Chris Priestley

An old obsession

2012-01-10T18:20:00.000Z

I went to my studio today for the first time in a while. Before Christmas I brought a load of boxes here from our old house and then delivered a stack of folios and so on, delivered to our new house from storage.

I had intended to get on with some writing, but made the fatal mistake of opening the folios. I had not seen any of this work for five years, but some of it had been in drawers and folios for a lot longer than that.

Before we left Norfolk for Cambridge I had periodic burnings of artwork. My wife would get upset at this, but there was no way I could keep all of the work I generated at The Economist and The Independent. A lot of it wasn't very good, to be honest. It was done to such tight deadlines and to such specific briefs that although I could take pride in having delivered something, the result was not something I wanted to live with. I didn't want to be the curator of some kind of archive of me.

Besides there is something cathartic about such destruction. I have always believed I have better work ahead of me. When I stop believing that I will stop creating.

The problem with destroying work is that perceptions change. What seemed valuable can seem worthless a few years down the line. The reverse is clearly also true. I just have to hope I didn't destroy anything I wouldn't destroy today. I'm pretty sure I didn't. I'll never know in any case so why worry?

I am pleased I have hung on to this drawing though. I must have been about sixteen when I did it, maybe younger, but certainly no older. It is an illustration to Frankenstein and it shows an early eagerness to counter the cinematic image of the creature.

Mister Creecher was being formed in those ink marks.

Japanese Marlowe

2012-01-10T17:29:00.000Z

I was very pleased to hear that my Tom Marlowe series for Random House is to be published in Japan and very excited to receive an advance copy of Death and the Arrow through the post yesterday. It is a nicely produced little book - a hardback with illustrations throughout.

I wonder what Japan will make of my tale of 18th Century London?

More German tales of terror

2012-01-10T17:20:00.002Z

I received copies of the audio book of the German edition of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship before Christmas.

German tales of terror

2012-01-10T17:13:00.002Z

Here is the cover for the German edition of Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. It is published by Bloomsbury in Berlin and translated, once again, by Beatrice Howeg. It is out at the end of this month.

Czech tales of terror

2012-01-03T10:12:00.002Z

Here is the Czech edition of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. It is published by Argo. I don't speak Czech at all but I really like the look of the title. I particularly like that 'z'!

Stories from the shadows

2012-01-02T10:09:00.000Z

I really ought to say a little more about Uncle Montague's Stories from the Shadows.

The play is being performed by the OnO Theatre Company and is directed by Gary Sefton who also adapted the script. OnO are based in Crawley in West Sussex and they have been running now for 11 years, touring schools.

The young cast were excellent, but I think I have to make special mention of Andy Burse who plays Uncle Montague with a physicality that really adds something to his character. I certainly did not write and Uncle Montague who was capable of leaping about like that, but it worked - it really did.

Another year over. . .

2012-01-01T12:52:00.003Z

A new one just begun. . .

2011 was a difficult year for me in many ways. I had a mini stroke in the early part of the year and it meant that I missed out on a lot of the excitement of my World Book Day flip book with Philip Reeve and it played havoc with my schedule. Added to that, I lost my father. He had been ill for most of the time we have lived in Cambridge. An old soldier, he faded away until he was barely there at all. It was a sad end for a man who had been so proud and in control for so much of his life.

I have high hopes for 2012 though. I have signed a new two book deal with Bloomsbury and I submitted a proposal for the first book just before Christmas. That book, if accepted, will be published in 2013. I sent the second draft of The Mask back to Bloomsbury at the end of the year and that book comes out in October 2012. March sees the publication of the paperback of Mister Creecher with a new cover. Here is an early version. The actual one will carry some of the nice quotes the hardback has collected.

Last month, on a dark and rainy afternoon, my son and I met up with my agent, Philippa Milnes-Smith, at the Old Vic Tunnels to see a performance of Uncle Montague's Stories from the Shadows, a theatrical interpretation of four stories from Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror.

I was a little nervous about the whole thing, not really knowing what to expect, but I was very pleasantly surprised. It worked very well and I was struck by how much of my writing had survived. It was fascinating to hear my words spoken and acted out. I haven't read from Uncle Montague for a while. Without wishing to sound immodest, I thought it sounded pretty good.

I have also had a couple of meetings about producing Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth as a play. I can't really say an more about this at the moment because it is at such an early stage of development that I don't want to jinx it. But if it comes off, I think it is going to be something special. Watch this space.

We have also had some more film interest in Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror. I was sent a link to the website of the director who is interested in the idea and his showreel was really nice and he would be a very good match for my writing I think. I should be having a meeting about that in the not too distant future and I'll let you know anything concrete.

I am still in the running for the Salford Book Award with The Dead of Winter and I very much hope that it survives onto the shortlist for the Carnegie Medal. The Dead of Winter is part of a Kindle promotion on Amazon a the moment and it has been fun to see it sitting at No. 1 on the horror listings in Children's Books.

I have been asked to do the Edinburgh International Book Festival again this year. I am so pleased to be invited again. Edinburgh is such a great city to visit and the festival itself is incredibly well organised. I'm looking forward to it already.

I intend to write more this year. As well as writing my book for Bloomsbury I would like to write at least one other book for children or teens. I still harbour ambitions to write a graphic novel and I may try my hand at writing a screenplay this year too. But I would also like to write something for adults. I'm not absolutely sure what that will be yet, but I'll let you know if and when it comes to anything.

In the meantime, let me wish you all a happy new year.

Chim-chim-charoo

2011-12-15T12:04:00.000Z

I haven't really been blogging since the beginning of November and a lot has happened since then. The biggest thing is that we have finally moved home. After five years of renting in Newnham, we are now the proud owners of a mortgage once again.

The move has been traumatic and very disruptive. We are planning to build an office and studio in the garden, but until then I am in a room that reminds me of the office in Terry Gilliam's Brazil where the person next door is moving the walls in their favour. My wife's studio looks like a storage cupboard full of boxes.

Our house in Newnham was a long way from being perfect for us and it was very frustrating to be unable to fix anything permanently or change anything to suit our tastes, but I produced all the Tales of Terror books there, as well as The Dead of Winter and Mister Creecher. What books will this house elicit from me I wonder?

And we will miss Newnham. Or we will miss some of it - our little bit of it. There is a part of Newnham that is far too pleased with itself, but we made some very good friends there nonetheless. And it is a unique area. At the last party I went to there, Stephen Hawking was in the kitchen. It's that kind of a place.

We will miss the quirky, grumpy, chatty, bossy, loveable Derby Stores and the butchers and the fish and chip van on a Tuesday night. We will miss Lammas Land and the walk across the little oasis of feral fenland to the centre of town. We will miss the amazing variety of birdlife we managed to attract into our tiny garden and the easy access out on to Grantchester Meadows.

But now we have our own house. We are reunited with our paintings - many of which I had forgotten (especially the ones I actually painted) - although we have had contend with breakages and losses. We have our books back, though we do not have anywhere to put them yet. We have far too much stuff for such a small house, but we do have a cellar luckily. We are in a quiet and very friendly little street.

The photograph shows the chimney sweep's brush emerging from the chimney pot. He insisted on showing us this, as sweeps do. They say it's lucky to see it. Let's hope so.

My brother

2011-12-11T11:36:00.001Z

My brother would have been fifty-nine yesterday. He died many years ago now and I am ashamed to say that months will go by when I don't think of him at all. We were not close for much of our lives. In fact we did not see each other for years. He was in the army - in the catering corps - and stationed in Germany for some of that time, but it was more that we seemed to have nothing but our surname in common. I arranged to meet him at Waterloo Station one time, to go and see our other brother, and I walked past him twice.

If you have not experienced it yourself it is very hard to explain what it is like to outlive an older brother - and he was six years older than me. When I reached the age that he was when he died - forty-four - it felt wrong. And I can never see him old. I cannot imagine him as fifty-nine.

He had survived a heart and kidney transplant and was progressing well when he fell victim to an infection. This was his second heart transplant. The new kidney was down to the fact that the existing one would never have coped with another round of the drugs involved. I saw him the morning after and marvelled, as I had at the first one, at how well he looked. The new heart seemed to refresh every cell in the body making it look ten years younger. It was a welcome distraction to the huge scar creeping up his chest.

This was his second heart transplant because the first would have failed in the donor had they lived long enough. It was just one of those things. My brother did not get many breaks in life, although to be fair, much of that was down to his own recklessness. He was wild when he was young. Just the mention of his name was enough to protect me on the estate where we lived.

He died very shortly after my son was born. It was a cruel confluence. I drove to the hospital with one of those brick-sized mobile phones we had in the 90s fearing that my wife would go into labour while I was gone. It seems like only moments later in my memory that I see my mother holding my baby son against her black dress and I am driving my parents through relentless rain to my brother's funeral.

My memories of my brother are almost all conversations. We would go to the pub if we were home (he from the army, me from college) at the same time and then, over the years, we seem to have had a series of long conversations, too many of them in a hospital of one sort or another. For some reason, although I was younger than he was, he would open up to me. I think he trusted me. His life was always full of drama - mostly tragedy. I'm not sure he ever really knew what he wanted from life.

One time we met up just the two of us and went for a meal in Soho in London. He was really taken by the little pasta place I took him to. It was the kind of place he would have liked to run, he said. Maybe there is a parallel universe somewhere where that dream came true. I hope so.

US dead of winter

2011-11-05T17:51:00.002Z

Here is the cover for the US edition of The Dead of Winter that will be published next spring. It looks good I think. I like the quote they've picked out for the back.

Carnegie nomination

2011-11-04T18:04:00.000Z

I was very pleased to learn that The Dead of Winter has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal. It is a very long and very strong list and I will be incredibly proud if I progress onto the shortlist. As always, I must say how fantastic it feels to be noticed and appreciated in amongst the wealth of wonderful books out there.

Good luck to everyone else on the longlist. I am genuinely excited to be in such illustrious company.

StarLit, starstruck

2011-11-03T17:24:00.000Z

I was in London today. I was doing an event as part of the StarLit Festival organised by the Shoreditch Trust. A group of Year 4, 5 and 6 primary school children from Queensbridge School came to see me at the Waterside Restaurant. They asked lots of very good questions and were a pleasure to be with. We had a lot of fun and then we got to eat some nice food for lunch. It was all very civilised.

I went from there to Soho where I was to have a meeting about. . .well, actually I'm not going to say what it was about because it is at such an early stage I might frighten it away if I breathe too hard. If it becomes a bit more solid I will never stop talking about it!

At this point all I will say is that involves the possibility of getting one of my books onto the stage, which would be fantastic obviously. And I also got to meet someone whose work I've enjoyed for a long time and was a little bit over-excited. I just hope she will take the project on.

Fingers crossed.

Uncanny

2011-11-02T17:41:00.000Z

I have been writing blogs and articles all week. I thought I'd share a couple with you.

I have my Top Ten list of scary short stories on the Guardian website. This took longer than I thought it would to compile. It was so hard to narrow it down to ten.

I am also 'guest editor' on the National Short Story Week website where I have written a short piece about uncanny fiction. I am also on there website taking part in a Write Lines podcast discussion chaired by Sue Cook and featuring Joe Craig, Tamsyn Murray and Jon Mayhew.

Have a listen. We're the ones yacking about children's books.

Reviews

2011-10-29T19:54:00.003+01:00

There were two very nice reviews of Mister Creecher today. Amanda Craig included it in her round up of Halloween books for children and YAs in The Times and Philip Ardagh reviewed at some length it in the Guardian. Both were very generous in their praise.

Crazy week, crazy month

2011-10-27T15:31:00.000+01:00

This week has been full of distractions. We are attempting to to move, having rented this house for five years now and have all the business of finance, surveyors and so on to deal with. The house we rent is on the market and we have to endure the presence of agents and possible purchasers trooping through the house. Added to which our car has all but died and we are in the process of replacing it. And I am still getting to grips with my new Mac, bought to replace my

As if that were not enough, I have spent the week writing posts for a blog tour, answering several Q&As, written a Top Ten list of horror short stories for the Guardian website and written a short piece for the TES.

October is traditionally a bit of a crazy time for me. It is my publication month and so there is inevitably a bit of promotion to be done, but as well as that I am reviewing the feedback on my book for next October - The Mask - and sorting out the synopsis and sample chapters of the one for 2013!

People are often surprised to find that a writer is working on two books at once, but it is not unusual to be working on three. And we are always thinking of stories, scribbling in notebooks and so on. As I have said before it is a (reasonably) benign form of madness.

Autumn

2011-10-26T15:38:00.000+01:00

I love autumn.

When we lived in Norfolk autumn arrived like a wild beast, roaring and howling. We lived at the top of a small hill, but it might as well have been a mountain, because the gales rolled in with few obstructions until they smacked into our house. We were lucky enough to have a mighty elm on our field boundary - a lucky survivor of the terrible plague that took so many of its kind - and it would roar in the wind like waves crashing on a shingle beach.

Huge flocks of geese would fly over our house to mark the change in seasons, their honking sounding like an enormous rusty gate creaking to and fro in the wind. And they would fly away again at the end of winter. But I don't miss the power cuts, the leaking roof or the floods we frequently had as rainwater seeped under our doors.

When you live way from the cities and towns, the seasons are much more clearly defined, especially living in an exposed part of the country like Norfolk, with its huge skies and violent weather changes. I miss those skies - especially the crystal clear, star strewn night skies. Coming back from a long commute from London, after a stressful day at The Economist or The Independent, I would park the car and look up at the Milky Way for a few minutes before walking into the house.

It was like a palate-cleansing sorbet.

Towering skies

2011-10-25T19:53:00.000+01:00

There was a wonderful sky in Cambridge today: the kind of sky that features in Baroque paintings, towering and multi-layered. These iPhone pics don't quite do it justice, but my phone was all I had on me.

Frankfurt

2011-10-16T10:06:00.000+01:00

I returned from the Frankfurt Book Fair yesterday. I did not win the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in my category, sadly, but I still had a good time. . .

I had never been to a book fair before. I have friends who have been to Bologna, but even they have not been to Frankfurt. Bologna seems to be a bit more author and illustrator friendly. Frankfurt is perhaps perceived as being a bit more cold-bloodedly about the business of publishing. I can't really say whether this is true or not. I can only say that my experience of Frankfurt was a very pleasant one.

I flew from Heathrow in bright sunshine, marvelling at the vast expanses of forest below as we started our descent into Frankfurt airport. The taxi ride from the airport was interesting. As soon as we pulled out onto the autobahn, I was shoved back into the seat by the g-force as we hurtled along. The only time I checked the speedo we were at 160 kilometres an hour - a shade under a 100 miles an hour. Brake lights twinkled in the sunshine as we weaved between lanes and I jabbed out at an imaginary brake with my foot whilst suppressing a whimper. After that I thought it best to look sideways at the blurred scenery.

I had no visual image of Frankfurt in my mind and was a little surprised by the mini Manhattan skyline on the horizon. I was determined that I was going to try and get a better look at the place if I could find the time.

I dropped my stuff at the hotel - a nice little place on the Liebigstrasse - and walked the short distance to the book fair to meet Emma Hopkin, the MD of Bloomsbury Childrens Publishing in the UK. Emma took me into the fair and to the Bloomsbury/Berlin Verlag stall in the German hall. We seemed to walk for about a mile, going in and out of buildings, up and down escalators. I knew the place was going to be vast, but nothing quite prepares you for how big it actually is.

There was a reception being held there for their authors and a little display with our books. For me, it was mainly a chance to meet my German publishers: Philip Roeder, MD of Bloomsbury in Germany, Natalie Tornai, editorial director, Dorit Engelhardt my editor, Beatrice Howeg who had clearly done such a great job translating Uncle Montague and Meike Blatnik from publicity who had arranged my trip and made everything run so smoothly. I owe them all a big thank you for making me feel so welcome. And to Emma Hopkin who looked after me so well while I was there.

There wasn't time for us to get over to the UK hall and come back in time to go to the awards ceremony and so we wandered round the German stalls until it was time to be taken over there by Natalie.

I had not heard of the Deutsher Jugendliteraturpreis until I was nominated, but I had already been told it was a very prestigious award and this was confirmed by the amount of people now milling about outside the auditorium. I had to get my name tag and be photographed and then we all took our seats. I think I'm right in saying there were about a thousand people in there.

In front of us was a huge stage with massive video screens above it. It all seemed so much more professional and glamorous than anything we have in the UK - or anything I had ever been invited to, anyway. Happily, the very first award went to Martin Baltscheit for his beautiful Bloomsbury-published picture book, Die Geschichte vom Fuchs, der den Verstand verlor. He went up on stage and received his award and then had to sit on a large white sofa on the stage for the rest of the evening, joined by each successive winner.

I suddenly became very aware that I did have a chance of winning and I had not really given any thought to what I would say and tried to remember all the people I would need to thank. Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror appeared on the giant screens, along with photos of me, David Roberts and Beatrice Howeg. But very soon after, the envelope was opened and I was relieved of the need for any kind of acceptance speech. The winner was Milena Baisch and her illustrator Elke Kusche, for Anton taucht ab published by Beltz & Gelberg.

The rest of the ceremony was a little opaque for those of us struggling to recall even the most primitive of sentences from our schoolboy German classes, but the slickness continued throughout. It was certainly a very impressively presented event.

Afterwards we milled about in the foyer where there was some wine and nibbles and then we went to a restaurant nearby, taking over most of the back room. Good food and very good company helped to make me forget how exhausted I was, having set off from the house at six in the morning. Just as when I went to Holland and met my Dutch publishers, I was in awe of how articulate and witty everyone was whilst speaking a foreign language. It is very humbling for we lazy Englanders. We left at about midnight and I flopped straight into bed when I got back to my hotel.

I got a text from Emma the next morning saying she had been up since five (she was flying out at seven). The horror! I'm not sure that anything would have got me up at that hour. I staggered downstairs at about 8.30 and had breakfast before checking out and setting off to see a bit of Frankfurt before I flew back in the early afternoon. I wandered about clutching one of those useless hotel maps where the type is so small you can't read it without an electron microscope. I walked through a very expensive shopping district, through the main square and along the river, wishing I had time to cross and investigate the other side. Eventually I ended up at the grand railway station where an anti-capitalist demonstration was beginning to form and head off, watched by knots of sullen looking policemen. 'We are the 99%' read one of the placards in English - a reference to the wealthy 1% of the world population who own most of it's riches.

The photographs here were taken on my iPhone so are not the best quality, but they give an impression of what was a very pleasant stroll through the city on a beautiful autumn day. I had slightly dreaded my trip to Frankfurt but I would happily come back if asked.

Maybe I will be nominated again.

And the award for most nominations goes to. . .

2011-10-12T10:55:00.000+01:00

I am in the running for three awards at the moment.

The Dead of Winter has been shortlisted for the Salford Book Award and longlisted for the UKLA Children's Book Award in the 12-16 category. It is always a real honour to be nominated for any award. It is frankly an honour to be noticed - there are so many great books out there. I will keep you posted about my progress - or lack of it.

Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror has been nominated for an award in it's German translation - Onkel Montagues Schaurgeschichten. I am reliably informed that the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis is very prestigious and just as with the Dutch award this time last year, it is particularly satisfying, somehow, to feel that the books have made such a successful migration to other countries. My translators are clearly making me look good.

The award ceremony takes place at the Frankfurt Book Fair this coming Friday and I am flying over to attend. I had hoped that the Tales of Terror illustrator, David Roberts, would be joining me, but sadly he can't make it. It is my first visit to a book fair and my first visit to Germany.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Swedish terrors

2011-10-10T10:48:00.000+01:00

A big box of the Swedish edition of the Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth arrived today. It was a rather bigger box than I had imagined I would get. Twelve copies of a foreign language edition is perhaps more generous than is absolutely necessary! I also received a more manageable four copies of the Spanish edition of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. It is getting hard to keep track of all the foreign editions of the Tales of Terror. Portugal is the latest country to take them. I'll let you know more about publication dates and covers on those when I have more information.

Bournemouth

2011-10-07T17:36:00.000+01:00

After my day at Bishop's Stortford, I took the train to London with Ian Lamb, my trusty publicity person at Bloomsbury, leaving him at Liverpool Street and braved the circle of hell that is rush hour on the London Underground, heading over to Waterloo Station to catch my train to Bournemouth.

Waterloo Station was as packed as the tube trains and it was like The Nightmare Before Christmas as I queued for a sandwich to take on the train, with mince pies sitting alongside chocolate pumpkins. Mince pies? At the beginning of October?

I haven't been on that particular line since I used to teach illustration at Southampton for a short period back in the 1980s. I associate it with feeling absolutely shattered owing to the fact that I had to get up at about six in the morning to make sure I arrived on time. Today was no different actually. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I arrived at Bournemouth and collapsed into bed pretty much as soon as I got to my hotel.

The life of the travelling author is filled with disappointments and my hotel - like so many English hotels - was a lot grander on the outside than on the inside. Although my room was huge, it had seen better days and I was next to the lift and so had to listen to 'bing-bong!' every time the doors open. Bing. Bong . . . Bing. Bong. .

If you are going to put rooms near the lifts then at least make them quiet. The lifts I mean.

Val O'Sullivan picked me up from the hotel and looked after me very well all day. Bournemouth Library is very swish - a lovely, light, modern building and a very good venue for an event. I managed to get my Mister Creecher iPhone presentation to show on the screen with the help of the IT whizz, John - but when we came back, some connection had gone to sleep and we couldn't get it to work. Back to the memory stick and the space bar. . .

I came away once again with the desire to do much more than either I or the venues seem capable of at the moment. The technology is already in place to do something a bit more, dare I say it, funky than flick through a glorified slide show, but everyone seems a bit scared to go beyond the confines of their present knowledge. I am going to make it my business to know more.

My first session was with a mixed group of Year 7 and 8 kids from three different schools. They were a lively bunch, but very attentive and asked lots of great questions at the end. After lunch and a stroll around Bournemouth, I had another session with Year 8 children. This was a smaller group and sometimes that can intimidate people into silence, but again, they were a really interested and interesting lot.

Thanks to everyone involved and hopefully you'll ask me back!

Bishop's Stortford

2011-10-06T17:51:00.000+01:00

I spent the day at the Bishop's Stortford College today with the wonderful Rosie Pike, librarian there. It was my first time at the school and my first time in Bishop's Stortford actually, despite it only being half an hour or so away. Not that I ever get to see anything of the places I go to for events.

It was a very varied day. I spoke to sixth formers who were just starting a module on Gothic fiction and who had just read Frankenstein. Responses to Mary Shelley's novel were varied, but we had a good discussion. It was interesting, actually, to see how underwhelmed many of them were by the experience of reading a novel I remember being so excited by. But it has to be said, the central section where the creature learns to read and write via Milton's Paradise Lost, is both tedious and a bit ridiculous.

I spoke to the Year 7 Book Club, all of whom were reading Mister Creecher. I was amazed at how many of them had already finished the book already. But more than that, I was so impressed with the questions they asked about it. We had a very good discussion about whether Creecher and Billy were good guys or bad guys. Or both. Or neither.

In the afternoon I helped (well, kind of) while the students tried to complete poems based on a theme of games for Write Path. Write Path is an amazing international collaborative writing scheme established by Bev Humphries. The brief is to carry on the poem for a verse or two then hand over to the next school at a set time by logging your competed work on the website. It was really tough. My role was more to observe and give moral support. I was amazed at how much they managed to get done in such a short space of time. I would have struggled. The fearlessness of youth!

Lastly I gave a talk to a whole hall full of students and for this talk I had brought along a Keynote presentation. This is unusual for me. I tend to be low on technology. Mostly I turn up with a book and chat. This is not because I hate technology or can't see the benefits of it, but because it so often causes problems and wastes time.

The presentation was basically a slide show of images related to the story of Frankenstein - both the novel, the movies, and the story of Mary Shelley herself and how the story came to be conceived. I used as many contemporary images as I could - which is not hard, given that Goya, Turner, Constable, Blake, Gericault and Caspar Davis Friedrich (to name but a few) were all working at the time. I had saved it as a Powerpoint show and Quicktime movie on a memory stick, but I had also put it onto my iPhone. That's right - my iPhone!

I had saved it as a Quicktime movie and exported it to my iTunes Library which then allowed me to synch it with my iPhone. I had bought a VGA adaptor and all I needed to do was attach the adapter to the cable going to the projector. Once connected, the screen would mirror whatever happened on my iPhone screen. Magic!

But though this would have allowed me more control and, frankly, looked a lot cooler - there was a panic in the eyes of all concerned and as soon as I told them I had a memory stick, they sighed with relief and waved the iPhone nonsense away as crazy talk. I did not know enough to persuade them otherwise and so we went with the safer option. Maybe next time. . .

It certainly did not spoil what was a busy but really enjoyable day. It was great to meet everyone and I will definitely be back.

I hope.

It's alive!

2011-10-03T17:00:00.001+01:00

It is publication day for Mister Creecher here in the UK. It is that strange time of the year when I will be promoting one book while editing another and writing a third. Actually I am promoting two books, in effect, as it is also the publication day for the paperback of The Dead of Winter. But more about all that later. For now I just want to take a moment to enjoy the release of my new book and to wish it well.

Hipstomatic marble

2011-09-30T14:30:00.000+01:00

We went to the John Soane Museum on another gloriously sunny day here in the UK. My son's school was having a teacher training day and so we took advantage and spent the day in London. We also went to the British Museum where I took these photos using the Hipstomatic app on my iPhone.

Come with me if you want to live

2011-09-14T15:10:00.002+01:00

We watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day recently. My son had never seen it and I was interested to see how it held up after all these years. I'm not sure I've watched it all the way through since I went to see it at the cinema on its release in 1991.

And that seems a lifetime ago.

Another reason for watching it was that the movie was definitely in the back of my mind when I was writing Mister Creecher. The idea of teaming two misfits - one a teenager, the other a kind of superhuman - certainly had something to do with my memory of Terminator 2. In particular, the scene where John Connor realises that he can make the terminator do whatever he says. The glee with which he realises that he has a near-indestructible killing machine at his disposal is immediately tempered by his feeling of responsibility as soon as the terminator starts to act on his orders. I knew I wanted that tension to exist in my novel - although Billy never actually has control over Mister Creecher in that way.

My story is a lot darker though, and the issue of who the 'monster' is in the book is deliberately blurred. It is comforting to believe that monsters are something other. I wanted to deliberately make my humans capable of anything. That is true to Mary Shelley's novel after all. The creature in Frankenstein is a blank slate. He is taught to be a monster by the humans he meets - chief among them his creator, Victor Frankenstein.

There is a continuing confusion in the public mind between Frankenstein and his creature. Which is ironic in a way - Victor Frankenstein being the true monster of the novel.

The special effects in Terminator 2 are not the thrill they once were. They are OK, but those morphing effects are commonplace now. The actual body-morphing of Linda Hamilton now seems more impressive than the virtual ones of the T-100o terminator. Although Robert Patrick's performance as the T-1000 is still superb. He invests the role with far more gravitas than it deserves and it really works. I love the way he runs. I like the way Sarah Connor becomes a terminator too. It reminded me of the way Ripley starts to act like an alien in Alien Resurrection (another movie franchise that owes a debt to Frankenstein)

It was good fun watching T2 again, but I had forgotten quite how cheesy the ending is. Not only is it shamelessly and inappropriately sentimental in a movie with such a cynical and world-weary view of mankind, but it also harks back to the old horror movie endings. Arnold Schwarzenegger could almost be Lon Chaney Jnr as he descends into the molten steel, although the garish colour is maybe more Hammer than Universal.

PC RIP

2011-09-13T09:01:00.001+01:00

My computer died last week. Admittedly it was over five years old and I had been intending to replace it with a Mac, but even so - it is surprising how disturbing it is to find yourself refused entry to your own computer. Most things were backed up, but not everything, inevitably.

I do have the use of a laptop, but that laptop has been the source of irritation ever since I bought it. It has never worked properly and has had just about every component replaced. It does work well enough to get by on until I figure out which Mac is right for me, but I had never bothered to try and connect it to my printer or scanner.

Actually, that's not true - I did try to connect it to my scanner when I went to help sort out my father's house after he died. I thought it would be nice to scan in some old family photos. But though the drivers appeared to install OK, the laptop doggedly refused to 'see' the scanner.

I get disproportionately frustrated by things like this and then pathetically triumphant when - as I did the other day - I finally get the thing to work. This is what computers have driven us to: we are actually grateful to them for doing the job they are designed to do.

Anyway, after downloading drivers from Epson, I did eventually get my scanner to hook up to my laptop and the printer connected without any problems. Until I go on a spending spree at the Apple Store, this will have to do. And Kevin, my IT guy, did at least manage to get the data from the hard drive before gave my old PC the last rites. I know it was only a boring PC, but I wrote all my recent books on it. I won't miss it exactly, but it was a faithful old workhorse. RIP.

All this was made even more difficult by a continuing problem with my internet connection. Again - I can remember when I did not have the internet and still managed to eat and breath, but now it seems that I cannot function as a human being unless I have a broadband connection.

Hopefully this goes some way to explaining the scarcity of blog entries of late and I shall be doing a bit of back-filling as I complete various half-finished entries from the last month or so.

Name-dropping

2011-08-30T17:23:00.000+01:00

I saw Chris Riddell and Paul Stewart briefly while I was up in Edinburgh. I was in the author's yurt (that never sounds sensible) just about to leave and catch a cab to the airport when I noticed Will Hutton, one-time editor of The Observer when I still working there as an illustrator. His main contribution to my career was axing my strip, Babel. I pointed him out to my publicist Ian Lamb and Ian said, 'Isn't that Chris Riddell talking to him.' I hadn't recognised Chris at all, seeing him out of context. I was also quite sure he was not arriving until after I'd gone.

Sure enough, the redoubtable Paul Stewart stepped forward, telling me that they had just had a hellishly bumpy flight into Edinburgh, flying through the thunderstorm that erupted just as my event stopped. Chris came over once he had finished talking to Will Hutton and I had the briefest of chats before I had to head off. It was nice to see them. We always talk about synchronising our events but it never seems to work out.

When I first arrived in Edinburgh I met up with Andrew Jamieson of the Edinburgh Geekzine. Andrew has been a great supporter of my recent books so it was great to meet up in the real world and hear his plans for taking Geekzine to a new level. You can see what he's up to by following the link.

I met up with Debi Gliori too. Debi is also with Bloomsbury and our publicists, Ian Lamb and Emma Bradshaw took us out for a very nice meal. Gillian Philip - another of Bloomsbury's authors - managed to drop in for a while. I've met Debi and Gillian before, but it was lovely to see them again. It was a really pleasant evening, even though I was exhausted after my early flight up to Edinburgh.

Writing is a fairly solitary profession and so festivals and events do provide a means of meeting up with other writers. I was very disappointed to have just missed Neil Gaiman as he is someone I have wanted to meet for a long time, but I was lucky enough to bump into the wonderful Shaun Tan.

I have been a big admirer of Shaun's for a long time and it is was great to meet him and discover him to be the quiet, thoughtful person that I would have expected from his work.

I also got to meet Nikki Gamble of who introduced my first session. I am looking forward to attending Nikki's Just Imagine children's book centre in the near future. More about that later.

American creecher

2011-08-28T23:29:00.007+01:00

I had a bag of advance copies of the US edition of Mister Creecher today. The cover is pretty much the same as the UK edition, with subtle changes to the mist swirling around Monsieur Creecher himself and the change to a san serif font for the title.

The book is out in September, published by Bloomsbury US.

Edinburgh

2011-08-26T16:20:00.000+01:00

I have just returned from my event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Edinburgh is such a great city. I stupidly forgot to bring my camera with me so I can't show what a grand city it is to anyone who hasn't been. But that's all the more reason for you to go and have a look for yourselves.

I did a public event yesterday and a schools event today. Both went very well. I stayed in a very comfortable and surprisingly quiet hotel a stones throw from the festival site and the weather was mostly kind to me. The whole experience was very, very pleasant. Thanks to everyone at the festival for running such a smooth operation.

I was taken aback a little by the size of the schools event crowd. I'm not sure how many I was expecting to be talking to, but I could not have had a nicer audience. They were attentive and responsive and asked lots of good questions. A big thank you to all the staff and students who came along and making the event such a success.

What next?

2011-08-12T17:08:00.000+01:00

So - I've delivered my latest book. What now?

Well there will be editing to do on The Mask of course. I had to send it without my wife looking at it first and so I suspect there will be lots of sequential things that I did not pick up as I did my final read through. I hate finding stupid mistakes in my manuscript after I've sent it, but that doesn't stop it happening. I always intend to send as clean a copy through as I can, but there are always things left behind from previous edits. It is a particular curse of writing things on a computer, I find: it is so easy to chop and change, that you can lose track of basic things like the timeline of events.

Anyway, there will be a few weeks in which the book will get passed on to editors to read before I hear what they have to say. The first response is usually a broad brush one dealing with the plot. When I have addressed those concerns, then we get on to the nitty-gritty.

While The Mask is being digested, I will be getting together my proposals for what comes after. One of the things I hate about publishing is the fact that time seems to be eaten up by books. The future is constantly being pulled towards the present at an unseemly rate. The new proposals will not see the (published) light of day until autumn 2013 and 2014. I already feel two years older, just typing that.

But as well as working on my new books, I have to look after my other ones. I have Mister Creecher coming out in October (September in the States) and I have the paperback of The Dead of Winter coming out alongside it (the hardback of The Dead of Winter comes out in the spring in the US). I'm looking forward to doing events for Mister Creecher.

In October I am in Frankfurt for the Book Fair, where the German translation of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror - Onkel Montagues Schaurgeschichten - is up for an award. I have been invited, along with David Roberts, to attend the ceremony. I'm really looking forward to it.

Maybe we'll even win!

No more rat poison

2011-08-08T16:39:00.000+01:00

I had been signed off by my consultant at Addenbrookes Hospital here in Cambridge. I no longer have to take warfarin, which means I also no longer have to have my fortnightly blood tests. I won't miss those. No more needles, no more rat poison.

I will also no longer be taking statins every night. I have not escaped entirely though. I have been put on a regime of a single dose of aspirin every day, for life. But considering everything, I got off lightly.

Again, thank you to the wonderful National Health Service. We don't have much to boast about in the UK, but a health service that treats everyone based on their need rather than their bank balance is still something to be very proud of and something that needs to be cherished and protected.

More uncorrected proofs

2011-08-02T16:49:00.000+01:00

I got some uncorrected proofs in the post today. They are the American edition of The Dead of Winter, which will be published early next year. I haven't actually read these particular copies but I am guessing that they are identical to the UK editions and the 'uncorrected' aspect simply refers to the fact that changes have not yet been made to spelling of the colour/color, grey/gray variety.

My feedback from the States has always been that they have found it difficult to sell the idea of my books of short stories, so I will be intrigued to see what Americans make of The Dead of Winter and Mister Creecher.

Although I have always been a bit mystified and disheartened by the supposed reluctance of Americans to respond to a book of short stories. America is such a champion of the short story! The Tales of Terror books are in part a homage to Edgar Allan Poe, after all. It is a source of constant frustration to me that Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror in particular, was not more successful in the States. I hope it may yet have its day.

Falling

2011-08-01T16:41:00.018+01:00

I often talk about fears and phobias at events and school visits as a way of getting in to the business of writing creepy stories. I ask my listeners what their phobias are and I tell them mine: one of which is a fear of heights.

But actually I do not really have a fear of heights. Or it's not quite as simple as that.

A fear of heights - an irrational fear of heights - is called acrophobia. People often use the word vertigo to describe a fear of heights, but vertigo is a sensation of spinning when standing still and can be caused by all kinds of things - including heights of course.

I actually love to be high. If I visit a new city I always want to climb to a high viewpoint and look down on the place like a map. But that's where the trouble starts. . .

I have a problem if the staircase up is spiral and I find it impossible if the steps are pierced so that you can see through them. I find looking down the slope of a roof disturbing. I remember finding the view from the top of the Duomo in Florence especially alarming as it involved looking over the tiled curved dome. In Siena nothing could have made me climb the last, open section of the bell tower. Always there is a tension between my desire for the view and the awful dread that sometimes comes over me when I look down.

It has caused me a few problems at work. I remember the first time I went to The Economist to deliver a cover and stood next to a large window trying to show my work. It was only the 11th floor, but I had a terrible sensation of falling backwards into space. Initially, my days at The Independent were even worse as they were much higher up in Canary Wharf. The windows were floor to ceiling and I found them very distracting at first. Luckily I was too busy most of the time to notice! Looking down from building seems to almost always cause me problems.

Maybe this is no coincidence. Maybe my fear of falling is tied up with a fear of failing. Although that doesn't quite explain why I also get a bit dizzy up a set of step ladders (though that may be a fear of decorating).

I love to be high in the Lake district and yet the route to that summit can be a problem. It is not as simple as the route being close to an edge or even that it is especially difficult as a climb. It seems more to do with the land around me as I walk.

Walking along a path where the path slopes away steeply seems to be the worst thing. This is irrational of course - even if I stumbled I would simply be falling onto a slope of scree or grass - but it does not really help to know that. I am filled with a sense of foreboding and have to use all my powers of concentration to walk past the problem. It is as though something is going to leap at at me. The slightest breeze makes the sensation even worse.

This does obviously mean that sections of a walk are not always enjoyable for me, but I am determined not to be beaten by it. That said, I have been beaten - and more than once. I have had to turn back or change my route when walking on my own. I know that there are paths I could not possibly take and it is often possible to tell just by looking at the map. But once up on the top of a fell I'm usually fine. I love that feeling of being high. I like to see from horizon to horizon.

There are many incidents of falling or near falling in my books. Mohawks are supposed to have no fear of heights and were employed building the skyscrapers of New York (though I have never been clear whether they have no fear or show no fear). I have a Mohawk visit London in the early part of the 18th Century in Death and the Arrow and I have the hero Tom chased to the top of St Paul's cathedral during an eclipse (though it is not he who falls).

The story called The Path in Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror is one of many attempts I have made to try and put my own particular fear into words. The Path is directly inspired by the dread I have sometimes felt on the fells. I re-trod the same path that inspired it with my family and I had forgotten that there was a section that I found almost impossible to walk. It was that feeling of being pursued by something - my own fear I suppose - that made me think of the story in the first place. I was visiting the Lakes on my own and saw a narrow path leading up from Grizedale Tarn and decided to follow it. After I managed to push myself through the difficult stretch I rested and looked back down the slope. Far below was a figure just starting out on the same path. The idea popped into my head there and then.

I did use to wonder if this dread was a kind of wraith - that somehow I was catching a whiff of my own future death by falling. Was I feeling uneasy because on some level I did not trust myself up there. Certainly I was walking alone at a very low point in my life when that story occurred to me. I don't know. It has never dimmed my enthusiasm for the place. If anything I think I just accept it - embrace it even - as a taste of the awe that early tourists experienced when they visited these places. Perhaps they should never feel completely safe or tamed.

But anyway - now I am older I am more minded to believe my problem is simply some kind of crisis caused by an inability to be sure of my horizontals and verticals. In other words, in my case, my fear of falling actually is a kind of vertigo.

Believing what we see is boundless

2011-07-31T23:16:00.030+01:00

Is it possible to feel as though you belong in a place even though you don't live there or have any family connection to the area? I think it is.

I know it is.

I have been going to the Lake District off and on for over forty years now and to the same small hamlet for thirty years. There have been huge gaps between my visits, and yet the excitement I first felt on arriving there has never diminished, and what has grown alongside it has been a sense of coming back to a place I love and feel comfortable in.

My wife and son feel the same, though my son has been here only a few times. But we all have a feeling of elation when we finally arrive on the small road that runs alongside Ullswater. We have just had a wonderful week up there and it did not disappoint.

I have never been very adventurous in the Lakes. I like to walk the fells , but I have always been content to walk the local, less crowded and less celebrated Eastern fells. I don't crave novelty and I have no interest in walking with a queue of other people just because a particular fell is especially lofty or famous. I like to climb up high enough to get a view and to lose myself in the landscape. P B Shelley put it better than I ever could:

I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be. . .

Dog magic!

2011-07-15T13:58:00.009+01:00

My very first book is to be reprinted. Dog Magic! was originally published in 2000 and was shortlisted for that years Children's Book Award. But these little books are hard to keep alive and it slipped quietly out of print a few years back.

It's a slight thing, but I think it's still one of my best books. It tells the story of a Jack Russell terrier who is granted unlimited wishes and learns that maybe having everything you want is not necessarily a good thing. . .

First books are always special. It relies on someone - in my case Annie Eaton at Transworld - to make that leap of faith and give you a chance. As soon as that book is out, you are a published author and you just have to cope as best as you can. It's like being pushed into a fast-flowing river.

The age group of my books has grown as my son has grown. Before long I was writing longer historical adventures and eventually the chillers of recent years. There was one exception though. . .

Dog Magic! was part of a two-book deal. When I went on to write my Tom Marlowe books this second younger book was put on the back burner. I would occasionally come up with something but each time there seemed to be a reason why the idea would not quite work. It was not until we were about to leave Norfolk that came up with the idea for Billy Wizard - a story about a boy moving to a new school.

The 'new' school that Joe goes to was a thinly disguised version of the little village school my own son was sadly leaving. We were moving to Cambridge and he was not at all keen to leave the house he had grown up in since he was a baby or leave the only school he had known. He was also very upset to be leaving the wonderful countryside and coast of Northwest Norfolk and the nature he loved there. I wondered at one point whether he would ever forgive us.

But the move has proved to be a good one for him. He loves his school and he enjoys the freedom that living in a small town has provided him.

Billy Wizard is dedicated to him

The curious floor of the Oude Kerk

2011-07-04T21:05:00.031+01:00

I spent a long time looking at the floor in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. I thought it was absolutely fascinating. The tomb slabs all had a beautifully inscribed number on them. Some had the usual kind of imagery you would find on tombstones in a churchyard - angels, skulls and so on. Some featured shields and heraldic devices. But some were inscribed with more enigmatic symbols. . .

Most of these markings are clearly some kind of monogram, presumably based on the initials of the deceased, but some of these engravings almost look like the mason's marks you see in cathedrals. Whatever the logic behind them, I really like them.

Amsterdam bestiary

2011-07-02T22:58:00.029+01:00

Sights, sounds and smells

2011-07-01T13:53:00.012+01:00

I got back from Amsterdam yesterday evening, expecting to be delayed by the strike of passport control officers but finding instead that I got through passport control much quicker than normal.

The trip was really worthwhile. I needed to gather all I could about the city in a very short pace of time and for the first time ever I actually went with an itinerary so that I made sure that I did everything I was supposed to do.

Mainly this meant visiting the places that the characters in The Mask visit - the Rijksmuseum for instance - and doing some of the things they do - like riding a tram and eating pancakes. I have written these scenes already, but as soon I did them in real life, I could immediately see mistakes and also completely new areas that opened up in the novel. I have characters having a drink in a cafe in the Rijksmuseum - but there is no cafe there: the museum is being renovated.

Flying into Schipol, my heart sank a little as we descended through clouds and landed in rain, but even that was positive because it rains continuously in The Mask and I now know that my description of rain on the aeroplane window was not quite right. But I have to say, I wasn't upset when the weather improved.

I decided to go to the Oude Kerk while I was there, as much as anything, because I really wanted to see it. The last time I was in Amsterdam I had mistimed my visit and found it shut. I actually did my best to avoid seeing it this time, turning up too late on the first day and turning up before it opened on the second day.

I'm glad I persisted though. It is an extraordinary place and that alone has bought it a place in the novel. I spent two hours in there, enjoying the stillness and fascinated by the floor which is a made up entirely of tomb slabs, each engraved with a number and often with curious symbols a little like the mason marks you sometimes see in cathedrals.

The Oude Kerk sits in the red light district of Amsterdam. I feel rather sorry for it, surrounded by all that cheesy tat and bare flesh. It deserves better. It is a truly lovely building.

The other place I went to that I'd never been too before was the Anne Frank Museum. I think I'd avoided going before. Maybe I though I knew the story and did not need t go. Maybe I even thought there might be something bad taste about it. But I was wrong and I'm glad I went, though I found it almost unbearably sad. That doesn't sound like a recommendation, but I would encourage anyone who visits Amsterdam to go. Book your ticket online before you visit and you can walk past the queues at the door. And the same goes for the Rijksmuseum.

As well as making notes about the specifics of museum entry and how to buy a tram ticket, I was also making notes about the sights and sounds - and smells (the open air urinals have an interesting bouquet for instance) - of Amsterdam. I took a huge amount of photographs - some of which I'll be sharing with you over the next few days.

Children's games

2011-06-28T09:49:00.008+01:00

I'm off to Amsterdam tomorrow. I am at the last stages of writing my new book, The Mask, which is set in Amsterdam and I need to check on some details and make lots of notes about the specifics of the places I visit in the novel.

I was in Amsterdam last year when the Dutch translation of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship was awarded a Vlag & Wimpel. I had a feeling straight away that Amsterdam would make a great setting for a creepy novel and so it has turned out.

The Mask is the first chiller I've written that has a contemporary setting - although there is also a historical element to it. The plot revolves around a boy, Alex, who visits the city with his father and is haunted by the ghost of a girl who once lived in the hotel he is staying in - a girl who lived there when it was a merchant's house in the seventeenth century.

The title refers to the fact that the girl is never seen without the mask she wears and never leaves the house. In my novel - though not in reality - there is a strange painting of the girl wearing her mask in the Rijksmuseum. She is standing at the window looking out onto the moonlit canal where children are playing. When Alex happens across the mask in a market stall and puts it on, he sees this scene: he sees the canalside as it was back then - and sees too those mysterious children playing in the moonlight.

And they see him.

Images are often starting points for me with books and The Mask probably started with a detail from a painting by Breughel called Children's Games. As always with Breughel paintings, there are strange things happening all over the place and one of the strange things in this picture is the creepy mask that is visible in the window at the top left. I think I may have had a detail showing this in a school text book series called Voices. But I may not. It was a long time ago.

That masked face at the window has haunted me ever since I first saw it, forty years or so ago, and though the mask is not the mask in my book, and the period is not the same, this was the seed that developed, over time, into my current novel.

Mister Creecher goes to print

2011-06-21T16:33:00.009+01:00

This afternoon I emailed the last two remaining fixes for the queries raised by Isabel Ford on the final edit on Mister Creecher. This is the rather lovely title page based on Mary Shelley's novel.

I talked to Isabel yesterday and we went through most things that remained from the previous round of editing. I'm starting to get some feedback now from those who have been given Mister Creecher to read in its uncorrected proof form.

I was asked (at Hay I think) whether I wrote more than one book at once and of course the answer is most definitely yes. I am often working on three books at once, in fact. So I have been doing the last tweaks to Mister Creecher, whilst writing The Mask, and also plotting the book (or rather books) that I will be working on next.

All three stages have their challenges. The final edit is always stressful. It is the final letting go of the manuscript. Moulding the shape of an entire novel is by turns, frustrating and enormously satisfying. But I love that feeling of standing in the middle of a novel and having it all swirl around me. That's when writing is a really fabulous profession - when you have your characters and you have your setting and you have the premise and all you have to do is write.

Settling on the next book is more problematic - especially the submission of a synopsis. You have to give yourself enough wiggle room in the synopsis to allow what you write to breath and develop and go where it has to, but also you just have the issue of coming up with something good - something as good as the last book.

Or preferably better.

A moated manor house

2011-06-16T16:45:00.010+01:00

Being a location scout is definitely part of the process of writing for me. Wherever I go, I see places that I know will get filed away as possible locations for future stories. The book I'm writing at the moment - The Mask - was stimulated by a visit to Amsterdam last year. The location itself suggested the story and dictated many of the story elements.

On the way back from Wales we stopped off at Lower Brockhampton House on the Herefordshire/Worcestershire borders. What a beautiful place. We went for a walk in the grounds before visiting the house and we were its last visitors of the day. What a fantastic setting for a story. I will be amazed if I do not return here, even if it's only in my imagination - and in my writing.

Drawing from life

2011-06-15T20:48:00.008+01:00

I have taken to carrying a sketchbook round me with me and drawing on the train. I used to carry a sketchbook with me wherever I went when I was younger. Now, it has become a writer's notebook that I always carry. I sit on trains caught between my competing desires to read a good book, write a good book and keep hold of my love of drawing.

I was an illustrator and cartoonist for about twenty years and much of my output was what I would call ideas-based. The illustrations were conceptual images designed to accompany a piece of journalism. The drier the piece, the more it would profit from having an image accompanying it.

It is a very particular type of work, very different from the skills needed to produce work for books. That's not to say that an illustrator cannot successfully do both - Chris Riddell is equally well-known in the worlds of newspapers and children's books - it is just to say that they are different. Apart from anything else, there is the difference in the allocation of time. A newspaper cartoon is usually the work of hours and has to be done that particular day and no other. It is about producing the best job you can on that day.

When I was at college I assumed I would become an illustrator of books. In fact the publishing work I have done forms a tiny fraction of my output as an illustrator. And somewhere along the way I became dissatisfied with my drawings - my observational drawings. Sketching became irritating and nothing more. I persuaded myself that drawing from life was irrelevant to the kind of visual artist I wanted to be. Now I'm less sure of that.

I am still dissatisfied with these drawings and I still wonder whether there is any real point to them, but I quite like the idea of seeing where they take me. And I also quite like the idea of sharing them. So there may be more.

Sir John Soane

2011-06-14T18:00:00.009+01:00

I did my Pop Up Festival event today at the Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London. I bumped into my old friend Will Hill on the train and we had a long talk about illustration and illustrators in the early eighties.

Thanks to Dylan for asking me to take part in the event and for the educational department at the museum for being to welcoming. Thanks to Natalie Hamilton for turning up from Bloomsbury and good to see Daniel Hahn there. Thanks too to the staff and students of City of London Academy, Islington.

It was a warm and sunny day in London and I arrived at the museum early so that I could have a look round and get some feel for how the children I would be working with could use the material that they were going to see.

I am ashamed to say that this was my first visit to Sir John Soane's amazing house and collection. Friends had raved about it when I lived in London, but when you live in a place there's always tomorrow isn't there? In the end I moved out to Norfolk having never been. Now I'm in Cambridge and a little closer to London, this will certainly not be my last visit.

Photographs of the interior make it seem much bigger than it is and also seem to suggest a museum - or something like the plaster cast galleries at the V&A. But it isn't like that at all. It is very much a house, crammed with stuff. The first rooms are fairly restrained, but as you move on, you find yourself almost edging sideways past cabinets and statues, plaster casts and columns. It is extraordinary. It is like climbing inside a display cabinet.

The museum is worth visiting for the Painting Room alone. I walked in there oblivious to the multi-layered nature of this tiny room and I feel as though it would spoil it to tell you too much about it save to say that it has Hogarth's Election series of paintings, plus all the original paintings for The Rake's Progress.

Anyway - after I had looked round I went to the room where I was going to be working. The children were Year 7 students. They took a little while to get going - it was hot and they'd just eaten lunch - but by the time we had finished, the room was a pretty lively place, buzzing with lots of very good ideas.

I talked a little about what I did and how I had come to do it. I spoke a little about fear and phobias and then read then The Black Ship from Tales of Terror from the Black Ship, the book that the school had been sent to tie in with this event. It is hard to read a creepy story at mid-day in a hot and sunny room, but I'm used to that. It is difficult to create the mood. A cabin on a becalmed sailing ship at night was not available, sadly.

Afterwards we talked a little about the museum - which the children had not yet seen - and I tried to get them to understand the idea that the house and its contents was like the imagination of Sir John Soane made visible to us. Walking round those rooms was like walking inside his head. Then we tried to write a creepy story using the idea of a school visit to the house.

It took a little bit of a shove to get them started but there was the making of a good story - a novel even! - by the time they left to look round the museum. The best notion was that of someone being sucked into one of the painting. The character would not just end up in the painting, but would be swapped with one of the children. This interloper would then be accepted into the midst of the group and would return with them to their school.

That idea could spark off all kinds of stories. Who was the person taken out of the painting. Why they there? Were they another victim of an evil force or were they some sort of evil force in themselves. What would they do now that they were out? And what would become of the person in the painting? Sadly we did not have time to go any further.

But I like to think they might have looked at those Hogarths a little more intently than they might have done before.

And talking of Poe

2011-06-11T21:25:00.007+01:00

Bloomsbury publish a rather fine edition of Edgar Allan Poe's stories - with an introduction by Neil Gaiman, no less. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. The list of writers (including yours truly) who will happily concede a debt to Poe is endless and his influence is huge. He is a timeless writer who still manages to sound modern and who still has the capacity to shock. These stories are very, very strange indeed.

If you haven't read his work - whatever age you are - grab a collection of his short stories and read The Tell-Tale Heart or Berenice or The Fall of the House of Usher and see why he is such an important writer.

Whenever I read him - and I reread him often - I am always reminded to up my game.

Edgar Allan Poe

2011-06-10T08:41:00.006+01:00

I enjoyed this documentary about Poe and the women in his life. I watched it on iPlayer last night. I particularly liked the use of stock footage - though I wish I knew where it all came from. There was a clip of Michael Hordern walking past a graveyard from Whistle and I'll Come to You. There was also a clip from the German silent movie, The Student of Prague I think. But lots of fascinating stuff I couldn't place.

Pop up

2011-06-09T22:40:00.005+01:00

I'm taking part in the Pop Up Festival next week. I'm doing an event based around Tales of Terror from the Black Ship with some school children at the John Soane's Museum in London.

More about that later. . .

Hay

2011-06-08T22:51:00.009+01:00

I thought I ought to talk a little more about my spot at the Hay Literary Festival.

As I have already mentioned this was my first time at the festival. It is one that I have wanted to do for a long time and was always very jealous of other authors who had been invited. Once I knew my date we decided to make a week of it, as it was half term, and book a cottage in Wales.

It was a bit exhausting to drive all the way back to Hay on the Sunday having driven all the way to Lampeter the day before, but it was worth it to have a cottage so near to the coast. The festival had booked me into the lovely George House for the night and all I had to do was find it! I arrived at the performer's car park to be told it was full and would I mind parking in front of the portaloos? Not the most auspicious of starts!

Luckily it transpired that there was actually parking right outside my lovely B&B. I say it was a B&B, but actually the owners only do this during the festival. It must be fascinating actually - to have a random stream of authors passing through their beautiful house. I had breakfast with Linda Grant and her sister Michelle, as well as Peter Conradi - and great company they were too. We had real laugh.

My event went well. I had a bit of a chance to have a wander round the town, resisting the temptation to buy secondhand books, before getting changed and walking the half mile or so up to the festival site. I was sure that I was going to get soaked, but the rain held off apart from a few drops.

My very attentive minder showed me to the green room (where, as with all such places, everyone in the room seemed to be famous apart from me) and after a glass of water we strolled over to the Starlight Stage where I was to do my gig. She walked ahead of me holding a long-stemmed rose. I think I'm going to insist on that everywhere I go.

The Starlight Stage was perfect for me. It can be a bit tricky reading spooky stuff in the middle of the day, but this tent had a dark blue canopy studded with tiny star-like bulbs and so the ambience was just right.

We had a good-sized crowd and I talked a bit about what I write, how I write and the funny route I've taken to become a writer. I talked a little bit about fear and phobias. One girl told me that her father was scared of buttons - he'd better not read Coraline! Then did a reading from The Dead of Winter and read Skating - the additional story in the rejacketed Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror.

There were some time for questions at the end and there were lots of them. It is always nice when lots of hands shoot up at the end, desperate to ask their question. They were a really supportive and enthusiastic bunch and I felt very welcome at Hay. As I was leaving my minder said, 'You're entitled to some wine,' and I almost refuse, imagining a glass of wine, but she reappeared with a case of Cava. Now that's what I call treating your performers well! She even offered to carry it for me back to my digs (it wasn't exactly light and I refused, of course).

And it didn't end there. I kept bumping into members of my audience as I walked around the town and everyone said very kind things. I was really touched.

All in all, a very enjoyable experience.

Hay and beyond

2011-06-06T10:39:00.041+01:00

I have just returned to Cambridge from a week in Wales. I had an event at the Hay Literary Festival and we decided to make a week of it. We stayed in a lovely barn conversion near Lampeter, which did mean a very long drive to and from Hay, but did mean we could get to the coast where - as you can see - we spotted dolphins. We also went to the fantastic red kite feeding session at Gigrin Farm near Rhayader. Absolutely amazing.

Thanks to all of you who came along to see me in Hay - especially those of you who stopped for a chat in the street. Thanks for all your supportive comments. And a big thanks to the organisers for inviting me and for my minder, Rhiannon (apologies if I've spelled your name wrong) for looking after me so well. Thanks too to my hosts, Malcolm and Shirley Smith, at the lovely George House where I stayed on the night of my event.

Facebook

2011-05-17T11:54:00.004+01:00

At long last I finally have a Facebook author page. Please follow the link and 'like' it if you want to. There will be considerable overlap between this blog and the Facebook page but they should have their own distinct flavour - I hope.

Some more editions

2011-05-16T13:12:00.009+01:00

Here is a batch of foreign editions that I haven't mentioned before (I don't think). From top to bottom, they are the Czech and Polish editions of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror, the Turkish edition of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship and the Swedish edition of Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth.

That splash of red on the Swedish edition is nice, huh?

Nicky Schmidt interview

2011-05-13T19:13:00.006+01:00

Blogger has been misbehaving, so I haven't had a chance to say that I have been interviewed by the lovely Nicky Schmidt for her website, Absolute Vanilla. It's about The Dead of Winter mainly, but also about writing in general - or at least my writing.

Please pop over and take a look, not just at the interview with me, but at all the other interesting stuff on her blog.

Tales of terror

2011-05-11T22:41:00.009+01:00

Cover story

2011-05-06T10:23:00.012+01:00

I have spoken before about the tricky issue of covers for an author. We tend to be shown covers at a stage when the concept has already been decided on by a committee involving the mighty forces of marketing and sales. 'Marketing love it,' we are told. 'The sales department is very keen.' In effect the dress has already been bought, it is being worn and the taxi is waiting outside. The 'How does it look?' is not designed to kick-start a frank exchange of opinions.

This is made all the more difficult when the author has been to art school, as I have. It requires a diplomacy that I'm not sure I have always quite managed. I like to think that the times I have decided to speak up have been valid and produced positive changes, but I have also spoken up and been roundly squashed. Which is fair enough, of course. A knowledge of art and design does not make me right any more than a lack of it would make me wrong.

At the top of the posts are two covers for my book Jail-breaker Jack. It was published by Hodder and is sadly no longer available. It is a book I am very proud of. It was a response by Hodder to the boom in narrative non-fiction for adults, but children's booksellers seemed a little mystified by a non-fiction book that had the narrative drive of a novel. Also, it did not tie into any of the areas covered by the history syllabus for the given age range. Ten year-old British children know a little about Victorians, the Tudors and WWII but they know nothing about the early part of the 18th Century. It would have been better to write a novel - which is effectively what I did with my Tom Marlowe books, in which I used all the research I had done for Jail-breaker Jack.

The book is copiously - and I mean copiously - illustrated throughout by my good self. It was very early in my career and I was lucky to have a fantastic editor in Anne Clark (now at Piccadilly Press). She was just the right combination of exacting and encouraging. I learned a lot from Anne and we made a couple of really nice books together.

I had completely forgotten until I did a clear out of my office the other day, that I had originally done the cover too. The one at the top is the one I did, the other is the one they decided to go with in the end.

The cover Hodder chose is perfectly elegant in its way but I don't think it is a book that the age group we were aiming at was ever going to get very excited about. I don't think mine is great - but I certainly think - as I did at the time - that it has more appeal to a ten year-old. And - as well as being an art trained, I was also - a long, long time ago - a ten year-old boy.

I did two books at Hodder. The second was Witch Hunt, an exploration of the Salem witch trials of the 17th Century. Though I had been told - a little preposterously - that one of the reasons my cover did not work is that marketing felt that covers with faces looking out did not go down well (!!), the second book (for which I did not even attempt to suggest a cover) featured an attractive girl (almost) looking out at us and seemed to be sold as fiction (I certainly found it in the fiction section in shops). I never once saw Jail-breaker Jack in a single shop.

But the horrible truth is that there seemed to be no appetite in children's books for narrative non-fiction and certainly no appetite among booksellers. Neither books sold. Would Jail-breaker Jack have sold with my cover on it? Maybe not. Probably not. But that's the problem with covers. We all agree they are important, but we can never know how important.

Exiles

2011-05-05T10:22:00.017+01:00

I enjoyed the recent BBC television drama Exile, though the story of an embittered hack returning to his northern home to his sister and father did have some painful echoes. The photo above shows a rather atypically jolly moment.

My father did not have dementia as Jim Broadbent did in Exile and thankfully I am not as embittered as the John Simm character (or as screwed up, I hope), but there things I recognised - not in the specifics (my father did not beat me up, I should say here), but in the general flavour. I certainly relate to that sense of dislocation. I can relate too to the truth of daughters so often being lumbered with the lion's share of looking after aged and infirm parents. It was certainly true in my own sister's case. Her life - as in the case of the Olivia Colman character - was taken over by the needs of our parents. My life - and the life of my brother in France - was remarkably untouched by the needs of our parents.

I never felt a sense of belonging in Newcastle. I suppose I didn't belong. I wasn't born there like most of the people I knew. My family wasn't from there. When I moved there in the late 1960s there seemed a suspicion of anyone whose accent betrayed them as being south of Gateshead. Actually I'm being unfair - they were suspicious of anyone who came from south of the Tyne. Only months before I had been swimming in the Mediterranean. I hated it - Newcastle, not the Mediterranean. Not all the time, and not always violently - but I knew I would always leave.

As I said in a previous post, I think I do feel I am a northerner. It does not make complete sense: my mother spent her childhood in and around London and I lived in that city for over a decade (and I'm only forty-five minutes away from it now). I don't hold with any of the nonsense about the north being friendlier than the south. I don't attach any particular merit to the north. I simply feel an affinity to it that I do not feel to the south, much as I love many things about it. I am a huge fan of London. I think it is a fantastic city and it is a place that I feel very comfortable.

But a romantic (Romantic even) attachment to the north does not mean I do not feel a sense of rootlessness. My wife and I watched Up in the Air recently too. Again - I do not share the George Clooney character's jaded world view, thankfully, but I can readily relate to the scenes in which he returns home and expects to be part of a family he has ignored the rest of the time. And again - I don't ignore my family completely, but neither do I fully engage with it. My own family - my wife, my son - is a full time thing. But my other family - the family I grew up with - is something I step in and out of. Well, perhaps I am never truly 'out' of it. But then I could also say I was never truly 'in' either.

I have a vision of a family - a large extended family - eating at a long table outside under the shade of vine leaves, babes in their mother's arms, youngsters eating short pasta while the older ones laugh and joke with grandparents. It's a kind of preposterously jovial Italian family dinner from the 1950s. Where it comes from I don't know - but could not be further from my own family experience. Perhaps I have concocted it simply to be disappointed by my own family's inability to match it.

Big guns

2011-05-03T22:52:00.012+01:00

Much as it offended my liberal principles later, when I was an art school rebel, it was kind of cool having a dad who fired very big guns when I was a kid. This is a picture of my father at Napier Battery in Gibraltar where we lived in the mid 1960s.

By a strange coincidence, given where my father ended his days, this 100 ton monster of a gun was manufactured by Armstrong of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1879. Nicknamed The Rockbuster could send a 2,000 lb shell up to eight miles.

My father (that's him on the left, with his hand on the gun) was also stationed in Gibraltar during WWII, sailing there on a troopship in 1943. He was, as always, on anti-aircraft duty and some of the guns were set up on Napier Battery for that purpose, though they were never actually fired in anger.

What must it have been like, I wonder, for this Middlesbrough boy to end up here, at the tip of Spain, within sight of Africa? It was strange enough for me twenty years later when I arrived there. I still remember the flight (a much more exclusive form of transport then) and the sensory confusion and excitement when we left the plane. My father's journey there was longer and more uncomfortable, but that probably only served to make the place even more exotic.

Family tales

2011-05-02T22:39:00.019+01:00

My father was a good storyteller. That's to say, he knew what made a good story. He was not always as well-tuned to the needs of his listener and often - very often - told the same story again and again, as though for the first time. He was not, perhaps, the best at gauging the interest of his audience. But he knew what a good story needed. He understood the construction. I don't remember him reading me stories when I was a child, but I do remember him telling them.

Inevitably many of his stories were about his wartime experiences or about his military service, although, strangely, I don't remember him talking much about the war until he was much older. Perhaps he always told the stories and I just did not listen. Occasionally, my father would speak about his childhood, but not often. He lost his mother as a boy and his father remarried. My father felt himself to be an unwelcome appendage to the new family they created. It must have been hard for him.

I remember my father telling me that he used to ride a fix wheeled racing bike around the North Yorkshire countryside - though I have no idea how often this took place. He also sang in a choir festival in St Mary's Church on the clifftop at Whitby. I remember him telling me that on his first day at work at the steelworks, when he was fourteen, the men passed round cigarettes at tea break and he, wanting to fit in, took one as it went by. That was it, he was a smoke from then on, finally quitting when I was in my teens. My mother's childhood was a place she never wished to revisit and one of the few times she became angry with me was when I tried, in later life, to get her to talk about it.

We made our own stories of course, my brothers, my sister and me. My son loves to hear stories about my childhood - particularly anything in which I did something wrong or reckless. We become frozen in our roles of father, mother, child, sibling. He enjoys imagining me as a child. I wonder if he will ever be able to imagine me as a man, separate from my identity as his father. It's something I still struggle to do with my own father: to see him as someone in his own right, free of his bond to me.

These family stories take on the qualities of myth after a while, and indeed they often do involve a bit of fiction, intentional or otherwise. They are a series of Chinese whispers sent through the generations: endlessly retold and refined and redrafted. Home truths and untruths. Someone will embellish, another will mishear or get the wrong end of the stick. Lies will be told too, let's be honest.

Interwoven between the birth certificates and photograph albums and all the other documents of our lives, are the stories we tell and hear: stories about triumph and failure, illness, adventure, births and deaths, comedy, tragedy. These tales are told through the prism of parental pride or sibling rivalry, of course. They are both true and not quite true. They reveal and they conceal.

Speaking and listening

2011-05-01T19:19:00.014+01:00

The past few months haven't been just about blood tests and funerals, though it feels that way. I have been going through the proofs of Mister Creecher ready for its publication later in the year and continuing with my writing of the first draft of The Mask, my new book about a haunting in Amsterdam. And of course, I am looking beyond that to my next books with Bloomsbury.

I have a book coming out with Pearson too. It is a return to historical fiction for me - a book set in Roman Britain - around AD180. It is called Blood Oath and I went to London a couple of weeks ago to do a filmed Q&A session as part of the accompanying teachers resource material. I was filmed in front of a green screen, so heaven only knows what will pop up behind me on the finished thing! I should be getting advance copies soonish - the book is out in June.

I did the FCBG (Federation of Children's Book Groups) Conference with my Bloomsbury stable- (kennel?) mate Jon Mayhew a few weeks ago, down in Sussex at Worth Abbey. The journey gave me a chance to finally finish the excellent Mortlock. I got the train from St Pancras - a really fascinating route right through the centre of London and over the Thames. As we approached Three Bridges station, where I was to get off, the train passed though a steep cutting and headed towards a tunnel. It was precisely the tunnel I had in mind for Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. It was slightly unnerving. David Almond was the main speaker and we followed on behind, in conversation with Daniel Hahn.

I've never met David Almond - and didn't meet him here, but I know his work obviously. It was interesting to hear him speak, as it is to hear any other authors talk about their work and what journey they took to becoming a writer.

I also did Cambridge's Wordfest this year, the first time I've been asked. It was certainly nice to do an event in the town where I live, although ironically, I had to dash back from the FCBG conference to do my gig at the Central Library. It was a really nice event and nice to be doing it in out wonderful new library when libraries are under such threat in this country.

I will be with you on your wedding-night. . .

2011-04-29T11:54:00.015+01:00

I found a copy of this poster for Frankenstein in Love in an envelope when I was going through my father's stuff. It comes from early in my career when I still sent things back to my parents to show what their son was up to in London.

It's not a great poster. I am not, and never have been, a real graphic designer. That rose is pretty awful, too - like some fat red cabbage. But it does have great sentimental value.

I had a short-lived career as a designer of theatre posters back in the early 1980s. I say career advisedly, because it could never have provided a living. The posters I did for Clive Barker's Dog Company I did for free, as he was a friend, and the ones I subsequently did were so poorly paid, I may as well have done them for nothing.

The Dog Company posters were where it began really. They spawned other posters at the Cockpit Theatre and at the Drill Hall. Eventually I ended up doing posters for the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs (of which Danny Boyle was director at the time). Which brings me back to Frankenstein. . .

As an antidote to today's giddiness surrounding a certain royal wedding, we went to see a filmed performance of Frankenstein currently wowing crowds at the National Theatre. The play is an adaptation (by Nick Dear) of Mary Shelley's novel, directed by that same Danny Boyle.

The two stars of the play swap roles nightly. One night Benedict Cumberbatch is Victor Frankenstein and Johnny Lee Miller is the Creature (the version we saw), the next Cumberbatch is the Creature and Miller is Frankenstein.

I'm a bit of a fan of Johnny Lee Miller. I like the way he looks for one thing: both modern and somehow also perfect for the Romantic period - he was easily the best thing about the BBC's most recent adaptation of Jane Austin's Emma (a book, incidentally, that was published the same year as Mary Shelley came up with the notion of Frankenstein). And he has charisma, which is a magical thing. He is not exactly intimidating, height-wise, but it was a really physical performance. Cumberbatch was good too - a nice combination of naivety and arrogance. And its easy to imagine that they would be just as good (though very different) in each other's roles.

I have been immersed in the world of Frankenstein for months now, (I am still correcting proofs on Mister Creecher) and it has been a passion for decades, so I was always going to be a difficult audience. I'm not sure the script lived up to the performances or the staging, both of which were superb. And I could have done without the silly tableau of the Industrial Revolution that rolled by at the beginning.

But it was a really good bit of theatre and it won't be the last of these 'live' feeds from the National we go to see. It is not the same as seeing it at the theatre, but there are added benefits - like the close-ups for instance - that make the experience compelling in its own right.

Ickworth

2011-04-26T18:13:00.016+01:00

We went to the rather wonderful Ickworth House near Bury St Edmunds yesterday. I found myself wondering what the previous occupants would have made of the likes of me wandering through their rooms.

Hounds would have been released I'm sure.

The great north road

2011-04-25T09:40:00.011+01:00

Memory is a kind of hard core lucky dip: you reach into that tub of sawdust and you don't know whether you are going to bring out a shiny new penny or a handful of razor blades.

I drove up and down the A1 - four or five hours each trip. The A1 is not a pleasant road for much of its length, the older sections suffering from narrow lanes and poor road surface, the building of newer sections causing miles of contraflow and hold-ups. Going up I got caught up in a queue trailing back from an accident. On the way back I saw a car engulfed in flames on the hard shoulder, a huge column of smoke rising up like a twister. The heat was incredible even from a lane away.

And yet the A1 is full of memories for me.

I remember long (oh, so very long) National Express coach journeys that would take the whole of a day (or night). Going down to London to see my brother, maybe. And it always did feel as though I really was going downhill, as though the land of Britain is tilted vertically with Scotland at the head.

Living in Newcastle, we always seemed to be on the A1. It used to go right through the centre of the city and over the Tyne Bridge. It was the way north to the Northumberland coast and to Edinburgh. It was the way south to Yorkshire, to the moors, to the coast. It was the quickest way to to start a journey.

I remember my brother-in-law driving me up the A1 in his Ford Zephyr and touching 100 mph. I remember sitting in the back of an army lorry when I worked one holiday as a removal man shifting furniture and crockery in and out of service accommodation.

I was working in effect for my dad. He had become a civil servant on leaving the army and worked for the Ministry. It was his job to oversee the provision of housing and contents to serving soldiers. He had left the army but he still worked in an army barracks and drove back and forth to the various army bases in his area.

I thought about that - among many other things - as I drove down the A1 past Catterick army base. Every hour or so I would be surprised by tears and by the suddenness of the emotion. Tears would spring to my eyes and my throat would tighten as though held in a firm grip.

The Great North Road. It does feel part of my life. I've spent more of my life in the south, and yet I do feel an affinity with the north country. We moved around so much when I was a child that nowhere really feels like home. But I think I am a northerner at heart. If I come from anywhere, I come from the North.

And maybe I wasn't sure of that until I had my back to it on the way home to Cambridge.

The house that built me

2011-04-23T19:57:00.026+01:00

Or at least this was one of the houses that built me. Me moved to this place when I was twelve or so. Previously we had lived in another council estate not too far away, but my father decided that this estate would be better for us. He had no social circle at all, so he was not remotely influenced by the issue of the friends my mother and I would leave behind. In fact, he was sure that I was mixing with the wrong sort altogether and that the move would do me good.

So we moved to Kenton. My sister was already living on the estate so that was a plus. And, as my parents got older, it would become more and more of an advantage. They got to see their grandchildren growing up and my sister was able to look after them in later life - first my mother and then, when she died, my father. Anyway - I've been helping my sister clear the house.

I always hated that house. Our previous estate - Newbiggin Hall - had been tough, in its own way. But my brother Paul had gained sufficient reputation among the local hard nuts before he went into the army, that the mere mention of his name gave me all the protection I needed. I had a little gang of friends and we played out on long summer evenings and cycled out into the country in the holidays. I went to a good primary school a walk away and subsequently caught an old red Routemaster double decker to the grammar school in Gosforth.

It was far from idyllic. There were some scary people living on that estate. But Kenton Bar Estate came to seem far, far worse. I used to visit my sister on Saturdays before we moved and Kenton Bar had seemed bright and cheerful, helped by the cycle route through cornfields.

But our house was one of the flat-roofed bungalows at the North Kenton end of the estate and darkness turned it into a badly lit maze of concrete and brick. I never felt safe walking back there after dark. I never felt like I belonged there.

Over the years I have swayed from a vague embarrassment about it, to a kind of pride that I came from such inauspicious beginnings, to a resentment of those who had a softer nest, and back again in no particular order. Sometimes I can feel all three in one day. But I feel horribly guilty that my parents - whose only aim was to keep me fed and clothed and safe - were ever caught up in that embarrassment or resentment, and could not benefit from a pride that was perverse. They had - I had - so much more than they had when they were children. They had a right to expect much more from me than they ever got by way of thanks or appreciation.

It was in the lounge of that house that I watched Lawrence Gordon Clark's M R James adaptations at Christmas in the 70s. It was here that I watched the Monster Movies on Tyne Tees television - back to back horror films from the thirties to the glory days of Hammer. It was here I would watch Top of the Pops and revel in how disturbed my father was by Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Bryan Ferry. It was here that I would stack my records on the Dansette Bermuda and sit in my bedroom reading comics or sci-fi novels. It was here that I first read Frankenstein. It was here that I watched Monty Python and Morecombe and Wise and Dave Allen and The World at War. It was here that I sketched and drew and doodled in notebooks and typed up my first attempts at short stories on my dad's portable typewriter. It was here that I cycled back to from my girlfriend's house, the dynamo light blazing on the tarmac as I freewheeled down the hill at night. It was here that I started to became me.

Do we need something to push against? Do we need to have some grit in our gizzards? If so, then that house in Kenton Bar Estate had such a function in my life. The house you leave when you leave home will always have a special significance. For some it will remain a symbol of home that they will try and recreate. For me it was the embodiment of everything I wanted to shed when I started my new life at college.

But you never do shed it of course.

The big sleep

2011-04-22T09:29:00.015+01:00

My father died a few weeks ago. Apologies for those of you who have tuned into the blog and found it deserted, but whereas writing about my mini stroke seemed to help deal with it, my father's death seemed to leave me oddly wordless.

My father died not long after his decision to have any unnecessary meds halted. The lack of drugs obviously played a part, but it was probably as much the final acceptance that he was not going home. His last years had seen his visits to hospital become more frequent and long-lasting. The grim outpost of the NHS he spent his last few months in would not have been anyone's choice of last resting place, but increasingly this is what awaits us: a dull, municipal end. We can extend life, but we cannot extend the enjoyment of life it seems.

I went to see The Big Sleep at the cinema with my wife and son just before he died. It was great to actually see it on a big(gish) screen. My dad had a soft spot for Humphrey Bogart - or Humpty Go-cart as he used to say when I was a kid - and we would always watch To Have and Have Not or The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep if it was on TV. Watching old movies was something we both enjoyed and was a rare meeting point for us.

My father had been a cinema projectionist for a short spell when he was younger, in the 1930s, and particularly liked the gangster movies of that era. Cagney was a favourite, as was George Raft. My father's sense of style - a moustache and centre-parted slicked down hair was straight from the 30s and 40s and remained that way for decades.

Although he he left school at fourteen to work in the local steelworks in Middlesbrough, he took the familiar escape route of applying to join the army at sixteen. WWII broke out when he was eighteen and at nineteen he was at Dunkirk. Though he left the Royal Artillery in his late forties, he remained a soldier in his own mind and in ours. It was as though it was in his DNA.

He was a difficult man and the only emotion he ever seemed to be able to express unreservedly was anger. Whole days would be ruined by his black moods and his frequent explosions of temper could be terrifying. I spent a lot of my time in that house resenting him, angry with him, fearful of him.

When I left home to go to art school, it always seemed to be my mother who drew me back. I don't think it was until my mother died that I made any effort to understand my father as a person. It is one of the qualities of growing old - or should be - that we do not see things in quite the same black and white way as we did when we were seventeen.

My father was inevitably the punitive part of the good cop/bad cop routine so many parents played at that time. My mother was a warm and affectionate person, but she was allowed to be. She rarely had to raise her voice or punish me. 'I'll tell dad,' was always enough to stop me in my tracks. I'm not saying he was forced into this role against his will, but it can't have been a very satisfying or enjoyable.

I had a strange relationship with my father. I think we baffled each other most of the time. Often he would look at me as though I had landed from outer space.

The last big row we had was when my mother died. I was determined that my mother's funeral would not be some bland, formulaic affair, with some vicar mouthing platitudes about a person he or she had never met. My brother's funeral had been like that and it only served to sharpen the pain of his dying.

My dad had yelled at me as he used to in days gone by, but we were all a bit older. I wrote him a long letter explaining that I thought we could do better for my mother and he, with time to reflect, agreed. I found the letter among his things when we cleared his house. I was genuinely surprised he'd kept it.

I was determined to do right by my dad too, when he died. I wanted to speak about his life as I had spoken about my mother. I arranged for a bugler from the Royal Artillery to come and play the last post, although sadly he was ill on the day and could not make it. But for all the vicar's effort to the contrary, the funeral was at least about my father - Tom Priestley, the man. Or at least the fragment of himself he allowed us to see.

RIP.

Deutscher Jugendsliteraturpreis

2011-03-17T19:37:00.008Z

I am very pleased to announce that the German translation of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror - Onkel Montagues Schauergeschichten - has been nominated for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. The book is published by Bloomsbury in Germany.

David Roberts and I have been invited to the awards ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. The winners are not announced until then. It will give me a chance to meet my editors over there and hopefully to thank my translator, Beatrice Howeg, who has obviously done a very good job.

Blood

2011-03-15T22:36:00.007Z

I flew up to Newcastle yesterday to visit my father who is ninety-one this year and is very ill in hospital. My brother, who lives in France, also flew over and we had a very rare lunch together with our sister and her daughter.

We have never been one of those families where siblings are on the phone to each other every day - although that has changed a little recently with my father's illness. I speak to my sister pretty much every week now, although sadly much of our conversation these days seems to centre on hospital visits.

My father was too tired and ill to speak, but he was certainly aware that we were there. He was such a big presence in my early life - often an intimidating, even frightening one at times - that it is strange to see him so weak, so fragile.

My father was the person everyone deferred to in the family. He seemed to know a lot about pretty much everything. Immensely practical, he could fix almost anything and was of that generation where, if your car broke down or you washing machine stopped working, you reached for the toolbox rather than the phone.

My brother arrived in Newcastle ahead of me and was lucky enough to see my father more alert and able to talk. But his condition when we went up together was more typical of the state my sister has found him in on her daily visits. There is more to life than simply being alive and my father, almost immobile, unable to see or hear properly any more, has little way of getting any pleasure from life. It is all very sad.

I flew back to Stansted with my brother and he stayed the night before flying back to France the following day. We spent the morning together just wandering around Cambridge before I drove him to the airport. It was the longest amount of time we'd spent in each others company for some considerable time. And my son was very excited to see his uncle and have a chat before he left for school.

I had a blood test in the morning and the warfarin nurses rang me in the afternoon with the annoying news that my INRs were down again. I was expecting them to tell me to inject myself with clexane again, but they didn't. They did tell me to up my warfarin dose again though.

Diet is a big factor with INRs and I tried to think if I had made any significant changes to mine in the last week. Nothing came to mind, but doing a little research online I came across a warning about drinking green tea, although it says nothing about it in the pack I got from the hospital.

I had green tea after lunch up in Newcastle. Maybe that threw the results out. In a way I hope it did, because that should mean they will go back to normal.

You can stop injecting yourself now. . .

2011-03-08T18:52:00.007Z

Yesterday was a good day. I had an early appointment to see my consultant at Addenbrookes. It is amazing to think it is three weeks now since I was there. It was a beautiful, bright clear morning and I drove for the first time since my stroke.

Addenbrookes seems almost designed to make any given part of it seem inaccessible. I suppose it is because the original building has been added to and added to over the years. It is a great labyrinth of a place now - and still growing.

After the uncertainties of the last few weeks - the constantly changing drug regime and the reluctance of my INR to get to the required level - it was good to be back in the reassuring hands of my consultant. He gives off an aura of having seen it all before and this familiarity is a comfort when so much of it seems new and disconcerting to me.

He did an ultrasound scan of my neck to check on how the artery is now. The only time I can recall having anything to do with one of these machines is when my wife was pregnant, but this seemed a much more swanky piece of kit. It was in colour (simulated coulour), for one thing and when my head was tilted that way, I could see vermilion-coloured blood surging through my arteries in steady pulses. Another setting brought the sound of those pulses, not in a drum beat, but in an unearthly THRUPPP-THRUPPP-THRUPP that changed tone and volume as he moved the device across my neck, explaining that though the tear had been in a rather awkward place to get at, he could tell how the artery was getting on by the level of flow elsewhere.

This was a test I had dreaded somewhat. Right at the beginning, the doctors had explained that medication was the preferred treatment, but that surgery was also an option. Although it was not explicitly said, I suspect that had this not gone well - had the artery not been healing itself - surgery would have been back on the agenda. But it all seemed to fine and I was told to come back in five months.

I had a blood test while I was there. The nurse used the little needles with the flexible tube attached that I had been used to in hospital and as then, she had no problem getting the blood out of me. And because I was there so early, the results were in that afternoon.

One of the warfarin nurses rang me to say that my INR was now 2.2. This was the first time I had been over two since I left hospital and this was good for two reasons: I was now at, or at least near, the prescribed level and I no longer had to inject myself with clexane.

This was such fantastic news. I have a black and purple bruise on my stomach about an inch and a half in diameter and a smaller one on the other side of my navel. I was running out of places to put the needle that weren't already bruised.

I just hope that is the last I see of those syringes.

The tour ends

2011-03-04T16:31:00.004Z

My blog tour comes to an end today with a visit to Book Chick City where I've listed five of my favourite scary books.

It has been a busy week. Despite the fact that I have hardly left my study I feel like I really have been on a tour! I was very sad to miss the World Book Day event yesterday but hear from Philips Reeve and Womack that it went very well. thanks again to Philip Womack for reading my book (and making a very good job of it by all accounts)

I had a giddy day yesterday watching the World Books Day flipbook hurtle up the Amazon listings here in the UK. I should clearly team up with Philip Reeve more often!

World Book Day reading

2011-03-03T14:04:00.001Z

The Teacher’s Tales of Terror from WorldBookDay's StoryTimeOnline on Vimeo.

World Book Day!

2011-03-03T08:34:00.023Z

Today my blog tour arrives at Wondrous Reads. . .

It's World Book Day here in the UK and I ought to be sharing an event with Philip Reeve at the Rose Theatre in Kingston. Sadly, due to my recent illness I thought it best to cancel. Philip Womack is going to stand in for me and will do an excellent job of it I'm sure.

My story for World Book Day is called Teacher's Tales of Terror and tells of a supply teacher coming to a school that is celebrating World Book Day by having a Victorian dressing up day.

Mr Munro

The grim-faced Mr Munro arrives at St Apollonia's like a chill breeze. He is named for H H Munro, who wrote as Saki. After making it clear to the children that he will take no nonsense from them, he opens up a book and begins to tell them a story. . .

The Jet Brooch

The Jet Brooch is set in Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast. It is a town I am very fond of. When I was growing up in Newcastle, we went there quite often. My father had sung here in choir festivals as a boy - in the wonderful St Mary's Church, with its interior of boxed pews and balconies and white twisted columns. I can remember lots of family trips there when I was young, and more recent trips with my wife and son, climbing the long flight of stone steps up to the abbey, to the church and to the gravestones, eaten by salt and soot, that are gradually tumbling over the cliffs.

Whitby is a superb location for a story. Bram Stoker spotted that when he stayed there and chose it as the place that Dracula would come ashore. It is famous for the seventh century Synod of Whitby, which resolved a dispute over deciding the date for Easter. It is famous for its whaling industry and two huge whale bones stand above the cliffs like an enormous wishbone topped with a harpoon point. It is also famous for the black stone called jet, so beloved of the morbid Victorians as jewelry. . .

The idea for the particular jet brooch in this story came from the St Hilda's snakestones carved from the fossil ammonites so common on this coast. Hilda was the abbess of Whitby Abbey where the Synod of Whitby was convened and legend has it that she turned a plague of snakes to stones (thereby explaining the ammonites which, though they do look like coiled snakes, are of course fossil shells of a nautilus-like creature).

I conflated this idea with the alchemical idea of the uroboros - a symbol showing a snake or dragon eating its own tail, used to signify eternity or cyclicality.

This tale eats its own tail.

Simon Magus

Simon Magus is a story that I have been playing around with for a very long time. I like the story of Simon Magus being brought to earth by Simon Peter. One version of the story goes that Simon Magus or Simon the Sorcerer had built a wooden tower in the Forum in Rome from which he levitated. Peter called on God to end the sorcery and Simon Magus came crashing to earth, dying later of his injuries. There is a lot more to the rivalry between Simon and Peter of course (mainly to do with the early church and its battle with 'heresies'), but it was this flying story that fascinated me. Pride comes before a fall. . .

The story is set in Sienna and is yet another tale that plays on my fear of heights.

Lydia

Lydia is an unashamed homage to Edgar Allan Poe, who had what can only be described as an obsession with premature burial and the blurring of the lines between sickness, sleep and death.

Lydia opens with Lady Overton brushing her daughter, Eleanor's, long red hair. She is tearfully remembering how, three months earlier, her other daughter (and Elanor's twin) had been lain to rest in the family vault. . .

Anything else I told you would ruin the story I'm afraid.

When the stories are finished, Mr Munro puts his book back in his briefcase and bids the children farewell. He has a rather troubling encounter with the headmistress as he leaves. . .

But again - I think I ought to leave it to you to find out what happens to Mr Munro on his way home.

The new bits

2011-03-02T08:38:00.019Z

Today my blog tour arrives at Carly Bennett's Writing from the Tub site.

The plan to rejacket the Tales of Terror series had been around for a long time, but last year Bloomsbury came up with the idea of adding a new story. It was a good idea.

So far I have talked about some of the inspirations for the stories in each book, but I have not mentioned the new sections. As the books are now hitting the bookshops, I thought I'd take a look at those added stories today. I'll start with the new edition of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror.

The Snow Globe

The Snow Globe sees Edgar return to Uncle Montague's house. Despite the fear induced by his last visit, he feels compelled to return by his addiction to Uncle Montague's stories (perhaps a bit of author wishful thinking going on here!). I enjoy trying to link all the worlds of my books, and after writing my novel The Dead of Winter, I decided to make winter a common theme in all these new sections. Edgar picks up a snow globe with the figure of a skater inside and despite having being warned never to touch anything in the study without permission, he shakes it. . .

Skating

Near where I live in Cambridge is a small enclosed meadow. It is at the start of the busy path to Grantchester and in the summer hundreds of people must walk by without noticing that there is an old cast iron lamp post in the middle of the field.

In days gone by, the field would be flooded in winter. The water would freeze and an ice rink would appear, complete with lamp to light the skaters. It must have looked magical.

There is a tradition of fen skating in this area; a tradition that has been revived recently during the last two hard winters. There is, of course, a famous skating scene in Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden when Tom and Hatty skate along the frozen river to Ely.

All these things contributed in some way to this story, which follows 'willful' Diana Partington as she ignores her mother's advice and goes skating into the middle of the frozen lake to partner a handsome young man she has noticed.

But they are skating on very thin ice.

After the story Edgar finds that he is trapped in the house by a sudden and heavy snow fall. Uncle Montague asks if he would like another story to pass the time. Knowing that each of the objects in the study seems to have its own tale, he asks what the story might be behind the ship - a rather peculiar, black and rotting ship - in a bottle nearby.

Which leads me of course to Tales of Terror from the Black Ship.

Father

Father sees Cathy and Ethan awake from the sleep they fell into at the end of the previous edition of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. They find their father sitting in the room with them. He tells them a story in an effort to try and explain his terrible actions.

The Mermaid

The Mermaid almost appeared in the first edition of Tales of Terror from the Tunnels Mouth - or at least a version of it almost did. Mermaids are usually depicted as beautiful, flaxen haired lovelies with the tails of some dull, unspecified but benign fish. Why?

There are lots of fish in the sea. . .

At the end of the story is a very gentle nod towards James Joyce. I love the last few paragraphs of The Dead and his description of snow falling - 'the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight' and 'softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves,' and his linking of those snow flakes with human souls drifting in the darkness.

I find snow very magical. Most people do, who don't have to cope with too much of it. It has a complex effect on familiar surroundings. It doesn't simply make things feel more pleasant, in the way sunshine does - it changes things utterly. It is beautiful, of course, but it is also dangerous. It can be used for sentimental effect, or for a chilling one.

The snowy world of Narnia was hugely appealing to me and to all the children who read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but of course, the winter represented evil - the grip of the cold-hearted White Witch. The snow that falls on George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life seems belligerent and heartless, as though it is trying to erase him.

I have always loved snow myself - the look of it, the feel of it, the eerie dreamlike silence it brings with it. I love the way it turns adults into children. As a child I used to look up into the clouds as the snow flakes fell towards me, imagining that I was flying up into the sky with the flakes falling past me.

The Rest Cure

The Rest Cure sees Robert, traumatised by his experiences in Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth, spending some time convalescing with his stepmother in a small cottage in East Anglia. He realises he has misjudged his stepmother and is also forced to accept that she does possess some powers of precognition and telepathy. She tells him a story. . .

The Voice

The Voice is one of my favourite stories from the whole collection. It was a story that I worried over for a long time. There are some stories that are completely reliant on the controlled releease of information - this is one of those. It must never feel like that of course. The reader needs to see the swan, not the flapping feet below the water. It has to glide. Right up until the point it rears up and pecks you on the backside.

The snow that is falling throughout these new sections now comes to the cottage. To quote James Joyce again. . .

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

And through this swirling snow, they see a boy walking past. . .

Tunnel's mouth tales

2011-03-01T08:36:00.042Z

The blood test shows my INRs still haven't reached 2, let alone the magic 2.5 we are aiming for. So another week (at least) of clexane jabs for me. I am not a happy man.

Life goes on however. My blog tour takes me to Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books today where I am talking about how the Tales of Terror books came about.

And that reminds me that though I went through the first two books outlining the inspirations for the stories, I never did get round to talking Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. I thought I'd put that right today. . .

The Train

I think the idea of setting one of the Tales of Terror books in a railway carriage had been in the back of my mind for a while before I suggested it to Bloomsbury. A big part of the inspiration behind the whole notion of these books was my enjoyment of portmanteau movies. The British production company Amicus made portmanteau movies something of a specialty and one of them - Dr Terror's House of Horror - was set on a train.

The movie stars two of the greats of horror - Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (both of whom were in my mind when I was developing the character of Uncle Montague). Cushing (who I was in awe of as a teenager - that voice, that amazing face) plays a fortune teller - Dr Schreck (German for terror, of course) who gives a tarot reading to each of the occupants of a railway carriage. I haven't seen the movie since my teens and looking at the plot summary online, I was taken aback to find that one of the tales features murderous plants and another is set on a Scottish island. . .

The Glasshouse

There is something creepy about Victorian palm houses. It's something to do with the soporific stuffiness and the slightly obscene exuberance of the plants. Some stories came out of my decision to set the tales in the Victorian era - this is one of those. But it also came from my love of John Wyndham who, lets face it, is the king of dangerous plants.

But actually Saki was in my mind most of all. If M R James was the touchstone for Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror and Poe for Tales of Terror from the Black Ship, I think Saki was to the fore in this volume.

The Island

I was thinking particularly of Wiltshire when I was writing this story. Travelling down the A303 to Somerset, where my mother-in-law lives, there is a point beyond Stone Henge where there seems to be a barrow every few yards. I was thinking of one of those huge fields that you get there - and in East Anglia for that matter - where some small piece of land has been left unploughed and untouched. The tractors and harvesters go round and round these islands like rakes round a boulder in a zen garden. How long have they been there? What might be secreted in those copses and spinneys?

A New Governess

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - or more correctly, the movie version directed by Jack Clayton as The Innocents - has always been in the back of my mind (as an an exemplar of the kind of mood I'm aiming at most of the time) when writing these stories, but A New Governess draws on that work more explicitly than the rest.

The Little People

I was not very amused when I went to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army at the cinema and saw that my idea for unfriendly fairies was not unique. But what idea is? The setting is very different of course. I wanted to have some fun with that airy-fairy Pre-Raphaelite silliness of the period.

The Crotach Stone

The first holiday I went on with my wife - though she wasn't my wife then - was to the Outer Hebrides via the Isle of Skye. We stayed in a tin-roofed bungalow on Harris on the shores of Loch Seaforth and had an amazing time. It has to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The beaches of Harris are stunning and few are better than the one at Scarista. The Scarista Stone, which stands on the dunes there, was the inspiration for the Crotach Stone.

Gerald

Puppets are inherently creepy. Actually anything with a painted face - puppets, clowns, mannequins, dolls. We need to trust the expression on a face and we are disturbed when that expression does not move, or may hide a very different one. I had already picked at this phobia with The Un-Door in Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror. This is a kind of odd spin on the voodoo doll idea.

Sister Veronica

Mad nuns? Well - I suppose Powell & Pressburger's Black Narcissus played its part. But I think this story actually came from a different direction. We had a few holidays in Italy when my son was young. Many friends at the time said that their children would never go to art galleries or museums or into old churches and cathedrals, but we were determined that we would at least try and enthuse him before giving up.

So when we went into a cathedral we would look at the carved animals and the wall paintings. He was fascinated by the idea of reliquaries - those treasure troves of jewel-encrusted vessels for holding pieces of the true cross or the finger bone of St Peter. Sometimes, in a side chapel there might even be the whole body under the altar.

I showed my son how different artists had depicted the same bible scenes over and over again through the ages and how a visual shorthand had developed so that the viewer could easily identify a given character and story. Mary wore blue, Peter wore yellow and held keys, John the Baptist wore a hair shirt and pointed to heaven. And so on, and so on. We would go on a search for saints.

Some saints were recognisable by the method of their martyrdom. St Lucy with her eyes on a platter, St Bartholomew carrying his own flayed skin, St Peter Martyr with a knife sticking out of his head. What child isn't going to be fascinated by that kind of stuff?

And how did I know about any of this? Well - partly because I took Gothic Architecture as part of my Art A Level and developed a bit of a passion for churches, partly because I know a little bit about religious art, but mainly because of a book called Signs and Symbols in Christian Art by George Ferguson. The reproductions are all poor quality, in black and white, and one of them is a grainy rendering of a painting attributed to an assistant of Piero della Francesca. It is of an unpleasant-looking St Apollonia standing holding a pair of pincers. The seed of the story took hold when I first saw that picture.

The Whispering Boy

I have no idea where this story came from, other than from my own fervent dislike of flies. When we lived in Norfolk we were plagued by them at certain points in the year. Working in the garden would attract flies immediately, buzzing round, horribly thirsty for sweat. But far worse were the cluster flies that would erupt from the attic and gather in their hundreds at the windows. My son had the loft hatch in his bedroom and we had to seal the gaps around it with masking tape or his room would fill with these revolting creatures. I hate flies. I. Hate. Flies.

But having said that, I think this may be my favourite story in the whole series.

A Crack in the Wall

There are many cliches in horror movies and one of them is the image of someone peering through a hole in a wall or door. Sometimes eyes move in a painting comic horror effect. The photo shows Anthony Perkins as voyeur in Psycho. Here the threat comes from the watcher. But there is also something scary about putting your eye so close to a crack or hole that you can feel your lashes brush against the surface on either side. You are fearful of what you might see, but you can't stop yourself from looking.

The Tunnel's Mouth

I have praised Lawrence Gordon's Clark's 1970s M R James adaptations many times on this blog, but actually Lawrence's finest work for the BBC's Ghost Story at Christmas strand was arguably his 1976 adaptation of Charles Dickens' The Signalman.

I have very self-consciously made off with the set of The Signalman. There is no actual signal box in my story, but the steep-sided railway cutting leading to a tunnel is a direct lift from Dickens.

Having said that, the line that Robert travels on is a version of the line between King's Lynn and London's King's Cross - a route I travelled at least once a week for much of the time I lived in Norfolk. Between Cambridge and London, there are long tunnels - and it was here that I imagined that Robert's train had come to a halt.

As for Robert's back story, a part of that certainly came from this creepy 1970s public information film voiced by Donald Pleasance.

Blog tour

2011-02-28T14:09:00.010Z

Ow, ow, ow.

The blood test was another three hole affair this morning as the nurse tried to extract blood from a stony-faced author. The big difference with the nurse at the GPs and the guy at the hospital was that the nurse was pleasant throughout and that's pretty much all you can hope for. We all know things are going to go less than perfectly, but that is just when you want some warmth from whoever is dealing with you. We can all be pleasant when things are going well.

Anyway, blood was eventually sucked out of me and will wing its way to the hospital for the tests. Time will tell.

I was quoted in my old paper, the Independent on Sunday, yesterday. When I say 'my' I just mean I used to work there. I did a strip with Chris Riddell at the Sindy for a few years and I took over as political cartoonist when Chris left to go to The Observer (although I subsequently allowed myself to be persuaded by Chris to follow him there).

Inbali Iserles was writing an article about the growth of horror and 'paranormal romance' in teen and YA fiction and asked me for my thoughts - I had many, but she wisely chose to ignore most of them and give more space to Mary Hoffman.

I'm off on a blog tour this week, organised by Ian Lamb, my publicist at Bloomsbury. Each day this week, I will be guesting on somebody else's blog in anticipation of the launch of the rejacketed Tales of Terror series and of my World Book Day flipbook with Philip Reeve.

First stop is an interview today with The Book Zone. The blog post features this little promo from Bloomsbury.

Football

2011-02-27T14:22:00.007Z

My son went off to football this afternoon. There have been few occasions when I have opted not to go and watch, but I have missed the last two games. Last week - just to spite me - he actually scored. Weeks of standing in icy gales and he scores when I don't turn up.

It was three weeks ago that I had my mini stroke. It feels like five minutes ago and it feels like five months. It is both horribly vivid and yet somehow distant - as if I have already shed the skin of that version of me and moved on.

But of course I haven't really. I don't think I will be able to until my warfarin dose has been sorted out and I have seen my consultant and (I hope) had the all clear from him.

I have a blood test booked for tomorrow morning. The results from that will hopefully show that my INRs have risen to a safe level and that I can cut out the clexane injections.

But I have learned not to get ahead of myself.

Inception

2011-02-26T23:12:00.012Z

We watched Inception on DVD tonight. Or did we?

Yes, we did.

Inception is essentially a cinematic experience of course, and watching it on an old television does not do it justice. having said that, the good thing about watching a film like this on a small screen is that you are not dazzled by the effects in the way you are in a cinema. You see the plot more - and the holes therein.

It has been likened to The Matrix for obvious reasons, but the movie I was most reminded of while I was watching was The Sting. It is after all a kind of heist movie, and one built up on layers of artifice. But I'm not sure it was as thought through as either of them.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy it. There were lots of things about it that were great. DiCaprio was very good in the lead role. I liked the fact that the labyrinth maker was called Ariadne. Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos who helped Theseus kill the Minotaur. The Minotaur was replaced at the centre of the labyrinth by the less subtly named Mal (DiCaprio's dead wife).

The scary elements in the movie were not brought out as well as they could have been. The idea that the incidental characters peopling a dream will resent the presence of an intruder and rise up against them was excellent, but having established it, they sort of wasted it with 'trained' projections running around with guns. The children, only ever seen from the back, were very effective.

Mal was very creepy. That was a movie in itself. What a great idea- that this resentful, malevolent ghost would haunt DiCaprio's dreams. It's just a shame that this more compelling personal story was buried under the special effects-laden blockbuster. The Where Eagles Dare layer of the dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream was frankly a bit silly.

So not a bad movie - more a frustrating one. There was an absolutely fantastic movie in there, trying to get out: one which understands that dreams are rarely blockbusters in which cities are turned upside down, but are more often strangely skewed versions of the mundane.

That is the disturbing thing about them.

The Road

2011-02-25T22:45:00.015Z

I finally got round to watching The Road. My wife bought it for me on DVD but it has been sitting on the shelf for a long time now.

My wife hasn't read the book, but I have and it's a book that had a big impact on me. I read it on the train journey to and from Halifax a couple of years ago when I was up for the Calderdale Book Award. I had read several Cormac McCarthy books before and so I was expecting something that was beautifully written. I was ready too for violence - McCarthy's books all have moments of brutal violence in them. But I was taken by surprise by how moving I found The Road. A friend said she found it 'sentimental' but I certainly did not. I found it harrowing.

But how would a movie of this book work? And could it stand alone - as all movies should be able to - without using the prior knowledge of the book as a prop? I wasn't sure.

Actually, I think it is quite a good movie. Viggo Mortensen is excellent in the lead and . The challenge in turning a book into a movie is that so much of the pleasure in reading a book is to do with the way it is written - the voice of the author. Stripping that away, you are left with plot and the hope that you can evoke some visual equivalent of the authorial voice.

Or you can chicken out and have a narrator.

There is a bit of narration in The Road. They obviously could not bear to lose McCarthy's voice completely - and who can blame them. But it does throw up the puzzle of how we are hearing the voice. In the book the voice is McCarthy's, not the man's - although the narrator is identified with the man. But in the movie it is Viggo Mortensen's voice and where is it coming from?

The bigger loss of nerve was in the flashbacks. They clearly did not want a movie in which women played no part.

But the incidental music was probably the most jarring thing. This is a dead world covered in ash. It is a silent world - horribly so. It would have been better by far if the only sound had been the squeaking trolley wheels and the trudge of footsteps. But I am probably describing a Tarkovsky movie rather than a Hollywood one.

Stripped of McCarthy's writing, the book seems more like a dystopian sci-fi story than it did when reading it. I don't think McCarthy was at all interested in what caused the catastrophic change in human fortunes. He just wanted to look at humanity pared down. The movie reminded me of Richard Matheson's I am Legend (the novel, not the dreadful movie) - and reminded me again of how good that book is.

But I think the movie does retain some of the books interesting themes, not least the very pertinent issue of how brutal we can become and still claim to be civilised.

Piles of terror

2011-02-23T15:42:00.013Z

This was always going to be a busy time for me, but my week in hospital has not helped. I am still in the process of editing Mister Creecher with Helen Szirtes. Mister Creecher was due to be published in June but is now coming out in October (twinned with the paperback edition of The Dead of Winter). The change was made before my recent adventure, but it was probably just as well. But it still needs to be finished. I think it is probably the best thing I've ever written.

But what do I know?

Just before I went into hospital I submitted a synopsis and sample chapter of my next book for Bloomsbury. This is a contemporary chiller set in Amsterdam. I am itching to get on and write it. It is called The Mask. I will tell you more about that book soon. . .

In the meantime, the rejacketed Tales of Terror are about to launch and so my advance copies have been arriving. Piles of each of the books have been stacked up on the steps of our staircase in the absence of anywhere else to put them.

I also have a World Book Day flipbook coming out with the redoubtable Philip Reeve. My side is called The Teacher's Tale of Terror (more about that later) and Philip's is called Traction City. It is a small book - but I have many copies of that too.

I need a bigger house.

You'll feel a bit of a prick

2011-02-21T10:11:00.009Z

I had another pointless (if you'll excuse the pun), grumpy phone call with one of the warfarin nurses who told me to increase my warfarin dose and get ready to get a bit more practice in with the old needle. But I'm not cross with the warfarin nurses.

I'm not cross with anyone really. But certainly not the warfarin nurses. They are only doing what's best for me. It's not their fault they have to tell me to take clexane injections. And it is all too easy to take out the righteous anger you feel about being ill on the person who is most associated with the illness - the doctor or the nurse. It is an impulse to be avoided at all costs.

My second attempt at a clexane injection was not as good as my first, watched by the nurse at the GPs. I though that this was due to having to inject into an area that was already bruised from previous injections.

But my next one was - even though I say so myself - pretty darned good. The next one too. I am definitely getting the knack. Although the pulling out bit needs some work. It's just as well I'm getting the hang of it - my INRs have not moved a muscle and I may be on the clexane for a couple of weeks yet.

The area you have to play with - if play is the right work (and it isn't) - is not huge. You have to inject the stuff to one side of the navel and just below, but not too far away and not too near. Inevitably that means poking the same bit of flab.

And of course the anti-coagulation regime makes you bruise as well as bleed. I rarely bruise normally. I don't know why - I just never have. But I'm making up for it now. The arm where the blood test man flicked and waggled is now a rich damask of green and purple.

So I wasn't exactly looking forward to my blood test at the GPs this morning. Particularly as I had had a really bad night, unable to sleep despite being dog tired.

But my nurse was superb. She could have almost crept up on me and taken the blood without me knowing. She was a stealth-vampire. You really become appreciate of people's needle skills when you have a lot of jabs. Top marks.

'Just a little scratch,' she said as she was putting the needle in. They all say that now. 'Just a little scratch.' Even though that's not really the sensation at all. It's a prick: a little prick. But they don't want to say that. They don't want to come over all Carry On Matron! so they say 'scratch'.

But say what they like, you still feel a prick.

It's easy

2011-02-18T10:01:00.008Z

I lost my cool yesterday. The reserves of calm and positivity got eaten up in a trice. The smooth running engine of my treatment had developed a strange knock. It was going to be a bumpier ride than I had previously thought.

I allowed myself to get annoyed with the 'warfarin nurse'. I wasn't really annoyed with her. I was annoyed at what she was saying and what it meant. I tried to make that clear but that distinction is a little tricky to make when you are annoyed. She suggested that I write to the Patients' Association. But I didn't want to make a complaint. I don't feel as though I'm complaining. I just wanted her to say, 'Yes - that shouldn't have happened, I'll get right on to that and make sure it never happens again.' But it was going to be down to me to tell the doctor by way of a complaint, or he wasn't going to get told.

The doctor who called from my GP practice did not really understand why I was a little bit taken aback by the news that I was to inject myself. 'It's very simple,' she said. I'm sure it is. 'They are in pre-measured doses,' she said. Or not, as it turned out.

But the fact is that the week before, when I was in hospital, I was told that it was critical that I get my INR up to 2.5. I was monitored every four hours and had my blood tested every day. When I was on clexane the nurse checked and rechecked the dose of a drug she could not give me unless a doctor signed for it each day. I had to wait long into the evening one time because a doctor could not be found.

Now I can get a week's supply from the chemists and inject myself. Now I am seen as safe to measure the dose myself. Now I don't need to be monitored. With the self same INR I was given bed rest and loaded with 10 mgs of warfarin each day. Now I'm up and about and given 3 mgs of warfarin. What was critical last week now seems to be a bit 'Meh'. 'You have to trust that they know what they are doing,' said my GP. 'They are the experts.' Yes - except that one of these experts mucked up my meds. Which experts do I trust now? The warfarin nurses? The consultant? My GP?

'It's easy,' said the nurse as she and the doctor tried to sort out exactly how much of the clexane I had to squirt away to get me down to the correct dose. There are three syringes, I thought. Let's all have a go if it's so easy. It can be my treat.

But none of this was the doctor's fault or the nurses fault and I began to feel sorry for the latter as she began to pick up on the stress levels from me and my wife and clearly started to doubt her own common sense. She and the doctor were - of course - very kind and understanding.

So, after much faffing about we agreed on the dose. I was happy with the reading on the syringe. The nurse was happy. All that remained was for me to stick the thing in my belly. How hard could it be? I'd pricked a sausage before. It had to be pretty similar.

'Just rest the point on the skin and then push,' she said.

And that's what I did. I'm not going to say it didn't hurt, but it hurt less than the guy who waggled away at the blood test department at the hospital. I'm glad that I knew that it was going to sting after a short delay or I might have thought I'd done something wrong.

It was a strange sensation. A tiny moment of resistance before the point breaks the skin. But in terms of pain, really not so bad. Not that I'm looking forward to the next one in half an hour or so. The devils that were holding back the hands of time while I was in hospital are now cackling and spinning the clock hands like a roulette wheel.

And they are putting their scaly hands to their foreheads and making an 'L' for 'Loser'

Of course it was never going to be that simple. . .

2011-02-17T16:16:00.008Z

On Monday I went to see my GP. It was the first time I had walked in the open air for a week apart from the brief stroll to Joad's car the day before. The sun was shining. The bird's were twittering. All of that was laid on especially for me, you know. And it was much appreciated.

My GP is another credit to the NHS. She is yet another person who manages the trick of appearing wholly concerned with you and your needs even while you know that can't be true. It's a kind of gift. Doctors are not supposed to be any good at blood tests either, but she was pretty good with me. I hardly felt a thing. Sunlight streamed in. It would all be fine now. It was all just a matter of adjusting to the new routine. She smiled. We smiled. It would be fine.

It's all about the INR - the international normalised ratio - which is the measure of the blood's coagulation. The base level is one - indicating a normal person under normal conditions. My target level is 2.5. In other words my blood needs to be 2.5 times less 'clotty' (a word I have invented) than a normal person. I was loaded with warfarin with a side order of clexane until my level rose.

The trouble is, it rose too high. It reached 3.9. You don't want to be too high otherwise you will get all Sam Peckinpah when you nick yourself shaving. So they cut the clexane. Hurray! I was childishly pleased when they said I didn't need clexane on the Saturday night. I'd never considered the idea of jabbing myself with a needle just to experience the joy of stopping.

But when my blood was tested on the Sunday morning, the INR was still high. The nurse that signed me out said 'They are advising you omit warfarin for one day'. Who 'they' were I don't know. But I'd like to give them a couple of doses of clexane just to say thanks.

The GP recommended 2 mgs of warfarin for the nest couple of days as the last test had showed my high INR. I had an outpatient visit booked with the anticoagulation clinic on Thursday where my blood would be tested again.

My wife drove me to Addenbrookes. She has been suffering from frozen shoulders for months and months and this was the first time she had driven in a very long time. She dropped me off and I went to see the 'warfarin nurse' who told me all about my new life with the drug. She also told me that the hospital should not have omitted warfarin.

'You can't do that,' she said.
'Then why did they?'
'Because they don't really understand how it works.'

I went down to have my blood taken. I had to take a ticket like you get at the deli counter and wait. I was number 99. Ping. My turn. My turn to have someone tugging ineffectually on my arm with a needle.

'Which arm do you prefer?'
'I don't mind,' I said.

Who has a preferred arm? I had blood taken every day from arms and hands without pain or problem for a week. This guy did this every day. He ought to be good at it, you'd think. But he tried the left arm. Not the ridge of my arm like the nurses had done, but the smooth bit in the middle. Odd. But he must know what he's doing, I thought. For a while.

Much tapping and fiddling about and he said that the blood wasn't flowing. 'Sometimes it just doesn't.' Hmmm. 'Sometimes'?. I'm going to guess at quite often. Anyway he had a poke around in another vein in my other arm with similar results. Eventually he called in his colleague (I'm guessing superior) who clearly did not appreciate my not seeing the funny side of it all, but got the blood out in seconds. I left with cotton wool taped to the three holes.

Later I get a phone call from my warfarin nurse. The INRs are low - really low. I'm only 1.3 - back where I started practically before I was loaded with the warfarin. 'It's because they omitted you see. . .' She rang my GP practice and one of the doctors - a doctor I did not really know and who seemed very blase about the whole thing - then rang me. They (It was 'they' again) wanted me to inject with clexane. Inject myself. For a week.

Now again - I know lots of people who have had to inject themselves for years and years. I feel bad getting crabby about it. I didn't want to do it, but I actually knew I would cope perfectly well. It's weird but not the worst thing. But it was knowing that it was all unnecessary that rankled. Knowing that whoever suggested that I omit the warfarin - and I will probably never know who that was - not only sentenced me to a regime of injections, but also seriously endangered my health by reducing my INR to a level at which clots were once more a potential hazard and a repeat stroke much more likely than it should have been.

And these are the tiny margins an organisation like the NHS works within: if it is not working perfectly, then something is wrong. No matter how long the good work lasts, it is the bad work you remember. The road can be smooth for a hundred miles, but it's the hole that you notice.

I feel sorry for the blameless doctors and nurses who saw me all that week. If I had managed to escape that Saturday I would never have had that blood test that showed my INRs as high and I would not have been told to omit on the Sunday. My GPs blood test may have shown I was high but I would have simply had my warfarin adjusted. I would have had nothing but praise. But there's that 'What if?' again.

It's always there isn't it?

Linger on

2011-02-15T17:40:00.020Z

I had some great visitors during my stay in Addenbrookes. We all want to feel our absence has been noticed. My studio mates John, Andrew and Lynette all came to see me. I had barely been into the studio lately. Had I seen Andrew or Lynette since New Year's Eve's Mad Men party? I'm not sure. It was lovely to see them. I was genuinely moved to think they had made the effort.

Big ball of energy John was full of excitement at his upcoming TV appearance and brought me a book and sketching equipment. It was great to see them all. It is pathetically touching to look out along a hospital bed and see familiar faces. I don't see enough of my friends. I retreat into myself through work. Do I do enough to deserve this concern?

My lovely neighbour Jim came in, witty and wise as always, amused in a kind way that my son had taken to his dressing gown in sympathy with his poorly father. My old friend Anne came too. We've known each other a long time now - is it really twenty-five years? - and we've shared some bad times as well as good and will no doubt share some more. But in the end that is what friendship is isn't it - a letting down of guards and artifice. It is not having to pretend. Pain and joy.

It is part of what makes me a poor social animal. I am not very good at small talk. I don't really see the point of acquaintances. But of course its a stage you have to go through. Vulnerability is one of those 'Show me yours and I'll show you mine' kind of things. You have to trust people to allow them close. And you have to win trust. This will bring me closer to the people who know about it.

My wonderful wife (who had to field all the telephone calls and emails) continued to come in every day, but eventually only once a day, because my son, recovered from his cold, came in on the bus by himself bringing me a cup of coffee and my lunch. One day he brought a book of wildlife photos and we looked at every page. Another day he brought his You Are the Ref book and tested me. . .

'At half-time in a non-League game you notice one of the goalkeepers going into the ladies' toilet. You approach the manager who admits the keeper is female. The opposition manager demands you abandon the game. What do you do?'

He also brought me in some drawings, much admired by the nurses. 'He's only 13? Wow! He is very talented.' Yes. Yes he is. Oh how good life can appear when the normality of it is threatened. How sweet it seems next to the bitterness of stress and discomfort.

Gregor came to see me too quite early on. I take his son to football training most Thursdays. He plays for the same team as my son. Gregor is a doctor and works in A&E. I had complained to him a week or two back about a severe pain in my neck. That, it turns out, was the pain from the tear in the artery. But a visit to a GP would have produced a prescription for painkillers and nothing more. No one would have guessed what it was. I did not have to feel stupid or guilty. It could not be helped. Sometimes you just have to take the cards that you are given. Pain and joy.

You spend a strange amount of time reassuring people as a patient. You don't want to be a burden to the nurses, you want to please the doctors, you don't want to worry your visitors. 'I'm fine, really.' It was a day or two into my stay before the shock of what had happened hit me in the way it had already hit my wife. I suddenly felt very fragile, very vulnerable.

What if I had been driving my son to football when it happened? What if I had been asleep? What if it had been worse? What if it happens again? What if, what if, what if?'

I think I'm right in saying that Jean Paul Sartre said 'What if?' is the most redundant phrase in any language. It is certainly one of the most insidious. It can stop you seeing the good fortune you've actually had and make you concentrate on the bad fortune that you might have suffered under different circumstances.

I was lucky. It's something to be glad about, not suspicious of.

Though I had hoped to be out on Saturday, I didn't escape until Sunday. This was really the only glitch in the whole proceedings. I ended up spending another night in hospital and taking up a valuable bed on purely administrative grounds. I had not been prescribed my meds. We all knew what they were and what the recommended dose was, but because the registrar had not actually prescribed them, I could not have them and so could not leave.

This situation looked in danger of repeating itself on the Sunday, until a senior nurse stepped in and took control. Joad had come in to visit me with his son and was luckily on hand to take me home. The lost man came into the day room and after trying to walk through a mirror thanked us for letting him sit in on our meeting.

Then all at once we were signed out, walking to the car and getting in. Joad started the engine and the stereo started up. It was Lou Reed, singing Pale Blue Eyes. . .

Thought of you as my mountain top,
Thought of you as my peak.
Thought of you as everything,
I've had but couldn't keep.
I've had but couldn't keep. . .

Linger on. The first phase was over.

Just one patient

2011-02-15T17:26:00.014Z

Blood tests every morning. One arm then the other, then back to the first. Now it's my hand for some reason. And now it's the other hand. . .'You have lovely veins.' Thanks. I think.

On Friday I saw my consultant who said that he was happy for me to leave provided my INR - the level of the clotting ability of my blood - was over 2 for two days running. We had not had the results back from that morning's blood test, but he felt sure that it would be fine and I should be out on the following day. He shook my hand, as he always did, and away he went.

That night was particularly bad. The patient from across the corridor was being particularly persistent in his escape attempts and a collection of security men were called. They all looked like extras from The Sopranos - pale and wide - and I wasn't quite sure what their remit was. They seemed to simply be a human barrier between the tagged would-be escapee and the door alarms. They were like bouncer's outside a nightclub. Except the outside world was the nightclub and we didn't have the right dress code.

This particular patient came into our bay more and more during my stay. He was tall, well spoken, bald (scarred naturally) with a high distinguished forehead. He looked like a headmaster or a bank manager or a senior civil servant - or would have had he not been dressed in claret pyjamas. I woke one morning to find him standing over me. He looked like he was judging me and finding me wanting. It was a little disconcerting. Mainly though it was just sad to see a man who had clearly been a figure of some authority reduced to wandering the ward, lost - terribly, terribly lost.

Occasionally he would leave things - a carrier bag, a drink he had taken from a nurse - or borrow things, walking off in my neighbour's slippers one time. Another time he stood at the foot of the same man's bed - he had just had a large tumour removed from his head - as the nurse did his rounds. 'Will he race again?' he asked the nurse.

On one occasion he actually got into another patient's bed, much to the amusement of the nurses. But they were not spiteful laughs. They were so caring towards that lost man. And anyway - who could begrudge them a laugh on that ward. I should think you have to take the laughs when they come.

During my whole time there I never encountered a grumpy or jobsworth nurse. They all seemed totally committed to their jobs and superhumanly patient. More than that - they were simply kind. And can you train someone to be kind?

I was treated with the same seriousness as the far more critical cases around me and they in turn were treated with the same light and friendly touch as me. Even if a patient showed no visible signs of being aware, they still chatted to them and explained every procedure in the same way as they did with me. 'I'm just going to take your blood pressure, if that's OK,' they would say to a man who showed little sign of being conscious. There was something incredibly touching about that. I heard a nurse telling a colleague that she had felt pulled in too many directions the previous shift.

'The thing about nursing is this,' he said. 'You only have one patient - the patient you are with. That's what you have to remember. No matter how many other things are going on. You just have that one patient to deal with.'

I cannot see how I could have had better care from those nurses and their care of the more critical cases around me was fantastic. A man opposite me was being transferred to another hospital after a long stay. A steady stream of staff came in all through the day as shifts changed, all wishing him well and asking him to text them to let them know he he had got on. Another nurse told me she had called in at two in the morning because she couldn't sleep worrying about a patient she had left at three in the afternoon.

I was reminded of a recent piece in The Economist about the proposed sell of of Forestry Commission woodland here in the UK. They visited a forest and talked to volunteers. Wasn't the Forestry Commission an impersonal state bureaucracy? No, they said pointing to someone walking by, it's not impersonal - it's Colin. Well, for me the NHS was not impersonal either: it was Rachel and Silvia and Alison and Gemma and the others too numerous to name.

It was also the round of doctors who all to a man and woman treated me faultlessly, from my consultant to the junior doctor who seemed to be there all day and most of the evening and always - always - had a smile on her face. The registrar who dealt with me most often was great, glasses perched on top of his head, intelligent, professional but warm with it. Can you train someone to be warm?

They were all kind and reassuring to me and to my wife, making eye contact and giving the impression for that for those minutes I was their only concern. They explained everything and understood why that was important.

My father's care in hospital has not always been what it should be and there has been some justifiably bad press about the treatment of the elderly in UK hospitals. But I - still relatively young - had no complaints. I got the impression that the staff on the neurology wards enjoyed their work and found it fulfilling. But I never for one moment felt that I had stopped being me; that I had turned into a 'case'.

They deserve a great deal of credit for that.

A lot of people just drift off

2011-02-15T17:23:00.010Z

The MRI scan was very strange. It looks a lot like the CT scanner in that it is another white tube that you are taken into on a rolling bed. But this time I was given ear plugs and had padding placed around my head both to dampen the noise and keep my head still. I was told that it did not matter whether I kept my eyes open or closed but a lot of people drift off as it takes twenty-five minutes.

My only contact with the outside world was a small mirror - a periscope that allowed me to see the operators in their booth. That and a tinny voice that would announce 'The next session is about to start. Five minutes for the next one. . .' It all felt like something from a sci-fi movie - but not in a good way. It was like 2001 A Space Odyssey.

'Hello HAL. Do you read me HAL?'
'Affirmative Chris. I read you.'
'What's the problem?'
'I think you know what the problem is as well as I do.'

Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. Initially I could not see how anyone could drift off under such circumstances. The noise is incredibly loud. DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH. At first it was a series of electronic squeaks and bleeps, like the ultrasound chatter of dolphins and bats. The rest was like some kind of hideously repetitive 1990s electronic dance music - or a pneumatic drill next to my head. DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH. But as it went on, I could see how one might fall asleep. The rhythm is very intense and loud, but also very hypnotic. Tune in. Turn on. Drop out. Solid gone.

'Daisy, Daisy. . .give me your. . .answer do. . .I'm. . .half crazy. . .' HAL's slowing voice in my head as he is being disconnected.

The registrar who had seen me earlier returned when my wife and son were visiting to tell us that the MRI scan showed that there was indeed a carotid dissection. This was an immense relief to me. I had a dread that they would find nothing and go on some long fishing trip round my body to discover the cause of the clots. It had a name. It felt smaller immediately.

My wife almost fainted as he described the dangers of a repeat of the incident and my son looked like he did as I was leaving the house for the hospital. They both looked pale, tired and overloaded with stress. I wanted to wake up and find it was all a dream and felt angry with myself when I thought of the friends and family members who had endured far worse hardships recently. Get a grip.

I had been walking around and popping downstairs to buy myself a paper and a coffee and fully expected to leave hospital that day. All that was to end. I was prescribed bed rest and told to take it easy. They were going to keep me in. Had I suffered any more ill effects? If I noticed a loss of sight in my left eye - like a black curtain descending - I had to let them know immediately. I assured him that I would.

So far I had been on a regime of aspirins in the morning and statins at night. On the Tuesday I was given my first dose of anticoagulants. One was in tablet form - warfarin (I lost count of how many times I was told that this was originally marketed as a rat poison) - and the other in the form of an injection of clexane - to the stomach.

Warfarin has the perverse property of actually being a clotting agent initially and so clexane has to be administered until you have enough warfarin in your system. While the clexane injection is not so bad, I hated lying there and letting someone stab me in the stomach with a needle. I wanted to grab the nurse's wrist. And it was one of the few times I wished I was fatter!

Also the injection really hurts afterwards. In fact it is very like a wasp sting in its effect. But I had only to look at my two neighbours to remind myself that I had very little to complain about in terms of discomfort or pain. And the effect doesn't last long. Even so - I came to dread those injections. How weak I am.

My son went down with a sore throat and cold and so could not come in to see me. Whilst he certainly did have a cold, we think it was also the stress of seeing me taken into hospital and of seeing the shocking state of those around me. The cold meant that he was banned from the ward and it was probably no bad thing. My wife's stress was merely increased though, as she now had to go back and forth between us, tending to our differing needs, and getting lost and exhausted in the process. 'I'm half crazy, all for the love of you. . .'

The days went by. Lights out at ten or ten thirty, woken at six for blood pressure checks, blood taken at eight or so, warfarin tablets and a clexane jab in the evening, statins at night. Marks & Spencer salads and homemade sandwiches from my wife for my lunch and tea. Texts and phone calls to my friends and family. Look at the paper or read a book. Watch a little TV. Play solitaire on my mobile. Wonder whether we would be offered a biscuit with our tea.

And what type of biscuit would it be?

Brain flakes

2011-02-15T12:00:00.009Z

On the morning of Sunday 6 February I went to my computer to look up the route to my son's lunchtime football match on Google maps. I reached for my cup of tea and found that my arm felt heavy and weak, and I did not quite trust it to carry the cup over the keys without spilling it.

I felt a numbness in my face - around the mouth and on the right side of my jaw. It tingled as it does after being given anaesthetic at the dentist. There was a long moment of refusal - of refusal to accept that this was happening to me; a pathetic attempt to mentally run away from the reality of it.

Then I got up and went downstairs. My wife walked towards me in the kitchen and what I wanted to say was 'Don't panic. Don't freak out. But there's something wrong with me and I think it may be serious.' But what came out was slurred and garbled by my anaesthetised tongue. I couldn't speak.

My wife rushed to ring 999 and they told her to get me to lie down and wait for the paramedic who seemed to arrive within seconds of the call. He examined me and I think it was he who first let the word 'stroke' float out into the air like a black balloon, though it had been with us all the time.

The ambulance arrived whilst the paramedic was still running his checks. My speech had mostly returned while the paramedic was there, but had gone again by the time I was leaving the house and getting in the ambulance. This transience was somehow more frightening. My wife came with me and we left our poor, startled son back at the house on his own.

I lay on the bed in the ambulance watching the trees and rooftops going my, trying to keep a mental note of everything. It was a strange, dreamlike view of a route I knew so well. I tried to fill the awkward silence by chatting to the ambulance men, but I just could not form the words. My wife mouthed the words 'Don't talk,' and I gave up.

I was moved from ambulance to wheelchair and we waited in the reception at A&E until someone came to collect me . The emergency doctor in A&E was exactly the kind of person you want in a situation like this - he was kind and thoughtful, making sure that he made eye contact with me and my wife and explaining every part of the process, and he gave off a comforting aura of being very, very good at his job.

I was back in a bed now and now and had a cannula put in my arm. Pads were stuck all over me and wires connected to them for the ECG. The first of many blood tests and blood pressure checks were taken. I was given a large dose of aspirin and swabbed for MRSA.

The doctor went through a whole set of strength, coordination and spacial awareness tests. I had to push against him with my fingers, with my clenched fists, with a bent arm, with a straight arm - and then I had to pull against him. I had to do similar things with my legs and toes. I had to follow his moving finger with my eyes and he checked my peripheral vision by waggling his fingers above my head and down at his sides and checking if I could see them. He tested my reflexes with a rubber mallet and ran the point of the handle down the soles of my feet (which is excruciating!). I had to point to finger clicks with my eyes closed. I had to touch my nose with my eyes shut with alternate fingers. I had to touch my thumb rapidly with alternate fingers of the same hand and 'play the piano'.

And there was a definite difference between the two hands. My right hand - the hand I use - was slower, weaker, clumsier. The doctor told us that some sort of mini stroke seemed the likeliest explanation, but they needed to take a CT scan to confirm.

The CT scan involved lying on a moving bed with a socket for my head to rest in, that rolled me into tube. I closed my eyes on entering the scanner - as instructed - but wasn't sure whether I was allowed to reopen them, so kept them shut. All I could hear was an escalating hum or roar - like a kettle coming to the boil beside my head.

I was then warned that I was about to have water injected into my arm via the cannula I had been fitted with in A&E. A small voice inside the machine said that the injection was about to start and then I felt warm water go into my arm, spread up my shoulder across my head and chest and then down my abdomen and thighs until I felt as though I had just wet myself. One of the strangest sensations I have ever experienced.

A neurology consultant came in to see me and went into the booth to look at the scans. I was taken back to A&E and to my wife who was still waiting there. The consultant followed me down and we had a chat about what may have caused what they could now see was definitely a stroke.

In someone of my age and fitness, one of the probably causes of such a mini stroke is a carotid dissection, or tear to the arterial wall, resulting in the production of clots that are sent up into the brain. It could also be the result of a narrowing of the artery and depending on what caused the stroke, I was told that I may have to have surgery to replace the artery or to put a balloon inside it to widen it, or I may get away with the condition being controlled by drugs. To find this out, I would need an MRI scan.

And so I took up residence in my hospital ward. I was in a bay with two other men, both of whom were neurosurgery patients and in far worse shape than me. The night was filled with noise: the voices of the nurses as they went about their tasks and chatted and laughed outside my door, the shriek of monitors followed by the sound of running feet, the door alarms set off by a tagged patient and his frequent attempts to leave and his angry protests at being prevented from doing so.

I was wakened at six the following morning by a nurse saying, 'Where are you?' This threw me completely.

'I'm sorry?'
'What is this place,' she said. 'Are you at home or in a hospital?'
'Sorry - I have no idea what you are talking about,' I said.
'This hospital,' she said. 'What is the name of it?'
'Addenbrookes,' I said. I felt like I had tumbled into a Kafka short story.

She smiled, satisfied. She had simply been checking that I was not confused. By confusing me utterly. In fact I thought she was confused and was beginning to be concerned that she was in charge of the drug trolley.

The dreaded routine of the hospital kicked in. Six o'clock and I would have the first of my blood pressure and pulse checks. They would be repeated every four hours during my stay. Cleaners swept and mopped. I was given my morning dose of aspirin and then the breakfast trolley arrived. Nurses did their handovers at seven. The clock on the wall would have seemed broken had it not been for the blood red second hand juddering round. Time dragged.

'What would you like?' said the Polish lad who delivered the breakfast.
'What do you have?' I asked.
'We have cornflakes, Weetabix, brain flakes. . .'

Brain flakes? Did he really say 'brain flakes'?

'I'll have bran flakes,' I said. How could I resist?

He went to get them and handed them to me.

'Here are you brain flakes,' he said - then shook his head and hurriedly corrected himself. . .'Bran flakes.'

Was he simply mispronouncing the word or was he trying so hard not to say the work 'brain' that it blurted out? I don't know, but it cheered me up immensely every breakfast time.

Paperback winter

2011-01-18T11:14:00.005Z

I got an email from Kate Clarke, the designer at Bloomsbury who works on my covers. She was sending me the proposed cover for the paperback of The Dead of Winter to ask what I thought.

The answer was that I thought it looked great. It will be out in October.

Gooooooooooooooal!

2011-01-16T23:25:00.010Z

Drove for half an hour to a windswept field in Cambridgeshire today. I was taking my son and two teammates to a football match. The forecast was for heavy rain, but we were lucky to get away with a cold, sharp breeze down our necks instead. It was a classic English scene - a group of windswept parents huddled under a glowering sky to watch their sons get covered in mud.

And a little glory as well this week! My son's team actually won. I don't think I would be showing them a great disrespect if I said that this was not entirely expected. All the more welcome for that, though.

Jesus!

2011-01-15T23:35:00.010Z

I have been going through Helen Szirtes' notes on Mister Creecher. These are more detailed points following on from the changes I made in response to much broader queries about the book.

We are doing this part of the edit using 'track changes' in Word. All Helen's changes are highlighted and there are comments and questions in the margin. There weren't that many, but at this stage they always tend to be difficult to resolve.

One of the things that has come up in this book is the fact that I had the main character saying 'Jesus!' when shocked or surprised or angered. I had a directive to remove these or find a replacement.

Editing is like any form of negotiations - there is no point wasting time and effort and goodwill fighting fights you know you are bound to lose. This was one of those - although I did find it infuriating. Not just because I don't accept that it a character in a book cannot say things that the author or the reader might find offensive, but more that I find it impossible to replace it with anything that was not more offensive.

That aside, it was good to read through Mister Creecher again. I don't often get giddy about a book. Quite the reverse - I usually feel more and more depressed about it, until when it is finally published I have convinced myself that it must be absolute garbage and that I have wasted my life and brought shame to my family. But I'm quite excited about Mister Creecher.

Although there is plenty of time between now and its publication in June, for me to get depressed.

Genuinely, thrillingly horrible. . .

2011-01-12T22:40:00.008Z

A lovely parcel arrived today from Bloomsbury - a jiffy bag full of the rejacketed Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth, ahead of it's publication in March.

I was very impressed. I finished the proof editing with Isabel Ford at Bloomsbury just before Christmas and was not expecting the book to appear quite so quickly. It was pure chance that Tunnel's Mouth should be done first, but it must mean that the other two Tales of Terror will be arriving shortly.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the rejacketed books go on sale. They look so different from the David Roberts editions - it will be fascinating to see who picks them up. I have had books rejacketed before and felt no benefit whatsoever (and that is very, very disappointing) but I am pretty hopeful that this re-issue will be much more successful.

As well as having no David Roberts illustration on the cover, the books will have no illustrations inside either. This is not any criticism of David's work - no one has ever said anything but very nice things to me about those drawings and I have always been very happy with them.

This is a different way of presenting the stories. Not better - just different.

Leeds Book Award

2011-01-08T23:00:00.006Z

I had some good news from Ian Lamb at Bloomsbury before Christmas. The Dead of Winter has been shortlisted for the Leeds Book Award in the 11-14 category. It is always nice to be noticed in among the blizzard of books that are eligible.

Voting takes place until the end of April with the winner announced in May. For details of how you can get involved if you live in Leeds, and for a look at the other books on the various shortlists, follow the link.

A delightfully scary book. . .

2011-01-07T21:36:00.012Z

I have been the final edits to the bonus stories in the rejacketed Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror and Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. Uncle Montague has a story called Skating and The Black Ship has a story called The Mermaid. Before Christmas I did the same thing with a story called The Voice at the end of Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth.

I have been working with Isabel Ford from Bloomsbury on these. She sends me the proof copy of the book as a PDF marked with her notes - about missing commas or capitals or whatever - but also any final queries about meaning or sentence structure.

This stage is perhaps the most nerve wracking of all. It is the last chance to make any changes, or to spot any mistakes. I am always amazed by how many things Isabel manages to find, and embarrassed that I have looked through the same thing and found next to nothing!

It is also a tantalising stage because for the first time you see the book taking its eventual form. The pages are laid out as they will be in the printed copy. There is a proper font and page numbers, chapter heads and title page. And if you don't get a little bit excited at this point, you probably shouldn't be a writer.

Back to school

2011-01-05T18:23:00.010Z

My son went back to school today and I went back to my desk to put in the first full day for a while. I hear a lot of macho stuff from writers (of both sexes) about how they work every day including/except Christmas Day as though their work was some kind of religious vocation.

Well I am proud to say that I don't. I don't always put my work first. Writing is a huge part of my life, but my wife and my son come first. That was true when I was an illustrator and it's still true. There are a lot of great writers who were failures when it came to being friends or fathers or husbands.

It is true to say that writing is one of those activities that needs to be done regularly. The engine needs to be kept running for the process to run smoothly. Otherwise you waste so much time just getting back into the necessary frame of mind needed.

A lot of my writing goes on in my head and leaves no trace. A lot goes on in notebooks, where I will scribble down alternative endings for a story or play about with some element that is getting in the way.

You do have to make yourselves available to write - available to the possibility of writing would be more truthful. But there is not always a correlation between effort and output. Sometimes the harder you work, the less you produce. Sometimes the words come so easily I start to worry that I am remembering them from my own (or someone else's) work.

A great deal of the process of writing - at the beginning and end of a book - is work that is vitally important but is concerned with either the shape of the book or the tiny details that will make a book shine (or not). A writer can (or certainly should in my opinion) spend days returning to a sentence or a paragraph, tweaking it and coaxing it into a thing of beauty.

This might result in thirty rather than three thousand words, but if they are the right ones, that is more than enough.