The side-effect of doing fewer school visits is that each one seems a lot more fun. It’s special. I have more energy. I’m more spontaneous and I find myself genuinely listening to what my audience has to say, rather than going through some slick routine that’s safe & familiar.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I never fall back on a few old tricks I’ve developed or a couple of favourite stories I like to wheel out every now and again. It also doesn’t mean that things never go wrong. Today I managed to combine both when I slipped into one of my favourite ‘bits’ – a Hitler impression. Somehow, sometimes, it IS relevant to what I’m meant to be talking about, but as I’m sitting here, I can’t quite put my finger on how. Never mind. It’s find. It’s my chance to pretend I’m Sacha Baron Cohen or Peter Sellers.

Sadly, just as I was getting warmed up with my subtle German accent and Aryan philosophy, I noticed how many of the students were filming me. Not just taking pictures, but actually filming. I panicked. Suddenly all I could think of was the OUTRAGE that would follow if any of these video clips found their way onto youtube.

Remember when Prince Harry dressed up as a Nazi? Or was it Prince William? Or was it the Queen? I can’t remember. But I remember everyone was pretty upset about it. Now, I’m not Prince Harry or Prince William or the Queen, and nor was I dressed as a Nazi. But somehow, one of my favourite routines, which always gets a great response from the audience, felt a little… inappropriate. OK, it felt A LOT inappropriate.

So, in my panic, what did I do?

My ‘fight-or-flight’ response kicked in. Unfortunately, both FIGHT and FLIGHT kicked in at the same time. So I ran round the room (a large-ish library, audience of 100) nicking all the mobile phones and cameras that were pointed at me. I gathered them up like an elf stealing jewellery at a dinner party. (Do elves do that? I don’t know. I’ve never been to a dinner party.)

That was the ‘fight’ response. Then came the ‘flight’. I ran out of the room.

100 students and several teachers were left baffled. I realise now how it must have appeared. I turned up at their school, pretended to begin an author event, then nicked a load of iphones and ran away.

I think I must have blacked out for a few minutes because I don’t really remember what happened. All I know is that I came round lying on the roof of a volvo in the car park, mobile phones spread out around me. And somehow there was a laptop sitting on my chest.

I was a little disorientated. Who knows how much time had passed.

I gathered up as many phones as I could carry (and, weirdly, there seemed to be more than I could carry – how had I got them all there?) and tried to take them back to the library. That’s when I found out I wasn’t in the car park of the school. I was in the car park of a branch of Sainsbury’s. The St Alban’s branch. The school I was supposed to be at was nowhere near St Alban’s, it was in West London.

I’m proud of the fact that at this point I did not panic. But that’s just about all I’m proud of. I used my own phone to find the number of the school. I rang them up to apologise. There was an awkward conversation which wasn’t completely resolved when the owner of the volvo turned up. Turns out he’d been parked at the school I was visiting a few hours previously and driven from there to St Alban’s. At no point did he mention that I’d been on his roof the whole time. I don’t think that’s possible. Surely it isn’t. And yet, I can’t think of any other way that I got where I was.

It took me 2 hours to get back to the school. By this time the school day was nearly over, but the librarian (very understanding, very confused) was kind enough to assemble almost all of the students in the library again. (I’m not entirely sure they were the same students. They looked a little older. One of them was in a boiler suit. I don’t know why. One of them had a beard.)

I promised I’d pick up where I left off and apologised for panicking. They sat in complete silence while I told them the story about the time I lost my shoe on a train. Then I opened it up for questions.

First question: who are you?

Second question: did you bring my phone back?

The third question was very kindly written on a piece of paper, wrapped around a mug and gently hurled in my direction. That was from the librarian.

So it was a mixed response from the audience, but all in all I’d say it was a success. Felt good to be back on the schools circuit…

…you know – getting myself out there…

All you have to do is register for an exciting new project from Renaissance Learning called Read To A Million Kids and you can do just that.  Plus, you have until 30th June to submit any question you’d like to ask me, and I’ll answer that on camera as well!  Best of all – it’s 100% free!

So, what are you waiting for?  Head over to www.readtoamillionkids.co.uk and sign up now!

Of course, I’ll need someone to sneak a video camera into the caves first…  Perhaps baked inside a cake?

I had a chance to meet three picture book illustrators Niamh Sharkey, a fellow TBM captive, as well as Chris Judge and Chris Haughton. We each gave brief talk about how we go about writing and illustrating picture books. The audience had a chance to get involved with a step-by-step drawing from one of our characters. What I wasn’t prepared for was an audience of talented illustrators:

Whilst I was signing afterwards an art student, Eoghon Korrigan (apologies if I’ve mispelt your name incorrectly), presented me with this amazing goblin portrait – of me, I think!  The line drawing on the left was the goblin I encouraged the audience to draw before he had a go. Now you know why it’s an uncomfortable experience drawing in front of fellow artists.

If that wasn’t enough A cartoonist Aidan Cooney, passed this to me as I was packing up my things. Not sure what the pound sign means but impressive all the same!

And a quick word about Dublin – what a beautiful part of the world. You should all hop on a plane and go take a look for yourselves immediately.

So happy that myself and my fellow cave dweller, David Melling are doing a joint event in Easons, Dublin this Thursday 19th May at 6pm!

Bisto Book of the Year winner Chris Haughton “A BIT LOST” will be along with Lonely Beast man, Chris Judge. Open from age zero to infinity!

Justin wants you... to read his books!

Justin Somper and I had met some years before at the London Final of the Kid’s Lit Quiz, but it was fun to catch up and chat about adventure stories to a group of librarians. As you can see from the picture, Justin writes books about Vampires – not my favourite topic, as you may be aware by now. However, these are no ordinary vampires… these are vampirates and that, when mixed with Justin’s sense of humour and adventure, does make a surprising difference. Are they vampires who happen to be pirates, or pirates who happen to be vampires? I’ll let you decide that one. What I do know is that from reading the first in the series, Demons of the Ocean, I discovered that there are some vampire stories out there that are at once: scary, exciting and more than anything else just good old-fashioned swashbuckling fun adventures. To my delight (and just a little bit of surprise!) I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Sophie McKenzie

Sophie McKenzie is an astonishingly talented author who is winning awards by the bucket-load. I have already reviewed The Set Up, first in the Medusa Project series here on Trapped by Monsters. Anyone who has attended one of my writing workshops will probably have heard me recite the first page from Girl Missing, another of her fantastic titles. However, seeing Sophie again sparked me to read another of her popular and award-winning titles Blood Ties. Boy this lady can write! What a fantastic story with characters that feel so real you walk out of the house expecting to bump into them on the street outside. And there’s a sequel… Blood Ransom. It’s just jumped up my monstrous pile of books that are waiting to be read to somewhere near the top. Ever wondered about cloning? Have scientists secretly cloned humans? If you were a clone, would you know? Blood Ties is a cracking read that will set your mind spinning and keep you breathlessly perched on the edge of your seat until the very last page.

If you’ve not read books by Justin or Sophie yet, take a look in your local bookshop next time you’re in and treat yourself. Go on. You know you want to.

MG, despite your rapid rise in the world of YA fiction, it’s possible that some of my readers may not have come across you before, so could you summarise your background and your path into writing novels up in a few sentences?

I was born in Mexico City and grew up in Manchester, England. As a teenager, during regular visits to my father in Mexico, I became fascinated by Mayan archaeology. A skiing accident in 2004 forced me to spend many weeks recuperating from surgery. I decided to keep a promise I’d made to myself to one day pursue a career as a novelist. I began work on a techno thriller which combined two obsessions – archaeology and biology. From this initial manuscript came the idea for a story featuring a boy searching for a lost Mayan codex … and The Joshua Files were born.

It was a timely and (if I may say so) commercially inspired idea to write a thriller series based around the Mayan predictions for 2012 in the years running up to this date. Why five books, though? Why not three or four? Did you always have that number in mind?

At first I thought maybe three, but the publishers wanted more instalments. Five parts would end the series in 2012, which I thought would be fitting. As the story took shape also, it seemed that five would be a natural fit, with two halves to the overall story: before Josh cracks the secret of time travel and beyond.

Each of the Joshua Files books has a distinctly different flavour to the story. Is this deliberate? Do you ever worry that the readers might just want more of the same each time?

Yes, for two reasons. Partly because remember that I’m still new to writing and I want to improve my craft. So I need to set myself challenges and learn by playing with different types of plot structure; the quest, the kidnap-and-rescue, the mystery-puzzle, the romance. And partly because I didn’t want there to be any obvious ‘favourite’. I wanted different books to be favourites of different types of readers. If all the flavours are all quite different then you don’t get the ‘vanilla issue’ (where vanilla turns out to be the most popular ice cream.)

I’ve always loved stories involving time travel, but the consequences of characters’ actions often give me a headache as I try to work them through in my mind. In Dark Parallel, it almost felt as if I was reading a high octane Dr Who episode (which is a very positive thing as far as I’m concerned). Swap Josh for the Doctor and Ixchel for his assistant, and who needs a Tardis when you have a bracelet that zaps you back and forth in time! The obvious question here is: Are you a big Doctor Who fan? If so, who is your favourite Doctor?

Thank you, to be compared to Doctor Who is the highest compliment you could pay The Joshua Files! I love and have always loved Doctor Who. I don’t think I was very happy, as a small child, to be brought to a cold, miserably decorated flat in Stockport after living in Mexico, Frankfurt and briefly, the Cotwolds. I do remember all that changing when I discovered Doctor Who, as a six-year old.

My favourite Doctor is Jon Pertwee, simply because he was ‘my Doctor’. Planet of the Spiders was a bit of a trauma, actually. But I think the best stories were in the John Nathan Turner/Tom Baker era and the recent Stephen Moffat episodes with both David Tennant and Matt Smith. And – I think Matt Smith may be my second-favourite…

Have you always had a fascination with the concept of time travel, or was it simply a plot device to spice up the story?

Yes, always been obsessed with time-travel, portals to other worlds, the whole bit. Time-travel was always going to be intrinsic to Josh’s story because when I ask ‘how could you categorically know what is going to happen in the future’ one of the most logical answers is ‘because you’ve been to the future’.

Keeping track of parallel time-lines and possible futures must be a nightmare. How much planning do you do before you start each book? And do you have a particular method of keeping track of all the story aspects?

The keeping track is tricky. I have timelines for everyone and everything who has significantly time-travelled, as well as for the city of Ek Naab itself. I always plan about 85% of the story before I start on chapter one. That’s just my methodology, but you can always retrofit things too…as Agatha Christie allegedly did!

The relationship between Josh and Ixchel is developed a lot in this installment. Do you find boy readers appreciate the romantic aspect of your story, or is this element specifically there to appeal to girl readers?

Girl readers have been coy about it, boy readers are the ones who put it most bluntly: when is Josh going to get off with Ixchel? I do enjoy the contrast, or perceived contrast between boys and girls when it comes to romantic situations. Josh would love to be blunt and get to the point with Ixchel, but he just can’t do it. Because what is at stake are his innermost feelings…and there he’s pretty vulnerable.

Josh shucks off his grumpy teenager aspect in this new segment of the story. He definitely shows his best side when under pressure. Do you see his grumpy phase in Zero Moment as something teen and pre-teen boys will readily identify with?

I suspect it is something that anyone, male or female, who has ever suffered from sexual jealousy will identify with. Don’t forget that people commit murder because of such jealousy – that is how extreme it can get! Josh suffers from jealousy, which stems from his being raised as an only child. Of course your parents dote on you if you are all they have. But what if they had someone else? That’s his eternal torment. So when people get between Josh and his mother or Josh and his girl, he tends to see red. It’s one of his major flaws.

Your action scenes are always vividly described. Are you a bit of an action girl yourself? The motor bike race near the beginning of the book is a great example. Have you ridden motorbikes at high speed and do you like doing practical research of this sort to be able to see the scene through the character’s eyes?

Once, when I was about 19, a mate of mine from University picked me up outside the lab on his new motorbike and took me for a pillion ride. We tore down the motorway at 80 miles per hour. I was scared, wobbling around on the back and thinking that I’d fly off, but at the same time it was a major rush and a thrill. My father bribed me into not getting a motorbike, by promising me a car when I was 21. Well, he died before he could make good on that but I had time to reflect on how very much he didn’t want me to ride a motorbike. So since then, I never have. I don’t do anything dangerous now, not even skateboarding or skiing (I used to). I’m just not hardcore enough, and I don’t want my family to suffer again if I have an accident.

I would like to thank MG for taking the time to answer my questions. I still get very excited about meeting authors and getting their autographs (does that make me a geek?). I cannot recommend The Joshua Files series highly enough. Go and give Invisibile City a read. You won’t regret it. It’s a brilliant start to a fantastic series.

You might also want to check out her fantastic website where she has just done a similar interview with me.

Last month I was let out of the dank, miserable, armpit-scented caves to tour around the country promoting Furnace 5. It was brilliant to be able to breathe air that hadn’t been filtered through Barfdribble Undergunk’s digestive system, and to stretch my legs after so long cowering in the corner of my cell. But on the very last night of my tour I actually found myself homesick for the caves.

Because my hotel was haunted…

I’ve always been scared of ghosts. They are one of my top five fears – after slugs, clowns and, right at the top of the list, slugs that look like clowns. (And yes, there is such a thing, see the above photo!) But there is something really, really creepy about the idea of a place being haunted – especially by an evil spirit.

The weird thing was, the hotel I was staying in on the last day of my tour wasn’t an old inn, or a creepy castle. It was a brand new building right in the middle of London. I won’t say which one it was just in case they complain (or in case the ghost comes after me)! It was a very pleasant five-star establishment with a lovely big room, and I was perfectly happy watching the giant TV all evening. It was only after I’d gone to sleep that spooky things started to happen.

I woke up just after midnight absolutely convinced that there was somebody in the room. Somebody evil. Watching me. It was a feeling of dread the likes of which I have NEVER felt before – and I have stayed in hundreds of hotels. I instantly switched on the light and searched the room top to bottom, and there was nothing there. But as soon as I went back to bed that eerie, malevolent presence was back. It was like somebody was standing right next to the bed. I couldn’t see it, but it was almost as if I could see the void it created – the pitch black space that wasn’t there because the ghost was filling it. I also had this incredibly detailed image in my head of a group of men attacking another man, and I was convinced that I was seeing what had happened in the room. I have never experienced anything like that before in my life. I was terrified!

Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep! In the morning I asked whether anything horrible had ever happened in the hotel, or whether there had been any reports of ghosts, and the two people at the desk did give each other a strange look. But they wouldn’t tell me anything!

I never thought I’d be happy to be back in the sewer pipe I call home down here in the caves, but I was so relieved to be out of that hotel that even the thought of spending the rest of my days sleeping inside Slobbergobble Bladderboil’s small intestine seemed like heaven!

Has anybody else ever had any spooky encounters whilst on tour, or whilst staying in a hotel?

Dublin has been named a UNESCO City of Literature, one of only four such cities worldwide. So as you can imagine we are all very excited over here. As part of the celebrations Trinity College Dublin are celebrating Children’s Literature tomorrow. I am part of a panel who get to rant on about how Classics and the City have influenced our work.

When I was researching for one of my books Cinderella, I was lucky enough to get a secret pass into the dark vaults of Early Printed Books in Trinity. It was so amazing to be able to handle books from the 15th century and older. Here’s a few photos of the books and some of my sketches from my notebooks.

Lots of the doodles never make it to the final book, they are just rough thumbnails for inspiration. I used this woodblock as inspiration for the stepmother. I love the strange spool of thread hanging from her dress. I exaggerated her hat and costume in the final illustration. Hopefully some of the original essence ended up in the final version.

www.niamhsharkey.com

A couple of days ago, though, I was cut free, hosed down, and shoved out into the glare of the media, as I attended the ceremony for the Royal Mail Book Awards 2010 at the Tramway Theatre in Glasgow. It was a glitzy, exciting affair, with fire-eaters, jugglers and Gillian Philip all in attendance. My first book – INVISIBLE FIENDS: MR MUMBLES – had been shortlisted in the 8-11 year old category, up against THE DRAGON WHISPERER by Lucinda Hare and THE SECRET OF THE BLACK MOON MOTH by John Fardell.

And, I’m delighted to reveal, Mr Mumbles won! It is now officially an award-winning book, and I’m an award-winning author! That’ll be tremendous comfort when I’m returned to The Dirty Room later this afternoon, for my final week-long stint. Those 168 hours of filth and misery will feel more like 165!

To read a fantastic write-up of the day, check out The Edinburgh Reporter.

I’m just about to start the Witchfinder 2: Gallows at Twilight World Tour (presently restricted to London, Cambridge, Lincolnshire and the Home Counties, but hopefully taking in the world at some point!). Anyhoo, as part of the WF2:GaTWT I’ve been putting together a new creative writing workshop for schools called HOW TO WRITE A KILLER STORY! The idea is to take a bunch of kids right the way through the writing process from that eureka idea to the final edit – an interactive whistle-stop tour of the highs and lows, joys and woes of writing a novel.

Anyhoo (must stop saying ‘anyhoo’ – it’s very annoying), there’s a little segment where I challenge the kids to come up with a KILLER opening sentence for their book. To help them along I’m going to highlight a few of my own favourite openers. 

And here they are:

‘Marley was dead, to begin with.’ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ George Orwell, 1984

‘The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.’ Stephen King, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

‘It was the day my grandmother exploded.’ Iain Banks, The Crow Road

‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.’ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit

‘It was a pleasure to burn.’ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Mysterious, intriguing, exciting and baffling (don’t forget, in 1937 no one had ever heard of ‘a hobbit’, so this very word would have been intriguing - what manner of creature was it?!) these great opening lines act as a hook to ensnare the reader and pull him or her straight into the story. It’s also a nice little exercise to generate ideas for a book. Just sit down and write a random sentence – the first thing that pops into your head (this is what Tolkien did with that first sentence of The Hobbit). You’ll be surprised how interesting (and, often, very bizarre!) the results can be!

Anyhoo (arrggghhhh!) – now it’s over to you: what are your favourite opening lines? Any corkers that I should be adding to my list?