Helen Grant

Sewers, bell towers and catacombs!

2012-01-26T05:17:00.000-08:00

Writing is a distinctly solitary business, so I enjoy doing an "event" now and again. Last week I visited Perth Academy to run a ghost story writing workshop with a group of S1 creative writing & drama students, and this week I gave a talk to the Rotary Club of Crieff. The topic was "Finding inspiration: sewers, bell towers and catacombs." It was all about the places that have inspired my books, past and future. I'm happy to talk on a variety of topics but the Rotary club fancied this particular one, though I did wonder whether they regretted the choice when dinner ended and I launched into a description of decomposing corpses contaminating the water supply in 18th century Paris! They're a staunch lot though, and managed to keep their haggis, neeps and tatties down.

The photograph is by David Smart (thanks, David!) and shows me with Vice President George Penny.

Signed copies available locally

2011-11-22T02:10:00.000-08:00

I had a great time yesterday evening at AK Bell Library in Perth, talking about "Writing thrillers" - a big thank you to Elaine from Waterstone's in Perth who initiated the event and came along to sell books, to Sara Ann, Jimmy and colleagues at the library for setting it up and to everyone who attended. There were lots of interesting questions!

If you are local to Perth, weren't able to attend but would still like to buy a signed copy of one of my books, they are available from Waterstone's at St John's Centre Perth, PH1 5UX, Phone 01738 643478.

I'm also going to be signing books at a forthcoming event in Crieff on 1st and 2nd December. There will be a Book Fair at Strathearn Community Campus (Thurs 9am - 6pm, Fri 9am -12 noon) in aid of Innerpeffray Library, Scotland's oldest lending library. If you are in the area do drop in - part of the proceeds from each signed book will be going to Innerpeffray.

Argh!!!

2011-11-11T06:14:00.000-08:00

I'm currently working very intensively on a new novel (my fourth); I reached 77,000 words yesterday and then decided to take a break because I wanted to think very carefully about what happens next. There were one or two plot details that needed thinking through before I plunged in and wrote myself into a corner. I think best when I'm out and about, either driving or walking, so I decided to go along Lady Mary's Walk, a very picturesque route which follows the River Earn. Finding a nice quiet place to go was important for one very good reason: I like to think aloud when I'm working an idea through, and if you do that in the Co-op people are likely to give you some very funny looks indeed. I hardly met a soul on the first part of the walk, although I did look behind me now and again to make sure nobody was around. Nope, completely alone. So on I wandered, rambling away to myself. On the way down Laggan Hill I was deep in discussion with myself when a small black dog ran past me, hotly pursued by a female runner. How she managed to sneak up on me so silently when the ground was covered with crunchy brown leaves, I shall never know, but she almost certainly heard me remark, "Well, maybe Egbert could be responsible for the maintenance."

Dog-walking running lady, whoever you are, I am not mad - just writing.

CILIP Carnegie Medal 2012 - WISH ME DEAD nominated!

2011-11-04T03:37:00.000-07:00

I am delighted to say that my third novel, Wish me dead, has been nominated for the 2012 CILIP Carnegie Medal. You can see the full longlist here:

http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/pressdesk/press.php?release=pres_nom_car_2012.html

Congratulations to everyone - it's a really strong list with lots of fantastic books!

Forthcoming event in Perth, Scotland

2011-10-07T07:08:00.000-07:00

I am delighted to say that I shall be doing a talk entitled "Writing thrillers" at the AK Bell Library in Perth (York Place, Perth PH2 8EP) on Tuesday 25th October starting at 7pm. All very welcome!

I'm planning to talk about the spooky and gruesome inspirations for my novels, and also about getting published - with plenty of opportunity for questions, so budding authors are very welcome. The talk will be accompanied with slides and Waterstone's Perth are very kindly supporting the event by selling books, if anyone would like a signed copy.

If you're in the area, I'd love to see you - come and ask me an interesting question!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: owing to a booking problem, this talk is now taking place on MONDAY 21st NOVEMBER at 7pm, venue and content as before. Apologies for any inconvenience - hope to see you there!

Ghost story competition

2011-09-21T00:51:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned before, I'm a great fan of the classic English ghost story writer Montague Rhodes James, and a contributor to the Ghosts & Scholars M.R.James Newsletter, which is all about MRJ and his contemporaries. I recently received issue 20 of the Newsletter and I was very excited to see that it includes details of a new competition, so I thought I'd post them here too!

Editor Rosemary Pardoe writes:

"Following the very satisfying level of interest in the 'Merfield Hall' and 'Game of Bear' story competitions, I'd been considering the possibility of a third competition when Dan McGachey came up with the suggestion that writers might like to produce sequels to MRJ's completed tales. All the people I've sounded out about this agree with me that it's a fine idea, but I want to extend it to include prequels too. Of course there have already been examples of sequels - David Sutton's 'Return to the Runes' in the second issue of G&S for instance - but there are still plenty of possibilities. What happened to the 'satyr' (or 'satyrs') after the end of 'An episode of Cathedral History'? Are the lanes of Islington still frequented by whatever it was that Dr. Abell encountered in 'Two Doctors'? What is left of the residue of the atrocities in 'An Evening's Entertainment'; and do Count Magnus and his little friend still lurk at a certain crossroads in Essex? As for prequels, I for one would like to know what sort of treasure Canon Alberic found, how it was guarded, and the details of his death in bed of a sudden seizure. And what exactly was James Wilson's belief system, which prompted him to have his ashes placed in the globe in the centre of Mr. Humphrey's maze: what is the significance of the figures on the globe - was Wilson a member of a Gnostic sect? Need I go on? I'm sure you can think of many more mysteries and questions that demand to be solved and answered.

I must emphasise that any competition entry which is just a revamp or parody of the plot of the chosen story is unlikely to be placed very highly. I'm looking for something more original than that. There is no necessity to confine yourself to Jamesian pastiche or to attempt to write in the James style. But there are no other rules aside from the usual ones: I will not look kindly on entries which have been simultaneously submitted elsewhere; the word count is entirely up to you (within reason!); and you can send your manuscript either in hard-copy or preferably as a Word (pre-Vista) or Rich Text file on e-mail attachment or CD-Rom*. The competition is open to everyone, not just Newsletter readers.

The winning story will be published in the first Newsletter of 2012, and there will be a £40 prize for the author, along with a one-year subscription or extension. If I receive enough good, publishable entries, Robert Morgan of Sarob Press has expressed considerable interest in producing a hardback book containing all the best ones (to be edited and introduced by me). This is exciting news, but it's up to you to make it happen. If there are not enough quality stories to fill a book, then the best runners-up will appear in the Newsletter (and receive a one-year sub extension) as with previous competitions.

The competition deadline is December 31st, 2011."

*Mailed entries to: Rosemary Pardoe, Flat One, 36 Hamilton Street, Hoole, Chester CH2 3JQ, UK.

e-mailed entries to: pardos@globalnet.co.uk

If you are already familiar with the stories of M.R.James then hopefully by now you are rubbing your hands! If not, and you'd like to enter the competition, you need to lay hands on a copy of his Collected Ghost Stories. Many of them are available online too but personally I'd buy a copy to read and re-read (I'm on my third copy, the other two having fallen to pieces).

Do consider subscribing to the Newsletter too if you are interested in classic ghost stories - it's not expensive. It contains all sorts of interesting bits and pieces including previously unpublished work by the great M.R.James himself, news of related books, film adaptations etc and sometimes descriptions of visits to the scenes of his stories (I have contributed a number of those myself).

Details are here: http://www.pardoes.info/roanddarroll/BackIssue.html

In which I discover a literary paradise in Perth & Kinross...

2011-08-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged for a while as I've been busy settling into my new home and adjusting to life back in the UK after an absence of 10 years, which takes more time than you would imagine. ("Why are we queuing?" asked the resident techie as we waited for the Perth bus. "We're waiting for the bus," I said. "No," she said, looking perplexed, "Why are we QUEUING?" "Er...that's what they do in Britain. You're not allowed to just trample the weak and defenceless...")

Up until now I have been so busy with move-related bureaucracy, school uniform lists, etc that I have not really felt moved to blog. Today, however, I visited a place so fabulously wonderful that I just have to mention it: the Innerpeffray Library.

There's a super tourist information office in my new home town, and I had noticed leaflets about the library. It's the oldest lending library in Britain (the world, for all I know), having been founded in 1680. I had glanced at the leaflet a few times and seen a photo of the building, and I suppose I had idly assumed that it would be situated on a high street and with a modern library tacked onto it. Ah no, dear reader. It is much more interesting than that!

I decided to go and see it today for the simple reason that everyone else had gone out. My husband was helping with a bush craft course and had taken the children with him. For the first time since arriving in Scotland I had a day home alone, so I thought I would drive over to Innerpeffray and take a peek at the library.

The first surprise was that the turning to the library (though well sign-posted) is single-tracked and somewhat desolate-looking, running past some delapidated buildings on one side and fields on the other. It eventually comes out at a small car-park next to a stone-built house. The path to the library and also to the adjoining Innerpeffray chapel is grassed-over and little of those buildings can be seen from the car-park. When I turned off the engine there was no sound other than the bleating of sheep in the next field. The location felt very remote; certainly there was no high street, no modern buildings.

I followed the signs to the library, leaving the chapel for later. The library is reached through a nondescript doorway behind the chapel. There is a flight of stairs and then you pass through a doorway into the first and biggest of two rooms, lined with glass-fronted wooden cabinets full of antiquarian books, some of them dating back to the 1600s. Now, here is the thing which amazed me: you are allowed to read all the books. Even the ones which are four hundred years old. Generally I am used to yearning hopelessly after antiquarian books which have been laid out under glass, so that you can (infuriatingly) only peruse the pages that the exhibitor has chosen to show. You can imagine therefore how thrilled I was when admiring a copy of King James' Daemonologie (1616), to have the librarian ask me whether I would like her to take it out of the case so that I could look at it!

I also looked at a seventeenth century atlas and picked out my former German home town "Münster Eiffel" (now Bad Münstereifel), and browsed a German encyclopaedia which included an interesting entry on the interpretation of dreams. (Apparently if you dream that your house has fallen down, your wife will die; and if you have no wife, a member of your household will die....)

The second and smaller room houses newer books, though since the library ceased lending in the 1960s even the "newer" ones are now pretty old. There are treasures here too: Kate Douglas Wiggin's entertaining Penelope's Experiences in Scotland, and H.Rider Haggard's Cleopatra, which opens with a peculiarly grisly discovery.

I could easily have spent the entire day in the library! As it was, I stayed until it closed for lunch and have promised myself that I will go back with a notebook so that I can jot down excerpts from some of the most interesting volumes. It's a fascinating place and most definitely worth a visit if you are ever in Perthshire and love old books as much as I do.

You can visit the library's website here: http://www.innerpeffraylibrary.co.uk/ and follow the library on Twitter at @Innerpeffray.

Upcoming signing event

2011-08-02T05:07:00.000-07:00

On Saturday 6th August I shall be signing copies of my latest book Wish Me Dead at Waterstone's in Perth (that's Perth in Scotland, not Perth in Australia...much to my daughter's disappointment, as she's mad about platypuses and there aren't any in Perth and Kinross). I'll be there from 12 until 2pm and I'd love to see you if you're in the area. Come and buy your signed copy, or come and chat, or simply come and tell me you guessed who the murderer was in the first chapter of the last book if you like...

Ship of Fools

2011-06-13T07:23:00.000-07:00

Here I am again, sitting with my trusty MacBook at our scarred and battered dining table, looking out at a wind-tossed garden. Only this time the garden is in Perthshire and not in Flanders. Yes, gentle reader*, we have survived our international move and are now established in Scotland, land of my husband's fathers even if not mine.

The actual move can best be described with the word "appalling". This time last week I was scheduling meetings with the Flemish tax office to finalise our tax affairs before we left Belgium, and trying to prepare for a year three Dutch exam. I had the exam on Wednesday night and on Thursday the removers arrived. It took a day and a half to pack all our stuff, during which time the cats hid shivering from all the clumping about and the children - well, I'm not sure what they were doing; I was too busy to notice. On the Friday the removers departed and so did hubs; he had to attend a family wedding in Scotland on the Saturday on behalf of us all. For the next three days I camped out in the empty house with two kids, two very stressed-out cats and two hyperactive gerbils (these last two being confined to a travel cage). It would have been a very comfortless experience indeed were it not for the kindness and hospitality of friends who invited us to dinner and let us use their wifi so that we did not feel entirely cut off from civilisation.

On Monday we all got up early to get the cats to the local vet for their tick and worm treatment; this has to be done between 24 and 48 hours before travelling to the UK. If the cats were already in a filthy mood, this experience did not help... Hubs arrived from Scotland during the morning, exhausted after a 4.30am start and brewing a nasty virus of some sort.

At 4.40am on Tuesday morning I got up and went downstairs to check on the animals. We had decided to let the cats spend the night outdoors as they prefer to do in the warmer months. The poor things are supposed to be confined to barracks for three weeks after the move, to ensure that they don't run away in a vain attempt to go "home", so we thought they might as well enjoy one more night on the tiles. Thankfully they turned up on time in the morning. As so often seems to happen, it is the mess-up you don't expect that actually gets you. I opened the door to the spare room, where the gerbils were, and saw something scuttle with lightning speed across the floor tiles. On closer inspection it turned out that the gerbils, who had apparently been quite happy in their travel tank for the previous five days, had chosen the night before we travelled to chew a hole in the side and escape. I captured them both, returned them to the tank and plugged the hole with their water bottle as a temporary measure, but it was clear that they would soon work it free and make their escape again. This was something of a facer since the house was almost empty, leaving little with which to improvise a new carrier, and it was much too early in the day to find an open pet shop. We were due to check in at Dunkirk at 9am. Carrying the gerbils loose or in an insecure carrier was not an option - if they got into the cats' carriers they would be eaten, and worse, if they were loose in the car there was always the chance they might take it into their furry little heads to chew through the brake cables or something. Gerbils are Olympic standard chewers. Eventually I put them both into a bucket full of gerbil bedding and put the cage lid on top. It didn't fit so it had to be weighted down with a book. They travelled all the way from Tervuren to Perthshire in it. I am still amazed it worked and that they didn't manage to get out. Given a little longer I am sure they would have found a way...

Meanwhile hubs was doing a good impression of Death Warmed Up; he slept through the sections which I drove, and whilst he was driving I dared not sleep in case he suddenly keeled over at the wheel or something. This was slightly unnerving since I had only driven once in the UK since 2001, and that was a short distance between two villages in Devon last November. Thankfully most of it was motorway so I didn't have to remind myself which way the Brits go round roundabouts.

The entire trip from door to door took 17 hours. When we were planning the move, the time of year was not a consideration which entered my head, but I am grateful we did it in June because it was light the entire way. I should not have cared to weave my way along the last of those endless roads in darkness.

The children coped with the journey fairly well thanks to the Miracle of iPod Touch. We blew all our birthday iPod vouchers downloading films and TV shows; when the iPods ran out of charge I recharged them from my MacBook, and thus we managed to limp through the entire 17 hours without ever running out of media.

Needless to say, the two cats utterly hated the journey. They refused food and spent most of the time yowling dismally. I wish I could have explained to them that we had chosen the route that we thought would be least awful for them; if we had taken the overnight ferry from Belgium or Holland they would have had many more hours of confinement, and if we had flown with them - well, shudder, considering how many bags get lost in a year, I didn't want to risk it. We chose a route that meant a lot of hard driving for us but less hours on the road for them. Unfortunately, they had no way of knowing this and were not at all grateful; they howled, tried to claw their way out, and eventually settled down into a plaintive lamenting. The one thing that was a great relief was that the control procedure at Dunkirk was swiftly and sympathetically done, and the lady on duty let us bring the cages inside in case the cats made a break for freedom when the doors were opened.

The gerbils, meanwhile, simply trolled around their bucket, ate grapes (for fluid; you can't attach a water bottle to the inside of a bucket) and slept. They were probably the least affected by the trip of any of us; in fact they probably think they are still in Flanders.

We arrived at the new house late in the evening with no means even to make a cup of tea (no kettle), let the cats out of their cages, switched on the hot water and unrolled our sleeping bags on the floor of one of the bedrooms.

At 9am the following morning the removal men arrived with our furniture and we had another day of heaving boxes around and unpacking, whilst desperately moving the cats from one closed room to another to prevent them escaping through the open front door. That was Wednesday.

I spent Thursday in bed asleep. In the evening my father-in-law turned up with our BT hub. He looked at the chaos in the house and said, "It looked nice when we visited it before."

Friday and Saturday are a bit of a blur. We went to Perth, which is our nearest big town, and had lunch in Pizza Hut. I was surprised to find no beer or wine on the menu. "Aha," I thought, "We have picked up fancy continental ways." In Flanders even McDonald's serves beer. After that we went to Waterstone's where I looked at e-readers for a bit and thought "Nah."

On Sunday the Grant clan (well, part of it) descended bearing spaghetti bolognese in a Tupperware, wine and chocolates. They mowed our lawn, moved all our heavy furniture about, made dinner and took the kids out geocaching. Having lived abroad for 10 years I am not used to having family support...it was lovely. Come again, please.

Today I almost feel human again. I still feel like an expat - I'm English, after all (people keep telling me it must be lovely to be "back" but I have never actually lived in Scotland before!). I don't know anyone apart from my family and a few nice people at the new school - but the local library already feels familiar and welcoming. There is a lot of work to be done on the house but it is starting to look a little bit like home...

* Not sure where that came from. Too many Victorian novels perhaps...

You take the high road...

2011-05-29T01:51:00.000-07:00

In nine days we are moving to Scotland.

I am sitting here at my desk in our house in Flanders, looking out at cloudy Flemish skies and next door's fruit tree swaying in the wind and the patio covered in the kids' chalk drawings, and finding the idea almost impossible to believe. I think part of the problem is that we have a very full and varied (not to say complicated) life here: the Scouts, the Guides, the swimming club, Dutch lessons. In Scotland we have a house that I have seen twice and hubs has only seen once from the outside, we have school places and a car, but it doesn't feel as though we have a life there yet.

The other thing is, we're not ready. Hubs has spent days, weeks, tidying up the garden and renovating our rental house here in the hopes of avoiding punitive charges when we leave. I've thrown out what seems like a hundred brown big bags full of things we no longer need, or don't need enough to make it worthwhile taking them to another country. I've given things away, sold things. Still the house is a mess although I know that by Thursday morning it has to be clean and tidy, everything ordered and ready to be boxed away and loaded into the removal van. Vast amounts of work lie between now (Sunday) and then (Thursday) and although I would rather crawl back under the duvet with a good book, there is no time left for procrastination. I shouldn't even be blogging; I should be stacking the school books we have agreed to donate to a friend, and cooking some of the stuff left in the freezer so it doesn't have to be thrown out on Wednesday night.

Although we are not travelling to Scotland ourselves for another nine days, we have already said many of our goodbyes. The coming week is half term, so this week we had the last ever Scout meeting, the last ever Guide meeting, the last riding lesson, the last day at school. (The last Dutch lesson, alas, is the night before the removal men come, and I am sitting the 3rd year exam that night whilst trying not to worry about the work that still needs to be done at home.)

Driving home from the school on Friday with the boot stuffed with text books, art projects, lunchbags, etc. I imagined the first day back at school after the holidays. My daughter's class will all be there at their desks, everything will go along as normal, except that she won't be there. Ditto my son. Guides will restart and my daughter won't be there. The swimming club will meet and all the "white caps" will be there ploughing up and down the lanes but my son won't be among them. It all feels rather scary, as though we are dying. We're closing down our life here and the new one is unknown country.

I think a lot about the day we left the UK, back in 2001. We have a photograph of the four of us which my father took just as we were about to get into the car to go to the airport, to fly to Germany. Hubs looks younger, I look scruffier (the kids were tiny then and personal presentation was not top of my to-do list). Our daughter is a toddler clutching a stuffed animal, our son is a placid-looking baby waving plump fists in the air. We had one-way tickets to Köln. Now, ten years later, we have the return tickets. It is a very strange feeling.

How I nearly missed my own launch party...

2011-05-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

Here are some great pics from the launch party for Wish me dead at Treasure Trove Books in Tervuren (Belgium) - thanks to Treasure Trove for taking them. I was thrilled to celebrate at Treasure Trove Books - and also a little relieved to have made it to the bookshop on time. Earlier in the week things were looking a little dubious as ash from the new volcanic eruption started to affect flights in the north of Britain - first I was worried that I wouldn't make it to the Leeds Book Awards, and then I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get home again! At one point not only had Edinburgh airport closed but Carlisle was apparently also closing - it felt as though the ashes were closing in and I was starting to wonder how I was going to get back to Brussels in time. Perhaps I have an overactive imagination (OK, forget the "perhaps") but I was envisioning some sort of Planes, Trains and Automobiles scenario in which I would have to make my way to Dover and blag my way onto a ferry... Luckily by Wednesday evening all flights were running normally and there was no delay at all.

On Thursday however, I ran into a slight logistical problem. Small son had a swimming gala 8km in the other direction from the bookshop and at the same time as the launch party. For the last few weeks we have had two cars, one Belgian one which we have been using for the last two years, and one British one which we bought recently for our move to Scotland. In a fit of efficiency, hubs chose Thursday morning to take the Belgian car to the local dealer to see if he could sell it on for us when we leave. Yes, came the reply, so hubs left the car there. This meant that we only had one car but half of us needed to be in Overijse and the other half in Tervuren at the same time. No problem, I thought, I'll take the 18.38 bus.

I had not reckoned with being utterly unable to find my reading glasses. 18.38 came and went, and I was still turning the house upside down and howling curses. I was beginning to wonder whether in my tired and weary state the night before I had left the glasses on the plane. Finally I found them on the bookcase behind hubs' desk. I have no idea what they were doing there, nor any memory of putting them there. Daughter and I sprinted for the bus stop, but the next bus was at 19.08 and it was late.

We finally arrived in Tervuren at 19.22 and ran for the bookshop, arriving pretty much simultaneously with the first guests. Phew! It is not ideal turning up for your own book event red-faced and looking as though you have been dragged through a hedge backwards. Luckily Jane and the team at Treasure Trove were reassuringly calm (as ever) and by the time things really got underway I probably looked as though I had sauntered in at 19.00 and put my feet up.

The turn-out for the party was excellent - all but two copies of Wish me dead were sold and some of my other books too. It was fabulous to see so many friends there - we aren't having an official leaving bash because if we try and organise one more thing one of us will probably have some sort of nervous breakdown , so it was a chance to say goodbye to some good friends, including Martina and Sabine, Bettina, Emma and Catherine, Val... Thanks, everyone, for coming! I was also very touched that two Flemish speaking ladies attended (dank u Birgit!) - it's a testament to the fabulous language skills of so many Flemish people that they are happy to attend an English language book event and take the books home to read too!

I talked a bit about Wish me dead and my other books, and read three chapters, and after some questions I was able to let my own hair down a bit and enjoy some of the sparkling wine. The Treasure Trove team very kindly presented me with some gorgeous chocolates and a beautiful album to put my photos in. It was altogether a wonderful evening.

This morning, however, it was back down to earth with a bump: the school had organised an eco-transport day so we were all supposed to cycle to school. If you ever think of cycling 8km at 7.15am in the morning after a launch party, my advice to you is: don't...

In which I haunt two schools in Leeds....

2011-05-27T02:40:00.000-07:00

This week two schools in the Leeds area were haunted by a strange apparition....the figure of an author carrying a stack of out-of-print books, a carved wooden cat, a pair of binoculars and a piece of paper with the words "Remember the well between four yew trees" written on it in red ink. Actually by the end of the week I probably will be half-dead, on account of rushing about all over the place as well as trying to plan for an international move - but that's another story.

Following the fabulous Leeds Book Awards (see previous post) I went to Morley Academy and Benton Park School to run workshops in ghost story writing.

Ghost stories lie very close to my heart. Long before I had my first novel published in 2009, I was penning supernatural tales, nearly all of which were published by small press magazines and anthologies (you can read one of them, The Sea Change, elsewhere on my website). Nowadays I write novels which are often categorised as "crime" or "thrillers", but I feel I learnt a huge amount from both reading and writing spooky stories. Ghost stories, as I was telling the pupils at the two schools, are (obviously) about ghosts, and not about serial killers, sparkly vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc. As such they represent a challenge to the writer, since you are trying to make the reader's flesh creep rather than make them want to throw up in a bucket. It's fairly easy to gross someone out by filling a story with graphic dismemberment and gallons of blood; it's harder to make them so uneasy that they are afraid to put the light out at bedtime. So ghost story writing is a great way to hone your literary skills.

We spent some of the workshop talking about the structure of ghost stories and then did some group exercises about style; the final exercise was for the students to split up into small groups and produce their own outline for a ghost story plus, time permitting, the first sentence or two. I'd like to showcase some of the results at the end of this blog post. These are the story openings created by the pupils at Morley Academy. (Hopefully I will be able to post some of the work by Benton Park later.) I was amazed at what they achieved in a relatively short time (only about fifteen minutes) - especially the group who spent the first five talking about the Apprentice (you know who you are, boys! ;-) ). Each of the groups was given a "prop" from a classic ghost story - the aim was not for the group to recreate the original story, but to use the prop to inspire their own story. As well as the carved wooden cat, the binoculars and the note about the yew trees, I also gave out an opened padlock, a postcard from Stresa addressed to Miss J.Strangeways and a wooden doll's house doll. Can anyone correctly identify all the stories? If you can, I'll gladly send you a signed copy of my story The Red House at Münstereifel, presented in chapbook form by Swan River Press. In the event of a rush of correct replies, the first correct answer gets the booklet! (NB A clue: don't forget I am an absolute fiend for the stories of M.R.James....)

Anyway, here are the opening lines produced by Morley Academy.

The binoculars (by Chris and Ryan)

A mere boy sat atop a hill, his eyes sore and his mouth dry, his binoculars pressed hard against his eye sockets. In the distance, there came an army of something not of this world, as though death had sent his pawns out to capture the lives of all which is good, and as they marched in perfect lines, they vanished...

The carved cat (by Sophie and Chloe)

I thought he loved me. I told him, I told him on the night that he left me that I would die without him. He was my life.

After one year of being with me, I thought I meant something to him. On the worst night of my life - when he left - I told him that I would die without. He was my life.

The postcard from Stresa (by Charlie and Charlotte)

It was the first and the last time I had ever been climbing with the Strangeways. Regret consumed me the moment I left him...

The well between four yew trees (by Tonicha and Tom)

In the woods on the outskirts of the village, local legend told that a well would provide salvation for lost travellers. This well was positioned among four yew trees, and the lost traveller would find it when they needed it most.

The wooden doll (by Tom B, Tom S, Ben and Jack)

Every day I come home and find more is written upon the wall. One day I came home not to find it on the doll's house wall but my bedroom wall. The feeling of being watched disturbs me. I see the doll and it looks at me, a sign of menace in its eyes. In the dead of night it will come for me...

I was thrilled by these opening sentences. Great work - I'd love to see a finished story if anyone has time!

Leeds Book Awards 2011

2011-05-27T02:10:00.000-07:00

I'm finally back at my desk after a very hectic few days! On Tuesday I flew over to the UK for the Leeds Book Awards ceremony - The Glass Demon was shortlisted. The 14-16 age group prize was carried off by L.Weatherly's Angel but it was still a great thrill to be at the ceremony and to meet so many young readers as well as friendly librarians and wonderful authors. All the shortlisters received a beautiful memento (pictured). I thought this was a lovely gesture - much nicer than going home empty-handed! Truth to tell (lowers voice to whisper) I like this etched crystal better than the actual award trophy!! I shall treasure it (and attempt to keep it out of my kids' hands....).

You can see some super photographs of the day on Candy Gourlay's blog here:

http://candygourlay.blogspot.com/2011/05/lovely-lovely-leeds-book-prize.html

The ceremony was compered by Paul Sleem, whose energy and good humour soon had the audience whipped into a frenzy! As we authors were standing outside waiting to be introduced we could hear yells and cheers from inside - it was so loud that I commented to one of the others that I felt a bit like a Christian about to be fed to the lions! It's a great tribute to "MC Paul" that he roused so much enthusiasm for books and reading. It was a really brilliant event.

After the awards ceremony I stayed the night in Leeds and on Wednesday I visited Morley Academy and Benton Park School, before flying home to Brussels to get myself organised for the launch party for Wish me dead on Thursday night.

It seemed slightly insane to take on so many events this week when the removal men are coming next Thursday to pack up our things and move us to Scotland! Still, it was nice to have a couple of days away from the endless packing, planning and bureaucracy. And whilst I was in Leeds I managed to have black pudding salad for lunch, which was a first...

Wish Me Dead lands in store!

2011-05-21T04:34:00.001-07:00

I was thrilled to log into Facebook today and find this lovely photo on Treasure Trove Books' wall. It's a pic of my new book Wish me dead, out in the UK at the beginning of June. Treasure Trove are hosting a launch event for the book on Thursday 26th May, a few days ahead of the launch, so their local friendly Penguin rep kindly ensured that stock was available in time. The party couldn't be any later because on 2nd June the removers arrive to pack up our things and move us to Scotland! My head is rather full of registering and de-registering utilities, getting the cats' paperwork in order, packing things etc so it will be great to have an evening talking and thinking about books instead. Everyone is welcome, so if you are based in Belgium do come along to Treasure Trove (Brusselsesteenweg, Tervuren, near the no. 44 tram stop) at 7.30pm for a glass of wine and a chat!

NEW! Book trailer for WISH ME DEAD!

2011-05-05T00:13:00.000-07:00

I'm thrilled to unveil the book trailer for my third novel Wish me dead, which is being published next month by Penguin Books UK.

You can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/helengrantsays?feature=mhum

I'll also be posting some behind-the-scenes photos on this blog very soon - hopefully some comments from the cast too! Big thanks to Lumiere Productions for making this the best trailer yet!

Launch event!

2011-05-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to announce that I will be having a launch event for my 3rd novel "Wish me dead" on Thursday May 26th at 7.30pm, at Treasure Trove Books in Tervuren (near Brussels)! If you're based in Belgium, come and have a glass of wine, listen to me reading excerpts from the book and buy a signed copy.

This is probably going to be my last event in Belgium for a while as I and my family are moving to Scotland in early June - so please do come!

If you live in Belgium but haven't visited Treasure Trove before, you can find the address, phone number and a map on their shop website, here:

http://www.treasuretrove.be/adults_parents/en/contact/

Everyone is welcome!

De Groene Waterman 23/4/11

2011-04-23T10:17:00.000-07:00

Vandaag had ik een geweldige tijd bij de Groene Waterman boekhandel in Antwerpen. Rebecca Benoot stelde me voor en interviewde me over mijn romans. Ik lees ook het eerste kapittel van mijn nieuwe roman De Glasduivel.

Een grote dank aan iedereen die aanwezig was, en Rebecca voor het organiseren van het evenement!

News, links and photos...

2011-04-20T08:06:00.000-07:00

...are all on my Facebook page, here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Helen-Grant-books-fan-page/189182864425143

If you want to get in touch, it's also a good place to leave comments!

Memento mori

2011-04-19T03:13:00.001-07:00

I just spent two days in Paris with my friend the Professor, visiting the catacombs and the sewers as part of the research for my next novels. If you'd like to see a short video of my visit to the catacombs, you can see it on my YouTube channel, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/helengrantsays

I decided to go around the catacombs because I was going to Paris anyway to tour the sewers, and thought this would be an interesting additional visit. My children begged to be allowed to come too, but on the whole I am glad they didn't. I didn't find the ossuary, with its (literally) millions of bones, particularly frightening - although I wouldn't fancy being down there all alone - but it was very affecting. The sheer quantity of Death is overwhelming. I read that six million Parisians are buried there.

The Paris catacombs are very deep underground. In Brussels, the sewers are usually the deepest underground tunnels, running underneath and alongside the Metro. In Paris, the sewers are at a relatively shallow depth, with the Metro below and the catacombs far below that, approximately 20 metres down. The tunnels and chambers which now comprise the catacombs were mostly the result of mining for gypsum and limestone. Around the end of the 18th Century, many of the cemeteries in Paris had to be emptied on health grounds, as they were full to saturation point. The bones were stacked in the catacombs, in neat piles often incorporating patterns using skulls and leg bones. There are stone plaques explaining which stacks of bones came from which cemeteries.

To reach the catacombs, you have to descend a circular stone staircase. There are 130 steps; it takes a while to get to the bottom. You then follow a series of tunnels which lead you to two chambers containing elaborate architectural carvings. There is also a circular staircase (visible but not accessible) leading to an underlit well. Shortly after that you reach an antechamber containing the entrance to the ossuary. Over the door is carved the splendidly morbid legend: Arretez! C'est ici l'empire de la mort. (Stop! This is the Empire of Death.)

Pass through this entrance and you find yourself in the first of a series of rooms piled high with bones. The bones on view are mostly femurs, end on, and skulls; I suppose the smaller bones are stacked somewhere behind these, out of view.

I have seen skeletons, and indeed mummies, many times before in museums, but there is something uniquely and gloomily impressive about the bones in the Paris catacombs. The sheer quantity of them somehow shocked me. This was entirely illogical considering that we all know that millions have gone before us and are now mouldering quietly in the earth. Still, there is a difference between knowing that and actually seeing it. We are all aware of death, and yet in a year we might hear of the deaths of one or two people we know. Considering how many people must die every day, I don't even see hearses particularly often. All of this seems to give Death a comfortable sense of distance. It is a shock, therefore, to walk into the catacombs and be confronted with the sheer scale of our mortality. And these were just the bones of the inhabitants of one city, for a period of a few hundred years! Every one of those skulls had a story of his or her own; every one of those leg bones was once helping to carry its owner about. I am sorry if this sounds unnecessarily morbid, but the fact of the matter is, I went to the catacombs expecting a slightly gruesome thrill, and instead found myself saddened and moved by it.

I think the Professor and I spent longer than the expected 45 minutes underground, deciphering the melancholy inscriptions in French and Latin. We didn't touch any of the bones; people evidently had, as some of the skulls are smooth and shiny, but I didn't like to. I was glad to have visited the catacombs, but all the same it was a relief when we had climbed the stairs back up to the street level and found ourselves outside in the spring sunshine.

The Glass Demon, US book trailer

2011-04-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

The US version of The Glass Demon is being published in June by Delacorte Press - here's the book trailer!

You can see more videos on my YouTube channel, here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/helengrantsays

Interview in Antwerpen

2011-04-12T05:20:00.000-07:00

Ik zal geïnterviewd worden!

Op zaterdag 23 april zal ik bij De Groene Waterman

boekhandel in Antwerpen (Wolstraat 7) zijn. Ik zal geïnterviewd worden en zal ook uit mijn boeken lezen.

Het interview en lezing zullen in het Engels, maar het is ook mogelijk een Nederlandse vertaling van mijn boeken te kopen.

Lesung in Bad Münstereifel

2011-04-12T05:12:00.001-07:00

Die Lesung am Freitag 15.4 im Erft Cafe Bad Münstereifel wird verschoben. Jetzt findet sie am Freitag 29.4 um 18.00 statt.

Ich lese aus meinem neuen Buch Blutige Scherben (The Glass Demon).

Sporrans and sewers

2011-04-12T02:50:00.001-07:00

I realised with a guilty start that it has been ages since I last blogged...February, I think. Things have been somewhat hectic around here recently, as this summer we are moving from our current home in Flanders to Scotland. By the time we actually move, we will have been living outside the UK for exactly 10 years, so I am viewing the move with a mixture of interest and trepidation. At the moment, trepidation is winning, as there seems to be an interminable list of things we have to do, such as working out how to transport our cats (and gerbils) to Scotland, selling our car, renovating our rental house in Belgium, etc. As a result, not very much actual WRITING is happening at the moment.

I have however been doing some research for my next couple of books. I'd like to set the next couple of books in Flanders, so I need to do all my local investigations whilst we are still here; there is a lot you can do on the internet but nothing beats seeing stuff with your own eyes. Also, since most of the research involves poking around creepy locations, it's fun and takes my mind off the move for a bit. People often ask authors where they get their ideas. I get a lot of mine from visiting atmospheric places; I like to prowl around a cemetery or a ruined castle or an ancient church and see what suggests itself.

Just recently I decided to spend a morning visiting exactly the sort of place I find most inspirational: somewhere dark, dank and creepy. (It was also a bit smelly, but I didn't find that particularly inspirational...) I took the tram to Anderlecht and went down the Brussels sewers. Anderlecht is one of those areas that looks as though it was probably very affluent about a century ago. There are lots of grand old buildings that now look extremely tatty.

When I got to the tram stop for the sewers museum, I had some difficult in finding it. The intersection where it was supposedly located was not the sort of place where you want to stand about looking lost, so I decided to make a quick circuit of it and hope to stumble on the museum. It turned out to be one of two classical-looking buildings which faced each other across the busy road. When I went inside, the man who sold tickets told me in French that you go into one building, along the sewers and up into the other building. "At least," he added, "I hope so."

There were no other visitors at all, although apparently they do guided tours some days of the week. I had a look at the exhibition, which was quite interesting in a chilling sort of way. Apparently the section of metro which runs through the area around the Bourse in Brussels has a big sewer underneath it, but there are also overflow chambers at the sides which allow flood water to go into another sewer above the metro tunnel. So in theory you can be zooming along in your tube train completely surrounded by water. Somehow, I did not find this thought comforting.

After looking at the exhibition you can go down into the actual sewers. I made a short video of this. If you are interested in - er - sewerage - you can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/helengrantsays

The thing I particularly noticed was the noise. You can hear all sorts of strange booms and rumbles (probably trams and traffic overhead) and trickling noises. On the whole I was quite glad to get out again at the other end!

Next week I am planning to go to Paris with a friend to visit the Paris sewers and the catacombs. I'm not thinking of setting a book there, but I feel that the more I see of sewers the better; you can only visit about 100m of the Brussels ones. The catacombs are just for fun - but you never know, something may suggest itself!

Bad Münstereifel - new video

2011-02-20T07:35:00.000-08:00

I've just uploaded a new video about Bad Münstereifel to my YouTube channel. You can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK0jeWr0QCY

People sometimes seem surprised to learn that Bad Münstereifel is a real town. In fact, all the locations in The Vanishing of Katharina Linden are real ones - the primary school, the red town hall, the ruined castle on the Quecken hill, etc. I visit Bad Münstereifel fairly often so I thought it would be fun to film a walking tour of some of these locations.

My second book, The Glass Demon, is also set in the Eifel, but I deliberately created fictional place names for the castle and the local towns. This is because many castles in the Eifel are still in private hands, and I didn't want the castle to be identified with anyone's real-life home. The castle in the book is an amalgam of several different castles and locations.

However, my third book, Wish me dead, which is being published in the UK by Penguin Books in June 2011, is once again set in Bad Münstereifel itself. The heroine of the story - Steffi Nett - is the daughter of a baker, and the bakery is part of the backdrop of the novel. For this reason, the video tour of the town also makes a stop at the Erft Cafe, my favourite bakery and cafe in Bad Münstereifel. Herr Nipp, the baker, was kind enough to help with the research for the book, as was Frau Quasten of the Bäckerei Cafe Quasten in Kommern.

I hope you'll enjoy the video!

The things I do for literature...

2011-01-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had an adventure. I wasn't planning to have one.

I was spending a second morning working on my fourth novel (working title: Silent Saturday). The very first scene is set in the belltower of a Flemish village church and I had spent the previous day setting the scene and getting the hero and heroine into the belltower. It was only when I booted up my MacBook on Tuesday morning that I started to question what I had written the day before. I had envisaged the pair of them climbing a stone spiral staircase straight up to the belltower from the vestibule of the church. But now I started to wonder whether that was realistic or not. Do churches still have bellropes hanging down, and would these be in the vestibule too? I hadn't mentioned them. And would the staircase go straight up to the bells or would there be a landing with access to the organ loft? Come to that, how many bells would there be up there? One? Four? Forty-six? (A quick check on the Internet showed that some Belgian churches do have more than forty bells, if they have a carillon.) Eventually I decided that there was nothing for it. I would walk up to the church in my village and have a look. I wasn't very hopeful of getting into the church at 9.30am on a filthy wet Tuesday morning, and I definitely didn't think the tower would be open, but I might be able to answer the question about the bellropes, and I certainly wasn't getting anywhere entering klokken + kerk into Google.

So I walked up to the church, which is partly romanesque and partly Gothic. To my relief it turned out to be open, though deserted. No sign of any bellropes, although there was a circular hole in the ceiling of the vestibule that had been filled in. To my surprise the door leading to the staircase up to the organ loft was unlocked, so I was able to go up. No stone stairs, and no spiral, either; there were several flights of fairly modern-looking wooden stairs turning a corner at right-angles. I was able to get into the organ loft, but it seemed there was no way of getting into the belfry at all, so no way of seeing how many bells there were.

On the way home, I decided on impulse to nip into the newsagent's shop in the village and question the friendly local man who runs it. He said he didn't go to mass at that church so he couldn't tell me much about it, but he thought the bells were controlled automatically nowadays. "The priest sends a GSM," he told me.

I went home, sat down again, and wondered whether to change the stone stairs in the story to wooden ones, and have a door leading to the organ loft halfway up them. It didn't seem a very satisfactory arrangement, and not half as creepy as the original setting. After playing about with a few ideas and deleting more than I had added, I finally decided that I would have to visit another church. The one in the story is supposed to be romanesque, as it happens there is a very pretty romanesque church in one of the villages in this area. If I could only see what the arrangements were in the belltower, they would be perfect for the fictional church. This time I had to take the car.

I parked in a side street and took a path across the churchyard. The church door was open but once again there was not a soul in sight. I went inside. There were no access doors to the upper areas at all in the vestibule, but there was one each at the back of the nave. One of them was obviously modern; the other looked much older, and had been blocked off with chairs. Both of them had locks. Somewhat pessimistically, I tried the newer door; it opened. Inside was a room crammed with various bits of furniture and what appeared to be the priest's bicycle. There was a flight of stairs running up to the organ loft. I went up but there was clearly no access to the belltower.

Back in the nave, I picked up the information sheet about the church, but although it gave plenty of details about the history of the church etc it said nothing about the bells. There was, however, a plan of the church showing the two doorways at either side of the nave. The one I had already tried led onto a square room (the one with the bicycle in it) and the other one apparently gave onto a spiral staircase.

I decided to try the older door. It didn't look promising; there was a piece of wood nailed to the door which suggested that it had been somehow barricaded shut, and there was a new-looking lock. All the same, I thought I might as well try the handle. I pushed, and the door opened. Behind it was a very narrow, very worn and extremely dark stone spiral staircase.

My Flemish is reasonably good by now and I was pretty sure I hadn't overlooked any signs saying "keep out" or "no access to the belltower" but on the other hand, the door was shut and there were chairs lined up in front of it. I had visions of some angry churchwarden turning up and berating me in Flemish, and me lamely telling him I was doing research for a book. Still, I had already answered one of my questions, which was that it was possible to have the access to the organ loft on one side of the church and have a separate staircase on the other leading specifically to the belfry. It was a simply irresistible opportunity to find out exactly what was up there. In I went.

The stone stairs were extremely worn, with great dips in the middle, and the staircase itself was not much wider than a shoulders' width. There wasn't any handrail either (Health and

Safety not existing in the Middle Ages) and it was so dark I couldn't see where I was putting my feet. I fumbled my way up the stairs. I was surprised to realise that I was actually frightened. My heart was thumping and I had an unpleasant tingling feeling in my stomach. Partly I was afraid someone would turn up and start shouting at me for being somewhere I shouldn't be, but it was also extremely unpleasant being in such a dark narrow space, not knowing where the stairs led or how far up they went.

Eventually I came to the top and found myself in a square room with stone walls and a wooden floor. No sight of the bells yet; instead there was a rickety-looking wooden staircase leading up to the next floor. In for a penny, in for a pound; up I went, now feeling very nervous, and trying to ignore the clumps of dirt and cobwebs all over the stairs and the handrail.

The next floor up proved to be the height of the church clock. I found myself in a square room with windows on three sides. It was extremely cold because the windows were louvred, not glazed, and the wind was howling through them. With the open space leading to the floor below, and a further open space above me leading to the next floor, it all felt horribly unstable. It was much as I imagine it would be perched in the crow's nest of a sailing ship; the wind and the impression of empty space all around were so strong that I felt as though I would be blown away. The room was also an unpleasant mess of thickly-encrusted birds' droppings, which didn't make me feel any better about being there; there are all sorts of nasties you can catch from contact with those, and here they were so thick that you couldn't touch anything without coming into contact with them. I had a look at the ladder up to the next floor, but it shifted when I touched it, and I dared not go up it. However, by standing at the bottom of it and putting my head back I could see up through the next levels, through a nest of wooden beams, to the church bell itself. That was another question answered: there was a single bell, green with age.

I turned to go back down, and then I had a real twinge of vertigo. The wooden stairs looked much more open, much less robust than they had when I climbed up. Reluctantly I had to hang onto the filthy handrail all the way down, promising myself that I would scrub my hands and wrists as soon as I got home (mental note to self: don't bite your nails on the way back). I went back down the stone staircase, very carefully closed the door at the bottom, replaced the chairs and went outside.

As I walked back to my car I realised that my legs were actually aching, not with exertion but with tension. Why was I so scared? I'm still not sure. I didn't want to get in trouble with anyone, certainly, but I hadn't seen a soul. I think perhaps it was the coldness and filth in the belfry. It was a very desolate place. I'm glad I got the information I had set out to get, but I'm not sure I'd go up there again.

Katharina Linden wins an "Alex"!

2011-01-12T06:47:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased to report that The Vanishing of Katharina Linden has won an ALA Alex Award!

You can read about it here: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/alexawards/alexawards.cfm#current

The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18. The Alex Awards were first given annually beginning in 1998 and became an official ALA award in 2002.

Cover Art - chance to vote!

2010-12-21T08:29:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased to say that the cover art for the US hardbacked edition of The Vanishing of Katharina Linden has also been nominated for The Rap Sheet's finest crime novel covers of the year. You can see all the nominees here, and vote too if you like:

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2010/12/face-off.html

I quite like this website because once you voted you can see who has had how many votes! OK, The Vanishing isn't in the lead (maybe if you vote...?) but it's doing pretty well.

Christmas crime, anyone?

2010-12-14T06:41:00.000-08:00

People quite often ask me at readings and signings whether The Glass Demon is a sequel to The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, and which one they should buy(!). The Glass Demon isn't in fact a sequel, although a minor character from The Vanishing does make an appearance. You can read The Glass Demon without having read The Vanishing.

It's a little more difficult to suggest which book someone should buy - especially if the person is buying it as a gift for someone else. It did occur to me, though, that The Vanishing of Katharina Linden might make quite an appropriate Christmas present, as the action of the book begins and ends in Advent. In fact, the freak accident with which the book opens occurs at an Advent dinner. There's even snow in the final scenes - you can't get much more seasonal than that! So if you know someone who fancies a bit of murder and mayhem with their Christmas lunch, maybe they'd like the book...

Goodreads Choice Awards 2010

2010-12-14T06:32:00.000-08:00

I'm delighted to say that the cover design for The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (US edition, Delacorte) has been nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards, Cover Art category.

If you like the cover design, with its elegant cat, please do vote for it on the Goodreads site here:

http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice

There are also lots of other categories in which you can vote for your favourite books of the year, so if you're passionate about books, take a look!

The Glass Demon - definitely "PG"

2010-12-09T00:22:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased to say that the book trailer for The Glass Demon is now ready and you can see it at the link below!

The film has actually been finished for a couple of weeks but we decided to produce the Norwegian version first in honour of the recent publication of the book in Norway by Vendetta Forlag. Here, finally, is the English version!

A word of warning: the trailer contains some gruesome shots and is not suitable for younger children (or possibly people of a sensitive disposition...).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIXZNhpiopY

The trailer was made by Lumiere Productions, who once again did a fabulous job on the minimalistic budget that the author (blush) could afford. I'll be blogging again soon with some more details about the making of the film - I'd love to know how Lalla Merlin, the director, managed to get that shot of Herr Mahlberg, for example! Meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy the video.

Let's build an igloo, says Sporty Outdoor Hubs

2010-12-04T13:27:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, when we still lived in Germany, we visited the Königsmuseum in Bonn and saw a film about Inuit constructing an igloo. The museum also had a set of large white blocks so that you could have a go at making your own (perhaps they still have them - I hope so, because my kids thought they were fab). I'm not sure whether it was that museum visit that sowed the seeds of the idea, but this week, when the snow lay thick upon the ground here in Flanders, Sporty Outdoor Hubs suddenly decided to build his own igloo. The kids joined in, too.

I stayed indoors and made cups of tea and warming stews. Someone has to do that; I saw myself rather in the role of the person who stays at Base Camp whilst the others try to do Mount Everest. (I managed to do a jigsaw and watch Pan's Labyrinth too in the unaccustomed peace indoors, but that's another story and quite an incidental benefit. Honest.)

It's amazing how much snow you need to build an igloo; they used up nearly all the snow in the front AND back gardens. Hubs found a plastic storage box which they used as a mould for making each snow brick. The kids helped transport the full mould across the garden on a sledge, and then turned it out on the igloo wall. It took them most of two afternoons to complete the igloo, which was good, actually, because a bit of snow fell in between and plastered over the joins in the bricks very nicely.

They decided to build the igloo as a complete hemisphere first and then cut in the doorway afterwards, which was sensible because it meant there was no subsidence as the top layers of bricks went on. Once the hemisphere was built, my son cut the doorway with a saw. We all stood back to admire the effect for a bit, and then hubs went off to find some candles. Apparently the correct thing to do is light a few candles and put them inside the completed igloo for a bit, so that the indoor surface will melt very slightly. When it freezes again, you have a smooth and hopefully draught-free wall.

They all crawled inside to see what it was like. "Warmer than you'd think," was the verdict. We left the candles burning for a bit; it looked so cosy that even the cat went out to investigate. Sporty Outdoor Hubs thinks it might even be possible to sleep out in it! Think I'll stay at Base Camp again, thanks...

NOTE: The kids had brilliant fun doing this, but if you decide to try it with yours, make sure they're not left to play inside unattended. That's quite a lot of snow, and if it collapsed, it could be dangerous.

What's that you say? Don't judge a book by its cover..?

2010-12-03T03:13:00.001-08:00

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden has now been published in Great Britain, the USA, Holland, Germany and Spain (still to come: Norway, who have already published The Glass Demon, Brazil, Italy and Romania). I'm fascinated to see the different ways in which the book has been interpreted in the cover art.

People sometimes ask me whether I decide what goes on the cover of my books. On the whole, no! Most of my publishers show me the proposed designs, some ask for feedback, but I'm not the person who creates the cover - which means it's always a thrill for me to see what the cover artist has come up with.

The latest launch was by Planeta in Spain, and I absolutely LOVE the brilliant, quirky Tim Burton-esque cover (left). I've shown it to groups of high school students at a recent school visit, and judging by the smiles, they loved it too. It has a great combination of creepiness and humour. The muted colours and the big scared-looking eyes of the two children suggest the dark content of the book, but I can't help laughing at Stefan's funny little face peeping out from behind Pia! The cover design was created by artist Gabriel Salvado; you can see more of his work here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eldibuixant/

Take a look too at some of the other cover designs, from the US, Holland, the UK and Germany. They all interpret the book in different ways, and all beautifully in my opinion. The US design focuses on the black cat Pluto, who plays a small but significant role in the book. The Dutch and British designs focus on Katharina Linden herself, the vanishing girl. The German design uses a photograph but with strong red tones creating a threatening effect.

Which one do you like best? Which best expresses the essence of the book? I'd love some feedback!

SINT - my fave movie of 2010

2010-11-28T09:07:00.000-08:00

I have absolutely no pretensions to being a film critic - in cinematic terms I am like those people who say "I don't know anything about wine but I like what I like". I have never seen Gone with the wind and I didn't manage to watch the whole of Citizen Kane. I've even committed the heresy of preferring the American film The Ring to the Japanese original, Ringu. So I don't have the slightest critical credentials to boast of. I just....like what I like.

Now that's out of the way, I just have to mention a film I saw yesterday, which I absolutely LOVED. It's SINT (Saint), by Dutch director Dick Maas. A Flemish friend of mine who knows a bit about my erratic taste in films told me about it, and from the moment I saw the trailer ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBqqp_j8r1A ) I was desperate to see it. Nor was I disappointed.

SINT is about Sinterklaas, better known to you and me as Santa Claus, or possibly Saint Nicholas. The story begins in 1492, with the original Bishop Nicholas revealed to be the evil head of a gang of plundering, murdering thugs. After he and his men visit a small village in the dead of winter and steal several children, the inhabitants take their revenge, setting fire to his ship and watching as Nicholas perishes in the flames. This is not the end of him, though; Sint has more lives than Freddy Krueger. Every 36 years, when the full moon falls on St.Nicholas' Eve (5th December) he returns to carry out a killing spree, murdering children and adults alike.

Fast forward to present-day Amsterdam, where the full moon is due to fall upon 5th December. Cute hero Frank and disgraced detective Goert battle to stop the latest wave of grisly murders, hampered by the fact that their appearance at many of the crime scenes puts them under suspicion.

I marvelled at the sheer outrageousness of this film. It was worth seeing it just to watch the scene in which Sinterklaas astride his traditional white horse gallops along the rooftops of Amsterdam, whilst the police give chase firing at him from the window of their police car. It's also certainly a new twist to the St.Nicholas legend to have him decapitating people with his crozier. Dick Maas, I salute you: you have one hell of an imagination!

SINT is currently in cinemas in Belgium; I hope there will be a dubbed English version in due course as it would be truly tragic to miss this film. Hell, watch it in Dutch if you have to! One word of warning: take the 12+ rating seriously. This isn't for younger kids!

Muy misterioso...

2010-11-28T02:32:00.000-08:00

When I was in Spain this week, an interviewer asked me, "What is the real Helen Grant like?" This was a bit of a fast ball since nearly everyone asks me how long it takes to write a book, where I get my ideas, etc. However, having reviewed all my inner characteristics in a nanosecond and rejected the bits about Never Saying No To Chocolate, having dubious daydreams about Johnny Depp and Preferring Mess To Housework, I replied (truthfully) that I am a person with a very active imagination, and it colours the way I see the world. Well, "colours" is a nice way of saying "completely and utterly falsifies."

Take for example my Dutch class, which I have been attending for two and half years now. Nederlands 1 and 2 introduced us to Hagob (Armenian) and Dorjee (Tibetan) as well as Dalia (Syrian) and Monserrat (Phillipina). (There was nothing so pedestrian as a European amongst this cast of characters.) They were forever ringing each other up or "accidentally" meeting in the street and having seemingly innocuous conversations about the weather or proposed cinema trips. If I had taken all this at face value I would have died of boredom long before we got onto irregular Dutch past participles, so I used to create extravagant supplementary histories for the characters. Hagob and Dorjee were clearly desperate to find women, but hampered by their lack of Dutch fluency, hence the inane remarks about the weather; Dalia and Monserrat had rumbled their little game long ago and kept trying to pass them onto each other, hence the rash of introductions in the first chapter - it was nothing to do with learning Dutch social conventions and everything to do with offloading an unwanted suitor. And don't get me onto Geert in the pink polo shirt in the chapter about family trees - no need to ask why he's still single at 30...

Given this predilection for "enhancing reality", you can imagine how my imagination ran riot when I turned up at my hotel in Madrid to find it crawling with security. At least, I think that's what they were. I took the lift to the second floor to find two men in suits wearing earpieces sitting on chairs one either side of one of the doors. They didn't have any luggage with them so I don't think they were waiting to get into their room, and they didn't look friendly. No nodding, no Buenas dias, just a flat stare. I went to my room and let myself in, feeling slightly uncomfortable; looked back after unlocking the door and saw one of them staring back at me. Bodyguards, I decided. But whose? The hotel was very comfortable and modern, but it wasn't the sort of marble-and-crystal-chandeliers type of place that film stars hang out in. Or was someone slumming it, in the hopes of going unnoticed?

I went out for a couple of hours to look around Madrid and when I got back to the hotel, the men were still there on the landing, still staring and still not saying anything. In fact, when I looked, the whole hotel seemed to be crawling with men in suits wearing earpieces. There was one with a Mephistophelean beard; he was definitely up to no good. He was probably one of those people you get in films, who can kill you in two seconds with his bare hands.

I began to wish I was someone with no imagination at all; nasty thoughts kept occurring to me, eg. if someone on my corridor needed bodyguards, were they expecting an imminent attack? Wasn't it a bit dangerous being on the same floor? Was I going to end up as "collateral damage"? Feeling rather silly but distinctly unnerved, I put a chair up against the door before I went to bed. There; that should stop contract killers sneaking in, killing me silently and using my room as a base.

The next morning I opened the curtains to discover a police van parked opposite the hotel. Out on the landing, the two men were still at their posts - or was it another two men? Hard to tell. Downstairs in the lobby was another little huddle of men in suits; whilst I sat there waiting for my interpreter to turn up, a policeman came in and starting speaking to them. How I wished I had got past Lesson 1: El Campesino in Living Spanish. Then I might have been able to work out whether they were saying, "The target has been eliminated; the jump jet is waiting" or "Can you move your car, please, sir; it's obstructing a delivery entrance."

I didn't dare ask the hotel staff what it was all about, in case I either made myself look terminally stupid or very suspicious. I did find myself wondering afterwards however whether the two men on my hotel corridor had imaginations as active as mine. Did they watch me unlocking my door and wonder whether that wheeled bag concealed a balaclava, an abseil rope and an Uzi? Did they see me open the door to the room service guy and wonder whether I was really giving him a two euro tip or passing a microdot? Let's hope so, because otherwise they must have had a terribly boring night, poor things, with nothing to do expect watch the digital numbers on the lift door going up and down.

PS Later in the day, comfortably removed from the hotel, I asked my contacts at the publisher's if they had any idea what had been going on. They were as puzzled as I was - but someone suggested it may have been a diplomat or other bigwig since there was some sort of big event related to the Spanish royal family going on. So whoever was in the room with the men outside, it probably wasn't a film star. Shame; I was hoping for Johnny Depp.

Bon dia Barcelona!

2010-11-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

"Well," said my husband when I called him from Barcelona, "How are they treating you?"

"Truthfully?" I said. "It's how I'd always hoped to be treated!" I couldn't tell him anything else for a minute though, because he was too busy laughing at me...

Delusions of grandeur aside(!), I think any author who has slaved away for a year or more on a manuscript, not knowing whether anyone else will ever read it, would be thrilled with the promotional programme Planeta (my Spanish publisher) had organised. Fourteen interviews at last count (well, that's what someone told me, since I actually had lost count), lots of exciting dashes about Madrid and Barcelona in taxis, and some very tasty tapas (thanks, Maria!). I've been on the radio (second time ever) and TV (first time ever) as well as chatting to lots of journalists. The Planeta team asked me if I was getting tired of talking to people; I said (quite truthfully) that coming from a large and vociferous family I am very grateful if anyone listens to me at all!

I came away with a very positive impression of the Spanish media - it was wonderful to be asked so many interesting and intelligent questions - as well as some very original ones. "Do you believe in reincarnation?" and "Do you have a great soul?" asked one TV interviewer. (One of my friends asked me how on earth you reply to a question like that; I replied that you say, "That is a very interesting question indeed," and whilst you are saying that, you think frantically!)

One of the things which interested many interviewers was the book's title, El Imperturbable Hans ("Unshockable Hans"), which is of course very different to the British title, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden. Why was this? they wanted to know. If you are interested, this is the reason: Unshockable Hans was my original working title of the book. I called it that because in many ways I see the legendary figure of Hans as the hero of the story. For various reasons the eventual English-language title was changed - it was much less obvious from the working title what the book was about, for example, whereas The Vanishing... is a pretty good signpost! However, the Spanish team liked the working title and decided to go with it. I'm thrilled that they did, because it fits very well with the spooky, quirky cover art of the Spanish edition.

Finally, I managed a very, very quick visit to La Pedrera and La Sagrada Familia, two of Barcelona's most famous landmarks, both designed by the artistic genius Antoni Gaudi. We lived in Barcelona for a few months in 1999 when my daughter was a baby, and whilst my husband was out working, I made it a project of mine to visit every single Gaudi building, park, gate, etc in Barcelona and photograph the baby in front of them. So it was wonderful to relive those memories, even if briefly.

Now I'm back in Brussels, looking out of the window at grey skies and what appears to be (eek!) snow falling...

Hola Madrid!

2010-11-22T11:34:00.000-08:00

It's been a bizarre day. I'm here in Spain to help publicise the launch of El Imperturbable Hans, the Spanish translation of The Vanishing of Katharina Linden. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, having missed (by a whisker) the email that arrived telling me the plans.

At Madrid airport there was a taxi driver waiting with a placard with my name on it. I had spent the two hour flight from Brussels frantically reading Living Spanish and trying to remember irregular verbs, however, my Spanish vocabulary has more holes in it than a lace mantilla, and if the taxi driver spoke any English he wasn't telling. I managed to ask him whether we were going to the publisher's or the hotel and established that it was the hotel, but that was about it.

Arrived at the hotel, went up to the desk and said "Tengo una reserva", after which the staff took pity on me and switched to English. They had my reservation all right; so far so good. I left my mobile phone number with Reception in case anyone called wanting me for anything, and then went out on foot to look at Madrid.

There wasn't time to take in a museum etc so instead I just wandered about for a bit soaking up the atmosphere as dusk fell. I've only ever been in Madrid once before, for a single day, and didn't manage to see anything then either. My main impression is of staggering buildings. Quite a lot of them have turrets and statues on top. I particularly liked a statue of someone driving a chariot, outlined against the evening sky.

Browsed in a fabulous shop called Lala; done out all in white and mirrors, it was a paradise of Gothic jewellery - purple or black diamante spiders on chains, huge dangly earrings and gorgeous scarlet and black pendants. Restrained myself with difficulty - I really don't have any occasion on which I could wear a tarantula on a string - but bought some black and turquoise glass and foil earrings in another boutique.

When I got back to the hotel, there was an envelope waiting for me. It contained the schedule for tomorrow, and a train ticket to Barcelona for tomorrow night. I am starting to feel like the girl in Beauty and the Beast, who kept waking up to find stuff had been done in the night by invisible servants. Will an actual person appear at some point, or shall I follow a trail of clues and notes...?

No idea whether I will be able to get at a Wifi connection in Barcelona; the train doesn't even arrive there until 21.43 so I may be too tired even if there is Wifi on every street corner. If I can get online, I'll be back to relate how I got on.

Greenlight for Girls 2

2010-11-20T08:04:00.001-08:00

Just picked my daughter up - she was utterly thrilled with the whole day. She has her own personalised lab coat and some of her own DNA in a test tube!!! (She says she was glad they let her bring that home because she didn't want anyone cloning her on the sly.) She says the best workshop of all was making a comet out of dry ice, water, baking powder, cornflower and kitchen spray - she's dying to try it out at home.

Judging by the excited faces coming out of the last session, everyone had a fabulous and inspiring time. Let's hope they run something like this again!

Greenlight for girls

2010-11-20T00:18:00.000-08:00

There are not many things which make me want to get up at 06.00 on a Saturday morning, but today I added one to the list (the others include climbing Ben Lomond, scuba diving off Weymouth and nabbing a turn at the only tap on an Indian campsite before anyone else got up, if you must know). I have just taken my daughter to a science day for girls being held at the International School of Brussels, which opened at 08.00, hence the horrendously early start, since we live half an hour's drive away.

The day is being run by Greenlight for Girls, an International NGO with the mission to encourage girls to consider a future in maths, science, engineering and technology by introducing them to the world of science in fun and exciting ways. It's a fabulous opportunity for girls to meet high-achieving women (and men) working in science, and to try out a variety of workshops and experiments. It's a whole-day event including lunch and amazingly, thanks to the organisation's sponsors, it's entirely free.

I dropped my daughter off at the registration desk, where she received her programme for the day and disappeared off to get herself a lab coat. Since my sole scientific qualifications are two ancient 'O'levels in Maths and Biology, I'm rather an outsider to the world of science. The only time I see a lab coat is at the doctor's or the pharmacy, so it made a very strong visual impression on me, seeing so many women and girls wearing them. Let's hope it's a uniform many of today's participants will continue to wear in the future.

I'll post again later when I've heard how my daughter got on!

You can read about the event and about Greenlight for Girls on their website, here:

http://www.greenlightforgirls.org/

The Glass Demon rights sold in Turkey!

2010-11-11T05:41:00.000-08:00

I'm delighted to report that the Turkish rights to The Glass Demon have been sold to Derin Kitap! Details in due course.

Book signing, 6th November 2010

2010-11-11T05:31:00.001-08:00

A big thank you to Octavia and Jo and everyone at Waterstone's in Cirencester for organising my book signing event last Saturday. Thanks also to William Bond for producing the super publicity material. A special mention too for Ben, one of my oldest friends, who travelled from London specially!

To everyone who attended and bought signed books - or just stopped to chat - it was great to see you.

Visit to St. Mary's Church, Fairford.

2010-11-11T04:41:00.001-08:00

As my long-suffering family and friends will testify, I have a bit of a "thing" about Renaissance stained glass. Whenever we are travelling about and I spot an interesting-looking church, I am prone to stopping the car and begging everyone else for "just five minutes" whilst I look to see whether there is any original glass left. Nine times out of ten I come out again looking disgusted (plain glass or some horrible later replacement) but now and again there is something really beautiful to see.

I became interested in the subject after researching the stained glass of Steinfeld Abbey (featured in the English ghost story "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" by M.R.James). Up until that point I had no idea how little glass of that period (1500s) survives. It is also very rare to see it in its original setting. The Steinfeld glass, and the equally gorgeous Mariawald glass, are now mostly the inmates of museums.

It was therefore a rare and fabulous treat for me to visit St. Mary's Church in Fairford, Gloucestershire, last week whilst I was in England. The Fairford glass is of the same period as the Steinfeld glass but amazingly, it is still in its original setting and virtually undamaged (a few windows were damaged by a storm in the early 1700s but most of the windows are perfect). The great west window includes one of the most stunning Last Judgement scenes I have ever seen, complete with demons.

A big vote of thanks to William Bond for taking me to Fairford, and also for taking a brilliant set of photographs of the glass for use in the upcoming book trailer for The Glass Demon. As the Fairford glass is of exactly the same period as the fictional Allerheiligen glass in my book, it was ideal - there is even a fire-belching "Bonschariant". If you are ever in the area, take a look - a unique chance to see real glass demons!

CILIP Carnegie Medal 2011

2010-11-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

I'm very pleased to say that The Glass Demon has been nominated for the 2011 CILIP Carnegie Medal. Here's the longlist:

http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/pressdesk/press.php?release=pres_nom_car_2011.html

Congratulations to everyone including FB friends Meg Rosoff and Keren David, and fellow Penguin YA writer Alex Scarrow!

Wish Me Dead

2010-11-02T13:23:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to report that I finished revisions on my third novel, Wish Me Dead, this week. In fact I sent it to Penguin Books on Sunday evening. There may be some further (hopefully small) revisions plus there's all the normal copyediting stuff, but basically the book is finished. I've also seen some fabulous cover artwork which I hope to be able to post here soon.

Wish Me Dead is my third book set in the Eifel region of Germany, and it's a return to Bad Münstereifel, the setting of The Vanishing of Katharina Linden. The story is about a group of friends, who decide to have a bit of slightly drunken fun one evening by going to the ruins of a witch's house in the woods near the town. They attempt to ask the long-dead witch to do their bidding. They wish someone dead - and the person really dies. That's just the beginning...

Anyone who has a particularly good memory for detail might remember that the Nett family have a VERY fleeting reference made to them in The Vanishing. It was that detail that inspired Wish Me Dead - that, plus the real-life history of witch-finding in the Eifel. A few other familiar Bad Münstereifel characters from my first two novels also make a reappearance in this book. It's not a "sequel" to either of the previous books but it still ties up a few loose ends!

Publication of Wish Me Dead is currently planned for June 2011 in the UK.

Signing event in Cirencester this week

2010-11-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

On Saturday 6th November I'll be at Waterstone's in Cirencester (Gloucestershire) signing copies of The Vanishing of Katharina Linden and The Glass Demon, from 11am to 1pm and 2-4pm. All welcome - I'd love to see you.

This is not part of a tour or anything - I simply happen to be in the UK anyway because it's my mum's birthday this week, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to do a signing in the area. Any excuse to spend hours and hours in a bookshop!

Scary stuff: ghosts, zombies, and rogue citrus fruit.

2010-10-17T02:42:00.000-07:00

Finally, 10 minutes spare for blogging. It's been another action-packed week in the Grant household. (For action-packed, read chaotic; bite-off-more-than-you-chew should be our family motto.) I spent last weekend camping with the girl guides again. When we camped at Grobbendonk in May, we had two days of solid rain, so I did wonder whether I needed my head examined for signing up again. "Are you mad?" asked one of my FB friends. In the event, I had the last laugh; we had gorgeous warm sunshine and we adults spent the evenings around the campfire drinking red wine and eating tortilla chips, basking in the satisfaction of having got 36 children to bed on time. I bet my doubting friends were horribly envious. Well, actually, they weren't...but they OUGHT to have been.

They might have been a bit more envious had I not told them about the Orange Incident. I went to the loo block on clean-up morning and found half an orange floating in the toilet; worse, someone - or possibly several someones, judging by the colour of the water - had pee'd on it. Flushing would probably have resulted in a blockage, so there was only one thing to do. I sighed and rolled my sleeves up, thanking Providence that I had put some disinfectant hand gel in my luggage. I disinfected my hands up to the elbows afterwards but I'll still be off finger food for a while.

This week was Book Week at the local British school, the BSB, so I went along to talk about The Glass Demon and run some workshops about writing ghost stories. I was nervous about running the workshops since I'd never done one before, but actually it was much more fun than talking about my own books! We had a great session at which I produced a carved wooden cat and asked the group to brainstorm possible ghost stories featuring it. I was thinking of M.R.James' "Stalls of Barchester Cathedral" and amazingly, a lot of the ideas which came up could have come directly from that story, even though none of the students had read it....full marks to the boy who suggested the wood from which the cat was carved might have an influence on the story.

I've also left Year 10 with a writing task inspired by a brilliant ghost story called "The Accident", by Ann Bridge; it appeared in the 4th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories back in 1967. In the story, someone receives a postcard postmarked Stresa, and is almost sent mad with terror. Why? I'm not telling... I mocked-up the postcard as exactly as I could (Swiss stamp from 1949 etc etc), gave out copies and asked the students to write a ghost story about the card. I'm planning to publish the best ones on my blog in due course.

Finally, the biggest thrill of the week for me was finally being able to see Lalla Merlin's short zombie film Virus for the first time! Lalla (who runs Lumiere Productions UK) made the book trailer for The Vanishing of Katharina Linden for me, and is currently working on a trailer for The Glass Demon. Lalla says "don't expect Shaun of the Dead" but I think she's selling herself short! The film is the result of a three day film making workshop for kids. None of the cast are professional actors and most of them didn't know each other beforehand, but the end result is great fun and there are some very funny moments as well as some very gruesome ones! You can see part one of the film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdDwYjwp-Ic

"Play with us, Fred...for ever...and ever..." Classic.

Introducing my gorgeous Norwegian....

2010-09-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

I'm absolutely thrilled to be able to share the fabulous cover of the Norwegian version of The Glass Demon, coming out any minute now in Norway (of course). It's being published by Vendetta Forlag, who have put a huge amount of energy into getting the cover design exactly right. I've seen three other, earlier concepts and this one is simply the best...it really sums up how I see the book myself. Maybe they picked my brains whilst I was asleep....

Canine the Barbarian - a cautionary tale.

2010-09-15T05:09:00.000-07:00

So, farewell summer. Here in Belgium the leaves are starting to turn orange, there are conkers all over the ground, and the rain has set in for the next ten months. The summer holidays this year were slightly frantic, as I attempted to finish my third novel in spite of the family trip to France, a visit from my brother, my son’s birthday, and my two children hanging around saying “Are we going to do something today, then?” I always have a mammoth “essay crisis” over the summer but this year I was even more behind than usual. I suppose therefore that it must have been a fit of temporary insanity which led me to offer to have a friend’s puppy for two weeks whilst she was away….yes, I offered, in spite of the fact that the last time I had a family dog was when I was 18 months old, and my parents had to find a new home for the family Basset hound after it kept knocking me over and trashing the house. I’m very fond of animals (except ones with more than six legs) and I adore our two cats, but when it comes to dogs I am a complete novice…and it shows.

During the two weeks of dogsitting, I posted regular updates on my Facebook wall. The “temporary dog” gained a minor following and I even had a request for further details of his exploits after he had left (perhaps I should be gratified that my travails provided such amusement; thanks sis). So here is my diary of our “dog days”, and if any of you are thinking of caving in to your kids’ demands for a puppy, let this be a warning to you…

8^th August Off to feed a friend's guinea pig and rabbits first thing in the morning. Dog sitting from Wednesday. Babysitting someone's kids on 19th. Hope I don't mess up at some point and feed the guinea pig to the dog or something.

11^th August The dog we are dogsitting for the next two weeks has arrived. We now have 2 kids and 1 mutt running like mad things up and down the garden. :-S

The temporary dog was caught chewing the phone charger cable. This does not bode well. I am keeping my MacBook Pro and its pristine white cables well out of his way!!!

12^th August Yapping frenzy from the temporary dog today when I got out the hoover. Ginger the cat meanwhile is red nosed and sneezing and has a vet's appointment this evening. Thus far the rabbits, guinea pig, terrapins and gerbils are all surviving.

(later) Oh noes. The vet says Ginger has an infection caused by stress.

13^th August Gordon goes out and the temporary dog sits at the door whining and scratching. I go out, and the temporary dog shrugs his shoulders and goes back to foraging in the compost bin.

Watched the temporary dog frolicking on the sofa with a plastic bottle he has been chewing. Asked small son, "Do you want a dog then?" He looked at the temporary dog dubiously and said, "Not one like that."

The owners of the guinea pig and the two rabbits comes home tomorrow so then it will just be one temporary dog, one invalid cat, two gerbils and two terrapins.

15^th August The temporary dog eats cat food. And clothes pegs. :-S

16^th August The temporary dog is in deep, deep disgrace for shooting out of the front door between Gordon's feet and running across the road. Luckily for him, there was nothing coming. He knows he's been bad; he's curled up in a very small ball looking extremely sorry for himself.

(later) I think something interesting ought to happen all of a sudden.

Oh bugger. It has. The temporary dog has piddled all over the floor.

17^th August I would still like something sudden and interesting to happen as long as it doesn't need cleaning up afterwards.

Oh noes. Just when you think life can't crank up the "ew" factor any higher....you discover that the temporary dog has worms. :-S

Hahahahahaha! The temporary dog is all wet. He couldn't resist the lake in the park. And now we know he is not actually a temporary dog at all but a temporary rat!!!

18^th August I have 4 kids running around here, plus 1 temporary dog, 1 permanent cat and 2 gerbils. I feel like Noah, esp. with all this bloody rain.

Now past caring whether kids spending 8 hours straight playing Nintendo rots their brains. Anything is better than this mayhem. Please kids, teach the bloody dog to play Super Mario too, will you?

Things are getting a bit intense here. Now even the temporary dog is hiding from the children.

19^th August Listening to Clouseau singing "laat me nu toch niet alleen" and wondering why anyone would say "don't leave me alone" - I DREAM of being left alone for 5 minutes.

(later) I grudgingly admit that the temporary dog is not that bad after all. He's kind of growing on me, in a slobbery hairy chewy sort of way.

NB This last post provoked the following reply from my friend Todd:

Todd Treichel 'Really? You probably haven't seen these all in one place, but because of a temporary dog we once had with similarly beguiling traits, I sent the following list of phrases from your FB posts to my wife:

"Temporary dog eats cat food. And clothes pegs."

"The temporary dog is in deep, deep disgrace for shooting out the door between Gordon's legs and into the street..."

"puddle of piddle"

"chewing up my house"

"digging in the compost bucket, and in the garden where our dear departed cat lies"

"slobbery licks"

"toxic farting"

"the whole family are now upstairs hiding" (from the previous two items)

"Just when you think that life can't crank up the "eww" factor any higher..."

"temporary dog has worms"

"Possibly the whole house may need to be sealed off and covered with black and yellow signs reading LEVEL 3 BIOHAZARD"

Perhaps he's not mean or violent, but he has completed most of the rest of the checklist. If he throws up a dead rat in your bedroom, then he will have it all covered.'

(later) Temporary dog is begging Gordon Grant to take him out for walkies. So, having stolen the cat's dinner, my son's Dr.Who pencil, my peace of mind and my clothes pegs, he now wants to take hubby away.

Gordon Grant, stop telling the dog I am his "temporary mum"!!! I said he wasn't quite as bad as I thought, not that I wished I had given birth to him.

20^th August NB David Longhorn is the - ahem - highly respected editor of Supernatural Tales.

Helen Grant Temporary dog, do not imagine for ONE minute that you are going to be allowed in that swimming pool. It takes 4 people about 78 years to set it up, costs about a trillion euros in water to fill, and is NOT going to be full of dog hairs and canine bodily fluids. OK?

David Longhorn My client insists that he has no intention of venturing into the swimming pool. However, my client gives fair warning that children shouting 'Come on in doggie!' might be construed as a verbal contract to get all wet.

Helen Grant I put it to you that your client has every intention of venturing into the swimming pool, and that he has in fact already entered said pool on one occasion and when challenged said "Woof."

David Longhorn My client may have unwittingly trespassed on the poolular zone while attempting to rescue a drowning beetle, as any good citizen would.

Helen Grant I have here in my hand a signed statement from the beetle in question, admitting that he was not in fact drowning and that he had been in receipt of several grammes of dog dung prior to the supposed "rescue" incident.

David Longhorn Would you consider a plea bargain involving a squeaky toy and half a box of Winalot, or equivalent comestible?

Helen Grant My learned friend displays a deplorable indifference to the principle involved. In the event of further pool incursions we shall be pressing for the severest possible penalties, including confiscation of toys both squeaky and non-squeaky, confinement to kennels and the awarding of six boxes of Winalot to the cat.

The prosecution calls upon Ginger Grant (cat).

Ginger Grant I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. The dog done it, M'Lord. I seen im.

David Longhorn This witness has been coached, and about as convincingly as the English soccer team.

Helen Grant We concede that the witness requires some assistance with translation from Cat to English, and request that he should not be subjected to felinist innuendo. However the fact remains that the defendant was apprehended with wet paws.

David Longhorn After conferring, we're prepared to plead to the lesser charge of trespass on a temporary pond while the balance of our tail was disturbed.

Helen Grant And upon the charge of felinist abuse, how does your client plead?

David Longhorn He intends to appeal to the International Canine Court, in Dalmatia.

Ginger Grant Send im down M'Lord. Me feelings is urt something terrible.

Helen Grant We wish to present damning new evidence. The dog has just been observed not only with all four paws in the pool but actually SWIMMING in it. Four witnesses were present, not including the cat and the beetle.

David Longhorn My client is but an innocent young dog, easily led astray by the worldly and cynical 'Jet Set' household into whose care he was entrusted. Have mercy, your honour, on a dog more sinned against than sinning. It may be a fair cop, but society is to blame. And so on and so forth. And that is some of the worst Cockney cat acting seen in a court since the Lady Chatterly trial.

Ginger Grant Felinist! I appeal to the court.

David Longhorn But not to me.

Ginger Grant M'Lord! I'm being oppressed by canine fundamentalists!

David Longhorn Send him off, ref, where are your specs?

Helen Grant We request a short recession in order that my witness the cat can compose himself after this tirade of felinist abuse.

Furthermore we call upon the court to observe the photographic evidence displayed above, which clearly shows the dog not only attempting to gain access to the pool but actually immersed in said pool. I rest my case.

David Longhorn It's the Apollo hoax all over again. The shadows are all wrong, the grass is fake, and if you follow the girl's line of sight she's actually looking at a distant greenfinch.

Helen Grant My learned colleague is surely attempting a pleasantry and will no doubt shortly announce that the photograph was taken by Shergar on the grassy knoll.

David Longhorn All right, I call upon Charles Darwin and Sons to explain that dogs like water due to several million years of evolution and there's no point in legislating against FACT! The rational defence - never actually tried in a court of law before today.

Helen Grant May I counter this proposterous line of argument by pointing out that human beings are carnivores but that does not justify leaping a five barred gate into a field and biting a cow.

David Longhorn It does where I live.

Helen Grant I suggest that the jury retire and consider the verdict.

David Longhorn Erm, there's a jury? Wow.

Helen Grant Of course there is a jury. What did you think this was, a kangaroo court?

David Longhorn If a kangaroo were on trial I'd have noticed.

Todd Treichel We're calling the jury back in from the pasture where they lunched, ma'am. Just be a minute cleaning up.

Helen Grant I think we can rely on the witness the beetle to do that.

(Solemn voice-over) The dog, anticipating a custodial sentence, made an unwarranted break for freedom and was apprehended in the street. He has been sentenced to an unlimited period in solitary confinement. Thus ends another career in crime.

The cat was awarded substantial damages and retired to Catalonia where he lives to this day, amusing himself with catnip and much younger kittens. The beetle, having cried "wolf" once too often, drowned in a latte macchiato in the middle of a crowded Starbucks, surrounded by people who thought that he was once again "putting it on". David Longhorn is still at large.

21^st August Not a good day so far. Exhausted after dog howled until 3 am. Already shouted at kids. Will go offline until feeling a bit more human....see you all around 2012 AD.

(later) The temporary dog has reached a new nadir of nastiness. Whilst we were all in the pool he was apprehended licking a pair of knickers.

Hmmmm. The temporary dog is chewing a mouthful of spaghetti. Unless he has grown wings and flown onto the work surface, he's had his nose in the compost bin again. :-S

(later) Sleep. I'm so tired I keep hallucinating. I think there are gerbils and cats and dogs all trying to eat each other.

22^nd August Another gruesome night. I suspect the animals in this house of living off Red Bull and Pepsi Max. Otherwise how can they stay up all night howling/meowing/scratching/trying to eat each other? :-(

The temporary dog saw the sun coming up over the fields at the back of the garden, heard the cock crowing a couple of doors down, and thought "My work here is done." He has stopped howling and is absolutely silent.

Now I know why the bible says Noah lived to be 950 years old. This morning I bloody well feel 950 years old too.

23^rd August Stuff the temporary dog has chewed today: a piece of paper, a bottle top, a pencil, a glove, a chip from the compost bucket, me.

Somewhere, at this very moment in a little Flemish village, is a woman whose heroism, whose tale of selfless sacrifice, may never be fully told. This is the woman about to become the temporary dog's new Mummy. Bless you, unnamed woman, for your services to my sleep patterns.

24^th August Gosh. The temporary dog has found a patch of sunlight 12 inches square and gone to sleep in it. The Angel of the Lord must have descended and spread peace everywhere or something.

‎"Dog, what have you been eating? Your breath stinks!" says horrified hubs, trying to fight the dog off. "Urgh....I think it's the compost heap."

Tee hee. Ginger the cat has taken to sitting halfway up the stairs and meowing loudly for someone to come and carry him past the temporary dog to the door so he can go out. Then he sits in my arms telegraphing his disdain at the dog as he passes it.

(later) From 11am tomorrow I am no longer the temporary dog's temporary mum.

25^th August The temporary dog has finally made it upstairs into Ginger the cat's sacred domain. Gordon was sitting at his desk when he heard SNUFFLE SNUFFLE SNUFFLE SNUFFLE YELP YELP YELP WHIIIIIINE! He came out to find the dog at the bottom of the stairs quivering in abject terror and Ginger on the top step looking smug.

Temporary dog gone in 3...2...1

Helen Grant hears the patter of tiny feet. Ginger is patrolling the house, checking that the temporary dog is really an ex temporary dog…

A chat with Lalla Merlin, maker of my book trailer!

2010-08-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to be able to feature a new book trailer for The Vanishing of Katharina Linden on my BOOKS page - there is also a US version here (it has the US cover at the end, otherwise it's the same): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV-b87wFvKE

I'm really thrilled with the trailer - I feel it has exactly the right creepy and quirky atmosphere. It was made by Lalla Merlin of Lumiere Films UK. Lalla not only makes films, she also runs film workshops for young people - she's currently running a three-day workshop to create a zombie film, so she's no stranger to creepy special effects! I'd never been involved in making a book trailer before as The Vanishing was my debut novel, so I put the whole thing in Lalla's hands. I'm fascinated by questions such as, how do you compress a 350+ page novel into a 2-3 minute trailer? So I asked her if she'd mind being interviewed, and here's what she said....

In a book trailer you only get about 2-3 minutes of finished film time - not long in which to portray a book of over 90,000 words. How did you pick out which aspects of the book should go in the trailer?

LM: A trailer is, essentially, the visual expression of a book’s ‘blurb’. We felt this opened the way to a metaphorical, rather than a purely literal, approach. One example of this is in the actual vanishing of Katharina: here, she vanishes – actually fades on the air. This expresses Pia’s embracing of a possible supernatural explanation of the disappearances.

Had you read the book when you were approached about making the book trailer?

LM: I had read the book before we were asked to make the trailer, but I re-read it. So did everybody involved with the making of the film, including Caspian, the ‘Headless Ghost’ – and ten-year-old Iseult, who played both Pia and (after having her hair dyed black) Katharina Linden.

Did the actress who played Pia know what happens in the book?

LM: The actress who Played Pia did know about the book’s events, and thoroughly relished the chance to act in something like this: something where she didn’t have to wear wings and a wand and appear to be ‘sweet’!

What film making experience did you draw on when you made the book trailer?

LM: I have been interested in film since I was at university, where I was quite keen on acting and scriptwriting in my spare time. I was also involved in the running of an art-house cinema. Since we have had our own film company we have made lots of films: an eclectic mixture of documentaries; corporate video; filmed oral history; fantasy, animation and fun short films with children: a perfect preparation for making a 2-minute book trailer. We have always enjoyed playing with special effects where possible. We made one film to showcase the work of a local artist and illustrator. In our film a child entered, then became trapped in the landscape of the artist’s imagination. We have just completed a kids’ animation project where the kids created an animation then, using greenscreen techniques, were able to appear as characters in their own animated films.

Can you explain how you created footage apparently shot on location in Bad Münstereifel?

LM:
We used greenscreen in the making of the book trailer, too: this is how we made the actors playing Katharina and the headless ghost appear to be in Bad Munstereifel, and Pia appear to be in the well. In fact, they were filmed against a greenscreen, then the green background was digitally removed and a photograph substituted. It’s a simple technique, but very effective.

What did the actress who played Pia's granny think about having a role as an exploding grandmother?

LM: She loved the idea. Her only reservation, in the end, was the fact that the cat actor (the ‘spectral cat’ ) – appeared on the screen for a longer time than she did!

What about the Glass Demon? Do you think you could make an interesting trailer for that book? How would it be different in tone from the Vanishing trailer?

LM: Yes: we’re hoping to get started on producing a trailer for ‘The Glass Demon’ quite soon – and it will be quite different in tone. While both books are rooted in legend, The Vanishing’s legend is inspirational: it is the story of Unshockable Hans that compels Pia to turn detective. The Glass Demon is rooted in a much darker, more violent piece of folklore. The story is told from the viewpoint of Lin who is much older than Pia, and more grounded in the adult world. The events are ‘on’ rather than ‘off’ stage, too – all of which make for a much darker, more horrifying trailer.
Lalla commented:

This particular book was fun because of its imagery, much of which comes from Germanic folklore: the stuff of fairy-tales. Add to this the fact that the story is told from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl – that transition age between innocence and wisdom, where two worlds are straddled and anything is possible; where the exploits of Unshockable Hans, vanquisher of witches and otherworldly beings can co-exist with her own parents’ troubled marriage and the disturbing events in the town – and the stage is set. It is the basis in folklore and the viewpoint of Pia that lifts this story, I think, from the massed realms of crime fiction into the more rarefied air of magical realism. This marriage of two worlds – the everyday and the uncanny – is something we wanted to express in the trailer. But there were other requirements, too. Firstly, we had to provoke a potential reader’s interest without giving too much of the plot away. Secondly, we had to stay within a reasonable budget:actors (even animal ones), music, venues, costumes and props all cost the author money. Thirdly – and this was trickiest of all – we had to express everything we wanted to say about the book within approximately two minutes.

Helen adds: I can't wait to see what Lalla does with The Glass Demon! I'm also dying to see the results of her zombie workshop...if she posts the film on YouTube I will post a link!

THE END (or not, as the case may be).

2010-08-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

Well, today was a momentous day for me - I finally typed THE END on the last page of my third novel, whose working title is "The Witch of Schönau" (though it probably won't be called that in the end). I'd aimed to have the book finished by the end of June, but I'd reckoned without the big chunks of time which would be spent reading proofs of my earlier books, organising launch stuff for The Glass Demon and doing other very nice things like Carnegie school visits. Then I aimed to have it done before we went on holiday to France in July; and then I tried to finish it whilst actually ON holiday (note to self: never try that again). Finally decided that it HAD to be finished by 15th August so that I could send it to my agent on Monday 16th, for her to cast an eye over before going away herself. I'm not cheeky enough to suggest SHE works on it whilst on holiday, so the deadline was set in tablets of stone. This week, with the deadline looming, I took to working in the house of a very kind friend who is away. Bliss - the only sounds in her house are the gentle gurgling of the fishtank downstairs echoed by the more distant gurgling of the terrapin tank upstairs. I've made about a hundred cups of strong Yorkshire tea with her kettle, eaten more chocolate bars than I would admit to (note to self: diet next week) and written for hours and hours and hours. I staggered out briefly last night to visit the village festival with my husband, who has been nobly minding the kids, the cat (who has feline rhinotracheitis) and the absent friend's dog. My eyes felt as though they were bugging out from looking at the laptop screen all day, and I probably looked like some sort of albino cave creature after not seeing the daylight all week. By Friday I was getting to the slightly panicky stage of thinking every other phrase was dreadful and deleting half of what I had written; on Saturday morning I deleted the whole of Friday's work and started again. Finally, this afternoon, with my snout pressed up against the deadline, I reached THE END.

This is not really THE END of course; there will probably be one trillion trillion revisions, especially because I don't have time to go through all 105,000 words with a toothcomb looking for inconsistencies etc before I send it off. But at least I can have a day off tomorrow. Hallelujah!!!!

So farewell then, Carnegie shadowing scheme 2010...

2010-06-25T00:48:00.000-07:00

I doubt it's news to anyone that the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2010 was won by Neil Gaiman for The Graveyard Book, the tale of a boy raised by the dead and mentored by a vampire. Although it is any writer's dream to win the medal, I am thrilled simply to have been on the shortlist. It's obviously very nice to have the publicity which goes with a shortlisting, but it was even nicer to be invited to various Carnegie shadowing scheme events - I enjoyed those hugely. As well as last week's mad dashes between Somerset, Warwick and Cardiff, I had a final event on Wednesday at the Tomlinson Centre in Hackney, where I talked to pupils from local schools and listened to their presentations of the shortlisted books. The Hackney event also included some discussion groups, and it was fascinating listening to the differing views expressed of the shortlisted books. I've experienced this already through the shadowing scheme website, where the posted reviews of my own book vary widely, ranging from the very positive to the extremely negative! I heard several of the teen reviewers express the opinion that the shortlisted books ought to be chosen by the target audience and not by adult librarians. That isn't the nature of the Carnegie medal, but it's an interesting point. What makes a "good" book? What is more important, literary merit or popularity? If 9 out of 10 people love a particular book, does that make it "good", even if it is light, with no highbrow literary pretensions? I asked the group I spoke to whether they thought Twilight should have won. Yes, they said without hesitation! It would be fascinating to see a shortlist of 8 books chosen by that group - I wonder whether my book or any of the other shortlisted books would be on the list?!

The awards ceremony itself was very interesting since it was only the second such event I have ever attended, the first being the Booktrust Teenage Award last November, also won by Neil Gaiman. I have often thought, looking at the author photos which accompanied the Carnegie shortlisted books, that Philip Reeve seems a very dapper chap, and having seen him in the flesh (and even stood next to him for the group photo) I can confirm that he is! I also spoke very briefly to Freya Blackwood, who won the Kate Greenaway Medal. Her acceptance speech was so sincere, and she was so very obviously overwhelmed to have won, that I felt like cheering for her. It was also very moving to see Neil Gaiman being presented with a braille version of The Graveyard Book - it's a brilliant aspect of the Carnegie medal process that the books are made available to braille readers too.

Sigh. Well, it's all over now. Back to work!

The importance of cats

2010-06-25T00:10:00.000-07:00

I am very, very sad to say that our beloved cat Mika was struck by a car on Monday and killed. I debated for a long time whether to mention this on my blog. People who aren't keen on animals will probably think, "What's the big deal? It was just a cat." But I think blogs should cover events of significance, and for me this was one of those, though not in a nice way.

We adopted Mika in 2007. We were driving to the riding stables in our then home in Germany, when we saw a very young kitten in the road. As we were miles from the nearest house, the kids were very anxious about it. Eventually I was persuaded (reluctantly, I am sorry to admit) to go back and look for it. The stables provided a cardboard box and we took its small and very fierce occupant to the local vet for assessment. He had to put on a kevlar mitt before examining her, as she was doing her best to defend herself with claws and fangs. He pronounced her female, starving and too unwell to be immunised for the time being. "Are you sure you want to keep it?" he asked me doubtfully. The kids looked at me pleadingly...and that was it. A new addition to the Grant household, and the plans we had had to get a little dog were scrapped.

Mika's endearing habits and ways would probably not mean anything to anyone outside our family. But as this is a writer's blog, I would would like to say that Mika was the only living thing I could stand to have around me when I'm writing. I never try to write anything when the kids are at home, and my husband is banished upstairs when I am working. Even Ginger, our other cat, is not particularly welcome since he is terminally restless, and can't seem to tolerate my sitting at the computer for more than 3 minutes; his demands to be let in and out are vociferous and hard to ignore. Mika, however, could happily sleep in the space between the keyboard and the screen without disturbing me at all. Sometimes she even slept on the printed-out manuscript of The Glass Demon (my friends suggested she was editing it). She was the perfect pet for a writer - and I miss her terribly.

The week ends in wonderful Warwick!

2010-06-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

"It's Friday so it must be Warwick." Well, it was starting to feel like that, but then I arrived at the fabulous Bridge Theatre at Warwick School, to a wonderful welcome and a really brilliant, enthusiastic, book-loving audience. I had something special for this audience and the one in Cardiff - a new story about Unshockable Hans. As I've mentioned elsewhere on my website, all the legends in The Vanishing of Katharina Linden are genuine Bad Münstereifel folktales, collected by Father Krause and published in the Eifel Club Newsletter from 1910 onwards. When I was researching for the book, I went to the Eifel Club HQ in Düren to get copies of the original published versions. Most of the stories about Hans feature in the book, but one didn't - so I retold it in English for the two bigger audiences.

It's been a fabulous week and a wonderful opportunity to meet readers. Since I live in Belgium, I don't have the chance to do so very often, so it's great to listen to their views, get feedback and answer questions. There were some very interesting questions at Warwick. Someone wanted to know whether I had any particular music in mind when I was writing my books. The answer is: when I was writing The Vanishing of Katharina Linden I don't remember having any particular music in mind, but when I was writing The Glass Demon it was Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium, and especially Nun seid ihr wohl gerochen. It's dynamic, passionate, and it's sung in German. Whenever I listen to it I think of angry angels. Perfect.

Big thanks to Angela Ballard for inviting me to the Warwick event. I'm back in Brussels for a few days now, but next week I'll be back in London for a final shadowing scheme event in Hackney, before the actual Carnegie award ceremony on Thursday 24th June. Can't wait!

Things get dramatic in Cardiff!

2010-06-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics of a super Carnegie shadowing scheme event at The Gate theatre in Cardiff, on Wednesday 16th June (yes, I'm back to some semblance of order). About a dozen schools from the area participated. Pupils from the schools' shadowing groups were put into eight teams, each of which were allocated one shortlisted book, which they had to present dramatically to a team of judges, including the Carnegie nominated writer Paul Dowswell, author of Auslander. Here you can see the presentation of The Vanishing of Katharina Linden. I was very impressed by all the presentations, which demonstrated energy, intelligent interpretation of the key points of each book, and in some cases humour! I was even more amazed though when I discovered that the teams had had less than two days to prepare, and that the pupils from the various schools had been mixed up, so that everyone was working with people they had never met before. The group who presented The Vanishing chose to dramatise the death of Oma Kristel and the subsequent ostracisation of Pia. The tensions within the Kolvenbach family were also well represented. I'm always amazed at readers' reactions to that; I've heard the disintegration of Kate's and Wolfgang's marriage described as one of the scariest things in the book, but when I was writing it, it just seemed like the natural background to the story.

The eagle-eyed in the audience may have spotted that the "model" who posed as Unshockable Hans for a mocked-up photo of the legendary miller was William Bond, who accompanied me as photographer. William also drove me everywhere this week, as I have not driven on the British side of the road since 2001. At last count he had driven me over 600 miles - so a big vote of thanks to William. Thanks also to Karyn Chapman for inviting me to The Gate!

Cirencester - a little out of order!

2010-06-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

My blog is a little out of chronological order - these photos are from my book signing at Waterstone's in Cirencester on Tuesday 15th June, ie. a day before the photos from Stanchester Community School! I suppose if I were writing about time travel like Alex Scarrow does (Timeriders), this would be entirely appropriate. Sadly it just means I'm disorganised!

Big thanks to Octavia at Waterstone's for organising the event, and to William Bond for drumming up the local press!

No pretzels, but lots of Swedish apple cake!

2010-06-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

I did the first of three Carnegie shadowing scheme-related school visits today, at Stanchester Community School in Stoke sub Hamdon, Somerset. I'm pictured here with staff and pupils (some from Heathfield School), including the super Mr.Guy (group photo, at the back, right-ish, in front of the window) who invited me to the school, organised everything and even baked the utterly delicious Swedish apple cake! There was utterly delicious chocolate cake too but that was all scoffed up before I had finished speaking! It was brilliant to meet such a motivated, intelligent and (joy!) attentive audience. I guess any shadowing group is bound to be a self-selecting group of book-lovers and this was no exception. If everyone I talked to baked such delicious cakes I would be a very happy author, though perhaps a somewhat larger one...

Books in Blighty

2010-06-12T00:58:00.000-07:00

Monday 14th is going to be the start of a very busy week - I'm leaving the house, the kids, the cats and the gerbils to my longsuffering other half, and coming over to the UK for a programme of book signing and school visits. I can't imagine what that will be like - I haven't had that much time away from the hurly-burly of family life, with its endless round of fish fingers, homework and Dr.Who, since 1998! As one of my friends stoutly remarked, it will probably "do them all good".
I'm kicking off the week with the Puffin 70th birthday party in London. I'm panicking slightly about what to wear, especially after reading Amanda Craig's excellent blog about clothing for female novelists this week: http://www.amandacraig.com/pages/blog_01/blog_item.asp?Blog_01ID=240
God forbid I should go "all arty craft about the neck and ankles". I've been picking the Bookwitch's brains as she has actually been to one of these events before. However, I think the fundamental problem is that I haven't quite moved on from living in rural Germany for 7 years. All my clothes are scruffy jeans (some with holes), cosy fleeces and practical dark t-shirts. I barely possess a single pair of high heels - useless when you step out of your door into six inch mud/snow (delete according to season). Sigh. Perhaps I'll find something in London on Monday afternoon...
On Tuesday I'm going to be in Waterstone's in Cirencester (14.30 and 16.30, if you're in the area that day), signing books. I know that particular shop fairly well as when we come to the UK to visit relatives I often nip in to stock up on English language books. You can get those in Brussels but generally they are a bit more expensive.
On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I am going to be talking to Carnegie shadowing scheme groups in Somerset, Cardiff and Warwick. I'm visiting the Stanchester Community School who sent me such a charming invitation that I couldn't refuse it - also they are allegedly going to have real German pretzels, athough I don't know where you can get those in Somerset. The Cardiff and Warwick events are both in theatres and groups from lots of different schools will be attending. In Cardiff the audience will be about 300-strong. At times like this I am very grateful for the 10 years I spent working in Marketing. (I worked on Twiglets and Mum deodorant amongst other products.) I've had to do lots of presentations before and once you've faced the northern region sales force and lived to tell the tale, you feel you can cope with anything. I have some gorgeous slides to show all the groups, plus a very special surprise indeed, which I'll describe afterwards, just in case anyone who's going to attend lays eyes on this blog.
I'll then be heading back to Brussels, laden with goodies from M&S and Waterstone's, and desperate to find out how my family managed without me (have the cats got into the guest room and eaten the gerbils? etc.). Will it have "done them good"? We shall see...

Corks popped for The Glass Demon!

2010-06-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

Corks popped this evening for the launch of The Glass Demon at Treasure Trove Books in Tervuren, near Brussels! Appropriately enough, the wine was a German sekt (the German equivalent of champagne) which I bought in Bad Münstereifel when I was there at Easter. We didn't drink all of it, though, because it was a blisteringly hot day in Brussels - instead, we got through litres and litres of mineral water!

I talked for a few minutes about the inspiration for The Glass Demon, including the true story of the Steinfeld glass, which I've talked about before on my blog, and the involvement of the famous ghost story writer M.R.James. Then I read chapter 11 of the book, in which a character familiar to anyone who has read The Vanishing of Katharina Linden makes a guest appearance to reveal the details of someone's horrible death!

Big thanks to the ladies at Treasure Trove for the gorgeous window display and for organising the event, also to Tom Alaerts and Richard Bishop for manning the cameras at short notice. It was also great to see representatives of the Brussels Writers' Group and the American Women's Club Writers' Group. A big hand also to German pal Gabi who nobly sat through the reading in English!

Finished the evening with a Chinese takeaway (too late to starting cooking, and I couldn't face it, either!); tomorrow the glamour factor in my life is going to take a steep nose dive as I tackle all the jobs that have been neglected today, starting with cleaning the house...

Launch party, The Glass Demon

2010-06-05T00:57:00.000-07:00

Today I'm going to be celebrating the launch of The Glass Demon at Treasure Trove Books in Tervuren, near Brussels (from 5pm to 7pm, if you're in the area!). I'm going to be talking about the inspiration for the book, reading from it and signing copies - plus helping to hand round glasses of pink sparkling wine (appropriately enough, from Germany, where the book is set). Treasure Trove Books is, as far as I can tell, a unique phenomenon - an English language children's bookshop in Flanders. I held a reading and signing session for my first book, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, at the shop last year and am thrilled to be returning with The Glass Demon. I popped in yesterday for a last-minute chat with Jane of Treasure Trove and found her hard at work creating a really fabulous window display designed around the theme of stained glass windows. If I can get some pictures (I guess stained glass is not the easiest thing to photograph) I'll post them later.
As for me, I was expecting to be skipping around like a spring lamb this morning, full of excitement, but I've had the mother of all migraines which started on Thursday afternoon. It's just as well it didn't start today as I don't think I could have read a word. The headache has gone but now I've got a "migraine hangover" and a glance in the bathroom mirror this morning revealed the horrid truth - I look like Bagpuss in drag. Let us hope that strong tea, fresh air and a hot shower can work a bit of magic, otherwise I may be mistaken for someone's granny this afternoon....

Book signing, Cirencester, 15th June.

2010-05-31T13:43:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to say that I shall be doing an author visit and book signing event at Waterstone's in Cirencester (14 Cricklade Street) on Tuesday 15th June. I'll be - ahem - "appearing" (hmmm, makes me sound like a prize pig...) at 2.30-3.30pm and 4.30-5.30pm.
It's going to be a busy week as I am spending the rest of it zooming around the country doing Carnegie-related school visits, but I'm very glad to be visiting Waterstone's as I've spent several very happy hours in that particular branch stocking up on English language books to take home with me to Brussels!

Thanks BSB!

2010-05-31T13:37:00.000-07:00

I had a brilliant time this morning making my first Carnegie shadowing scheme-related school visit, to the British School of Brussels (BSB) where I chatted about The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, and answered questions from the shadowing group - super questions too! I love it when anyone asks me whether anyone in my books is based on a real person. (The answer is yes, but only one; Pia's mother Kate was based on myself, just for fun. I often say those crabby things to my kids - "Clear it up or it goes in the bin" etc. When I showed my manuscript to several agents I was somewhat dismayed when one of them said "Love the book, but Pia's mother - she's such a bitch!")
It was a really lively session and I could happily have continued with it for another hour! I'll be back at the BSB in the autumn anyway as part of their Book Week. A big thanks to all concerned - especially for the box of pralines, which are always welcome!!!

Update from the "Ghosts and Scholars" Roving Reporter

2010-05-29T02:56:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday I realised a long-held ambition to visit Marcilly-le-Hayer, in Aube, France. As I've commented before, I'm a huge fan of the English ghost story writer M.R.James, and a regular contributor to the M.R.James Ghosts and Scholars Newsletter. In fact, the Newsletter was the place where I first cut my teeth as a writer, long before I dared attempt a 100,000 word novel! My first article for the Newsletter was about Steinfeld abbey, scene of MRJ's tale "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas"; although MRJ never actually visited the abbey, part of the story is set there, so I went to see whether the abbey is really just as it is described in the story, or not, and indeed whether there is really a well there (there are several).

Since then, I have also visited Viborg (scene of "Number 13") and St. Bertrand de Comminges (scene of "Canon Alberic's Scrap-book"). Other writers have covered the British locations of MRJ's stories, and the Swedish location of "Count Magnus", and I personally hope that one day there will be a book containing the collected "Jamesian Traveller" articles!

Marcilly-le-Hayer is the scene of a story fragment which you can read here:

http://http//www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveMarcilly.html

The plot is also summarised in MRJ's essay "Stories I have tried to write", although some details differ from the above longer version. Although "Marcilly-le-Hayer" is unfinished, it represented an irresistible challenge as far as I was concerned. It was impossible to have seen so many of MRJ's other foreign locations and miss out on this one!

Although we live in Brussels, it's still a drive of over 400km to Marcilly, so we planned to combine it with a climbing/walking trip to Fontainebleau. The trip was actually booked in February and then at the last minute both I and my husband fell ill, and there was deep snow. The combination was enough to put us off going - neither of us felt fit enough to dig the car out of snow etc if we got stuck anywhere. So we cancelled at the last minute.

School holidays rolled around again in May, so we decided to have another go. This time we opted for camping (I should perhaps have learnt from my recent experiences with the Brussels girl guides - it rained AGAIN this time, and we are still drying out wet gear...). I traded 4 nights in a tent and a lot of hours hanging around the boulders in the Foret des Trois Pignons whilst the others went climbing, in exchange for a day trip to Marcilly.

Wednesday was a fine sunny day and around noon we finally crested a hill above Marcilly and drove down to the town between rows of lime trees. I'm not going to describe what we found there, and how it relates to the story fragment, because I haven't written the article for the Newsletter yet. But I can say that I had some fruitful discussions with local residents, including a very charming lady of 91.

I thought that once I had visited Marcilly, I would have satisfied my yearnings to visit Jamesian locations. But no... before we got back to the campsite I was already leafing through my battered copy of Collected Ghost Stories, looking for new locations. "Casting the Runes" makes a brief passing reference to Abbeville. Might be worth a visit...

Carnegie Shadowing Scheme

2010-05-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

It's just over two weeks since the announcement of the CILIP Carnegie medal shortlist and it's been fascinating seeing the Shadowing Scheme working. I have to admit that before "The Vanishing..." was Carnegie nominated, I was woefully ignorant about the scheme - perhaps because my kids aren't in the British school system, so we'd never come across it. It's a briliant idea - participating schools organise reading groups and events, and post online reviews of the shortlisted books. It's a great way to encourage reading, create debate and also stimulate some of the frankest literary criticism you're ever likely to come across as an author. Those reviewers don't pull their punches!

Here's a selection, ranging from the good:
Rhiannan: "This is one of the best books I have ever read, it keeps you on your toes and you get a good feeling about how Pia and the other characters feel. I really liked how the author included the German words. I think that it is one of the most mysterious books I have read and it's very scary. How it makes you lock your bedroom window at night!!!!!!!"

to the bad:
Lauren: "I didn't like this book. I thought it was really bad. The story line about girls being abducted interested me and the blurb and the cover made it seem quite interesting but overall it was really strange and uninteresting. It took a lot of effort to get into. It was very anticlimactic."

and - ahem - the ugly:
'Slattybatfast': "you're all wrong. wrong wrong wrong. its the lamest peice of drivvel i have ever had the missfortune to pick up. the charecter was an annoying girl that would be knocked over in a moderatly strong draft! the setting was weak and a bit cliche, the thing with the granny was funny but unnessercery. ect. ect. ect."

Who's right? No, don't answer that.... At any rate, I'm pleased the book has provoked a strong response!!!

I'm delighted to say that I have been invited to visit several schools in Britain (and one here in Belgium) in June to talk about the book and answer questions as part of the Shadowing scheme. I'm hoping to visit Wales, Warwickshire and Somerset amongst other places. Looking forward to meeting some of those readers for real!

The Glass Demon, published today!

2010-05-06T11:19:00.001-07:00

Phew. It seems like it's taken forever to get to today - publication day for my second novel, "The Glass Demon." Coincidentally, a pristine copy of the book arrived today from Penguin. I did have another one, but my daughter appropriated it the day it arrived!

I'm thrilled to see the book "out there" at last. I thought when I wrote "The Vanishing of Katharina Linden" that I'd put everything I had into it, but I think I love this one even more (though perhaps like the mother of children, one ought not to have favourites). It was inspired by the true-life story of the Steinfeld abbey glass, which has long fascinated me.

The Steinfeld glass was created in the 1500s by the master craftsman Gerhard Remsich, and during its history it was removed from the Steinfeld cloister several times to avoid damage during times of unrest etc. Finally when the abbey was closed in the early 1800s due to secularisation, the glass was sold and apparently vanished completely. A century later the famous English ghost story writer M.R.James was asked by Lord Brownlow to catalogue the stained glass in the chapel of Ashridge House in Hertfordshire, England, and recognised the Steinfeld glass from a latin inscription. The glass inspired him to write his story "The treasure of Abbot Thomas." The story's publication was briefly noted in the newsletter of the Eifel Club (in Germany). A German Roman

Catholic priest called Nikola Reinartz read the notice and was intrigued. On a subsequent visit to the UK he contacted MRJ to find out where the glass was, and went to see it in person. His articles (in German) about his correspondence with the famous writer, and the series of coincidences which led to his seeing the glass, make fascinating reading. The glass itself was never returned to Steinfeld; it was sold at Sotheby's in the 1920s for a sum equivalent to about 800,000 pounds in modern money.

The story fascinated me for several reasons. I was amazed that something as fragile as stained glass could be removed from the cloister windows without being smashed to smithereens. And I couldn't help thinking that if a second series of windows by the same craftsman were to be discovered nowadays, they would be almost priceless. And that was the starting point for "The Glass Demon", which is all about a set of lost stained glass windows supposedly haunted by a demon.

If you want to know more about M.R.James, take a look at the excellent Ghosts and Scholars website:

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/GS.html

Father Reinartz is an interesting character, too. A passionate local historian, he was also an outspoken critic of Nazism. During my research I developed a real respect and affection for him, and gave his surname to Michel Reinartz, one of the characters in the book. The picture at the top of this post is of Father Reinartz's grave at Kreuzweingarten, near Bad Münstereifel. I have visited it several times.

Wednesday's child

2010-05-05T06:31:00.000-07:00

Wednesday's child is full of woe. Well, this one is, anyway. Wednesday is get-out-of-school-early day here in Belgium, so by 13.30 the house is teeming with kids - mine, and quite often other people's, too.
I was on a roll this morning - cantered through my daily 1000 words and was just getting ready to bump off a particularly nasty character in my current book - when I looked at the clock and realised it was 12.30; time to drive to the school.
Looking at the positive side, it probably keeps me eager as a writer, having to stop writing when I know there's more to come. But it's agony too!

The call of the wild

2010-05-02T11:01:00.000-07:00

I feel as though a writer's blog should be all about writing, but this weekend I didn't do any at all, because I was (horrors!) outdoors and (even more horrors!) without my laptop. And not just without my laptop, but without a shower or a mirror or a flushing loo.
A few months ago the girl guide unit my daughter belongs to were planning a camping trip, and asked whether any parents would be prepared to come along and help. With the trip a safe distance in the future I volunteered to go, but of course, as with all Faustian pacts, payback time came around much more quickly than expected. Friday afternoon saw me packing like a fiend, and then driving through the rush-hour traffic to get to the campsite at the intriguingly-named Grobbendonk. (There used to be a character called Grobbendonk in the strip cartoon "Nemesis the Warlock" in 2000A.D. - but I don't think he was any relation.) In order to get to Grobbendonk we also passed through or by Lint, Lisp, Duffel and Bouwel. (That last one caused a bit of amusement as we debated whether the town had Upper and Lower parts.)
Way back in about 1977 I used to be a girl guide myself, and if I am truly honest I had had a sneaky suspicion that things had got softer since then. I mean, we had cotton uniforms which needed ironing, not hoodies and polo shirts... Well, I take back every unworthy thought. This was the real deal. In our particular field I calculated there must have been over 150 people, all sharing 1 standpipe and 5 portaloos. There were no showers at all, and no washbasins. Camp was set up on Friday and on Saturday all the guides and scouts went on an expedition requiring them to carry mountainous quantities of gear whilst completing various Sisyphean tasks, then build their own overnight shelter out of a tarp and pieces of string, and cook their dinner outdoors.
On Saturday night it began to rain and this morning it poured down solidly. One of my former hobbies was scuba diving and I don't think even that was as wet as this was. Amazingly, I didn't hear anyone complaining as they took down the overnight shelters, cooked breakfast, cleaned up and struck camp. If anyone's got softer since 1977 it's me...
We drove home with a wet tent, wet tarp and huge pile of wet kit steaming in the back of the car, dreaming of hot baths and cups of tea. When we arrived home it was to discover that the gerbils (whom a neighbour had fed for us) had, in an SAS-like maneouvre, leaped from their sleeping house onto the top of their water bottle, and gnawed a hole in the cover of their tank, through which one of them had escaped. So we spent rather a long time trying to catch him as he nimbly dodged from one hiding place to another, eventually falling for the old "Tupperware" trick (put a large Tupperware box at one end of his hiding place and then make a noise at the other end, at which the rodent will take fright and run into the Tupperware).
It was a much more eventful weekend than I was expecting (and a very much wetter one!) and I'm absolutely exhausted now. I mean, my normal working day involves sitting at the PC writing, with occasional forays to the kitchen for tea and chocolate biscuits. I can feel tiredness in muscles I'd forgotten I even have. The garden has a wet tent in it, the washing machine is close to a nervous breakdown, and the hallway smells of damp socks. But would I do it again? Definitely.

The Glass Demon - launch event.

2010-04-24T04:43:00.000-07:00

My second book, "The Glass Demon", is being published in the UK in May - but I'm having a launch party in Belgium, as I've lived here since 2008. I thought I would never enjoy living anywhere as much as Bad Münstereifel, but I've become very fond of my new home and I'm looking forward to celebrating here.
I'm planning to hold an evening of reading, talking (not just me - I like to listen to readers too!), book signing and hopefully toasting the launch of my new book. The event is being held at Treasure Trove Books in Tervuren, near Brussels - which has the distinction of being an English language children's bookshop in Flanders! - on Saturday 5th June, from 17.00 to 19.00. Entrance free (naturally) and all welcome.

Carnegie shortlist 2010

2010-04-24T04:29:00.000-07:00

I'm absolutely thrilled to say that "The Vanishing of Katharina Linden" is on the shortlist for the 2010 CILIP Carnegie medal!
Here's a list of all the shortlisted books:
CHAINS by Laurie Halse Anderson
THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman
THE VANISHING OF KATHARINA LINDEN by Helen Grant
ROWAN THE STRANGE by Julie Hearn
THE ASK AND THE ANSWER by Patrick Ness
NATION by Terry Pratchett
FEVER CRUMB by Philip Reeve
REVOLVER by Marcus Sedgwick
It's a super-strong list and I'm really pleased that my book is on it. I wish I could say that I and my family had rushed out last night for a champagne celebration, but we had already arranged to take a horde of kids to the local pool in Overijse and then to McDonald's!!! So I'll be saving the champagne for the launch of my second book next month - of which more later.

Bad Münstereifel

2010-04-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

It seems like the right occasion to start blogging on my new website (big thanks to xuni.com for doing a brilliant job on that!); I've just got back from a four day trip to Bad Münstereifel. BM is the town where "The Vanishing of Katharina Linden" is set; it's a real place, and we lived there for seven years before moving to our current home in Belgium.
When we moved to Germany in 2001 my husband was anxious that I would be bored in BM. "You can walk from one end of it to the other in two minutes," he said. I suppose that's true - at a brisk walk you could get from the Orchheimer Tor (gate) at the south end of the town to the Werther Tor at the north end. But I was never bored there for an instant. I fell in love with the town as soon as I saw it. It's the sort of place I thought no longer existed outside old b&w films. There are cobbled streets and half timbered houses enclosed by mediaeval walls, a castle, and some amazing old churches. There are still quite a few small businesses, there's a strong sense of community, there's even a friendly policeman who knows everyone by name. It's also a place with a fascinating history and simply bursting with local legends (I didn't make the ones in "The Vanishing..." up). I could have stayed there for another seven years without getting bored!
It's always a bittersweet experience visiting the town. On the one hand it's wonderful to catch up with friends, smell the sweet clean air and relish the silence (we live under the flight path in Brussels). But it's always hard to leave.
A few things have happened since our last visit in 2009. A new bookshop called "Leserei" has opened on the Marktstrasse. The Jesuit church next to the St. Michel Gymnasium has been closed because of fire damage (it didn't burn down but everything is smoke blackened after a fire in the corner where the votive candles are). Also, the old castle on the Quecken hill is now firmly on the tourist trail. When I first visited the castle (which must have been around 2004) the ruins were so thoroughly concealed in the undergrowth that it took me about half an hour to find them at all. The turret by which Stefan sits during his midnight visit to the castle in the book was completely open and accessible (not that you would want to fall into it, as you'd never get out by yourself and it's lonely up there in the woods...). During our time in BM (ie after 1999 when the book is set) a kind of cage was fitted over the turret to prevent people falling into it - a big safety improvement but not a very aesthetic addition. This time I was somewhat horrified to discover that a path up to the turret had been cleared and a large and imposing sign reading "castle 50m" had been put up! Well, I suppose it's an improvement in terms of making the town's history accessible to all, but the thrill of discovery has kind of gone...
One thing hadn't changed, anyway. Herr Nipp of the Erft Cafe still makes the best cherry streusel I have ever tasted!

First post coming soon!

2010-04-07T10:46:00.001-07:00

Please check back in mid-April.