions such as Angela Carter’s reworkings. But they are almost my favourite kind of story, and so, ever since I became a writer, I have always tried to find ways of working elements of folklore into my books.

How? By using iconic images, words with deep resonance, patterns of story telling and certain motifs which remind us, subconsciously at least, of those dark stories we all heard at a tender age.

Midwinterblood is full of these things, my favourite two being the hare, and the moon. Each of the seven parts of the book takes place under the influence of a full moon, but unlike today, our ancestors had names for each of the twelve full moons of the year. More in touch with the weather, the landscape and the turning of the seasons than we are, most ancient cultures had names such as the Snow Moon, the Grain Moon, the Fruit Moon. I took the ones I liked best from English and Norse calendars, recast them slightly, and it is these moons that shone down upon the protagonists of Midwinterblood.

And the hare? Such a mysterious creature, little accurate was known about it until relatively recently in our history, allowing all sorts of myths to be created around it. So when I was looking for a totemic creature for Merl to have in the book, the hare seemed perfect - fast, lithe, unknowable - and so a hare appears, as a child’s toy, as a carving, as the real creature, as a grieving lover transformed by a witch. And if I can’t get away with writing new fairy tales, at least I can enjoy plundering our literary heritage to populate my books.

And here’s an extract from Part One of Midwinterblood, Midsummer Sun

Eric explores late into the afternoon.

He finds nothing, at least, nothing that he is looking for.

The orchids, or a production facility maybe, a homespun lab of some sort. He supposes he will know it when he sees it. That’s how it is in his job, and he has always quietly thought to himself that that is why he has been successful in his work. That, and something less easy to admit, that maybe he is never satisfied. Neither in life, or work, nor in love, he always wants more. It has made him a good journalist, this desire in him to search for more, but although he knows it deep inside, he has never admitted to himself that this same thing has left him alone, with a heart that nervously beats for fear of never finding. But something just clicks when he’s on the right track of a story, something just clicks. Like something clicked when he saw Merle’s face.

He finds himself back at the Cross House, and pulls out the map again, trying to decide where to look next.

It is getting late, but that does not matter, because it will not get dark. The flower moon is rising above the hill. He studies the map that Tor gave him.

It looks hand drawn, but he can see it is printed, and there’s a title and a price on the back of it. There is something about it that nags at him, but he’s finding it so hard to think. He wonders if he’s getting ill, it’s twice now that his mind has felt like this. Cloudy.

With an effort, his head clears, and into his memory comes the image of the map of Blessed, the one that he’d saved on his device.

He realises that the map in front of him is not the same as the one he had recorded back at the office.

That one had two halves, a very distinct shape, like the two wings of a butterfly, though the western half slightly smaller, giving it a lopsided look. The two halves were joined by a narrow strip of land.

Eric looks at the paper map in his hand. Only the eastern half of the island is printed. Half the island is missing.

Now why, he thinks, would they print a map of only half the island?

That would be stupid. Unless, unless, unless you wanted to keep half of it secret.

Special places

2011-10-10T16:24:00.002+01:00

first posted at THE BOOKBAG

Another of those questions you get asked a lot as a writer: where do you like to work? Do you have a special place? Well, yes, I do have a special place - I am one of those lucky ones who has a shed at the bottom of the garden. It’s bright, and my fingers don’t freeze in the winter now I’ve put a woodburner into it, but it’s very small and won’t cost half a million pounds to move it when I’m dead (as we heard a week or so ago about the famous Dahl writing abode!) And I do love writing in there, but the truth of the matter is, when a deadline is pressing, or maybe when it’s even gone by, the best place to write is anywhere that works.

I was running against time writing Midwinterblood, largely because I’d written 10,000 words of something else that I then had to abandon, being unhappy with it. As things fell out, I was living on an island off the coast of Sweden, in a small hut, though a small hut with wifi (well, Sweden’s a modern place) and it was there that I wrote the bulk of the book. I knew a couple of people on the island, my landlord and landlady, and that was about it. I ate very simply, the fastest things I could cook, and I worked all day from early morning to early evening, taking usually one trip a day to go to the island’s single shop, or to go diving off the rocks into the warm (yes, really) waters of the Gothenburg archipelago.

I suspect I went a little crazy with cabin fever, but the next time I lifted my head to see who I was, I had three-quarters of a new book. It all feels so serendipitous when it’s going well - having the idea at the right time, having the chance to be able to work on it, finding that it’s going okay, and I never take it for granted when it does, because any writer will tell you about the times when it doesn’t go well, as for example, when you have to throw away 10,000 words. Something I’ve now done three times in my life, and which, I suspect, I will have to do again, one day...

And here’s an extract from Part Three of Midwinterblood, The Airman

Hovering between life and death, the airman’s dreams are as twisted and broken as his fighter plane, which still smokes on a hillside a mile away. He sees weird visions of heaven and hell, and has a nightmare of running but being unable to run, as something chases him through fiery pits.

He groans in his sleep, and thrashes wildly, disturbing the hare that has been sitting nearby, watching him, wide eyes blinking in the near moonless night. Finally, as he wakes in early daylight, he dreams he’s being eaten by a dragon.

He sits up and screams, because his ankle is broken.

A beast scumbles away from him and he sees the dragon from his dreams, a large dog, a wolfhound. He collapses onto his back again, and with his thick leather glove he wipes his face, wet with the dog’s slobber.

Turning his neck awkwardly, he sees the lines of his chute stretching across a field of wheat. He’s made quite a mess, and suddenly panic takes hold.

He sits up again, this time avoiding using his right leg, the ankle of which is throbbing in a threatening way.

The dog has run away a few paces, but now sits watching him, panting merrily.

Where the hell am I? he thinks.

The last thing he remembers was that he’d managed to radio Petter before he’d had to bail out, but even then they were way off course, having made a run north to avoid a fighter patrol. What bad luck to hit another one. They’d come from nowhere and taken half the flight down before they even knew what was happening.

They’d been over the coast, God knows where, and he’d seen the lights of a small group of islands, and prayed he’d land on one of them, and not the sea, for to land in the sea would mean death.

He considers the facts, the chances of his survival.

His ankle is broken, he cannot walk.

If his emergency kit has survived, he can inject himself with some morphine, which, while it lasts, will ease the pain.

The island on which he has fallen must be inhabited; this is a wheatfield, there is someone’s dog.

He knows this is not the mainland, but it could be almost anywhere else; they’d gone a long way north before the dogfight.

He’d radioed Petter, but maybe Petter didn’t make it either.

He decides not to think that.

Petter Åkare is a good pilot, and he knows he’ll have made it. He’ll report their position, and then…

Then what?

They’re not going to mount a rescue operation for one missing airman, even if he is a Flight Lieutenant. The best he can hope for is to make contact with friendly forces, get himself picked up by the Navy.

He’s just thinking all this when he hears a harsh voice, shouting.

‘Skilla! Skilla!’

He fumbles to pull his gloves off.

‘Skill-a!’

It’s a man’s voice, and it sounds angry, even if he doesn’t understand what the man is shouting.

He manages to pull his glove off with his teeth, and scrabbles for his pistol, but before he can pop the catch on his holster, the light is blotted out above him by the figure of a man. A large man.

He looks down and whistles.

The dog bounds over to him, begins to lick his hand.

‘Well, Skilla,’ he says, ‘what have you found this time?

Short stories and twisted tales

2011-10-09T16:00:00.000+01:00

first posted at THE BOOKETTE

I love stories. I’m a writer, so that probably sounds a bit stupid. Of course I like stories, but I really really like short stories. So when I wrote this book which is composed of seven parts, each one like a short story, I also decided it would be fun to take things even further, and have a story within a story. The Unquiet Grave, the fifth part of the book, and whose titles derives from an old English folk ballad, is a ghost story, told from within a ghost story. If that sounds complicated, it isn’t too bad when you read it, I hope, though it did cause me a few headaches at the time. It is also one of the world’s only lesbian ghost stories, though I would love to be proved wrong about that, and probably will be. (Answers on a virtual postcard, please!)

That’s why I like short stories: you can do odd things within them, experiment a bit, try things you might not want to risk trying in a whole book. Many writers made almost their whole career out of them: Poe would be a good example, many writers wrote many alongside their longer works: such as Hawthorne, and many writers never touch the form at all. The short story is particularly suited to certain genres as well, I find: science-fiction and ghost stories must be among the best examples. So The Unquiet Grave is my small offering to the traditional ghost story, with a couple of slight twists.

And here’s an extract from Part Five of Midwinterblood, The Unquiet Grave

Every night, at dusk, Merle would wander from her house, like a ghost, a mere shadow of her former beauty, and drift to the graveyard.

Every night, she would sit at Erik’s grave, waiting, waiting for him to return. Eventually, she would fall asleep, her tears lost among the steady autumn rains that pattered onto the freshly turned grave soil.

Every morning, she would stagger home to bed, a cold and fevered wretch.

Her father tried to stop her, but no matter what he did or said, Merle took no notice of him.

The days turned into weeks.

The weeks turned into months.

The months turned into a year.

And still Merle spent every night weeping at her lover’s grave.

As the year had passed however, something had happened to Merle, to her mind. It had grown tired, and been stretched beyond endurance, so that it tore, and so it was, a year and a day after Erik had been laid in the earth, that she went mad.

That night, as she slept on the grave, now well covered with grass, the gravestone softening gently with the turn of the days, she woke.

The moon was bright, almost as bright as day.

It was a clear, calm night, as still indeed, as the grave, and she looked up to see a hare sitting on the grass, an arm’s length away.

She knew immediately who it was, or rather, who she thought it was. In her delusion, she thought the creature was her lover.

‘Erik!’ she cried, and when the hare did not run away in fright, the belief that she was right grew in her. ‘Erik!’ she declared again, laughing, the tears streaming down her face.

She put out her hand, and the hare hopped closer, and sniffed her fingers. She leaned closer, and the hare came right up to her face, to her lips. They kissed, lightly.

‘Erik!’ she said. ‘How clever!’

Then suddenly she realised something, and she sat up quickly. Now the hare bolted into the trees.

‘But how,’ she cried. ‘How can I follow you? I must be with you, my love! How can I be with you?’

Though even as she said the words, she knew what she had to do. The idea formed in her head, like an apple ripening, and she knew what she had to do, and who she needed to help her.

On the hill, on the road out to the western isle, was an old woman, who knew the old ways.

They said she was a witch, and they were right.

Vampires: The Vikings had them too...

2011-10-07T17:10:00.000+01:00

first posted at WONDROUS READS

It’s true. Years ago I was amazed to discover that vampires were known to the Vikings, at least, if their sagas are to be believed. In a couple of them, the Eyrbyggja Saga for example, the bodies of those slain rise from the dead, causing havoc, slaughtering animals and men, and blood flows.

Some readers interpret these revenants as ghosts, but what, after all, is the difference between a ghost and a vampire? Not such a great deal. Both are spirits who, for whatever reason, come back after death, and the main difference is the association of blood drinking on the part of the vampire, the lack of corporeality on the part of the ghost. And yet, go back in time, and vampires, at least in the original folklore, are very rarely described as drinking blood, and the main difference seems to be more to do with where you lived, not what the revenant actually was. Eastern Europe has a strong vampire tradition, England does not. What we have here is ghosts. And yet, we dealt with ghosts in exactly the same ways that our Transylvanian cousin dealt with vampires: a stake through the chest, or mouth for example. Or better yet, both.

To the superstitious mind, both of these frights, the vampire and the ghost, are just people trying to come back, with unfinished business to conclude with the living. And so are the viking vampires: often the victim of a domestic quarrel, the aggrieved party return after death to try and claim what they believe to be theirs: in the case of Midwinterblood, two children, twin brother and sister, whose uncle returns after death, claiming them as his own.

And here’s an extract from Part Six of Midwinterblood, The Vampire

The turning of the days became heavy and thick.

The short tide of daylight was grey and grim, as an unborn violence took root in the soil beneath the snows.

It was unseen, but it was felt by all, and it grew.

Very soon, it would burst up out of the ground.

Eirik and I clung to each other.

‘What will be?’ I whispered to him one night, as we lay in our bed, in the small room behind the longhouse. Our parents slept soundly, beyond the fire, but Eirik and I were full of fear and of wondering.

‘Why do they not speak to each other?’ Eirik whispered back.

It was true. Mother and Father were not speaking.

Tor strode round the village as if he were the chieftan, not Father. Some sneered at him as he passed, others took his hand in friendship, and so the village grew divided, and quiet, and brooded.

Eirik and I shivered and shook, and waited for something to happen, and we did not have long to wait.

One night, the violence that had been growing between Father and Tor erupted.

At meal time, as we sat and silently chewed our food, the doors opened and there stood Tor.

I heard my father say, ‘Name him, and he’s always near.’

Heads hung, others lifted.

Words were muttered, as once more, Tor walked around the tables, and out into the centre, by the fire.

He stood facing Father and then, without looking at us, his hand pointed in our direction.

‘Those barn,’ he said, ‘are mine. They are my seed, and mine to own. I will have them to me.’

Father stood.

Now all eyes were lifted, and all hands shook.

My father stood and walked around the high table, into the centre of the great longhouse, and walked up to Tor, till their toes touched.

He said a single word to Tor, but no one knew what that word was, so quietly did he speak.

And then they were on each other.

I could not see who struck first, so fast it was, and it mattered not, because in a moment they were one beast, rolling in the dirt.

It would have been usual at such a fight for shouts to ring out, for voices to cry and for hands to hammer on the tabletops.

But not this time. This time there was silence, and the only sounds were the sobbing of our mother, and the grunts of the men grappling.

I felt for Eirik’s hand and he felt for mine, just as our father’s and our uncle’s hands felt for each other’s throats.

It didn’t take long.

As they rolled, I wondered why it was that our father, some years older than his brother, seemed the younger. His skin was younger, his back was straighter, his arms stronger.

And his hands.

He was astride Tor now. Like a horse. Even at the awful moment, I remember that I thought it looked as if he rode a horse.

But he didn’t, he rode a man, and as I fingered the hare at my throat, Father’s fingers closed around the throat of his brother, and squeezed.

The Rite of Winter

2011-10-06T17:27:00.004+01:00

first posted at READING ZONE

Parts of many of my books have been inspired by music: the chapter titles in White Crow for example, are titles of songs with related meanings, much of the Book of Dead Days was inspired by Schubert's epic song cycle, Winterreise.

And Midwinterblood is no exception: lines by Nick Drake and Led Zeppelin are tucked away in the text, but the most significant source for the book is Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which is probably the piece that made me fall in love with classical music, as well as modern music. I first heard it at the age of around 14 and as the saying goes, it blew my tiny mind. More energy than the Sex Pistols, freakier than Hendrix, many people know the story of how a riot broke out at its scandalous first performance in Paris in 1913. This story was actually somewhat exaggerated, largely by Stravinsky himself, but it's not hard to see what the fuss is all about. Even today, this piece, when performed well, is startling, brutal, raw and fundamentally unknowable.

The Rite concerns the pagan sacrifice of a girl in old Russia, and just the names of its fourteen short passages are enough to make my spine tingle: I stole some of them for the chapter titles in part seven of Midwinterblood: The Glorification of the Chosen One, The Kiss of the Earth... And one small part of Stravinsky's work was the inspiration for some lines in the book just before the climatic sacrifice. The passage known as The Sage is shortest of the whole work, often just around twenty seconds long, and is a very very quiet section with a weird, otherworldly discord to end it. Either side of this near silence, the music thunders and drums, pounds and shudders, and to me, it depicts the way in life that a moment of great drama or violence is preceded by a moment of calm and stillness first.

I'd long wanted to pay homage to one of my favourite pieces of music by incorporating some of it in a book: I'm glad Midwinterblood gave me that chance.

PS Here’s four pieces of music you can “find” in the book:

Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin

Evocation of the Ancestors, The Rite of Spring - Igor Stravinsky

The Unquiet Grave - many versions but my favourite is by Lau

Pink Moon - Nick Drake

And here’s a short extract from Part Seven of Midwinterblood

The Glorification of the Chosen One

The sled is nearly at its place.

King Eirikr rises from the gilded throne upon which he has been riding.

He is covered in a massive fur of fox, and yet, as he stands, he slips the knot at its neck, and lets it fall to the wooden floor of the sled.

He is naked, yet he feels neither the cold of night, nor the deep of winter. His blood is pounding through his body. He tips his chin to the heavens, defiantly.

He is naked but for the narrow gold band gripping his head, the gold bracer of triple design, another symbol of the flower cult, the magic of which even now hurtles round his veins with the rest of his hot blood.

As if in an orgy of orchestrated genius, there is always a moment of silence before the violence and noise of the act itself.

Before battle, as the whole army takes in a breath.

Before the diver leaps into the water, and the sea pounds his ear drums.

Before the storm, the stillness in which a single bird calls.

Before the pains of birth, the brief rest between the spasms.

Before the all the other instruments descend in a maelstrom, the faint and strangled chord from the bassoons.

Before the ice breaks, before the tree falls, before the sword lands.

It might only be a fraction of a moment, but that time can dilate, can swell and grow, can fill the world around it with its power, till it lasts for a lifetime.

The Big Blog Story - Chapter 8

2011-09-23T12:10:00.001+01:00

You can read the previous chapter of the Big Blog Story, by Lauren Kate, HERE

Chapter 8:

Back on dry land, Mr Catch turned and looked at Scribble.

"You know, Scribble," he said, "I feel like a pataphysical interlude just occurred..."
He looked puzzled as Scribble scribbled in his notepad furiously for several minutes. He held the pad up for Mr Catch to see.

OCTOPUS, it said.

"You are a strange boy, Scribble," muttered Mr Catch, darkly, "however, I feel that has been well established by now, but what is less clear is this business about the moon."

He waved his hand at the ocean.

"That sprightly young mermaid might just be able to help us, more considerate than Moby Doris, kinder of heart, and less prejudiced towards...ahem....fishermen, we need to speak to her urgently about the contents of this chest, for if I am not very much mistaken, the coral, the rope, the pearl and that fiendishly odd set of scribblings are the ingredients of some magical stuff, something powerful and dangerous, and yet also potentially adventure-solving... Just the sort of thing a mysterious and frankly mythological creature of the sea should be able to help us with."

He stood up, feeling heroic, and tried striking a variety of noble poses, then realised something.

"There's just one problem...," he said, looking suddenly glum. "How are we, land-based organisms, going to venture beneath the salty waves?"

Now Scribble applied pencil to paper in a frantic and free manner, and after some little time had passed, handed the pad to Mr Catch.

"Well call me Ishmael and wipe my face with a flounder! A submersible!"

For what Scribble had drawn, nay designed, was exactly that. A fully equipped, deep sea diving, sub-marinal machine.

"Give me till tea time!" cried Catch, picking up a hammer and a sheet of metal that he found immediately at hand, "and I'll be putting on the final lick of paint."

And he was as good as his word...

Read the next instalment of the Big Blog Story at Alan Gibbons' blog on September 24th: HERE

The right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away

2011-07-19T09:27:00.000+01:00

Reposting my guest blog from The Periscope Post

According to CILIP, the professional body of our country’s librarians, one in six adults in the UK are functionally illiterate. This means they have literacy below that expected of the average 11 year old. We are not talking here about using reading as a leisure activity, as a source of pleasure, we’re talking about reading levels insufficient to be able to live, to work to full potential. To communicate.

Thinking long term, the sensible approach is to correct the problem early, by improving the literacy of primary school children. So, good news, at the end of 2011 the government awarded a grant of £110 million to be used to boost the attainment of the poorest children in the country.

Launched last week, one of the first announcements of the Education Endowment Foundation, who will administer this fund, is a piece of research that shows that, unsurprisingly, it’s our poorest children who are most likely to suffer such disadvantages: A staggering three out of five (60 percent) of children from the poorest sections of society lack basic literacy. Looking in more detail, the 165,000 pupils that the EEF will target are half as likely as their better-off peers to reach national standards at primary level (40 percent v. 81 percent), and one third as likely to reach national standards at secondary level (18 percent v. 61 percent). And, far from improving, the picture is getting worse. Three years ago, 45 percent of primary school children met these standards; the figure now stands at 40 percent. So it would seem like there’s no better time to be throwing some cash at the problem.

However, CILIP, many teachers, publishing professionals and various children’s authors argue convincingly that at the core of any child’s progress towards literacy should come a good relationship to books, at best, a love of reading. And where is any child from one of the poorest households described above going to find books? Free books, thousands of them? In their public or school library, that is where.

On the same day as the launch of the EEF, the government released its white paper on Open Public Services. Rather lost amidst the spectacle of the revelations concerning New International, the white paper, while according to many pundits a watered down version of Cameron’s initial plans, contains nevertheless the imperative for the control of public services, including libraries, to be outsourced to private companies, charities, community groups, you name it. And explicit in this process is the belief that struggling services should be allowed to fail: “The inevitability of small levels of failure is not an excuse for dismantling the system of open public services and returning to the old ways of top-down prescription.

Speak to any librarian and they will be more than happy to regale you with accounts of the reduction in funding and services to libraries not just since the coalition came to power, but over the past several years. How galling is it therefore, to find yourself in a service that can now be deemed as failing when funding has been repeatedly cut? For libraries, cuts means reduction in opening hours, reduction in book budget, and reduction in qualified staffing. According to the Voices for the Library campaign, it seems that over 10 percent of UK libraries are currently under threat, on top of those that have already seen closure.

Around the same time that the announcement of the EEF was made, we also learned that the Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) Council was to be abolished, and responsibility for library services to be handed to the Arts Council instead. And with a 25 percent reduction in their budget. As for libraries, the Arts Council announced last week that it intends to “speak up for libraries” in the Review of the Arts Council’s Strategic Framework. What the review doesn’t mention is that it will be doing this with an allocation for libraries slashed from £13 million to just £3 million.

Well, we have to save money somewhere, right? Just a shame it has to come at the cost of our children’s literacy. Does £3 million sound like a lot to you? In governmental terms, it sounds pretty tiny, especially if you compare it with something like Defence spending, the 2010 figure for which was over £43 billion. Then it sounds very tiny indeed.

Radio silence

2011-07-05T10:21:00.000+01:00

Like many bloggers I am guilty of occasional long silences, a result of having too much to do and yet not much to say about it either.

I've been travelling a lot, doing talks and school events, and got back last week from the States, where I'd been in New Orleans at the ALA conference, which was excellent: I discovered that American school and public librarians are every bit as wonderful, enthusiastic and knowledgable as their British counterparts. Why, on both sides of the Atlantic, we are cutting library services, is beyond me. Or rather, I know full well why, but it's a crime.

I also had time to indulge my obsession with Bond: this is the location of the Jazz funeral at the start of Live and Let Die :-)

Today is my last school event of the season, and then I have two weeks to write half a book, and co write half a screenplay with my brother. Oh, and get ideas for a new YA book together, finally. So that should all be a doddle, and I'm wondering what to do with my spare time :-/

Twitter event for Edbookfest

2011-04-02T15:24:00.000+01:00

I've just written a short story called 'Archipelago' for Edinburgh Book Festival for a project called 'Elsewhere'. They invited me to do a twitter q and a session today, and there's a transcript of the whole event online here:

http://edbookfest.blogspot.com/2011/04/transcript-of-todays-twitter-q-with.html

It was great fun, some deep questions, some silly ones, some that really stumped me, but the most interesting thing is that I find these events more nerve-wracking than 'real' ones, for some odd reason. Part of it is that you don't know who, or how many people, you're talking to, unlike a real event.

But it was fun and it's good to think you can communicate with people around the world all at once.

Cover design

2011-02-28T10:15:00.000Z

I've got time for one more pass through my new book, Midwinterblood, to be published this autumn, and that means it's time for the design team at Orion to kick into overdrive with the cover. I like this bit for lots of reasons, not least because my work is nearly done and I can 'advise' on someone else trying to get the best out of the thing.

Midwinterblood was always going to be a challengin cover design, because the book has so many different elements. Which to go for? What to focus on? In the end, as I've probably said on numerous occasions, it comes down to one thing. It took me years to realise what a cover should do, and actually it's pretty simple. A good cover should obviously be a smart and striking piece of design, if it tells you something about the plot, characters, setting etc then so much the better, but THE ONE THING a cover should do is tell you how you will feel when you read the book. We read, after all, to experience an emotion, or emotions, and a cover should give you a sample of that before you even open the pages.

That being understood, as we tweak what will be the finished thing for Midwinterblood, I realise again that that is what it has come down to. A big fat slice of what I hope people will feel as they read the book. And also, after a few alternative designs, we went back to something based on the painting that inspired the book in the first place, Carl Larsson's Midvinterblot. That seems fitting.

Rewriting

2011-02-03T11:18:00.000Z

Normally I hate it. Now it seems I love it. Rewriting, that is.

The last two longer books I've written, White Crow and Midwinterblood (which won't be published till October) have seen a change in my attitude to rewriting. With White Crow, I thought this was because I really didn't like getting the first draft down as much as usual, so I wondered if the fun came in tinkering with afterwards. But then, I really enjoyed doing the first draft of Midwinterblood, so that's that theory out of the window. My alternative theory is that because I wrote the first draft pretty quickly, I didn't 'live' for a long time in its world, and therefore was not yet bored/fed up/angry with it.

I've just finished the second draft, and hope I've done enough of the major stuff that needed doing, there will undoubtedly by lots of little bits still to get right, but for a few more days at least, it's off my desk and in my editor's inbox :-)

In the meantime, I realise that we are all wasting our time worrying about writing the perfect children's book, when it was done in that episode of Black Books, with the elephant and his balloon. (The relevant section comes in at 17:24, but really the whole thing is painfully apt.)

Mind you, the stages they went through to get there seem awfully familiar...

Author event by Skype

2010-11-17T17:09:00.000Z

So, I just visited America, for an hour, to do a school visit, by Skype.

The photo shows students from Gilbert H Hood Middle School, in Derry, New Hampshire.

This is the first time I've done an event by Skype - it was the idea of librarian Kathy Lane, and it was enormous fun. As I sat in my writing shed as dusk fell in England, I spoke to the students in Derry, about writing in general and about Revolver in particular.

The picture was great throughout, and with the aid of a roving mic I was able to hear the students' questions. Though I would normally use powerpoint to do an event, I was able to wave various things at the students that related to their questions - my notebook, the shell case that inspired Revolver in the first place, and so on. It was a very different, exciting kind of event, and I got to speak to students I would normally never be able to.

A taste of the future, and a very enjoyable one at that. Thanks to Kathy Lane, Mr Keeley, and all the students of the PACE group at Gilbert H Hood Middle School. Great fun to talk to you.

The only sad thing, maybe, was that I couldn't sign a book for anyone :-(

(Though there's even a machine that can do that now - they have one Waterstones Bookshop, Picadilly, London...)

The Cave - Mervyn Peake

2010-10-27T09:53:00.000+01:00

Last night I went to see a performance of The Cave by Mervyn Peake, in its world premiere run at the Blue Elephant Theatre.

In attendance, and in conversation afterwards with Neil Norman, was Peake's eldest child, Sebastian, who explained how after the death of their mother, he came into the possession of a suitcase of his father's effects. Understandably sorrowful after losing his mother, he didn't feel like rummaging around in the case. It was therefore over ten years later that he properly investigated its contents, and discovered bundles of unpublished writing by his father, including ten plays.

The Cave is the first of these plays to receive a production, selected as much as anything we were told, because it would suit the forces of the Blue Elephant Theatre. It's a short but powerful piece about a family across thousands of years, and deals with many things - conformity, rebellion, belief, love, I could go on here. I won't.

I really enjoyed it, the end in particular was genuinely chilling, and it's exciting to think there is more 'new' Peake material coming, for all the plays will be published by Methuen over the next three years. What was as fascinating for me, however, was the discussion afterwards.

Peake has always remained something of an acquired taste, on the fringes, a cult writer perhaps, maybe a writer's writer. I've got my own ideas why this may be, but last night I got the chance to ask Sebastian if he had an explanation for why his father, unlike his contemporary Tolkein say, never achieved the fame, success and to be blunt, money, that his work deserved. Sebastian's answer was the one his father's publisher once gave to the same question; he was too good.

He finished with a lovely quote I would like to reproduce here: It was once said that the difference between Tolkein and Peake is this: Tolkein stood on the top of the mountain, and he directed his forces from there. Peake was down in the valley, alongside his troops.

If you think of the difference between the Lord of the Rings and Gormenghast, I think that's true, and that unsettling, uncomfortable feeling you sometimes get when reading Peake is maybe another explanation for why he never fully entered the mainstream.

The Raven Mysteries - Book V - Magic and Mayhem

2010-10-14T11:02:00.000+01:00

Book five of the Raven Mysteries series is not published until next Spring, but I've just received a full set of layouts with illustrations now in place, and I thought it would be nice to give a shout out to the wonderful man who makes the pictures for the words - Pete Williamson. Have a look at his wonderful website.

I'm not going to give too much away at this stage, but since I don't often mention the Raven Mysteries here, I just want to say that I think this is going to be the best one yet, largely due to the depiction of hundreds of little white bunnies and thousands of large green cabbages. And also the depiction of the deadly, yes, deadly, combination of the two.

Witness poor Edgar here, just imagining what it would be like to have his tail feathers accosted by just one small, but determined bunny.

In the words of Solstice; "I love bunnies. They're so uncool, they're cool."

Super Fanboy Geek Attack

2010-09-24T15:33:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I had the enormously wonderful privilege of speaking at Eltham College. This was not only because it is a very nice school to visit, but also because it happens to be where Mervyn Peake went to school.

That's him, second from the left in the back row of the 1928/1929 Rugby team. I was told he didn't make much of a player, well not compared to Eric Liddell who had recently passed through the school too, but that even then he was drawing drawing drawing all the time, even all over his English books.

I don't tend to lean towards hero worshipping generally, but yesterday I ignored that fact, and became the teenager I once was, obsessed by his writing: it reminded me how wonderfully strange Gormenghast was the first time I read it, and it reminded me why to be strange and unusual is a good thing in writing, much more fascinating than the mundane and the commonplace. Well, for my money anyway.

Thanks to my Dad for introducing me to Peake in the first place, and thanks to Stephanie Fearn of Eltham College for the invitation to visit the home of, yes, a hero.

So, about that book I was writing...

2010-09-21T15:14:00.000+01:00

A while ago, I posted some words on My New Book...

That was at the front end of the summer I think, and back then, it was all going along really well. I'd done ten thousand words fairly speedily (and it's aways been my belief that fast writing is good writing, because it shows that it's all flowing properly) so I was quite content.

Then, this thing happened. Namely, I went off to Sweden for a month or so, in order to finish the book. In fact, two things happened. Firstly, I wrote not a single word of the book while I was away. Secondly, and of even greater concern to my and my editor's sanity, was that I didn't want to write any more of it either.

I'm not entirely sure why this was, but let's just say that I didn't feel it. Not really. So I threw away the ten thousand words. That will teach me to blog about word counts...
And hence the long silence about the book.

However, thanks to the gods of writing, another idea popped into my head one day as I cycled round the island I was living on, an idea so exciting and weird that I knew I wanted that to be my next book. And the idea was not only almost fully formed, I knew I could write it very quickly.

So after a few weeks home, I went back to the island, and started to write. 37 days later, I have it. Pretty much done.

To say I'm relieved is an understatement of the highest order, but I'm also excited. I know there will be LOTS to do in rewriting, since it's all happened so fast, but I'm excited about it, and that has to be the main thing.

And if I'm wrong about that, well, somebody show me the exit...

Marcus Sedgwick - School Report 1986

2010-09-03T17:10:00.000+01:00

In the words of my headmaster, back in 1986:

"I said last year that Marcus needs to show more ambition. The remark still stands."

Well, today, I wrote six thousand words of my new novel, yesterday I wrote a three thousand word early reader, tomorrow I'm flying to New York to finish writing a contracted screenplay with my brother, so reaching out across the years to 1986, I have only one (printable) thing to say to Howell Griffiths, and that is this....
Actually, that's unprintable too.

Sigh. There were somemore favourable comments to be found, way back at the end of Easter term, 1986, such as this from my lovely form tutor, Mr Burgoyne: "He seems to have a sound analytical mind." Note the use of the word 'seems' in there. Mr Burgoyne was the teacher I wanted to have for all subjects, not just History, but he's probably the reason there's so much historical stuff in my novels.

And not so many Maths-based plot lines: Some accurate comments from Mr Neeve: "Marcus is not a gifted Mathematician." Shame I was doing two Maths A-levels, then.

Still, my other Maths teacher had this to say "His written work, although not always neat, is well documented, and it is easy to follow his train of thought." As one would that of any simple creature of the forest, perhaps.

Why am I telling you this? Because I just found the offending article in a drawer while looking for my passport and it made me chuckle.

In an almost entirely good way.

Edinburgh and beyond

2010-08-31T08:15:00.001+01:00

I have just slept for three and a half days. This may be an exaggeration but it certainly feels like it. Having had a delayed flight back from Sweden, I got two hours' sleep before flying to Edinburgh for the book festival. After four events in three days there, I then came home to organize a small but fun film festival in the village where I live.

All good fun, and three successful things; words written in Sweden, events went well in Edinburgh, with Mal Peet, Ian Beck and Philip Reeve, and a small but satisfied crowd for each of the two nights of our film festival.

On the first night we showed the wonderful A Matter of Life and Death, which was timely because it's providing inspiration for the screenplay my brother and I are writing just now. This is another project which is going well at the moment, and brings me to my next trip: we're off to NYC on Saturday to scout some locations for some scenes of the film.

Including this one, the only active cemetery left in Manhattan.

New York is one of those cities that cemeteries don't seem to belong in to me. I know this is illogical but maybe it's because it's just so full of life...

New York, that is, not the cemetery.

Swedish Haiku - #2

2010-08-25T09:06:00.000+01:00

Ägget

Jag simmade i

ett ägg. I Hagabadet

hittade jag mig.

Swedish Haiku - #1

2010-08-23T15:31:00.000+01:00

Värk

Vinden viskar i

björkarna. Jag är hemma, men

jag har forsvunnit.

My Swordhand is Singing in Swedish

2010-08-22T16:30:00.000+01:00

Not much to say about this apart from the fact I think it must be at least the twelfth foreign edition* of My Swordhand is Singing, and one with a special place in my heart.

It's not out till next year, but the cover seems to be fixed on, or rather the title, since the cover is the wonderful UK one.

The titles translates as 'Those who walk again.'

Heh heh heh...

*I've checked with people who know; it's actually the thirteenth :-)

White Crow: enhanced e-reader

2010-08-01T00:43:00.000+01:00

I'm really excited to say that White Crow is now available as an enhanced e-reader. Not only that, but it has the honour of being the very first enhanced e-reader that Orion have published. For a pound more than the physical book, punters can buy it for iPad, Kindle and Sony e-reader, and get a bunch of extra material, for example, a photo gallery, which not only contains photos of the village of Dunwich which inspired the book, but also things like pages from my notebook, an example of which is shown here.

The main reason for buying it I suppose, would be the addition of a short story, called Dreams of the White Crow, which gives a little vignette into Ferelith's world...

Being Orion's first, it was a steep learning curve for everyone, including me, but I'm pleased with the results, and impressed with the speed with which the project came about.

And this morning it enabled me to do the slightly perverse thing of buying my own book online, just for the fun of doing so. Not the best idea financially perhaps, but, yes, fun, nevertheless.

A Day by the Sea

2010-07-27T16:53:00.000+01:00

A few short weeks ago, the lovely "Louise from marketing", Miles "he can do anything with Final Cut" and I took a day out by the sea, to film a short video piece to promote White Crow.

After days of sunshine, the weather was not promising. White Crow is set in a hot, hot summer (this very hot summer of 2010, in fact, so please feel free to come to me with your weather forecast requirements from now on...) and so it was a tad disappointing to see the clouds, and yes, even (gasp) drizzle coming down on the Suffolk coast.

In order to get around this, we made two quick decisions. First, we concluded that since White Crow is a Gothic novel, a trailer filmed on a murky, rainy day would be much the best thing anyway. Second Louise and I went to the 'caff' for tea in polystyrene mugs and Mars bars. This is when I realised why Louise is lovely :-) Miles toughed it out on the beach, filming pebbles.

In the caff we were suddenly entertained by three things. One, the lad behind the counter trying to rig up a totally old TV set in order to watch the World Cup. Second, the lad behind the counter telling us all about the film crew that had been there the day before, and asking were we part of it, and impressing us with how many vans and crew they had. And third, the lad from the behind the counter asking if we knew who anyone who could film his really good band for him.

At this point, Miles staggered in, looking in need of tea and a Mars bar. We gave him both, and a really promising lead for some filming we were sure he'd love to do. "He can do anything with Final Cut, you know" we assured the lad from behind the counter, sauntering back out into the drizzle.

Anyway, the filming day was enormous fun, and just as we left the coast behind, the sun came out, scorching hot once more. Shucks.

The results of the filming are now up: click here to view. My thanks to Miles and Louise.

White Crow flies the nest

2010-07-01T16:24:00.001+01:00

Today is publication day for White Crow, so it flaps off over the horizon and into the great beyond. Kind of literally in this case, as the whole damn point with this book is one of the biggies: vad finns efter döden? ie What is there after death..?

Personally I'm hoping for a chance to put your feet up with a nice cup of tea and nice chat about this and that. You know the sort of thing, all those big questions you always wanted to ask. Like Why did You invent evil? Why do Bad Things happen to Good People? And Where do you get those crazy sandals from?

That aside, I would like to say I'm really happy with how the book turned out, looks wise, and I wish it well. So how am I spending publication day? Big do? Bottle of champagne? Nope, off to the jetty at the end of the island I'm living on, where I'm told a thing called the ölbåt is arriving later to bring merriment to the dancing Swedes. That's 'beerboat' by the way, if you're working in old money.

Ha det så bra, vi ses...

White Crow

2010-06-08T18:57:00.000+01:00

White Crow will be out in a couple of weeks time in the UK (next Spring in the US).

It's my attempt to write a modern gothic story, and in that vein, it features a couple of tragic heroines. One of them, Ferelith, likes her music :-)

This is what's on her iPod (all Spotify links if you're a user...)

These song titles also happen to be the titles of chapters narrated by her.

Blue Roses – Rebecca
P!nk – I'm Not Dead
Evanescence – Bring Me To Life
London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) – Four Sea Interludes Op. 33a (from Peter Grimes) (1976 Digital Remaster): I. Dawn (Lento e tranquillo)
London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) – Four Sea Interludes Op. 33a (from Peter Grimes) (1976 Digital Remaster): II. Sunday Morning (Allegro spiritoso)
Andre Previn – Four Sea Interludes Op. 33a (from Peter Grimes) (1976 Digital Remaster): III. Moonlight (Andante comodo e rubato)
Andre Previn – Four Sea Interludes Op. 33a (from Peter Grimes) (1976 Digital Remaster): IV. Storm (Presto con fuoco)
Adam & The Ants – Catholic Day
Kylesa – The Warning
Gustav Mahler – Kindertotenlieder: Nun Will Die Sonn' So Hell Aufgeh'n
Gustav Mahler – Kindertotenlieder: Nun Seh' Ich Wohl, Warum So Dunkle Flammen
Gustav Mahler – Kindertotenlieder: Wenn Dein Mutterlein
Gustav Mahler – Kindertotenlieder: Oft Denk' Ich, Sie Sind Nur Ausgegangen
Gustav Mahler – Kindertotenlieder: In Diesem Wetter
Julie London – Cry Me A River
My Chemical Romance – This Is How I Disappear
Gillan – Dead Of Night
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – What Must Be Done
Bauhaus – The Passion Of Lovers
Sonic Youth – Pattern Recognition
Skinny Puppy – Candle
Porcupine Tree – Kneel and Disconnect
Sonic Youth – 'Cross The Breeze

Obelisk

2010-06-01T14:00:00.001+01:00

Nope, not a fat Gaul but the new arrival in my garden; thanks to the help of three hefty neighbours and some swearing, I now have a small menhir standing outside my writing shed.

This is good because it makes me ludicrously happy for some silly reason, but bad because it's one more thing to distract me when I should be writing :-(

However, the good news is that despite the arrival of the obelisk, I've (at last) started writing my new book. Four thousand words in, and so far we have three deaths and a funeral.

Business as usual then for Sedgwick? Maybe, but this one feels a bit different from recent books, I think more in the style of The Book of Dead Days, but as Ron Manager would say, it's early doors yet, game of two halves, anything could happen.

Which reminds me, it's only ten days till that greatest distraction from writing of all. The World Cup! Thank God it only comes every four years....

One book, four covers

2010-04-06T17:33:00.000+01:00

Well from the left we have the UK hardback, UK paperback, US hardback and German editions of REVOLVER.

I love seeing the way one book gets a different look in each country it's published in. The big debate we had in the UK was whether to put a gun on the cover of the original HB. All sorts of issues to be considered, of course.

The final decision was no, but for the PB the answer has been yes, and the new look is pretty lovely. Interesting that both the US and German editions include a human element, even though you have to look fairly hard to see it.

Bologna book fair

2010-03-30T19:10:00.000+01:00

I've just about had enough sleep since getting back from the Bologna children's book fair...

In one morning I happened to meet eight of my publishers from overseas, which is great in itself, but also slightly blows your mind.

Why? Well, there you are, in your shed, writing a book, and struggling with that, and for not one tiny moment does it cross your tiny brain that you might make sure your book will have 'international sales appeal'.

Maybe it does try to cross your mind, and maybe you just blot it out, because if you started to think like that, you'd go doo-lally pretty sharpish.

Anyway, the pasta's great in Bologna, that's the main thing :-)

Is this the 1960s...?

2010-03-16T14:57:00.000Z

So I'm on campus at Bath Spa University, the sun is shining, there's some guy with an acoustic guitar singing songs about how Jesus is going to invade or something, and I feel like I'm living the 1960s education dream...

So far today, that education has taken the form of tutorials with MA students, and it's been interesting how the same issues can crop up. This evening, I'm taking part in a debate on how far, as a creative type, you should think about the realities of the commercial world. How much should it guide what you do and so on. Is it selling your soul to write something because you think it might have a greater chance of selling more copies...?

Personally I think you have to practice the art of holding a paradox in your head - on the one hand to ignore the real world totally, write just what you love, and do it just how you want it, and on the other hand, and at the same time, to have a part of your mind focusing on what is realistic, commercial and viable. And if Alice can believe in six impossible things before breakfast, then a paradox a day should be well within our reach.

Revolver PB cover

2010-02-24T13:26:00.000Z

New covers a-go-go, at the moment! This is how Revolver is going to look in paperback when it comes out in May. Although most people seemed to like the smoking match thing on the hardback, we're going for a more commercial look now.

I always like those words; "more commercial". Let's hope it does the job. I'm very happy with it, though, on the basis that it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Preview of the Vampires and Volts cover publishing October 2010

2010-02-23T09:20:00.000Z

a graphic piece of work...

2010-02-22T09:49:00.000Z

So I am so utterly and absolutely delighted to be co-writing a graphic novel with my brother. We're about half way through now, and the team-writing thing is working well. In fact, so well, that I think I might not want to write on my own again!

It's called Dark Satanic Mills, and is V for Vendetta meets the Wizard of Oz, with a side-helping of William Blake. Won't say too much about it now because it won't be published for a good long while yet, but it's a dystopian vision of a future Britain on the verge of becoming a fundamentalist Theocracy. Bit sci-fi, bit noir, bit of a laugh. And writing with Julian is the best thing of all...

Author in Residence

2010-01-22T21:01:00.000Z

I've just got back from my first day at Bath Spa University as Author in Residence.

I'm feeling a little guilty because although this is a paid position, I think I may have got just as much out of it as the students who I'm mentoring. (Mentoring: a friend of mine defined it like this: are they "meantta" do what you say??) Anyway, I'm looking forward to the rest of the program...

The picture is of the building wherein my tutorials took place - known as The Castle, an opportunity which could hardly be passed up by a writer of the occasional gothic novel!

New methodologies...

2010-01-11T11:12:00.000Z

I've just finished what I hope will be the final edits on White Crow, published in July. Of course there's bound to be some tweaking to do, but I think it's ready, by and large.

This is just as well as I've been writing without the benefit of central heating this morning - this certainly sharpens the mind, and stops one dithering over the exact position of commas quite so much. Perhaps this could be a new writing technique...? How about writing standing up? Or in a sauna? That would certainly encourage one not to hang about...

Right, I'm off for a walk on the basis it can't be any colder outside than in.

Editing...

2009-12-30T14:30:00.000Z

...is a game, a tennis match, a battle of wits, an exercise in horse-trading, and whatnot, but every once in a while you just have to concede the point to your editor. So (sadly) the following lines will not now appear in White Crow, when it's published in July.

I know some who have seen great fissures in the earth, rent cave mouths and slit rock, wherein lies the entrance to the path to Hell. I spoke to a man from the North of England some years gone, who told me he had seen such an entrance with his very eyes. I understood from him that the gateway to Hell is somewhere outside Bolton.

Maybe it's for the best...there are some nice librarians in Bolton, after all.

I think I might start posting more deletions. Could make a whole new book out of them...

White Crow

2009-12-30T13:37:00.000Z

So I wrote this book and it was supposed to be called The Angel and the Devil and then I changed that to The Angel or the Devil, because prepositions make all the difference, and then, well, shucks, after many 'discussions' (please imagine really exaggerated air-quotes at this point) with my publisher, it has been changed again. It's now White Crow, and actually, I'm pretty happy with that.

And also, and VERY strangely for me, I'm really enjoying working on the rewrites for it. Usually I hate this bit so much, and I figure it's the bit where I actually earn my money, because it's the only bit of writing that feels like work... Maybe this time is different because writing the first draft was harder than usual. It all comes out in the wash, swings and roundabouts, what goes around comes around, somebody up there must really hate me....*

* please supply your own cliché if these are not to your taste.

Magic and Mayhem...

2009-12-16T17:59:00.000Z

...is the title of Raven Mysteries Book V, which I am writing at the mo. I'm about halfway through which is good, because I promised myself I'd have it done by Christmas, and if I'm still writing at five minutes to midnight on Christmas eve, I'll nod at Santa as he comes down the flue of the log burner and jolly well keep on writing.

All is going fine so far, and the 'plot' has frequent mention of cabbages, bunnies and the lethal combination of the two. Obviously. I have to confess I'm getting some help with this one; rabbit names are being supplied by the best rabbit namer in the country (that's official), and my very own daughter told me the funniest thing I've heard in years the other day, so that's going in too!

Now, how many hours till Christmas exactly? Oh, dear...

Blooming Christmas

2009-12-13T21:11:00.000Z

Except I'm actually quite enjoying it this year. Of course the house always looks better with a giant inflatable Homer Simpson Santa outside ;-)

Apologies for the profanities displaying on my Twitter feed - I've deleted it now as it seemed to have been infiltrated by people with lots of bad words in their naughty little heads...

Ghosts and gadgets interview with Martin Jarvis

2009-11-20T21:48:00.000Z

He is such a gent, I cannot tell you. Whether it's his Christopher Lee impression or his thoughts about Derren Brown, I remain in awe of his skills....

Hallowe'en...

2009-11-02T18:00:00.001Z

As my daughter says, you gotta love it.

And we certainly had fun. Dressed as (inept) Victorian Vampire Hunters, we welcome visitors to the ghostwalk at Wicken Fen. An almost full moon, mist drifting in from the fen, and some fantastic tableaux, including a werewolf chewing on someone and howling, and zombies emerging from the reeds!

Here's how we looked: www.marcussedgwick.com/vampirehunters.html

Oh, why is next Samhain 12 months away?!

Things Can Only Get Better...

2009-10-06T16:56:00.000+01:00

When the first date of your world domination book tour is cancelled with 6 hours notice, you know things can only get better. Shame, I was looking forward to extricating myself from my studio and remembering what talking to other people is like, rather than all the voices in my head (these are characters I'm talking about here, people. Honest)

So instead I'm going to have to keep talking to those characters for another 24 hours and hit the road tomorrow instead. What miffs me the most is I was planning a sneaky trip to All Saints in Spitalfields first...

Onwards and upwards.

The Raven Mysteries Website is alive!

2009-10-02T09:06:00.000+01:00

Please pop along and take a look:

www.ravenmysteries.co.uk

The Sun Also Rises...

2009-10-02T08:57:00.000+01:00

...As Ernest Hemingway once said.

This picture is yesterday's sunset, I'm just sorry I didn't snap sunrise this morning too, as it has been absolutely beautiful. Again.

Anyway enough romanticising. More pressing matters, like that thumping great re-write I'm working on await me. Shucks. But when that book is put to bed then it's time for the sun to rise on the next one, and that is always the most exciting part of writing, I find. When all is fresh and new and you haven't had time to doubt what you're doing...

Ok! To the book!

If I Believed in Heaven it Would Look Like This

2009-09-09T22:06:00.000+01:00

Today I finished writing the first book I've written in my new writing room at the bottom of the garden, and the whole thing fills me with joy!

The book in question is Raven Mysteries IV: "Vampires and Volts" and features The Annual Pumkpin Hunt (look out for the squishy ones), a Great Hallowe'en Ball (which gets a bit scary when the lights go out), and yes, vampires. Very naughty ones.

Vetting for School Visits

2009-08-12T15:06:00.001+01:00

I'm not writing about the rights and wrongs of the new procedure for being vetted before visiting schools, but I thought (because I didn't know) it might help to actually set out what the exact details are and how to go about registering, since like many authors, whatever one's thoughts about it, there's just the pragmatic question of how to get on with it...

So thanks to Nina Douglas at Orion for finding all this out - here's the story...:

I couldn’t find the guidelines this morning from the DCSF and so rang the ISA helpline and I think have it clarified – see below:

In basic language, yes you do need to register – and it is open from next July, a one-off fee, for life with automatic updates fully in place by 2011!

The definition of needing to be part of the scheme is such:

In a specified place: ie school or juvenile detention or other place over the course of ‘frequently’: defined as once a month, or 3 or more occasions in 30 days

This means that for author tours and authors holding regular school events, even if not at the same school (can be different places of the same type, ie different schools), authors and those accompanying them, ie publicists will also need to register

This is not immediate, registration is from July 2010, with all ‘new starters’ registered by Nov 2010, and full scheme integration by 2011. It is a one off fee and is for life with no renewal required – it automatically updates. As far as I can make out authors can simply apply themselves through the website.

I have signed up to the e-newsletters for any news or progress on the scheme. A helpline, which actually helped is on 0300 123 1111.

And a useful presentation, is here:http://bit.ly/X7xx2

CRB checks can still be requested by schools in addition to this.

23 years

2009-07-17T13:43:00.000+01:00

OK so it's a shocking amount of time since I last posted, but that's because I'm rubbish...

It's not quite 23 years since I posted, but it is 23 years since I left 'big' school, to where I returned on Tuesday gone to give a talk to Year 8. And a lovely bunch they were too. I was delighted to go, but have to say it was extremely weird to be back on the stage of the old hall from where maters used to bark at us all... Anyway, I enjoyed it, and didn't even have to resort to telling the story about the time I nearly blew up the pavilion...

Creative thinking...

2009-04-24T13:58:00.000+01:00

Have been in Wales teaching creative writing with Matt Whyman. Enormously rewarding and even more tiring, and even more than that, my brain actually hurts.

But the chance to think freely for a few days - priceless.

Love the path by the river below David Lloyd (/Health Clubs/Cole and the Commotions) George's grave, and eventually discovered that just because you and your mate think a bad joke is funny fifteen times over, doesn't mean anyone else will.

The Genius that is... Martin Jarvis

2009-03-21T16:40:00.000Z

I was so enormously delighted when I heard that Martin Jarvis would record the audiobook version of Flood and Fang, first book in the Raven Mysteries, and even more delighted to witness his utter genius last Thursday evening as he put the finishing touches to the book. He's added a whole new level of humour to the book and it was great to see such a great actor at work on Edgar and co...

Humble thanks are in order.

Events!

2009-03-21T16:32:00.000Z

I've been fairly busy with events of late. Here's shot from a signing after a lovely visit to Burford School for World Book Day. I've also been recently to Magdalen College School, Oxford, and Eastbourne, for a great time with the East Sussex Libraries Service.

Thanks to everyone for being so welcoming and making the events such fun!

Gasp! The Raven Mysteries is unleashed...

2009-03-21T16:23:00.000Z

Heh, heh, heh. Solstice, Cudweed and of course Edgar the Raven are now available and waiting to be discovered in the first of The Raven Mysteries; Flood and Fang.

I only pity the poor kitchen maids who keep getting eaten...

Rest...

2008-11-02T10:04:00.000Z

I'm in a non-writing phase at the moment, I'm just doing some rewrites of next year's novel: Revolver. You can see a brief teaser for it here.

Otherwise I'm enjoying reading some things I should have read a long time ago, and puting my feet up a bit.

Now that I have a 'proper' keyboard again, I want to say a proper thank you to Barry Sayer and everyone at the British School of Brussels, where I had a superb time. It was I think the nicest school I've ever had the pleasure of talking at and all the students and teachers were friendly and welcoming. Thanks for inviting me!

Oxford

2008-10-13T18:11:00.000+01:00

Had a wonderful time in Oxford with the Oxford Children's Book Group, giving a talk on Historical Fiction, with Linda Newbery, Adele Geras, and Marie-Louise Jensen: in case you're ever wondering, I'm told (by Adele herself) that Geras rhymes with terrace. And on the same subject, (Phillip) Ardagh rhymes with harder. Sedgwick rhymes only with hedgepig, and even then, not that well...

It was an interesting morning, if only because I learnt that I am a historical author, which was news to me, but I guess true. Mostly I feel like a hysterical author, ha ha.

In Brussels

2008-10-13T18:06:00.000+01:00

The title is in ho,qge to the superb fil,; In Bruges. q classic of the future; no+

I q, noa ariting this blog on q belgiqn keyboqrd in q tozn zhere they qctuqlly speqk Dutch, then Fle,ish; then French, qnd let ,e tell you thqt this is the crqwiest keyboqrd I hqve ever co,e qcross; I hqve decided to give up trying to find the correct letters qnd q, just going to type nor,qlly: pretty fun, no+

thqtùs enough; i:ll hqve to zrite ,ore zhen I get bqck to Blighty!!!

Bath and Ty Newydd

2008-10-13T17:55:00.000+01:00

After a spiffing time in Bath, where I did an event with Meg Rosoff, who I can now officially say is superb! Tanks to john McClay for organising it all. I ten made my way to the Lleyn peninsula, to the Ty Newydd creative writing course, run by Celia Rees and Mary Hoffman, where I had q greqt time, whilst giving a talk on the spot where Lloyd George died...

This is the beautiful house: my thanks to Sally and Awen for inviting me...

Technology

2008-10-13T16:40:00.000+01:00

Well I was going to be good and keep up to date with my mini tour, but sadly technology has let me down, and I haven't been able to post from my phone as I hoped!
But now I've got a bit of free time, so here goes...

Book tours

2008-09-10T08:24:00.000+01:00

The Kiss of Death. It seemed like a fun title for a book, I just hope won't jinx my writing career. I'm about to start the usual round of publicity events for the book, seven events coming up, which will take me from North Wales to Brussels. The normal worries crop up. Will anyone turn up? Will I think of something to say? Will I be funny? Intentionally? If you have the misfortune to attend one of these events (the first in at the Bath Kids Lit Festival on the 25th September), you'll find out, otherwise, I'll report back here.

An Empty Chair

2008-09-02T17:44:00.001+01:00

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Gone Fishing

2008-09-02T17:43:00.001+01:00

Well that's a lie. What I mean is, I've done all my homework (ie writing books) and it's time to sit back and do some serious thinking about what comes next....

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Ravens know best

2008-08-17T10:42:00.000+01:00

Well, back to work now. But at least it's something I love. I'm switching between 'older', 'tougher' novels and a new younger series I've started, called The Raven Mysteries, a spooky set of adventures set in and around Otherhand Castle, and all narrated by the castle's guardian, the trusty, if flea-bitten, old raven called Edgar.

I've just started number II, and it' a real joy to have something light and loose like this to write, especially after wading through the grimness of Revolver for the last year or so, enjoyable though that was in its own way.

It's also interesting for me, for the first time, to be working with an illustrator on something I've written - Pete Williamson is coming up with wonderful stuff like this, and I can't wait to see the finished books.

2008-07-26T20:38:00.000+01:00

A writer's life for me.

At least for the five minutes when
a) you've just finished writing a new book,
b) you're on holiday, and the view looks like this,
c) the prospect of four rewrites of a) seems a long way off.

A Translation As Promised

2008-07-18T09:55:00.001+01:00

I wrote an introduction to what I wanted to say - then crossed it out. Yet, still I wish
that before the darkness closes over me
the last that is seen of me is a clutched fist among the waterlilies
and the last that is heard is a word
of bubbles from the deep.
Gunnar Ekelöf - Among Waterlilies

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Harmony House

2008-07-18T06:48:00.001+01:00

Home to the friendliest book festival in the UK. Thanks to Paula and Alistair.

100 miles North of the Arctic Circle

2008-07-16T20:05:00.001+01:00

Doing research for the next book...

Hello, and goodbye

2008-07-16T17:26:00.000+01:00

I can't think of a better way to start a blog than with some gloomy Swedish poetry.

Jag har skrivit en inledning till vad jag skulle ha sagt

men jag har strukit den - Dock önskar jag

att innan mörkret slår samman over mig

det sista som syns av mig

skall vara en knuten näve bland näckrosor

och det sista som hörs ett ord av bubblor

från botten.

I know it requires a translation, but you can get some of the words: inledning; an introduction, mörkret; murk or the darkness, bubblor; yes, bubbles. It's just wonderful how languages carry the imprint of their ancestors in this way. The poem itself is about yes, you guessed it, death.

Next time I come back here I'll bring the translation, too. That would be less irritating, would it not.