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

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...

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

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!

"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!

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!