The last few weeks, it’s fair to say, have been quite hectic. As well as a rather stressful cave move, which saw me shifting my few remaining belongings along several miles of dark, cramped tunnels until I reached my new cell, I appeared at two different book festivals on the same weekend.

Provided you count Friday as a weekend day. Which I do. So there.

On Friday 13th of August – yes, FRIDAY 13th – I appeared at Eden Court theatre as part of the Inverness Book Festival. This was my first ever festival appearance, and I was really pleased that it was at my ‘local’ festival up in the Highlands. As well as my usual trick of rambling on for an hour talking rubbish, I incorportated a new bit into my event. A poor, unwitting soul was selected from the audience, then dressed up as Caddie, the villain of my second Invisible Fiends book, Raggy Maggie. Then, after the ‘volunteer’ (and I use that term loosely) was revealed in all her full horrific horror, she helped me with the reading, by being the voice of Caddie in the story.

Here’s the Inverness Caddie – the lovely Rachel – in her costume and make-up, which was hastily applied by her mum:

On Saturday, I made the trip to Edinburgh, where I was taken out for dinner by the lovely people at HarperCollins Children’s Books. At the dinner I met Garth Nix, Darren Shan and his partner, Bas, and Louise Rennison, none of whom I’d met before. It was a great night, and the meal was flippin’ lovely, too, after having eaten nothing but Snotgrump’s ‘arm bogeys’ for weeks.

The following day, I made my first appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. It was all a bit nerve-wracking, but it went quite well (I think!). This time, I didn’t just get someone dressed up as Caddie. I went one better than that…

Here we have Maria as Mr Mumbles, and Henry as Caddie. Both of them were great sports, and their performances really made the audience laugh. Or maybe they were so terrified they were hysterical. Either way, they were making a lot of noise.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Now the festivals are over (until Fife next month, at least) I should have more time to blog here. I’ll also soon be offering you the chance to bag yourself a sticker like the one below. More details soooooon…

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