As regular readers of this blog will know, I was honoured to be one of the judges for the inaugural Guardian Hot Key Books Young Writers Prize – click here for more info on the prize and here for my post about the winning novels. I am now equally delighted to announce that I will be a member of the judging panels for the 2013 Kitschies, specifically for the Red Tentacle Award for the best novel of 2013 and the Golden Tentacle Award for the best debut.

If you’re not aware of them, the Kitschies are a quartet of awards given out annually to reward the ’most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic.’ In addition to the two awards that I will be helping to judge, they also give out an Inky Tentacle for the best cover design of the year, and a Black Tentacle, which is a special award given at the discretion of the Kitschies board. The awards were founded by Jared Shurin and Anne Perry, the creators and editors of Pornokitsch, one of the best blogs you’ll read, and two people who I have got to know pretty well over the last couple of years – in addition to the Kitschies, and their actual real-life jobs, they also founded Jurassic London, an independent press publishing some of the very finest limited edition anthologies around which Jared continues to run – I had a novella in the most recent collection, A Town Called Pandemonium, and working with him was an utter pleasure. As a result, when he asked me to come on board as a judge, I didn’t hesitate.

Well, that’s not true at all, actually. I hesitated a LOT.

Last year publishers submitted more than 210 titles for consideration for the various Kitschies, and there is every reason to suspect the number will be even higher this year. I have the fourth Department 19 novel to write this year, my girlfriend and I are in the final stages of buying a house, which will then need moving into and decorating and work doing to it and all that other fun stuff, I owe two short stories to people, I’m trying to finish two very different screenplays, and my workload last year landed me in a doctor’s office unable to breathe properly.

So yeah, I hesitated. But I found I couldn’t bring myself to turn the offer down. Partly because I was honoured to be asked (Jared and Anne know EVERYONE and have ruthlessly high standards for everything they do!) but mostly because I’m a great believer in what the Kitschies stand for – celebrating the best in speculative fiction, regardless of trends, politics, publishers, canvassing, bloc voting, or anything else. The best books of the year, according to the judges who have been chosen for the year in question – no more, no less.

So – the announcement has been made, SUBMISSIONS ARE OFFICIALLY OPEN, and my fellow judges (a truly fantastic lineup consisting of Nick Harkaway (the winner of last year’s Red Tentacle for Angelmaker), Kate Griffin, Anab Jain and Annabel Wright – more info here) and I are ready to start reading.

Bring it on.

The winners of The Guardian Hot Key Books Young Writers Prize were announced this morning, the climax of an almost year-long search for the best novels by young unpublished writers around the world. Here they are, with synopses from the Hot Key press release…

VIVIAN VERSUS THE APOCALYPSE by Katie Coyle

A chilling vision of a contemporary USA where the sinister Church of America is destroying lives. Our cynical protagonist, seventeen-year-old Vivian Apple, is awaiting the fated ‘Rapture’ – or rather the lack of it. Her evangelical parents have been in the Church’s thrall for too long, and she’s looking forward to getting them back. Except that when Vivian arrives home the day after the supposed ‘Rapture’, her parents are gone. All that is left are two holes in the ceiling…

Viv is determined to carry on as normal, but when she starts to suspect that her parents might still be alive, she realises she must uncover the truth. Joined by Peter, a boy claiming to know the real whereabouts of the Church, and Edie, a heavily pregnant Believer who has been ‘left behind’, they embark on a road trip across America. Encountering freak weather, roving ‘Believer’ gangs and a strange teenage group calling themselves the ‘New Orphans’, Viv soon begins to realise that the Rapture was just the beginning.

THE RIG by Joe Ducie

Fifteen-year-old Will Drake has made a career of breaking out from high-security prisons. His talents have landed him at The Rig, a specialist juvenile holding facility in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. No one can escape from The Rig. No one except for Drake…

After making some escape plans and meeting the first real friends of his life, Drake quickly realises that all is not as it seems on The Rig. The Warden is obsessed with the mysterious Crystal-X – a blue, glowing substance that appears to give superpowers to the teens exposed to it. Drake, Tristan and Irene are banking on a bid for freedom – but can they survive long enough to make it? Drake is an action hero to rival Jason Bourne and the CHERUB team in this debut author’s fantastically imagined sci-fi nightmare.

It was my great pleasure to serve on the jury, alongside Julia Eccleshare, Elen Caldecott, Jon Newman (from the brilliant Newham Bookshop) and Hot Key Publisher Emily Thomas. You can read about the entries and the schedule and everything else over on the Hot Key blog, but essentially, young writers were asked to send in the opening of a novel they had either written or were working on – these were then sifted through and a longlist of writers were given until late 2012 to submit the completed manuscript. Those that managed to do so had their novels read and digested, and a shortlist was selected.

Which is where I, and the rest of the judges, came in. We had a couple of months to read, consider, and pick our favourites. Those favourites would win the categories, and receive the prize – publication on the Hot Key list. So no pressure, right?

The pressure was ramped up when I started reading the first of the shortlist, picked on nothing more than its title.

It was good. Really good.

I quickly read the first few chapters of them all, to give myself a feel for what was there, and my suspicions were confirmed. The standard was very, very high. On one hand this was a relief, as it’s impossible to predict what you will get whenever you do any kind of open submission or contest. If the contest had run six months earlier or later, the entries would no doubt have been very different, as writers found themselves at different stages in their processes. On the other hand, it was somewhat daunting, as the reality of having to judge other people’s work settled over me. I (metaphorically) rolled up my sleeves, and got to work.

I read one manuscript on the balcony of a hotel in Grenada, another on a long, turbulent flight to Los Angeles, two in a hotel in New York, and one on my sofa at home, barely three days before the judging panels were scheduled to gather and pick our winner. The range of voices, genres, characters and stories were fantastic, and every one of the manuscripts marked its author out as someone with talent. I went to the judging summit at the Hot Key offices unsure, wavering, ready to argue the corners of all the titles on the shortlist.

We gathered, ate, drank, and talked, and talked, and talked. And it gradually became clear that their was consensus among us – that two (very different) books had impressed us above the others. They were beautifully written, with clear narrative voices, three-dimensional characters, plots that delivered on two incredibly strong premises, and dialogue that crackled with life.

They were worthy winners.

Both books will be published on 5th September, and you should really read them when they’re out. If only so you can say that you knew about them before they both became successful and famous :) Because they’re fantastic books – they really are. If you know me IRL, you’ll know how hard I am to impress. But these two books managed it, in spades.

The Guardian and Hot Key have agreed to run the prize again next year, which is also great news – if you’re an unpublished writer, keep an eye on their blog for all the information…

As part of the launch of Battle Lines, my UK publisher HarperCollins asked me to write a trilogy of short scripts, that they planned to turn into animated comic strips. I did so in and around the final proofread of Battle Lines, which means I barely recall writing them, although I do remember my editor Nick giving me suggestions that made them better, which is how our process usually works :)

The first one is embedded below. And is utterly, completely AWESOME. Which, I have to say, is no great surprise, given that the illustration, photography, animation, editing and music were done by my friend Tom Percival, who, when not creating amazing things for other people (including the covers for Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant series), writes and illustrates his own books – you can check out his stuff here.

So – have a watch of IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS… and check back here sometime later this week for the second instalment. And as ever, let me know what you think in the comments section below…

I’ve never met Iain Banks.

And the statement he released yesterday, full of his characteristic humour and dignity, suggests I never will (although I won’t be uncrossing my fingers until I’m reading an obituary). I know plenty of people who have met him, though, including a few who know him well. And they describe exactly what you would hope they would – a man of great charm, of biting wit, of warmth and compassion and the hope and ultimate faith in human beings that shone through in his work.

Roald Dahl made me fall in love with stories, and the power they can have over those who read them. Stephen King ignited my love of horror and suspense. But three novels, read in my highly impressionable mid-teens, made me realise that what can be done with the written word is limited only by the imagination and ambition of the writer: Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.

I picked up The Wasp Factory in a bookshop in Grantham when I was visiting my grandparents one summer. I can’t remember the year, or where I’d heard about it, but I know I went into that bookshop looking for it. I remember being intrigued by the beautiful black and white covers that Abacus used to put on Banks’s novels. I remember my lovely, kind-hearted granddad (who himself died far too young, and never saw the grandson he endlessly encouraged to follow his dreams realise his biggest one, of being a published author) asking whether I was sure I wanted to read it. He wasn’t concerned about whether the content was suitable for me – he was a great believer in letting people find things out for himself. He just didn’t want me to be scared. He couldn’t help it – he was my granddad.

I assured him it would be fine.

It wasn’t.

The Wasp Factory scared the hell out of me. Not the way that the Stephen King novels I was devouring at the time scared me – this was something different. This was a tour de force, a grotesque journey through the physical and mental worlds of someone deeply broken described in prose that was alternately as blunt as a fist and as precise as a scalpel. It was my first experience of an unreliable narrator, of having the rug that I had believed comprised the entire novel pulled out from under me, and having it make perfect, tragic sense.

It was mind-blowing. It was an education in the art of what’s possible. It was an inspiration.

I’m clearly not the only one who thought so – you can read lovely pieces by Glen Mehn and Barry Hutchison here and here, and you can read the thousands of messages that have been left for him in the message book on his website here.

I’ve read everything he wrote as Iain Banks, and I love them all – The Crow Road, Espedair Street, and the much (and unfairly) maligned Dead Air are probably my favourites.

But The Wasp Factory was more than that. It was one of the books that changed my life, and I’ll always be grateful to him for writing it.

And I haven’t given up hope that one day I’ll get to thank him in person.

Not just yet.

Department 19: Battle Lines is published today in the UK, in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and in English bookshops all over the world next month, and copies are already out there in a few places.

IT’S FINALLY OUT!

Which means people are already reading it.

Which is incredibly exciting :)

But also means we’re heading into spoiler territory.

So here’s the deal:

Battle Lines is essentially a long series of spoilers, following on from the equally spoiler-packed The Rising, which in turn follows on from the big spoilers at the end of Department 19. So to keep it fair to people who haven’t got their copies yet, or who live in countries where it isn’t published until later on in 2013, I’m posting this so that the comments thread below can be a safe place to discuss what happens in Battle Lines, and asking you to please try your very hardest not to post spoilers on Twitter or Facebook – please, please, please consider your fellow readers!

Cheers very much

Will