The monsters let Sam and I out long enough to visit the North East Teenage Book Awards last night where Sam’s brilliant book, The Black Tattoo, had been shortlisted for the prize.  The other nominees were:

Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

Angel by Cliff McNish

The Knife That Killed Me by Anthony McGowan

The Falconer’s Knot by Mary Hoffman

Slam by Nick Hornby

Sam was, as ever, as excited as a jet-powered puppy to meet all his fans and while he chatted with the other nominees, I stayed at the back of the hall, ready to activate the fire alarm should any monsters decide to add the north east’s eager young readers to their collection.

The event started and Sam kicked off proceedings with a reading from The Black Tattoo, and then answering an inspired audience question about tying up loose plot ends at the close of a book.  The other authors followed to talk, read and answer questions themselves.

Eventually – the winner was announced as Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine and the authors took their places at the signing table to meet and greet their readers.  It really was incredible to see so many teenagers, many of them carrying well-thumbed, ragged copies of their favourite books, queuing up to meet the writers and chat.  The air was buzzing with debates over characters, plots, twists and more!

Sam’s queue was the last to end and, after a brief chat with Anthony McGowan (we think we have persuaded him to come and check on us in the cave every now and again) we repaired to a local hostelry for refreshment.  This, however, didn’t go quite as planned and we soon found ourselves in a darkened tunnel, running from our monstrous captors – see the picture below!

More on that part of the evening, soon…

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