Past events

Just realised looking back that I didn't report back on the two events I trailed in my post a few weeks ago. Will be brief, just to say...

(1) Ilford. Rather than an audience of adults we had mostly under-5s, which is really pretty scary if it's not what you're prepared for. So after half an hour of valiantly shouting over all the crying, running around etc. we gave up and we (well, mainly Susan) resorted to 15 minutes of The Wheels on the Bus, Twinkle Twinkle, If You're Happy and You Know It, etc. Quite unexpected.

(2) St Albans. Nice dinner event organised by Jayne Truran of the St Albans CBG. I was speaking alongside Justin Somper, Meg Rosoff and Linzi Glass. My own talk was I think not good enough, in part as I was battling through a nasty headache the whole time, but by and large very glad to be there, and always nice to see Justin and Meg and Jayne and to meet lots of new people. Justin read a freshly written piece from the next Vampirates book, and Meg told an excellent story about a potato which I've been repeating at every opportunity.

D.

Catching up...

My, but we've been a little quiet recently... Don't know where all the time's gone...

(Sorry about that.)

Leonie has had a particularly busy few days which were GREAT but I'll leave it to her to tell you why... And Susan and I have been busy as ever too, though rather delinquent on the UBG front - we all met up last weekend at the annual garden party but managed not to talk about UBGs, children's books etc. *at all*. We're supposed to be finishing up work on the revised teen guide very soon and we're not even nearly there, so we'll have to sort ourselves out pretty sharpish...

Meantime - while we haven't been doing UBG work - I've been falling behind on my reading too. But have in odd free moments been continuing the treat I started last month of re-reading the Narnia series, many books of which I haven't read since I was a kid. In fact, apart from Lion... and Magician's Nephew this is my first time returning to any of them. And it's thrilling to discover I still think they're so good. I don't know why I expected to be troubled by them, but so far (five of seven) I've just been loving it all - the writing, the imagination, the whole world of it is tremendous. It's full of details I'd forgotten, there's humour and all sorts of other unexpected things (none of them to do with bothersome religious analogies, etc.). Pure pleasure.

Also just read The Prince of Mists, the first in a YA fantasy series by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, who wrote the vastly successful Shadow of the Wind (second most successful Spanish book of all time - first was Don Quixote) - it's really very good, reminding me at its best of Susan Cooper, though I haven't yet been able to work out why precisely... It's not available in English just yet, but the whole four-book series has been bought for Orion for publication from 2010, so something to look forward to. (Or to track down right now if you're a Spanish-language reader, of course.) Looking forward to the rest of the series. Am away all of August so packing lots of fun things like these in my suitcase. I wonder what else I should take...

Hmm...

Incidentally, I've been speaking lately to Jane Churchill - who runs the children's programme at the Cheltenham Festival - about this year's events; there's going to be one specifically UBG-related event which is going to be unusual and really fun, and many other exciting things besides. More details as soon as all confirmed...

D.

PS New Emily Gravett in two weeks! Hooray!