SPOILERS. WELL, SORT OF. If you’re intending to go to the Harry Potter studio tour and you don’t want to know what you’re going to see when you get there, then don’t read this post…

Yesterday, my girlfriend Sarah and I went to the (deep breath) Warners Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making Of Harry Potter. OK, so it may not be the most snappily titled of attractions, and we had something of a nightmare of a journey to get there (thanks very much for the power cut Seven Sisters station!) but we made it just in time for our 3pm entrance. And from then on, the day got a lot, lot better.

I’m a Harry Potter fan. I’m a long-standing defender of the books, I loved (most of) the films, and I have a great deal of respect for JK Rowling. And I’m a HUGE film nerd. So it’s fair to say I was more than a bit excited at the thought of seeing behind the scenes of pretty much the most ambitious film project in living memory.

The tour takes place in a pair of purpose-built buildings at Leaveesden studios, which is now the property of Warner Bros. They bought it once the decision had been taken to permanently house the Harry Potter productions there, and are now pouring money into it to expand it into a world-class studio complex. It’s still a working studio, with more than a dozen sound stages, but those areas are off limits to the public, unsurprisingly. The Harry Potter tour is housed in two building that have been built to look exactly like the actual stages, which you can see in the distance, and the sets themselves have all been moved over and rebuilt inside them. So it’s not exactly what they advertise i.e. that you can walk on the sets where the films were shot. Mainly because in most cases, you can’t actually walk on the sets; they’re all roped off. And they were actually a few hundred yards away when the cameras were rolling. But it’s still awesome. Let me repeat that; it’s AWESOME.

So – here are a great big load of photos I took, with a little bit of commentary. If you’re a Potter fan, most of them will speak for themselves. And if you’re not, you’ve probably already stopped reading..

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It got announced this morning, so I can finally say that I’m one of the judges for The Guardian Hot Key Books Young Writers Prize 2012. Yes, that is a long name for a prize. But that’s not what matters…

What matters is that what the lovely people over at Hot Key and the Guardian have cooked up is a writer’s prize with a real prize at the end of it – the possibility of a publishing contract with Hot Key. Which is a very, very big thing – the chance to see YOUR book in shops with YOUR name on the cover. If you’re a writer, there’s no greater feeling – trust me.

The prize is split into two age categories (meaning the age range of the book, NOT the age of the entrant) – 9-12 and 13-19 – and the prize is open to all unpublished writers aged between 18-25. They’re asking for 4,000 words and a synopsis, which is more than enough room to show what you can do. The deadline is the 31st of May, so get cracking right now…

You can read all the Ts&Cs and info about the prize here

You can read the announcement of the judging panel here

Then when you’re done reading all that, GET WRITING! I can’t wait to read what some of you come up with :)

The best thing about being published is, by far, seeing your Word document gradually turn into something beautifully real, that you can hold and open and read, that (if you’re lucky) finds its way into the hands of people who give up their time to read it. It’s lovely.

The second best thing about getting published, for me at least, has been the people I’ve met – school kids, readers, teachers, librarians, booksellers, buyers, marketers, publicists, all with a love of books and a passion for reading. And authors. Lots and lots of amazing authors, several of which I’m proud to call my friends. I’ve found a gang of funny, brilliant people, who I look forward to seeing every time a convention or launch or birthday appears in my calendar. Most of them have books coming out this year, so this post is nothing more  than a big plug for some authors and novels that I think you’re going to want to check out. Which I’m allowed to do. Because this is my blog :)

Blood and Feathers by Lou Morgan (Solaris, August)

More info on Lou here and on Twitter.

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Today is the centenary of the death of Bram Stoker, without whom I wouldn’t be a published author.

Without Dracula, there would be no Department 19 series.

It’s that simple.

To mark the centenary, I got the chance to compile a list of my top ten favourite vampire characters for the Guardian Children’s Books site – you can check it out here. I was very honoured, to be honest, to be able to write something that makes it clear how much of a debt I, and hundreds of other authors, owe to Stoker’s masterpiece.

Do let me know which ones you agree with and which ones I’ve committed a terrible crime by leaving out :)

I’m not going to do this every week, mainly because I know I’ll forget and I don’t want to feel guilty when I do, but here’s a quick look at the comics I’ll be buying this week…

Batman #8 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo (DC)

This is flat out the best comic being published right now.

Epic, brutal, beautifully written and stunningly drawn, Batman has been going from strength to strength since DC’s New 52 relaunch. Scott Snyder (American Vampire, Swamp Thing) has managed that rarest of achievements – creating a new Batman villain that can stand alongside the greatest rogue’s gallery in comics, a villain rooted in the history of Gotham, with sinister connections to both the Wayne family and his modern family, especially Dick Grayson. It’s almost a shame that the story is leading towards the first major New 52 crossover, Night Of The Owls, to which this issue serves as a prelude, but I have such faith in Snyder at the moment that I’m completely sure the bigger picture isn’t going to dilute what he and Greg Capullo (Spawn, X-Force) are doing on the flagship Bat-title, which is something truly special.

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The last few weeks have been a bit crazy, what with The Rising being published and all, so I’ve been (hopefully forgivably) a bit lax in updating this blog. But since everything is starting to calm down (at least a bit!) now, so I thought I’d give a quick update of what’s been going on.

The week The Rising came out (beginning the 25th of March) had long been set aside for getting away from my desk and (shock! horror!) out of London to do some events in the north west. So on the the Sunday, I met my lovely publicist Rosi (this is her on Twitter) at Euston station and we caught a train for Preston, ready for two days of school visits.

Now – it should be said that I have (or at least, have had) a bit of a love-hate relationship with events. I always enjoy them once we get out and get on with them, but for days, sometimes weeks, before, they cause me a huge amount of panicky dread. I’m definitely not a natural public speaker (although I’ve worked very hard to try and get better and to make sure I’m always well prepared) and the thought of a sea of blank faces and staring eyes haunts my nightmares whenever a new tour starts to grow near. It’s part of the job of being an author in the modern world, and a crucial one for a children’s author, and I’ve never turned down an invitation from anybody who has been kind enough to want me to visit them. But I’d rather be hidden away in the British Library writing the books, if I’m absolutely honest, and I think the number of authors for whom that isn’t the case is probably pretty small.

So – there are two ways that tours get planned. Sometimes the publisher gathers the invitations that have come in for that author, pins down some dates, then approaches other schools or libraries or bookshops in the same area to fill in the gaps, so you end up with a tight schedule that maximises everyone’s time. Alternatively, a bookshop may ask for a period of an author’s schedule, and will fill it themselves. This is more common with independent bookshops who have built good relationships in their area, and this was the case last month – lovely Elaine from SilverDell Books in Kirkham asked if we would go and spend two days with her, visiting nearby schools. So off we went.

We caught a taxi from the station to the Marriott Preston,  got some sleep, had breakfast and then Elaine and Sue from the bookshop picked us up, and off we went. We chatted happily about books and other authors they’d had to visit, several of which I knew, and before I knew it we were arriving at the first school – St Augustines RC High School in Billington. We’d been talking so much that I hadn’t really thought much about the impending event, which was both good and bad. Good, because I’d been distracted and hadn’t worried. Bad, because it was suddenly time and I was a little bit terrified :) We waited in the Library while the kids filed into the hall, and then I went on. And it was… fine.

The first event of a tour is always the hardest – you’re out of practice, you’re nervous, and your throat is always suddenly bone-dry. And this was no exception – I should have accepted the offer of a microphone, but I didn’t, and I was obviously, palpably nervous. But the kids were lovely – polite, interested, and my confidence began to grow after a shaky start (possibly from the moment I mentioned being a Liverpool fan, which instantly created a noisy division amongst the kids!) and I began to enjoy it. I talked about where the idea for Department 19 came from, about Dracula and Frankenstein and modern horror. I talked about writing, and reading, and how long it takes to write the books. And I did the exercise I normally do at the end, where everyone has to stand up and help me tell a little horror story, voting on a series of possible options to try and keep the main character alive. I took questions, and afterwards I signed books and chatted and answered more questions, and had the always flattering experience of talking to some my target audience who had read D19, and were (very!) happy to tell me what they thought of it. Everyone seemed pleased, and I was delighted to have got the first event of the tour out of the way. So we piled back into the car, and headed for the second event of the day, at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School…

Which was lots of fun. The kids were just as polite and enthusiastic, it was a smaller group in the very well-stocked school library, and I was (much!) less nervous. I signed more books, and chatted until they threw me out because it was the end of the day and everyone had to go home. Whereas we headed into Clitheroe, to wait for an evening event at the Library. Elaine and Sue dropped us off, as Elaine had to get to a council meeting (she’s a local councillor, on top of running a bookshop that also sells award-winning ice cream, which she makes herself!), so Rosi and I repaired to a pub, in true publishing style. It was boiling hot that afternoon, so we enjoyed a couple of hours in a beer garden, drinking cider and doing battle with wasps, until it was time. We met the lovely librarian, and the little group who had come to talk to me about writing and the D19 series. It was a small turnout – the lovely weather had, I suspect, persuaded a few of the people who’d bought tickets against spending their evening indoors, but those who did come were very nice, and the Library laid on pizza and drinks, so a good time was had by all. We got a tour of the Library’s dungeons (!) where prisoners were kept in the days that it was a civic building, and saw their lovely installation of origami birds.

Then we had a long, informal chat about writing, reading, and being an author. Tired but happy, we said goodbye to everyone, and piled back into the car to be taken back to the hotel.

On the way back, in that endlessly weird small-world way of things, I discovered that Suze, who was along with her late husband was former RAF, had, shall we say, a somewhat intimate knowledge of the US Air Force base known as Area 51, which plays a part in The Rising, and a much bigger part in D19 book three. I can’t tell you any of what she told me, as I promised secrecy, but it was a very, very enlightening discussion :) And before I knew it, we were back at the Marriott, ready to grab some sleep and do it all over again the next day…

NEXT: More schools, libraries, and a truly remarkable dessert…

Last week I was on tour in the north west, visiting schools and libraries and talking to people about the Department 19 books. I’ll write a longer post about that when I’ve got more time (and also when I’ve fully recovered from it all :) but, something else happened last week…

DEPARTMENT 19: THE RISING WAS PUBLISHED IN THE UK!!!

Yes, as of the 29th, it has been officially released and should be on sale wherever you normally buy your books. It seems a long time ago that I started writing this one, and I can’t quite believe that it’s actually out there now, or that it’s been getting the incredibly lovely reviews it has. I’m very proud of it, and I’m really looking forward to hearing what the readers think of it…

Thanks as always to everyone who made this possible. You know who you are.

Ridley Scott made Alien. And Blade Runner.

So it was always going to be a pretty big deal when he announced that he was returning to SF this summer.

It became a bigger deal when it was announced that the new film would be set in the same world as Alien, although there have been across the board refusals to confirm whether everyone’s favourite sexually metaphoric xenomorph will actually appear. There was a first trailer, with the letters of the film’s title appearing slowly, one strut at a time, exactly as the opening titles of Alien and Aliens do, a shot of something causing a spacesuit helmet to smoke as someone grabbed at it with their hands (couldn’t possibly be acid, could it?) and a huge reveal at the end – the crash of the alien spaceship in which the first facehugger impregnates John Hurt. The ship piloted by the long-dead elephantine alien usually referred to as the space jockey. This ship.

Now there’s this new trailer, which was premiered at WonderCon yesterday and released last night.

Mind. Blown.

We still don’t know exactly how this is all going to play into Alien, whether it can be considered a true prequel (as some have suggested) or whether it just plays in the same sandbox, but I think it’s clear now that the links between Prometheus and Alien are far from superficial – they’re right there in the DNA. Finally, check this out…

http://twitpic.com/8xqnv3

Look familiar?

I’m counting down the days until the 1st of June…

I’m not going to do this every week, mainly because I know I’ll forget and I don’t want to feel guilty when I do, but here’s a quick look at the comics I’ll be buying this week…

Saucer Country #1 by Paul Cornell and Ryan Kelly (DC/Vertigo)

This is a brand new Vertigo series written by Paul Cornell (who has written Action Comics, Doctor Who comics and novels, and launched Demon Knights and Stormwatch for the DC New 52) about Arcadia Alvarado, the Governor of New Mexico, who is about to announce that she is running for the Presidency when she is (possibly maybe) abducted by aliens. Cornell describes it as “The West Wing does The X-Files” and if that doesn’t grab you as a premise, then I don’t know what to tell you.

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There’s a YouTube channel where we put all of the videos that have been produced for both Department 19 and The Rising, as well as all the entries to the scary video competition we ran last year. But I wanted to just highlight three new videos that we’ve made in the last couple of months…

Author videos are pretty much my worst nightmare :) It’s the horror of hearing your own voice on voicemail multiplied by about a thousand. Thankfully, the team at HarperCollins (particularly the endlessly remarkable Tom Percival) are so talented that they can take my halting, rabbit in the headlights monologues and turn them into something cool and interesting to watch. This new author video is a perfect example – Tom filmed me against a green screen at the HarperCollins offices then projected the footage all over Bristol and recorded the projected footage (still with me?) and then edited it all together into the video below. I won’t be watching it again for fear of exploding with embarrassment, but I urge you to give it a look :)

The next video is just so damn awesome I can still hardly believe it :) This one’s also Tom Percival’s work, and is a 3D model of the Loop, the secret Department 19 base, that he built based on my descriptions in the books. It looks exactly like I see it in my head (well, maybe a little bit more purple!) and my jaw just hit the floor when I was sent the link to it. So, so cool.

This last one is a short montage of footage taken at the secret event we organised at the National Army Museum last month, with bits of my chat with Nick Lake (my editor) and a few very kind vox-pops from some of the attendees. It’s lovely to see people trying out the new campaign on the laptops (MUCH more on that to follow in the next couple of weeks!) and the deeply frightening men in full Operator uniforms watching over everything. I’m posting this video despite the fact that it clearly displays my bald spot – that’s how much I like it :)

There’s one more video to come before The Rising is published, but I can’t say much about it now. Needless to say, I’ll post it as soon as I can. And I promise you you’re going to want to watch it – probably through your fingers… :)

Wrecking Ball, the new Bruce Springsteen album, was released on Monday.

Now, I absolutely love Springsteen, have loved him since a friend of mine introduced me to his Greatest Hits collection when I was a teenager, have seen him live three times and have tickets for his gig in Hyde Park this summer, and have listened to all his albums more times than I could possibly count. But the last two albums, Magic and Working On A Dream, weren’t among my favourites (for the sake of clarity Nebraska, Darkness On The Edge Of Town and Born To Run are probably the ones I love the most) – the strength of the lyrics and the quality of the arrangements was all still there, but for some reason I just didn’t connect to them. So I was looking forward to Wrecking Ball, but with a healthy amount of trepidation.

I needn’t have worried. Wrecking Ball is fantastic, a strident, swaggering return to form that’s already my favourite of his albums since The Rising (I loved The Seeger Sessions but they don’t really bear comparison, although that collection of songs has a clear musical influence on Wrecking Ball) and my favourite album of the year so far (yes, I know it’s only March!).

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Last month we launched The Rising with a secret gathering at the National Army Museum in London. There were bloggers, librarians, booksellers, two of the winners of the video competition we ran on the D19 Facebook page last year, and a lovely number of fans who applied to come in the week before the event. There were about fifty people in all, plus me and the fabulous HarperCollins team (with the exception of my pal Tom, who had to head home at the last minute and was much missed!).

Here they all are – from left to right, Rebecca, Alison, me (managing to close my eyes at precisely the most inconvenient nanosecond, as always), Liz, Rosi, Nick…

The plan was pretty straightforward – Alison, the HC Associate Publisher, would introduce me and my editor Nick. We would then do a little Q&A explaining The Rising, I would read a bit of the new book, and then I’d take questions from the audience. We’d show the video that is the centrepiece of the new campaign, before I signed the hardbacks of The Rising we’d given everyone while people got the chance to try out the interactive aspects of the new campaign on rows of laptops. So far, so straightforward, right? Well, there were two things on my mind while I was waiting to get underway:

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So – I’ve tried to keep this blog free of any posts that could be translated to “please buy my books, please please please” but I’m going to make an exception for once, for the simple reason that if you have even the slightest interest in reading Department 19, it’s never going to be cheaper for you to do so than it will be for the next few weeks…

Tomorrow (the 1st of March) is World Book Day in the UK and Ireland – a truly awesome celebration of reading, publishing and copyright that has been running since 1998. Everyone aged 18 and under in full-time education gets a £1 World Book Day token they can exchange for one of eight fantastic specially produced £1 books (including an all-new Skulduggery Pleasant novella – I had to mention that one as my editor is also Derek Landy’s editor and he’d never have forgiven me otherwise!) or put them towards books and audiobooks that cost £2.99 or more. There are events, fundraising campaigns, signings, quizzes, in hundreds of participating bookshops around the country. As I said before, it’s awesome :)

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There are copies of The Rising out there now. ARCs have gone out to reviewers and booksellers in the UK, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and heaven only knows where else. Not to mention the 50 hardbacks we gave away at the secret event last week (more on that to follow at a later date!).

Here’s the thing. The Rising contains so many spoilers that discussing it is going to be like treading carefully through a minefield. A minefield of twists and revelations and dark, dark secrets…

I saw the first spoiler on Twitter about an hour ago. A big one, that the guy who posted it very kindly took down straight away.

So – with that in mind, I’m going to take a leaf out of John Green’s book and ask that anyone who wants to discuss The Rising in any level of spoiler-ific detail do so here, and HERE ONLY. Please, please, please don’t post spoilers on Twitter and Facebook, even if they are of the ‘OMG! I can’t believe (INSERT SPOILER) happened!’ variety – I absolutely love the enthusiasm and loyalty of the D19 fans, but it’s unfair to those who haven’t read The Rising and are going to, and to those people who might want to read Department 19 one day.

Simply put, spoilers suck. You know this to be true. So all I’m asking is that you put them somewhere people can avoid them if they want to. Below this post you can discuss it to your heart’s content, and I’ll be excited to see what you have to say about it!

I’ll post this on Twitter and Facebook and repost it regularly between now and pub date, when I’ll start re-Tweeting it every ten minutes or so :)

Cheers all

Will

Just a quick post, for those of you who are members of the British Fantasy Society, attended FantasyCon 2011 or have registered for FantasyCon 2012 – the recommendations period for the 2012 British Fantasy Awards is now open. And you should vote.

You really, really should.

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I worked in publishing for a long time before I became a full time writer, and during those years I saw behind the scenes of a lot of cool places – aircraft hangar sized distribution centres, recording studios, backstage areas of famous gig venues, editing suites, and many others. But I never saw the inside of a printers.

Several of my colleagues did, and the members of the Production department (who, if you don’t know, are the brave men and women who actually make sure a book exists, by setting texts and covers, getting files to printers and making sure that they get into warehouses and therefore into bookshops when they are supposed to) went reasonably regularly, as the printers know full well who sign off their invoices, and like to keep them on side. But I never went. So when Nick, my editor at HarperCollins, asked me if I wanted to go and watch The Rising come off the presses, and sign a few copies while I was there, my reaction was, I suspect, a bit more enthusiastic than he was expecting.

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I tend to write a lot, as those of you have seen the pictures of The Rising manuscript will probably have realised. But it’s taken me a couple of days to put the experience of the SFX Weekender into words.

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Just a very quick post to say that the first teaser trailer for The Rising, the sequel to Department 19, has been released. Here’s an embed – please pop onto the Facebook page and let me know what you make of it. Personally, I think it’s awesome! But then I am at least a little bit biased…

I haven’t written this blog for more than three weeks. No excuses – I’ve been rubbish. I’ve done exactly what I said I wouldn’t do. I apologise.

That’s a man being burnt at the stake. Which is clearly what I deserve.

Since the last time I posted on this blog, I’ve been out and about doing the events that the last post was about, and a couple of others. I’m not sure how well I can actually remember anything about them at this point, but that may or may not make this post more entertaining. Anyway, first up, what seems like an incredibly long time ago, was the Bath Festival Of Children’s Literature…

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This weekend I’m attending the BFS FantasyCon in Brighton, then hot-footing it over to the Bath Childrens Literature Festival – in both places I’m doing events and generally hanging out, so do please come and say hello if you’re planning to attend either (or both!)…

 At FantasyCon (which is a fabulous weekend out for all the family – well, those members of the family with extremely strong livers, at least…) I’ll be participating in the Mass Signing at 8pm on Friday, then moderating and taking part in the Rise Of YA panel at 3pm on Saturday. The rest of the weekend I’ll mostly be at the bar, or in a pub which I’m reliably informed is called The Druid’s Head, somewhere in the backstreets of Brighton…

Then on Sunday, after getting on a train at an ungodly hour, I’ll have the (very genuine) privilege of sharing a panel event with John Connolly, one of my absolutely favourite writers, and a genuinely lovely man as well. I’ll be the one trying not to look deeply starstruck and unworthy…

The event is at Bath Central Library from 11am-12pm, with a signing for an hour or so afterwards. I think it’s pretty close to sold out (which is entirely due to John, I know!) but there are still a few tickets left here. After that’s done, I’m heading back to London, for a bit of a sleep before I get down to some seriously geeky mapping on Monday, with the hope of starting Department 19 vol 3: THE CLASSIFIED TITLE towards the end of the week.

Should all be a lot of fun – please do come and say hello if you’re around!

I’ve been so, SO rubbish with this blog for the last week or so – apologies. I was finishing Department 19: The Rising, which I hope you’ll agree is a pretty decent excuse, but it’s an excuse nonetheless. I’m going to get back on top of it over the next few days, and catch up with some of the stuff I’ve been wanting to talk about – the DC New 52, the imminent return of South Park, some ridiculously OCD Department 19 stuff I had to do in the course of editing The Rising, and a couple of places that you can come and say hello to me this weekend if you’re around. But the first thing I need to catch up on is one of the better films I’ve seen recently – Tomas Alfredson’s new version of John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Alfredson was the man who brought John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let The Right One In so beautifully to the screen, and, as you can see above, he put together one HELL of a cast for his new film. So it’s fair to say, my expectations were pretty high. Did it meet them?

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When I started this blog, I told people on Twitter that it wasn’t going to be all about Department 19, and I intend to stick to that, I promise. But I’ve gathered from talking to people over the last few months that there are at least a few of you out there who are interested in the process of how a book becomes a reality, so I thought I’d write this little update now that The Rising has finally reached the home stretch.

I sent the third draft to my editor this afternoon, and a hard copy is on its way back to me now. One more pass, one more slow, careful read of every word with a red pen in my hand, and it’ll basically be done. I’ll send that version back to my editor Nick, who will do the same, and send it back to me. I’ll say yes or no to the tracked changes he has added to the manuscript, and then it’ll be out of our hands, off to a copyeditor and then a proofreader. My only remaining task will be to say yes or no to their tracked changes.

So how did it get here, to this complicated period of back and forth?

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A great many cleverer and better informed people than me have written about 9/11 in the last week or so (I particularly recommend Jason Burke and Francis Fukuyama in The Guardian, Farooq Murad at The Huffington Post and David Remnick, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer and others in The New Yorker) but I’m going to tell my own little story of the day the towers fell anyway. Not because I feel I have any particular insight or expertise, but because what became a global, landscape-shifting event was still, at the ground level, a story of individual people – the victims who lost their lives (including the many who were forced to jump from the buildings to escape the searing heat of the burning jet fuel, and who have been shamefully airbrushed from the official record), the men and women who gave theirs voluntarily while trying to help others, the survivors, the families, and everyone else who was touched by that terrible morning.

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This is one of the reasons I love my girlfriend. Because she gives me presents like this for my birthday.

These two beautiful books are part of the new Penguin Classics Deluxe range – these are US editions, although they are available here and here from Amazon in the UK – and anyone who has read Department 19 will understand why these were the two titles she picked to give me, and why I was so thrilled by them.

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Sometimes friends are useful. They buy you drinks, laugh at your jokes, pick you up when life punches you in the face. And sometimes, far more importantly, they lend you pre-release DVDs of movies you’ve been wanting to see for literally months.

I was in the US researching The Rising, the second Department 19 novel, when Attack The Block came out – since then I’ve been watching the days count down until it came out on DVD (19th September, according to Amazon). Everything I knew about it had me convinced I was going to love it – it’s written and directed by Joe Cornish, one half of Adam & Joe (whose radio show remains one of the best and funniest things out there), produced by Big Talk Productions (home of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright), it was filmed on the Heygate Estate in South London, a place I have a curious fascination with, and it’s about a gang of petty criminal kids fighting off an alien invasion. I repeat; it’s about a gang of petty criminal kids fighting off an alien invasion.

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Right. So this is a blog. My blog, in fact. The first blog I’ve ever had. Although given that until very, very recently, I’d have rather scooped my own eyes out with a rusty spoon than write a blog, that’s hardly surprising. So what’s changed?

Mainly the fact that on March 31^st this year, I became an official published author when HarperCollins sent my debut novel, Department 19, out into the world. Well, into bookshops and warehouses, at least. The same novel that is published in paperback today. And since then, in slowly increasing numbers, people have started to ask me questions, which can be grouped into three rough categories:

- stuff you might expect – how to get an agent, how to get published, how much do authors earn, does being a writer make you more attractive to the opposite sex. I’ll give you the answer to that last one right now; no it doesn’t.

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