A SPARK GAP

On the road and in the ether...

2011-06-05T20:27:00.008+01:00

AURORA is out! And there's lots going on.

I'll be travelling about in person, talking about the Exodus trilogy to people in various places over the next few weeks, including the West End Festival (which is practically on my own doorstep so I'd better stock up on tea and biscuits, just in case) and the Edinburgh Book Festival. There will be another event there on Aurora on August 13th.

I'll also be travelling all through the ether on a blog tour, talking to Bookwitch and Bookette (who sound as if they should duet), Mary Hoffman and The Book Lantern (who sound as if they should be a fantasy series) and various other sites.

I'll put up links to all this - and more - as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, here is an article I wrote on the current craze for dystopian/apocalyptic fiction ('The New Dystopalypse') in Saturday's Scotsman.

"Have teenagers, fed on an everyday diet of terror - war, recession, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, swine flu - become disaster junkies?"

Well, have you? What do you think?

The Book Lantern

2011-03-20T18:49:00.005Z

Is teen angst, lust and abuse the new, true love? Or is it love triangles? Just what is it about those bad boys: brooding, Byronic and broke?

Loving the brilliantly spiky, sparky posts on THE BOOK LANTERN.

And thanks to Ceilidh of The Sparkle Project who wrote a great piece about Scottish YA fiction.

Hoping for the Nowhere People

2011-03-11T21:27:00.015Z

Tonight I'm worrying about people I've never met, hoping that they have survived the tsunami: the people of the tiny island nation of Kiribati in the heart of the south Pacific, whose plight against rising oceans inspired me to write a whole trilogy. Yesterday, I was talking to young people in Scotland about the young people of Kiribati. So tonight, while I have fun with friends, and Japan reels from its nightmare, I'm taking this moment to send my hopes to the all those people so far away.

"To be part of a nation that might be under the sea, gives me a feeling that I am from nowhere." - young i-Kiribati native.

Low-lying islands that were the first in the tsunami's path - Kiribati, tonga, Guam - ordered people to move 30 metres inland and look for refuge well above sea level, the Guardian reports tonight.

But on Kiribati there is nowhere above sea level to run to.

New covers!

2011-02-17T15:03:00.004Z

EXODUS and ZENITH have just been re-issued with these great new covers and AURORA, the final part of the story, will be published in June.

THE BEAUTIFUL FREEDOM CAGE, Radio 4

2010-05-04T10:33:00.014+01:00

There is a bridge in Venice at sunset, a loch in the ancient forests of Scotland of a primeval stillness that makes me shiver, a fishing harbour on a Greek island beside the tiny church of the Mermaid Madonna - these are my heavenly havens, enchanted places where the worries of the world seem very far away.

Last summer, watching a tangerine moon rise up over the Mermaid Madonna church (above), my fantasies about spending a winter there one day, writing a book in that perfect peace, were interrupted by sirens and the dash of police cars through the cafe tables. We couldn't see what was wrong and the locals only shrugged. We shrugged too and carried on eating, relaxing, dreaming...

Half a year later, in the depths of a Scottish winter, a newspaper article revealed what the strange harbour panic had been. Our idyllic Greek fishing harbour is not as 'out of this world' as we thought - all of a sudden, it is right at the heart of the modern world. Skala Sykaminias, so close to Turkey that I often wondered if I could swim across the turquoise strait of sea, has become a crisis point for refugees to enter Europe.

Most of the refugees are young boys from Afghanistan, many still children, fleeing Taliban attacks in their war-ravaged land, enticed by the promise of a new life in Europe by smuggler gangs. Some survive the epic journey, only to find themselves caught at the very end; some drown.

So when asked for a story for Radio 4 to mark the 150th anniversary of JM Barrie's birth, inspired by a Peter Pan chapter, 'Come Away, Come Away', I knew what I had to write. It is a story tinged with the stuff of Peter Pan - brutal pirates, flight, lost boys... and yet it is no fantasy. It's all happening right now in the place I will be going to on holiday again this year. But it will feel different, this time. And the story is not going away. Some stories decide they want to grow into books. We'll see.

Mine is one of three 15 min stories - the others are by Geraldine McCaughrean and Michael Morpurgo broadcast Tuesday 4th and Wed 5th May.

And I never knew till now that JM Barrie and I share the same birthday!

THE BEAUTIFUL FREEDOM CAGE Radio 4 on Thursday 6th May 3.30pm.

All 3 stories available on i-player.

AURORA

2010-03-13T17:51:00.005Z

The End. It's done, at last. AURORA, that is.

I'm still fiddling and editing but I feel a bit like the cleaner sweeping the stage after an epic play. The characters have exited the stage and walked off into their futures - or not, having shuffled off their mortal coils, some of them. Well, 'shuffle' is a bit of an understatement for what happens to some of them but that's all I'm saying for now.

I miss them. I'm busy writing other things and planning the next book, yet I catch myself thinking about them all, wondering what they're doing now. Then I remember they're not real, and they're not doing anything at all 'now'. They're only imagined presences in an invented world of 2115 - but I've lived with this lot so long, they feel quite real to me.

It always surprises me that they feel real to other people. That is the magic of a book - my dream can become yours too. So I loved this animatic of THE WEAVE from Exodus on youtube, where Mara meets Fox. (The Weave is a crucial part of the story in Aurora too.) It's amazingly close to what I imagined. Thanks to the young students at Ravensbourne College who created it.

I Read The News Today...

2009-10-05T20:39:00.006+01:00

...with a sickening sense of foreboding. Two teenage girls, just 14 and 15, held hands and jumped together to their death last night from a high bridge not too far from my home. There was a girl I was thinking of, hoping it wasn’t her. All I can do is mark her short life here. RIP Georgia with the puppy-soft eyes.

Once upon a time there was a world...

2009-09-26T13:45:00.010+01:00

On a brief skive from the last great heave on AURORA, I clicked on a Guardian podcast on 'climate change books' and heard the lovely Sarah Crown from the Guardian books blog saying very nice things about Exodus and Zenith (about 23 mins in). It was a little gift from the ether. Moments before, I'd hit a Friday afternoon slump, telling myself I'd get somebody to slap me if I ever had the urge to write an epic trilogy ever again. I really just needed a Kitkat.

The podcast is worth a listen as there are a number of good books discussed - some of my own favourites like Cormac MCarthy's The Road, poetry from Don Paterson and Sean O'Brien, Earth From The Air. Sarah finishes with a great quote from Philip Pullman about 'Thou shalt not' reaching the head, but what touches the heart is 'once upon a time' - the very words, as it happens, that Exodus opens with and Aurora ends on.

The podcast and booklist is HERE.

A few more links I've been too busy to put up before: THE BOOK SMUGGLERS on YA apocalyptic-dystopian fiction. And HERE. Some Glasgow Dystopia. And I loved the look of IN SEARCH OF GIANTS.

Next blog, a moving Once Upon A Time...

As If You Live In The Early Days Of A Better Nation

2009-03-01T22:01:00.010Z

"Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation" - Alasdair Gray.

On Friday, on The Times online, I spotted the most powerful poetic wake-up call by Philip Pullman to a nation sleepwalking itself into a state of fettered 'freedom'. I decided to grab a newspaper version; I was sure it would have an illustration by the 18th century poet-artist William Blake, as Philip roots his sleepwalking vision in Blake's poetic myth of Albion, the ancient name for Britain. And I was right. And just as well I did buy the paper because a few hours later, when I tried to link the online piece to this blog, it had vanished into the ether, into the mysterious Lost Dimension of 404.

But the blogosphere came to the rescue as bloggers began, en masse, to post the piece that had vanished, because it needs to be read and thought about and debated - by all of us, but especially by the generation who are about to inherit the Earth in what might be the most crucial era in human history. So here it is, with thanks to Longrider.

More debate about the kind of world we want to live in here and here and the Modern Liberty Campaign .

ARCTIC UNICORNS

2009-02-10T15:39:00.003Z

Beautiful, just beautiful - watch this amazing footage of 'arctic unicorns', the narwhals.

And here they are in ZENITH:

"There is no moon but the sprinkle of starlight picks out a dazzling mosaic of ice that is so fragile it shifts with the movement of the sea. And there is something else. A long, silver point is sticking up out of the thin crust of ice.
Mara screws up her eyes. It looks like a sword.
The silver sword vanishes then re-appears further in front, breaking a path through the icy waves. Another sword rises out of the ocean, surges towards the first and crosses it. Mara gasps as the swords clash then vanish.
Narwhals.
She only saw them once on Wing. Great, shell-encrusted whales, far out in Longhope Bay. Island folk legend said a speck of ground narwhal tusk a day would make you live a hundred years or more, just as the narwhals do.
A narwhal horn always points to the North Star."

Nature's Great Events: The Great Melt is on Wednesday 11 February on BBC One at 2100 GMT

NEW YEAR, NEW ZENITH

2009-01-06T11:03:00.011Z

A nicely seasonal cover for the US ZENITH, coming soon.

It looks and feels a bit like this here in Scotland right now...

Happy New Year and I hope 2009 is good to you.

*Great interview in CYNSATIONS with my fantastic editor-of-old, Sarah Davies, who now 'grows' writers in her Greenhouse - a nice insight into the world of children's publishing from a publisher-turned-transatlantic agent.

RIP Bunny Bertagna

2008-12-01T16:35:00.004Z

Grief for a pet is so uncomplicated. Normally stoic in a crisis, I've been a sniffling mess all day. Hoping that I could put the red-eyed look down to it being an eye-watering minus 4 degrees today in Glasgow, the whole city sparkling with frost, I had to take the laptop out and work my way around cafes and museums. Just couldn't face sitting alone at my desk without my little foot-warmer and writing companion, the beloved Bunny Bertagna. Poor little thing was suffering badly and we couldn't let that go on.

As I said in a post last year:

A rabbit is the perfect writing companion. He needs no walkies when you are lost in that hard-won mysterious 'zone' when the hours fly by and writing is a dream. Cast a few carrot chunks about the room and he will amuse himself quietly all afternoon by foraging in corners. Rabbits don't bark or twitter, just make sweet gruntings and look impossibly cute when they want something. They are the ultimate muse: when you read a bit of the book you are working on, they never look bored or less than impressed. And they are the best foot warmer in winter, as you sit at your desk.

What more could a writer want?

So, to possibly the most spoiled house rabbit ever, thank you for a bunny-load of love, fun and foot-warming. We miss you lots.

One City

2008-11-03T14:51:00.006Z

Our City brings together ten of Scotland's top children's writers, with specially commissioned stories inspired by Edinburgh and introduced by children's-favourite, BBC presenter, Raven.

OCEAN TERMINAL, EDINBURGH
6 November 2008 at 4.30pm

Meet all ten authors of Our City - come along to Ocean terminal, Edinburgh, and get your very own copy of the book signed by all ten authors.

Teapots on Pluto

2008-10-21T14:40:00.006+01:00

Are there? Who knows? Scientists Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins caused a rumpus by comparing belief in God to the unprovable belief that there is a teapot orbiting Pluto. My story, A Teapot on Pluto, is not about God; it's about time travel (yes, my head is stuck in the future, but one of these days I'll get back to the here and now). The teapot has been tucked away in the back of my mind, gathering dust and waiting for its moment, and when I read about the big Atom-Smasher switch-on last month (see post below) I found it.

Read the story here or download it from Scottish Book Trust's excellent site. Check out the stories by other authors too.

I've put lots of hot links within the story, for a truly interactive read. So have fun - click away, and see what you find...

Catalysed

2008-10-15T14:49:00.014+01:00

Well, I didn't expect that at all. I was up for the Catalyst Book Award along with double-Carnegie Medal winner Berlie Doherty whose books I love, and Cathy MacPhail who wins awards all the time (but you just can't hate her, she's great) and Tabitha Suzuma who is an exciting new writer on the YA book scene. I was shortlisted for ZENITH, which was never going to win against that lot, and also because it's a sequel, and sequels never win. So I was very relaxed. So relaxed, and so 110% certain that I wouldn't win, that I didn't see the point in preparing a winning speech - or in saying 'no' to a late, too-big glass of wine with last year's winner and this year's Master of Ceremony, Anthony McGowan...

That's how I came to be standing on the Catalyst stage with a headache and without a speech, apart from an astonished 'wow, thank you.' Thanks indeed to all the enthusiastic teenagers who read and debate the books and vote on the award, and to the teachers and librarians from about 30 schools who make the Catalyst Award such a fantastic event for all the writers involved. You are all really inspiring.

It was a thrill to win and so was seeing so many excited teenagers who were really into books. I was very moved by the connection so many teenagers made with ZENITH, and with the other shortlisted books. The Catalyst Award is a brilliant catalyst for making sparks fly between teenagers and books.

And it all very powerfully proved wrong an article I just read on Achuka.

Big thanks to Cara Murray, a trainee teacher who has been doing a fantastic project with children, based on my Ice Cream Machine books. I'm going to set up a page for schools with ideas and photos of activities from Cara's project and others.

Proof that two days are rarely the same in this job- I was asked to be a BAFTA Scotland judge for the children's TV award by the MD of SMG who made the Ice Cream Machine TV series, and had a great time wrangling with the other judges. Our chosen shortlist is announced tomorrow. My invitation to the Baftas says, intimidatingly, 'Black tie and glamour'. Oh, I'll try...

And for Jack (who gets a gold star for stumping me on a question at the Catalyst Schools events!): you asked how many people are at risk on the drowning islands of Kiribati in the South Seas (which originally gave me the idea for Exodus and Zenith) - it's 107, 817 people, Jack.

Medieval technology

2008-09-20T14:49:00.004+01:00

And thanks to Steve Augarde via Fidra for making me smile at the end of a truly horrible week.

Or there's this; not so funny but cheering all the same.

Catalysts and black holes

2008-09-20T13:28:00.009+01:00

Is it coincidence that so many big banks have imploded all across the world since the switch-on of the big Atom-Smasher (or Large Hadron Collider) in Geneva? Or have they been sucked into big black holes?

I couldn't help wondering, as I've just finished a story inspired by this amazing idea. The story, A Teapot on Pluto, should appear soon on the Young Scottish Book Trust blog where Keith Gray is their first Online Writer in Residence. (Obviously I'll have to buy Keith a few beers for the nice things he said about me.) Meanwhile, you can read and download his story and others here and watch Keith's brilliant podcasts for budding writers here. I've been picking up a few tips.

In a few weeks I'm off to do a run of events for the Catalyst Book Award. ZENITH has been shortlisted, along with books by Berlie Doherty, Cathy MacPhail, Antony Macgowan and Tabitha Suzuma - fantastic writers all. It's a great shortlist and great to be there. Best of all, Catalyst gets teenagers reading and arguing over books.

In November, I'll be involved in an exciting launch with TV's 'Raven' for Our City for the OneCity Trust. It's a project close to my heart and I always wanted to rewrite the story of the Pied Piper - this gave me the perfect chance, with Edinburgh instead of Hamburg as the dramatic setting for a fairytale that haunted me as a child.

And I've just seen the stunning new cover of the US Zenith. More soon!

Pullman and Banksy fight the good fight

2008-09-02T10:44:00.014+01:00

Philip Pullman debunks another false god - and Banksy (above) is on side.

"Worshipping the market....: by handing over vast amounts of money to Tesco’s, for example, in order to bring about a miracle – and sure, enough, the god responds: the book they nominate is labelled No. 1 at Tesco’s, and behold! They have a bestseller. In reality, success comes so unpredictably..." Read the rest here, along with Anne Fine.

Intermission....

2008-06-22T18:45:00.003+01:00

Summer is the season of book tents

2008-06-15T23:01:00.010+01:00

This week, I'm doing an event at Edinburgh's Old Town Festival, as part of REFUGEE WEEK (see wed 18th June). On Friday I'll be in Kelso at the Borders Book Festival. There will be heart-stopping visuals and I'll bring you face to face with the real, world-shattering SOS that lies behind the epic stories of EXODUS, ZENITH and AURORA.

And I hope the nice SLA conference people I spoke to yesterday enjoyed their night in the badlands of Glasgow...

There's also my FUTURE SHOCK event at the Edinburgh Book Festival 25th August, with inspiration from Bladerunner, The Matrix - and the Sex Pistols. Well, why not?

Revolting authors and children

2008-06-06T12:57:00.021+01:00

It takes a lot to get the nation's children's authors, a peaceable lot, to amass in an uprising. But this week Philip Pullman led an outpouring of dismay over some UK publishers' plans to put age recommendations, without consultation, on our books. So much has been said by authors and publishers and journalists, but the most important views, surely, are those of young readers.

Which says it all, really.

If you want to find out why so many authors, including all four Children's Laureates and some of our most wonderful writers and illustrators, such as Alan Garner, felt the need to say 'not in our name' to the proposed plans, have a look here and here and here and here and here... and there's a good summary of both arguments here.

Here are Philip Pullman and Darren Shan, and an excellent post at Fidra Books where Alan Garner comments.

If I had never read the books of Alan Garner (as with Ursula Le Guin) I might not be a writer today. I have read Alan Garner, as many people do, at ten years old, at fifteen and as an adult, and each time I find something startling and new. The impossibility of age-banding his novels hits on what is wrong with the uninspired commercial impulse of this idea - a dull, wrong-headed, narrow marketing approach that completely goes against the grain of what the wide-open universe of books is all about.

And from Bearsden to Earthsea

2008-05-23T20:50:00.008+01:00

I never could have imagined, all those years ago, curled up in the windowseat of Bearsden Library, escaping from life into the wizard world of Earthsea, that I would ever grow up to write books of my own, and that one of my books would one day end up on the American Booklists's Top Ten SF/ Fantasy Titles for Youth 2008 alongside a book by Ursula Le Guin.

Amazing.

As Mara found out in EXODUS, miracles can happen.

The Wise Woman of Earthsea

2008-04-22T11:37:00.009+01:00

Working alone at a desk can be wonderful and it can be hard. Not as hard as lots of other things I've done, but still. What do you do when inspiration goes awol? Most often you look to other writers- ransack the bookshelves and the teetering piles on the desk. But there's often inspiration - and distractions - to be had online, on the phone, a quick coffee-therapy with another writer. And I like to dip into Ursula Le Guin's site ; it's like a brisk talking-to from a wise old auntie, if that's not too disrespectful. Full of nuggets of wisdom and insight. Aged 14, I submerged myself in her Earthsea books. That's a map of Earthsea above. I fled my life and a rainsodden Scottish summer on the windowseat of my local library. (Is it any wonder I ended up writing about an Earth all at sea?) I just read this on Sara O'Leary's site via the bookwitch, who just tagged me (see below).

Anyway, some wise words from Le Guin: "the writers who are my friends now are generous people with a strong sense of community. I keep away from writers who think art is a competition for fame, money, prizes, etc. What matters is the work."

Which sort of leads me onto bookwitch's 'tagging game' this morning. She does these things just to keep us off our work.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Okay, 6th sentence on p123 of my nearest book, Keith Gray's soon-to-be-published 'Ostrich Boys':
"'I pulled my rucksack closer to my feet, wrapped my legs around it as if to protect what was inside. At last Sim said: 'You know. Just...' 'O-kay. Dodgy question,' Joe said."

Wise woman Ursula would approve of Keith and it's a cracking read.

My chosen taggees, who might want to avoid some work by joining the blogchain (do steps I to 5 above) are: The Greenhouse, Julia Bell, Fidra, Notes from The Slushpile and Normblog.

Not an April Fool

2008-04-01T13:37:00.013+01:00

It's Publication Day for EXODUS in the USA. A bit of a worrying date! So I did a quick check on Amazon.com but it's definitely there.

It's been a long journey for Exodus to reach the USA. When it was first published in 2002, America was, understandably, caught up in the aftermath of September 11th. A novel about a flooded world was just the wrong book at the wrong time, though it was going down a storm here, published as it was during a summer of mass floods in Asia, Europe and the UK. My home city, Glasgow, which I'd envisioned engulfed by floods in the year 2100 had cars floating down the streets that monsoon summer.... I felt like a prophet of doom.

Now, it's been published in many countries and America has suffered its own catastrophic floods too. So for all the wrong, sad reasons this feels like the right time for the book there. The responses so far have been amazing. But it's early days. Books provoke all kinds of reactions, so we'll see....

But so far so good. The ALA (American Library Association) BOOKLIST made Exodus a front page feature, which was wonderful. See Love Among The Ruins Booklist feature and review.

Another review from Jen Robinson's fantastic site - a small universe of books in one blog, and, oops, I've managed to lose the links for the other nice ones, like the US School Library Journal. Obviously I won't put them all up but publishing a book is as scary as it is exciting. Anyone can strangle your baby, so to speak, so it's great when people welcome it to the world. Most of all, I've been overwhelmed by the passion of young readers - their emails and debates are furiously passionate, obsessional, inspiring!

If you are a reading group, a teacher or librarian and want to get the debate going, Walker have published a wonderful reading guide for the US publication, downloadable here.

Facts and reality are often too overwhelming. Humans have always needed stories. I think of stories as a map, torch and compass to take on the journey through life. Maybe that's why Mara's journey, and the other young characters in Exodus and Zenith, have such resonance for young people (and a lot of older ones too) who are wondering and worrying about the future. It's such a vast, exciting and scary unknown. But an epic adventure with characters you love - well, all I can say is I loved writing it, even when it's bending my brain!

And it's currently bent in three 3 different directions: remembering what I wrote in Exodus for a US interview, doing events on the new paperback of Zenith (the 2nd book), and writing Aurora.

Today, as Exodus starts a new journey, I decided to do something special. I'm writing the ending of AURORA, the last book in the trilogy. (Though there's a gaping big bit in the middle still to be written...) Writing with goosebumps, a racing heart. And a big box of tissues.

And from Edith to Simone (a much easier leap)

2008-03-25T12:37:00.013Z

Edith Wharton and Simone de Beauvoir: New Yorker and Parisian, yet definitely two of a kind. Both were huge inspirations to me, as a fledgling writer in my twenties, when I felt stuck and angry with myself for lacking courage and taking the wrong, easy path in life and ending up thoroughly lost in the woods. I'd just spent four years at university studying books mostly written by men - and I'd loved it. But in a kind of desperate instinct to find my way back to myself, I began a journey into books written by women. I read everything by Edith and Simone and many other ground-breaking women writers. The most important thing I learned was that the 'easy' road is always the hardest in the end. But there is always a way back to yourself.

And, if you want to write, you pick up a pen.

So when I read this about Simone de Beauvoir in today's Guardian by Zoe Williams, it made me laugh:

"Ollivier includes small pull-out sections on French Girls We Love and has the brass neck, ladies, to include Simone de Beauvoir, who is apparently "known as one of the 20th-century's most interesting and important women. Her memoirs reveal an independent, self-defined woman who made conscious (if existentialist!) choices regarding love and work ..."

I don't even know where to start with that, but at random, let's start here: can you imagine what De Beauvoir would have said about being called a girl? About being included in a book whose next chapter explains why it's important to buy your walking shoes in Prada, because you can never be too well dressed? About being name-checked by a person who doesn't just not know the meaning of the word existentialist, but can't even be arsed to look it up before committing it to a paperback? Can you imagine? She would have had a cow.

... surely there's more to being a French woman than not eating a whole portion of anything and knowing who Simone de Beauvoir is, even if you do not, strictly speaking, know anything she ever said."

Wonderful, Zoe.

A bit about that ('existentialist!') girl Simone here.

PS - problems with the comments section here and my website email. Things are not getting through. Apologies if you think you are being ignored. Will be sorted asap!

From Slash to Edith

2008-03-21T14:43:00.007Z

Yes, quite a leap there. From demented rock god to Edith Wharton. But Ms Wharton was far more the rebellious spirit of the cartoon, above, than the prim lady of her portrait. So maybe they would get along.

I'm staggeringly late in putting this up, but better late than never (as I always say to my publishers).

I was honoured when one of my favourite 'online coffeestops', the wonderful Normblog, invited me to join his illustrious list of writers. I had to write about my favourite book for Norm's Writer's Choice series. An enjoyable task which proved almost impossible. So, in the end, after ransacking my bookshelves and ending up with a pile on the floor almost as tall as myself, I settled for one of my most favourite books (the one I'd re-read most recently): Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.

You can read my Writer's Choice here and there are lots more.
Here's the Amazon link if you would like to read it yourself.

That Doesn't Mean It Didn't Happen

2008-01-22T09:59:00.000Z

It's rare, as I said in a previous post, that I get to impress the teenage Rebel. I take whatever fleeting moment I can. So when I was told that ZENITH was No.2 in the bebo fiction charts, I couldn't wait for Rebel and friends to come in from school, and for the Almost Legendary Guitar Hero to come in from work, so that I could announce that I was higher in the charts than Slash, the Actual Legendary Guitar Hero from Guns n Roses and latterly Velvet Revolver (we saw VR last autumn and my ears buzzed for a week).

Of course by the time you read this the moment might have passed. I might have crashed and Slash might be rising again. But in the words of the man himself, That Doesn't Mean It Didn't Happen.

Happy New Year

2008-01-08T12:03:00.000Z

A very happy New Year!

CLICK onto my EARTHSPACE blog (http://earth-rise.blogspot.com/) to see how to win £100 of iTunes. It's a bebo competition to celebrate the launch of the paperback release of my eco-epic ZENITH. Or go straight to www.bebo.com/zenithbook to post your green resolution for 2008 and see if you win. Good luck!

2008 has begun with a very nice bundle of mail. It's fantastic to read it all - but quite hard to reply to everyone quickly as I'm trying to write the next book. So I've come up with a few solutions. One is that in the new paperback of ZENITH, out on 1st February, there is an extra feature at the end of the book. It's an interview made up of all the questions that readers mail to me most often. They are really good questions and I enjoyed you 'interviewing' me!

The other solution is to post some of your emails (anonymously) and reply here as best I can.....

"I'm 12yrs old and I've only read Exodus and Zenith. I think they're both really really good books!! Once I started reading I couldn't stop, I was in a totally different world! But your books have also made me think. About the world and global warming. i think it's really cool that you wrote two really good books and still had that important message of global warming. I've learnt so much from reading those two books and i can't wait to read more of your books!
I myself would like to be an author when i am older, and you have really inspired me as a role model. I read through your whole website and learnt a lot! I love to write stories and I'm quite a bookworm. My biggest ambition is to actually write a proper children's book and have it published. But i can never actually finish one story. How do you keep going, do you ever get boerd, halfway throught?
How do you make your characters come to life, so that they are basically real people?
Do you already know how your stpry is going to end once you start writing?
What is the best top tip for you for story writing?
I look forward to reading more of your books!!!!!!
love, a huge fan!
xxxx
P.S, what's the best thing about being an author?
P.P.S, please, please write back??!!!!!"

My reply:

Thanks for such a lovely message and such good questions. Let's see if I can answer them!

I know exactly what you mean about being in a different world. That's how I feel when the writing is going well and my biggest hope is that people reading the books feel that too. I also wanted you to think - I didn't want to tell you what to think though; that's up to you. Stories are spoiled when the writer tries to put a stark message across to the reader. But if you closed the book and it left you thinking - that's wonderful.

You are already doing some of the very best things you can do if you want to be an author - being a bookworm and imagining up stories. It's the best apprenticeship there is! Read lots and dream lots. Read books you might not normally try, try to work out what makes a book good - or bad. Everything grows and sparks your imagination. And really live your life - then you'll have more to write about.

It can be very hard to keep going with a story. Every author finds this. We get stuck, get bored, want to give up, do anything else....just like you. Sometimes, it's best to move onto a new story. Not every story works. But don't give up too easily. Put the story away for a while - a few weeks or even months - but keep reading and dreaming and living with your eyes and mind open. It's amazing how, when you come back to something with fresh eyes and ideas, the next part of the story pops up out of your imagination. Or you think of a new character, or a new and better way to write it.

Have you ever tried putting the ideas in two unfinished stories together to see if you can make a completely different new one? The trick is to keep playing around, keep making it interesting for yourself, keep having fun with writing, make it a challenge, a game. That's harder than it sounds, as you are finding out, but it's a big part of being a writer. You have to find your own inspiration.

MY characters seem to grow out of a place. I keep finding out things about them as the story grows so it's only by the end of a book that I feel I really know them inside out -it can take half a book for me to 'see' them in my mind, because I'm seeing them from the inside. You don't have to know everything at once. Keep a small notebook or computer page on them and add notes to 'grow' your character a bit at a time - their friends, memories, likes and dislikes, traits. Steal faces from people you see on the street or people that you know - or parts of people that you know - and use them in a story. Soon, they will stop being the real people and will grow, in your imagination, into 3-D characters in your story.

All my stories are journeys of discovery and I hardly ever know exactly what's going to happen - which is very scary. So I get stuck a lot. But there comes a point, usually half way through, when I have a very clear vision of the ending - as clear as a dream (sometimes I really do dream it). That's when I let out the breath that I seem to have been holding for months, my shoulders relax (a bit) and I stop finding every excuse I can think of to leave my desk. Because now I see the end of the journey and I know I can make it.

I just have to work out how to get there....(but that's what keeps me writing. I have to find out).

Exercise your imagination like an athlete exercises their body. Let your imagination go exploring and see where it takes you. Learn to trust it and it will take you on all kinds of journeys. (I think this is the best thing about being an author.)

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-21T12:13:00.001Z

Have fun!

PROPHETS AND PHILANTHROPISTS

2007-11-16T12:42:00.000Z

Am beginning to feel like a travelling prophet of doom.

It began the very week that Exodus was published - my home city, Glasgow, which I had fictionally drowned in sea 100 years in the future, was engulfed in floodwaters. Orkney was the fictional model for Mara’s sinking island, Wing, and last winter my cousin Carol, who lives in Orkney, emailed me photos of its streets turned to rivers of sea. Last summer, I was no sooner off the train after speaking about Exodus and Zenith in middle England than the entire region was submerged in catastrophic floods. This month, as my publishers mapped out a promotional tour of East Anglia, the entire east coast was threatened by a tidal surge (yes, that's it above).

Just off the train from a few author talks in various places but no bad news as yet....

Off to Luxembourg next week, taking my 'Apocalyptic Powerpoint' to British Council school pupils (the slideshow has been going down very powerfully, and there is hope amid the apocalyptic images, I promise). Fortunately Luxembourg has no sea coast so I can’t see what damage I can possibly do there. I keep thinking of a film I saw as a child, starring Richard Burton, who dreams of disasters that come true. Maybe I should stay home quietly and write happy, pink, glittery tales.

But seriously, because obviously it is serious, I'm getting together an EARTHSPACE page (http://earth-rise.blogspot.com). It will grow as time goes on but it already has some fantastic links and inspirational info - and even eco-games - for anyone with an inclination to join the planet's gathering army of eco-warriors: the single necessary world war we really should all be joining up to fight.

On a much happier note, ZENITH (above) has been nominated for the 2008 Cilip Carnegie Medal. The Carnegie is awarded by the UK’s librarians to an outstanding novel for young readers. All five of my older books have now been nominated so I know not to hold my breath for the shortlist - it's just great to be chosen out of the 10,000 or so novels for young readers that are published in the UK each year.

The Carnegie Award is brilliant for readers and writers as many schools read and judge the books, 'shadowing' the official awards process - but even if you are not part of the shadowing process, the nominations list is a great guide to a good read out of this year’s crop of books.

As a Scot, I’m especially proud as the award is named after fellow Scot, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919). Pictured above, he looks a bit like Santa Claus, and maybe that's no coincidence. Carnegie rose from rags to being one of the richest men in the world after making his fortune in steel in the USA and his memory of using a library as a child made him vow 'if ever wealth came to me it should be used to establish free libraries.' And he did - he gifted almost 3000 of them in the UK and all across the world. Quite some Santa.

Wouldn't it be good to see much more of that bygone grace of 'giving back' in today's privileged and super-wealthy? The amazing legacy of philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie lives on.

* www.carnegie.greenaway.org.uk

EXPLODING COMET

2007-11-08T17:11:00.003Z

One of my books, SOUNDTRACK, is about a catastrophe that befalls Lagandall, a fictional village by the sea. A comet hangs in the sky over the sea, where the disaster happens, like a portent of doom. The uncanny fictional event mirrored a shocking real one that occurred off the coast of Scotland: the Antares disaster. The comet was real too. I would look out of my window and see the Hale-Bop comet flaring like a ghost or an angel above the rooftops as I wrote. And I discovered all kinds of superstitions and fears and fascinations trail in a comet's wake. In ancient times, when a comet appeared in the sky, the world held its breath and wondered what might follow.

So on this sparkling, cold and clear November night I will stand at the top of the hill where I live and search the skies for the exploding Comet Holmes: 'the strangest comet to burst onto the celestial scene in our lifetime'.

Wikipedia entry.

Bouncer Bertagna (Writing Muse)

2007-10-18T22:09:00.000+01:00

This should have been attached to last post but image wouldn't upload - for all you people who seem as interested in the rabbit as the new book!

The Ideal Writing Companion

2007-10-18T20:01:00.000+01:00

As the leaves blaze and fall into knee-high piles outside my door, I am turning over a new leaf here: two posts in two days. Rebel & Co (see below) must surely be impressed. Am beginning to see why blogging is so very popular, especially among writers. What a great distraction from the thing you are supposed to be writing. Yet you can kid yourself you are still working - well, you are researching and writing, aren't you? You could easily spend hours every day looking up interesting Sparky Stuff to post, and barely write another thing. Much better than tidying out the wardrobe/ desk/ rabbit hutch to avoid the burn-out that seems to hit around page 157 of every book.

By chance, just after introducing Rabbit in the last post I found this on www.writingontherun.com (another fantastic distraction-site) : a Pet Personality Quiz for Writers. Apparently, if you have a small animal as a 'writing companion':

'Nobody needs a pick-up line to get you to cuddle. Deep down, you want take the lead, but your playful nature hides this desire from the world. You tend to like to write longhand -- something about the paper that really turns you on. A little disciplined time and space for writing would help you to meet deadlines. While others are racing ahead, you’re content to eat the nuts and seeds in your trail mix.'

Absolutely no comment.

Neither would I dare comment on the accuracy of the profile of a writer who finds inspiration with an exotic bird, of the feathered kind, on their shoulder (www.keith-gray.com).

A rabbit is the perfect writing companion. He needs no walkies when you are lost in that hard-won mysterious 'zone' when the hours fly by and writing is a dream. Cast a few carrot chunks about the room and he will amuse himself quietly all afternoon by foraging in corners. Rabbits don't bark or twitter, just make sweet gruntings and look impossibly cute when they want something. They are the ultimate muse: when you read a bit of the book you are working on, they never look bored or less than impressed. And they are the best foot warmer in winter, as you sit at your desk.

What more could a writer want?

Bunnies and Baby Goths

2007-10-17T19:52:00.000+01:00

Rebel & Co, my Teen Advisory Board (aka my 13 year old daughter & friends; that's Rebel with the fringe, not the ears) keep me right on all things 'awesome' and 'eeew'. Well, they've decided I just don't cut it as a blogger. I need to do better. They are right. I will try to be more sparky, more often. Just write about Stuff, they say.

So I was thinking about Stuff to write about the other night as I stood with Rebel & Co, waiting for the mighty Avenged Sevenfold (www.myspace.com/avengedsevenfold) to take the stage and blast us all away at what was deemed The Best Gig In The Universe, Ever. It was a fantastic small gig of just 400 'best friends.' The great thing about having a teenager in the house is that you find out about all kinds of Stuff that would never be on your radar otherwise. (Though it can be bewildering trying to work out why the top you've pulled on that morning is suddenly 'eeew' when it didn't offend anyone last week...)

And so I came to be in a black-dark Goth cavern that was swarming with sweet little baby Goths, enjoying some screaming hi-energy punk-Goth-metal-with-soul, for the first time in many moons. I remember when I saw The Ramones, just along the road at the Apollo, I said, casually trying to impress Rebel & Co. And I did. 'You saw The Ramones? THE Ramones!' Uhuh. I basked in a fleeting moment of awesomeliness. Don't get so many of them these days. But then Rebel never took me to see Avenged Sevenfold when she was seven. If I want uncomplicated awe and devotion there's always Rabbit, and as you can see he is a pretty cute guy. (That's him with the ears.)

'I've just remembered. This is a historic site. You know who played a legendary last gig here?' Rebel's dad declared, as Rebel & Co emerged from the scary gothpit, gasping for Irn Bru, looking as if they'd survived a monsoon.

'Me', he said wistfully. 'My band. If it hadn't been for those, um, musical differences we could have had the world....'

But he's got Rebel instead, with his rock genes. She disappears back to the baby gothpit, eyeliner streaming beneath her Goth fringe (above) that I cut and dyed, as payment for her setting up Myspace pages for Mara and Fox - with Tuck, Pandora and others to follow, in time.

And that's really the Stuff that this blog is about. That Mara and Fox will be on Myspace soon. I'll post here and on the main website when we've got things up and running and I hope you'll drop in and befriend them.

Some news:

A definite spring release date (April) for EXODUS in the US.

ZENITH paperback is released in UK February, with a competition prize so amazing I wish I could win it myself. More on this soon. ZENITH will be Waterstone's Book of the Month for February.

Lots of adaptations and productions of the books are in progress, and lots of green projects all over the country, which are using Exodus and Zenith to bring the facts to life. I'll put up details on a special GREEN PAGE. Coming soon...

APOCALYPSE NOW?

2007-08-22T20:53:00.000+01:00

EARTH WINS
Summer 2100

Mara grips her father's hand as they face the impossible truth. All the islands in the north are gone. Now it's too late for miracles. The entire network of islands has been swallowed by the sea. Along with most of Wing.
“We're out of time, Mara,” says her father.
Furious, Mara runs down to the edge of the waves, crashes into the sea and struggles to reach the old red phone box that stands on the humpbacked bridge. Up to her waist in water, she reaches an arm through a windowpane that's long emptied of glass and dials the old emergency number. Why, she doesn't know. Who she is calling, she doesn't know either. Who on Earth does she think might answer? The line is dead of course.
This can't happen, Mara sobs down the phoneline that's been dead for decades.
No one answers. They're all long gone.
(From EXODUS)

WORLD WIND
Fox leans closer. ‘It was a hundred years ago, Mara. It’s history.’
‘But they knew. They could’ve done something but they didn’t. They knew. They didn’t think about the future, did they? They never thought about us.’
(From ZENITH)

After this summer’s catastrophic floods in the UK and all across Asia, and Hurricane Dean now rampaging across the Caribbean and hurtling into Mexico, the event I’m doing at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival could not be more timely. On Sunday, I will be exploring visions of the future with two other authors. The debate is not just about Scotland, it’s about all our futures.

Floods have wrecked millions of lives, the storm is still rising... but people are beginning to talk about ‘climate change fatigue’? It’s true that if one more breezy celeb nags me to use low energy light bulbs, having been flown in and taxied to a TV studio where lights blaze day and night (just as they burn in empty offices in every city in the world) I feel I'll blow a fuse myself.

We need less nagging and a lot more vision and imagination. That’s what fiction, and the event, is all about. We’d love you to add your energy to the mix.

Apocalyptic Scotland: Julie Bertagna, Catherine Forde & James Jauncey
Edinburgh International Book Festival
Charlotte Square Gardens

Sun 26/08/2007 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Teens & adults

Join some of teen fiction's strongest voices on a journey to a new Scotland. Each has written distinctly different dystopian futures for the nation. In an age of uncertainty, political upheaval and environmental catastrophe, they look to the future to explore who we are and who we may yet become. A truly outstanding collaboration not to be missed.

It was ten years ago today...

2007-08-16T17:43:00.000+01:00

Ten years ago today I did my first-ever author event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival with another brand new writer. She, like me, was a trembling, whey-faced nervous wreck.

'Hi, I'm Jo and I'm terrified,' she whispered, as we exchanged a sweaty-palmed handshake. I reassured her that she had met her match in the terrified stakes. Never, in my dreams of becoming an author, had I imagined I would end up onstage before a sea of faces - my idea of a nightmare. I'd only ever got as far as dreaming of a book with my name on it on a bookshop shelf.

It was just a few weeks before Princess Diana died. The world didn't yet know but it was about to find, in that terrified rookie author that was Jo Rowling, a new Cinderella story to replace the one that was about to end so catastrophically. This was a Cinderella to suit the new millennium - one where Cinders didn't even need a prince; she could write her own happy-ever-after in an Edinburgh cafe with a baby buggy at her side.

Some months earlier, I’d been amazed to see book bins stacked with Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights, with dramatic posters, in bookshops. Back then, children's authors didn't get book bins. Or posters. Or a marketing budget, to be brutally honest. You were supposed to feel grateful to be published alongside the grown-ups. Things were about to change. Together, Potter and Pullman would transform this publishing backwater into a booming business that, nowadays, entices some of the biggest names in adult fiction to write a children's or 'crossover' novel.

A couple of mavericks were behind the revolution. David Fickling was the pioneering editor who published Pullman’s His Dark Materials (a 1200-page epic inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost) at a time when most editor’s had decided that children and teenagers only read books that were short, snappy and not too demanding. The original print run for Northern Lights, the first of the trilogy, was just 500 copies and sales were not much higher until it won the Carnegie Medal in 1996. Fickling took that win as the green light to experiment, stealing marketing techniques from Goosebumps, the hugely successful 1990s children’s horror series. Never before had a vast literary epic for children been published with all the pizzazz of pulp fiction. The effect was sheer magic: sales went through the roof.

At the same time, Barry Cunningham at Bloomsbury (then a small, struggling children’s publisher) paid peanuts for a novel that had been turned down by nine other publishers, all of whom thought Harry Potter too old-fashioned to appeal to the ‘Playstation generation’. But they were also into Dungeons and Dragons, the magical narratives of interactive computer fantasy, and still read Enid Blyton’s boarding school stories and mysteries, alongside Goosebumps’ pulp horror and contemporary fiction. Like Fickling, Cunningham saw a gap in the market and dared to be different.

Bloomsbury’s genius was in publishing Harry Potter in the style of a 1950s children’s classic, setting it apart from the ‘garish or gritty’ trend - and then to use Rowling’s personal ‘Cinderella story’ in their marketing campaign. So, while children were passing copies of Harry Potter around the playground, their parents were reading about his creator’s rags to riches tale in their newspaper. Something remarkable happened: a children’s book simultaneously hit the radar with children and adults around the world.

The phenomenal successes of Rowling and Pullman exploded all the rules about what young fiction can be - and how much money it can make. While publishers (naturally) began to search for the next big windfall, writers began to open the doors on their imaginations and create the rich and challenging fiction they now saw that young readers were ready for.

Yet, until a few years ago, it was still a battle to publish something that wasn’t reassuringly like something else. To write my book Exodus, I had to overcome publisher nervousness because there just wasn’t anything else like it on the market. Climate change had yet to hit the front pages, so my futuristic vision of a drowning world was deemed too far-fetched to have much appeal. It was only once Exodus became such a success that I got the go-ahead to write the sequels, Zenith and now Aurora -although I would have written them anyway, just for myself, because the story haunts me too much. (More than anyone else, I need to find out what happens to Mara and Fox!)

Now, a battalion of writers is creating rich and sophisticated novels for an increasingly ‘crossover’ readership of young and not-so-young readers. A lot of people have jumped on the ‘kidlit’ bandwagon, and some of it is stale and over-hyped - but never before have young readers had so many good and exciting books to explore. The very best combine great storytelling and characters with imaginative daring and, like all good fiction, raise powerful questions about the world.

Like Harry, young fiction has finally come of age.

(I was going to end with the story of Jo Rowling and myself being held hostage by a gigantic blue M n M - no, I don't know why - but on second thoughts, maybe not. One of those things you end up doing as a newbie author, just because a press pack tells you to. And then learn not to, EVER again....)

First Spark

2007-03-29T18:31:00.000+01:00

I'd been set against writing a blog. Everyone seemed to be doing one. And the most interesting things I'll ever have to say are, I hope, to be found in my books. I'm sure you don't want to know what I'm thinking of having for dinner or exactly why I've got myself in knots over a particular character in chapter 8. Or how many words I did (or didn't) write today.

Even the name put me off. Blog. It just doesn't sound like the kind of place you'd want to spend time in. I'd thought about a Spark Gap, the title of my first book. Then I read about Anna Wintour (editor-diva of Vogue and the inspiration for ice-crone Miranda in The Devil Wears Prada) instructing her minions (in Miranda-like tones) to find another name, NOW please, because she just cannot bear that horrible, graceless word 'blog'. It's probably the one and only time in my life I'll ever share a thought with Anna Wintour.

A Spark Gap sounded good: a space in the ether where odd sparks of news and thoughts could fly back and forth. And since I've been getting so many emails full of questions about the books, I realised it was just contrary not to create one. So I changed my mind.

I might be the most infrequent and unreliable poster - or should that be sparker? Life is very busy. But I'll do my best.

I've had so many fantastic emails with lots of questions since Zenith was published last month, so for anyone else who is wondering, the answer is YES. There is another book after Zenith and I'm working hard on it now. There shouldn't really have been a third - I was determined not to write a trilogy. Everyone seems to be doing one. But the story was too fascinating to let me stop. It was haunting my imagination, waking me up at night. There is a very good reason (to do with 'story arcs' and how stories work) why an epic tale like mine probably works best in three parts. So I changed my mind - not least because if I'd published it all as one book you'd need a wheelbarrow to cart it around in, which, as Anna or Miranda would tell you, is not a great look.

So the story will continue in....

AURORA

Unless I change my mind.

Julie

PS - one or two of you seem to think that Mara has a nice, tidy, happy-ever-after ending in Zenith? Like the pic at the top of this post? Are you absolutely sure about that?