JULY 2010

Why do writers write?

For revenge, mainly. But also in the hope that the sequence of words you tap into your computer will effect somebody somewhere.

Which is why by far my biggest highlight as a writer came this month from a reader of The Radleys who said that it was reading this book that gave him the impetus to tell his parents he suffered from schizophrenia. He told me that he took the message of self-acceptance profoundly to heart and this triggered him to be open about his experience of mental illness. And his parents reacted well, apparently.

You know, you set off trying to write a little story about vampires and someone you have never met emails you and says it's had this effect on them.

No review in the world can top that.

So, The Radleys are go. At least, they are in terms of the UK and Australian editions. It's a nervous old time for a neurotic, anxiety-ridden writer (notice I say that like there's another kind). But signs are good. Lovely buzz building online with some good old-school newspaper reviews.

The response has been way better than my pessimistic mind dared hope. And it was great to be asked on the Today programme - it's not every day you get to talk about the sexual meaning of vampires with Evan Davies. It was also good to get the opportunity to write about my experience of panic disorder for Shortlist magazine. I've never felt brave enough to talk about it before, but realised it was important to do so at some stage because it would have helped me a lot to read an article like that ten years ago, when I was at my worst.

It was also great to make a trip up to Edinburgh and meeting the lovely Walker books people and re-meeting the Canongate lot. As painless as sales conferences get, I think. And funny-odd to bump into a pre-T in the Park Faithless in the hotel lobby (last time I saw those old ravers was 1999 in a quarry in Ibiza as I slowly lost my mind).

Very exciting movie stuff bubbling away but have to be tight-lipped right now.

Can be less tight-lipped about fact I'm going to be on Patrick Kielty's new post-Jonathan Ross Radio Two show on 7th August and at the Edinburgh Festival for a kids event and an adult event on the 21st.

And have just seen the cover art for the new Puffin Classics edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales which I've done the introduction for. Looks delicious (the art, not my intro, which probably looks like some words on a page.) Equally pleased to see the paperback editions of The Runaway Troll - Random House have done a great job with them (in shops August).

In addition to Canongate's facebook page for The Radleys, my French publishers Albin Michel have set up a page here.

Right, my offspring need a bath. Hairwash night. Better go.

JUNE 2010 - THE RADLEYS REACHES 20; FACEBOOKING; 4AM STARTS; EDINBURGH FESTIVAL; ELMO SINGS OPERA...

The news of a Polish deal for The Radleys means it now has twenty publishers. This was after a busy two weeks where I heard it was going to be published in Greek, Hebrew, Portuguese and Dutch editions on top of all the others. Merci beaucoup (as they say internationally) to the brilliant Andrea Joyce and all of Canongate's legendary rights department.

This is all good news obviously but between all this excitement and moving house and having Lucas and Pearl not quite yet grasping the concept that just because it gets light at four in the morning doesn't mean we should make like chaffinches and start the hyper-energetic playtime for another two hours, means I haven't had a full night's sleep for - oh, I don't know - two years.

Couple of Facebook things to tell you about. Canongate have set up a nice page for The Radleys here. Plus, as I'm often getting people asking for writing advice I thought I'd set up a little writing club on facebook to share my thoughts and get people to share theirs - you can link to it here.

And have found out I'm going to be doing two events at the Edinburgh Book Festival this year, both on Saturday 21st August. There's going to be an evening event in the Writer's Retreat about The Radleys, then an earlier event somewhere else to talk about my kids' books.

Currently having a tiny respite from writing as I've just handed in a treatment (story outline) for a new screenplay to Tanya Seghatchian and Jon Croker at the UK Film Council. It's a simple little story about a recovering alcoholic and his estranged daughter cycling the length of the country after the death of the girl's mum. Tanya Seghatchian, by the way, is the person who more than anyone else is responsible for getting me started with The Radleys because she was the one whose eyes lit up when I mentioned it in passing as a possible screeenplay idea nearly three years ago. She is the kind of brilliant, boundlessly passionate person you need on your side if you are ever going to stand a solid chance of cracking the film business.

Also, Pearl - our one-year-old - has discovered a love of middlebrow opera. There's a clip on YouTube of Andrea Boccelli singing Elmo from Sesame Street good night and we have probably watched it about, modest estimate, eighty times. Actually, if you miss a night's sleep and watch this clip for the eightieth time I guarantee you will weep at the sound of Mr Boccelli singing about the alphabet and counting to twenty as if it is the most sublimely beautiful thing the world has ever known (or maybe that's me).

APRIL 2010

Surreal info time. Alfonso Cuaron, one of my all time favourite directors (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), is producing the movie version of The Radleys. And he's going to do so using my screenplay. That piece of news is still making me feel a little bit dizzy. I mean, about 8 years ago I was sat at home watching a DVD of Y Tu Mama Tambien and telling my girlfriend I thought it was probably the best movie I'd ever seen and if some Ghost of Easter Future had come along and told me Mr Cuaron would be producing a movie of a book I hadn't written yet I'd be seriously requesting some medication.

Here's what he says about The Radleys:

"Funny, scary and wickedly familiar ... Reading The Radleys proved an unpredictable experience, its themes crafted through a pleasurable switch of tones. On the one hand it’s a parochial comedy of manners in a dull suburban setting, but it quickly gathers poison and then effortlessly enters the supernatural without ever betraying its worldly concerns.”

The press release is here.

And here is the cover for the teen version of The Radleys, which will be published in July alongside the adult version:

MARCH 2010

There will be blood! The first batch of covers for The Radleys are here. And I think they are rather lovely. In order of appearance, they are for the UK, the US, Germany and Australia.

Plus, I have just finished writing my next children's book, How To Be a Cat. It's about a boy who turns into a cat. But really it's a book about courage, Wizard of Oz style. And I've started writing another screenplay, with a little help from the UK Film Council.

I took Lucas to the cinema to see The Princess and the Frog. First time he's sat through a film to the end. He liked the crocodile who played the trumpet, and got through a very large bucket of pop-pop (popcorn, if we're being pedantic). Sleep, though, is still something he and his sister consider to be vastly overrated. Not that I'm against singing Baa Baa Black Sheep at 3 in the morning lying on a carpet with a bad back and high anxiety.

Read Christopher Reid's brilliant book of poetry, A Scattering. Plus the new film books by Peter Biskind (on Warren Beatty) and Mark Kermode (on Mark Kermode). And finally got around to seeing The Hurt Locker. To me it's a film about masculinity and addiction, just like Bygelow's neo-cowboy vampire classic Near Dark, and it works because if you are addicted to war the external damage matches the internal damage. Loved it.

JANUARY 2010

I have a cough. I am coughing as I type this, in fact. I've had this thing for a week now, and have infected Andrea with it, as well as Lucas and Pearl. And we've just discovered that cough medicine is banned for under 6s. Since last July, apparently. The coughing classes and their mad legislation! Tixylix is now a Class A drug sold with crystal meth in brown paper bags under the table in seedy pubs called The Turk's Head. WTF! as youths like to say these days.

Anyway, between coughs I am happy because:

Heard some exciting stuff about The Radleys just before Christmas. It is going to be published by Free Press in America. The publication date will be December 2010.

It will be published in France as well. Albin Michel will be my publisher there and it will be published later this year.

Denmark and Norway, too, will be publishing the book. The publishers will be Poltikens and Tiden.

Also, and this is something I'm really excited about, Canongate have joined forces with the children's publisher Walker Books, and they are forming a new imprint, Walker Canongate, which will publish certain Canongate titles for the young adult market. Anyway, the first four books they're doing will be The Life of Pi, Niccolo Ammaniti's I'm Not Scared, Kelly Link's absolutely mindblowing collection of spooky short stories Pretty Monsters and The Radleys. I feel honoured my book is hanging around such highly esteemed company and am excited because it means two editions will be published simultaneously in the UK - one for young adults and one for, erm, old adults.

Went to a place called Courmayeur in December. It's an Italian ski resort on the foot of Mont Blanc and I was there for a Noir Festival, as in film noir and Raymond Chandler and stuff like that. And I was there on a big serious panel to talk about my book The Last Family in England, which is an update of Henry IV Part One narrated by a Labrador. Think they'd got me mistaken for Harlan Coben or something. But very nice mountains.

NOVEMBER 2009

Quite a busy November so far.

The Radleys is taking off in ways I would have never dared expect. Within a month of being embraced by Canongate, it has now found wonderful homes in Germany with Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Italy (Einaudi), Spain (Random House Mondadori), Canada (Harper Collins), Brazil (Record), Australia (Text), Russia (Corpus) and Iceland (Bjartur).

The interest in The Radleys movie and my screenplay is also gaining a bit of heat out there but I'm not going to jinx anything by talking about that right now.

Okay other stuff:

The Last Family in England has published in Italy this month, translated as Il patto dei Labrador.

I was amazed to go home with the Achievement in the Arts award at the Yorkshire Young Achievers awards on 12th November (probably the first and last time I'll win something the Kaiser Chiefs have won).

Been invited to the Courmayeur Noir Festival in Italy, which is meant to be a mindblowing gathering at the foot of Mont Blanc taking place 10th-13th December. Can't wait.

Also heading off to Fontainebleu in France at the end of the month, to appear at an event organised by the English bookstore Reelbooks (the event is on 29th November at 4pm).

But most importantly of all, my six-month-old daughter Pearl is now eating proper food and has broken the British and Commonwealth record for eating a bowl of stewed apple in less than sixty seconds.

OCTOBER 2009

I have been walking around with a radioactive Ready Brek glow for the last week because I have found out that the legendary Canongate are going to be publishing my next novel, The Radleys. Canongate are my dream publisher, because they publish the most brilliant books with canyon-sized passion. They are the Miramax, the HBO, or the Rough Trade of publishing. The jewels on my bookshelves - like Michel Faber, Geoff Dyer, Scarlett Thomas, Steven Hall, Yann Martel, Nick Cave, Dan Rhodes, David 'The Wire' Simon and a lesser known talent called Barack Obama (big in America apparently) all have the magic logo on their spine. That my tale of a family of middle class, abstaining vampires is being so enthusiastically backed by Jamie Byng, and my new editor Francis Bickmore, is the icing on an already very delectable cake.

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