On the road and in the ether...

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

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

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!

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.