Visit to St. Mary's Church, Fairford.

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

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

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

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.

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.