Sorry I've been absent for a while, I've been on tour! Yes, a tour, just like the gods of rock – huge triple-decker tour bus with swimming pool and disco, private jets with military escorts, insane riders at venues (I simply must have a bed made from haggis and I must bathe in champagne every evening) and not to mention my entourage of hair designers, make-up artists, fashion experts and foot corn filers.

Well, to be honest not all of that is true. I didn't have a foot corn filer. I have been on tour, though, to promote the release of Furnace 3: Death Sentence. It's all very exciting! I've finished the first leg, and am off on the second tomorrow, so I don't have an awful lot of time to write, but I just wanted to give you a rundown of events so far and say a huge thanks to everyone who came to see me!

First there was the Free Word Festival at the wonderful new Free Word Centre in London. This is an amazing place devoted to literature, literacy and free expression, and well worth checking out! I was just one of a number of things going on that day, including a Shakespeare rap session with Akala and a manga workshop. Thanks to everybody for listening to my talk, and for asking some great questions!

Next I was on the train heading up to Wigtown. Isn't that just the coolest name for a place?! It has nothing to do with wigs, apparently – if anyone does know why it's called Wigtown please do let me know as I forgot to ask! It was a long, long journey up there (my private jet and coach weren't working that day, I think Bono might have borrowed them) but I took my book and the hours just flew by. All nine and a half of them. It would have been nine, but the lovely retired couple who came to collect me at Dumfries Station needed to do their shopping and so I ended up accompanying them on a trip round Tescos! It was dark when I arrived at the hotel, a beautiful place called the Rowallan Guest House, but when I woke up in the morning the views were absolutely stunning! I always forget how beautiful parts of Scotland are, and the west coast is unbeatable.

After a delicious and healthy fry-up with haggis for breakfast I ventured off to get the bus – I mean my private helicopter – to Wigtown. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and after I checked in with the lovely festival organisers I decided to go and have a wander. I had a couple of hours until my event and the countryside was beckoning me! I headed off for the harbour, and arrived after ten minutes of the freshest air you could imagine (I looked like a man about to try and blow up a hundred balloons). I arrived at the harbour, however, just as the heavens opened. And I mean a monsoon! I was only in my T-shirt (well, I had trousers and stuff on as well, I just mean I wasn't wearing a coat) and I legged it back towards town. Half way there I spotted a signpost for a path and gambled on it being a shortcut... It wasn't (of course), and I ended up taking a very muddy, very wet, very windy detour around the entire town. By the time I got back I was drenched and looked like a mud monster. But it had stopped raining so I walked up to the Windy Hill (yes, it is actually called that) and stood there in the gale-force wind until I was reasonably dry.

Here I am on Windy Hill!



By that time it was almost four, so after a quick spot of lunch in the writer's retreat I headed over to the children's tent. Because of the weather there weren't as many people there as there could have been, but everyone who did come was absolutely fantastic! Smaller audiences often work better because everybody gets a chance to talk, and these guys were so full of great ideas – especially when we started coming up with ideas for horror stories! Thanks so much to you all for braving the weather, and I owe a special thanks to Greg for his wonderful introduction! It was a really great event, and I hope I'll be back again next year!

Afterwards, still a little damp, I popped back to the retreat for a cup of tea and ended up chatting to the wonderful Charlie James, author of Fish and Dino Egg. We even came up with a fantastic Wigtown Scooby Doo episode together! After that I made my way back to the lodge and thought about crashing out for a while before heading off to the festival ceilidh (weirdest spelling ever). I especially wanted to go because fellow Faber author Philip Ardagh might have been there. However, after a hot bath and some chocolate the thought of venturing back out in the dark was too much and I ended up watching X-Factor, playing Civ then going to bed! The next day involved more haggis for breakfast, then a long, long trip back to Norwich (but no trip round Tescos this time)!

Thanks to everyone at Wigtown for being so great! And for anyone who has never been, it really is worth it, especially if you like books. It's Scotland's book town and there are about 15 book shops there, maybe more! Heaven!

After a long snooze I was back on the road (well, the railway tracks) the following day, this time heading in the other direction. I was going down to Kent, to the Petts Wood Library. I got there two minutes after I was supposed to start, and launched myself straight in to my talk. The library was packed, which was wonderful, and it was a younger crowd than the ones I've been talking to recently which was such a nice change! They all laughed their socks off as I talked about building crazy inventions, making rocket boots out of fireworks and shooting cowpats with shotguns, and once again there were some brilliant ideas for stories! Most of them bought books afterwards as well, although sadly there were no copies of The Inventors there because I think it's out of print. ARGH! I'll find out and let you all know! But thanks to you all for making it a fantastic event, and a special thanks too to Jenny for organising it all! I had a great time!

The next event was an extra special one because it took place in another of my old schools! This time my old infant school, Bignold, in Norwich. It was so weird going back there after twenty-five years. Yes, you heard right, a quarter of century! But the weird thing was it smelled exactly the same. In fact that's one of the few things I can remember about Bignold, the smell. It's not a bad smell, just a school smell, but it takes you right back to your early days! I also vaguely remember playing kissy-cat in the playground when I was at Bignold (er, when I was a kid, that was, not when I visited the other day!!) but other than that I don't remember much at all!

I was giving a talk to years 4, 5 and 6 so the hall was absolutely packed. But they were an amazing audience, one of the best I've ever spoken to, and at times they were laughing so hard I thought the windows were going to explode! Thanks to you all for coming up with some great scary ideas and for being such stars! This will definitely go down as one of the best events I've ever done! Thanks to you all, and also to Rachel and Lisa for organising it! I'll definitely be back in soon to do some workshops!

Tomorrow I'm off to London for a week of school events, which I'm really looking forward to! If I'm coming to visit your school then get thinking about scary stories now!

I'll try and blog again as soon as humanly possible. And once again a massive thanks to everyone who came to see me!

This weekend was a busy one, preparing for our Kung Fu testing on Sunday. We did our first grading three months ago – learning the basic stances, blocks, kicks and punches for our white fringe. Going for the yellow fringe is a great deal harder, however, as you have to have mastered the first three forms – long, complicated routines of punches, kicks and stance work. I love doing forms. They are difficult, but extremely satisfying once you've committed them to memory. And they're great exercise too! So on Saturday we were about to start training when Jamie dropped a bombshell – he didn't want to do Kung Fu any more! It's such a shame as it was something I really enjoyed doing with him, but the last thing I want to do is force him to do it. Hopefully it's just a phase and he'll come back to it when he's ready.

So, sans Jamie, Lynsey, Lucy and I headed over to our Kung Fu school on Sunday afternoon, all extremely nervous and convinced that we'd forgotten everything. There were quite a few people doing their testing this time round (which is good in some ways as you can hide at the back behind them all) and we all passed without a problem! So now we've all got our yellow fringes, which really does feel like quite an achievement. Well done everybody! We start learning the forms for an orange fringe today, and they look DIFFICULT!!! We rewarded ourselves with a big dominos pizza (well, three of them actually) plus loads of chocolate and then the four of us played poker and watched the first Harry Potter film.

The weekend wasn't all work, though (not that you can really call any of that work...). On Saturday afternoon Jamie and I went to the cinema to see The Final Destination. We're both big fans of the previous three films, and the fact that this one was in 3D made it unmissable! The plot was EXACTLY the same as its predecessors. And I mean EXACTLY the same. Only with different death scenes. But the death scenes were what we were going to see, so that's okay! Every time I see a 3D film I'm amazed by the technology, and this was the first time I'd seen a live action movie in 3D. Absolutely stunning. It really looked like there was blood and guts spurting out of the screen. Lovely! So I'd recommend going to see this at the cinema as on a 2D screen at home it will just be a rubbish horror movie!

And last night Nathan popped round for another Fallout 3 session. I just love this game sooooooo much. I still wish I lived in the Wasteland, how cool would that be?!

Anyway, I'd better do some writing this week as I'm getting a bit lazy... Life can't be all Kung Fu, cinema and computer games. Can it...?

Okay, I've been asked to correct a heinous error in the last post. Apparently Lyns DID make it to the top of the Walter Scott monument, and she was actually the first person up there. So I'm very sorry about that!

I've been meaning to blog about Edinburgh all week but I've only just got around to it. I haven't had a chance to upload all the pics and video from my show yet, but I'll add them in a little later!

In previous years I've always headed north by myself, but this year I wanted to make an occasion of it and have a little holiday too so Lyns, Lucy and Jamie accompanied me. We all clambered, luggage-laden, onto the train on Wednesday morning to brave the long trip up the east coast. Lyns wanted to fly, but there was no way!! It's a lengthy old trip across the border – an hour and a half to Peterborough from Norwich then another four hours or so to Edinburgh, but we passed the time playing on the DSs and battling with Jamie's new Magic: The Gathering cards. Before we knew it we were clambering, luggage-laden, off the train and into a taxi.

I love Edinburgh. I think it's probably my favourite city in the world (sorry Norwich, I love you too, just not as much). I think it's the architecture that I love most. Everywhere you look in Edinburgh the sights are just breathtaking – not just the castle but the regency buildings and the monuments, and beyond them the hills and the Forth. It's just spectacular. I'd have moved there years ago if it was a little closer, and if the weather wasn't so bloody awful!! We were staying in Channings, which is a gorgeous townhouse hotel a ten minute walk out of town. Apparently it's the friendliest hotel in Edinburgh, and we weren't disappointed. We were in a two-bedroom suite (well, a family room, but two-bedroom suite sounds so much better!) in the basement, but even down there the views out of the huge windows were great! We had a bit of an explore of the hotel, then wandered up to Princes Street, but the rain eventually drove us back to Channings for a meal. I couldn't really enjoy myself, though, because I was anxious about my show...

I needn't have been! The Edinburgh International Book Festival is an amazing event – if you've never been then you just have to check it out next year. There's so much going on, all in a wonderful location. This was the third year that I've been invited, although unfortunately I had to miss my first ever show here back in 2007. Last year I did a brilliantly fun event with John Fardell, and this year I was on my lonesome, which made it even more terrifying! I think the biggest fear when you do an event is that nobody will come, and when I arrived in Charlotte Square 45 minutes before my show to see the place looking quite empty I started to panic. Oh no, there are going to be three people there – Lyns, Lucy and Jamie – and I'm never going to be invited back. I'm just going to run away and hide! I went and sat in the author yurt (yes, it really is called that, it's great – last year I was in there with Sean Connery!) and tried to relax. Patrick Ness was in there too and I really wanted to say hi but I was too nervous and didn't really know what to say! After a few minutes the chair of my show arrived – a lovely woman called Yvonne who told me how much she loved Furnace, which was very sweet. We chatted a while and she put me at ease. Then with a few minutes left to go Sara Grady, the fantastic woman who runs the children's side of the festival, came to collect us. Fortunately when I stepped outside there were loads of kids there, and I was delighted to see that many of them were queueing up outside my venue! We waited outside the door for a few minutes (and people kept coming up and asking me where the loos were – it must have been the bright orange T-shirt I was wearing, even if it did have a rather large skull on it!) then it was time!

When I went through the door I saw that the event was sold out! There must have been 130ish people in there, including Lyns, Lucy and Jamie (who had come very close to arriving late thanks to Lynsey's awful navigation skills). I was delighted (if still absolutely terrified). Yvonne introduced me, then I was on! It was a great event, the audience were so responsive – especially when asked about their greatest fears. Two shout-outs have to go to the boy who said his greatest fear was Glasgow, and the girl in the front row who kept talking about having her eyes ripped out (by spoons, I think, and by insects). By the end of the session we had some absolutely wonderful story ideas. It was one of the best events I've ever done, and thanks so much to everybody who came. Jamie actually filmed it, so I'll try and post the video on the site sometime soon. Afterwards I hopped across the path to the bookshop and signed for nearly an hour. They sold out of books so I was signing slips of paper and allsorts! By the end of it I was absolutely exhausted, but it wasn't over yet! I was doing an outreach event – part of a wonderful programme to bring book festival shows to less privileged parts of the city – and a great guy called Colm whisked me off in a taxi to the McDonald Road Library where I did a smaller but equally enjoyable show. Thanks so much to the pupils who came to this one too, I had a fantastic time and you were all great. Let me know if you turn any of those great ideas into stories! Oh and because there weren't books at this event I ended up signing about twenty arms, which is a first!

So thanks again everybody for making my events in Edinburgh go so fantastically well – hopefully I'll see you all next year!

Utterly knackered, I headed back to the hotel and chilled out for a bit and waited for the gang to come back from a day of shopping. After a bit of relaxation we decided to go out for something to eat, and ended up heading round to the south side of the castle, and the Grassmarket. I love that part of Edinburgh – it always reminds me of going there with my dad when I was little. There used to be a shop that sold spooky Polish posters that we would always visit, although I can't seem to find it there now. It had started to rain again (surprise surprise) so we dashed into a Steak and Oyster bar for a meal. I didn't really fancy a steak as I'd had a burger for lunch, so I had mussels. They were gross!!! I pride myself on being able to eat anything, but I really struggled with these. Blurgh! Jamie ate most of mine, even though he'd eaten a bucket of mussels himself! It was late by the time we'd walked back to the hotel, so we decided to have an early night and save our energy for tomorrow – Lynsey's birthday!

In the morning me, Jamie and Lucy went and had a slap-up breakfast while Lyns had a lie-in, and we brought her back a mountain of toast and danish pastries. We'd said that Lyns could do whatever she wanted today, and she wanted to visit the castle, which was great. We walked across town, getting a bit lost in the Princes Street gardens, then up the steepist hill in the world to get to the castle gates. The tattoo was on all month, so the view was obscured a bit by the scaffolding, but once we'd got past that the castle looked superb. We had a good wander round, and luckily the weather was clear so we could enjoy the spectacular vistas from the top (although the freezing wind was doing its best to blow us off the edge)! Lyns and Lucy watched a show about Mary Queen of Scots while Jamie and I went to eat (I had haggis, delicious)! Then we headed back down into town. Next Lynsey wanted to go to the camera obscura which is just outside the castle gates. It's an amazing place – not just because of the pinhole camera which lets you spy on the city below, but because of all the mega cool magical and illusion stuff they have there. Some of it is mind-boggling! We spent hours roaming around being gob-smacked. I'd really recommend this place to anyone who's visiting Edinburgh. After that we were pretty tired so we walked back to the hotel and had dinner there. The staff even put a little birthday candle in Lynsey's creme brulee whilst we sang happy birthday, which was very sweet! All in all it was one of the best days ever!!!!

We had great fun the next day too, walking into town and visiting the Museum of Childhood. This has to be one of the scariest places I have ever been in my whole life – there is a room full of spooky dolls!!! I don't think I'd stay in there overnight for a million quid! It's a fascinating place, though, full of toys that have been long forgotten in this age of computer games and the like. After that we did a bit of shopping – the girls looking for souvenirs and me and Jamie looking for Magic cards and Battlestar Galactica T-shirts (yes, I know, we're geeks). Then we spent hours trying to find somewhere to eat before ending up in Bella Italia. Then it was time for bed!

To make the most of our final day I hadn't booked the train until 3, so we dropped off our luggage at the station and headed for the Walter Scott monument. I think it's so awesome that this immense and imposing tower was built in honour of a writer – I mean how cool is that?! I hope I have one of these made in my honour after I die :-) There are around 270 steps to the top, and they get steeper and narrower as you climb. By the time you reach the highest of several balconies your head is spinning from the circular climb, which means you're towering over the city below and the world is literally circling you. All in all not a great design... Lyns backed out on the penultimate level, but the rest of us made it to the top. I have to say it was absolutely terrifying, but great fun at the same time! After we'd clambered down and kissed solid ground we went for a cuppa in the National Gallery, then it was time for the train :-(

I wish we'd had longer to spend in Edinburgh, but even though we only had a few days it was one of the best holidays I've ever had, and one of the best shows I've ever done! See you next year, Edinburgh!

Well, this is the last weekend before dratted school stars again! To try and get the most out of summer (I can't believe how fast it's flown by, seven weeks in the blink of an eye, that's scary!) we headed out to the beach yesterday. It was late by the time we left, and it was raining, but that shouldn't stop you enjoying the seaside! We went to Cromer because we all fancied fish and chips, and to be honest Mary Jane's Fish and Chips are the best in the world. We gobbled up our fish suppers in the restaurant because it was so miserable outside, then headed for the arcades to play basketball, guitar hero and the quiz machine. Great fun!

What was great about it, though, is that Lyns brought a pack of cards with her. Now, we quite often play cards when we're eating out, usually Old Maid because it's so easy to play. But when we were eating our fish and chips Lyns suggested playing Cheat. I haven't played that since I was at school, and I'd forgotten how addictive it is! For those who have never played, the pack (minus Jokers) is dealt out evenly to each player. Players must lay cards face down on the table in a certain order: they have to lay a card which is the same, one higher, or one lower than the card that has just been played. For instance if the first player lays two sixes, the second player must lay fives, sixes or sevens. If they lay a seven, the next player must lay sixes, sevens or eights. The great thing about the game, though, is that because the cards are laid face down, you can cheat if you want to. So if you don't have any sixes, sevens or eights then you can lay a queen and say it's a six. It's all about bluffing, and trying to work out who's telling the truth and who's cheating. If you don't believe someone then call 'Cheat' and their last card is checked. If they were cheating, then they get the whole pile, if they weren't, then you do. The winner is the first person to get rid of all their cards!

It's a fantastic game, and the best thing was that when we got back to the house nobody wanted to watch TV or movies, nobody wanted to play computer games or go on Facebook. Everybody, especially Jamie and Lucy, just wanted to play Cheat. And the same thing today! It's so wonderfully refreshing! If you've got kids who won't tear their eyeballs away from the screen, get out the cards and give Cheat a go – but maybe check the rules as my instructions aren't great!

I also read out the finished Bogey Brothers as a bedtime story and it went down very well, which is a good sign!

Anyway, enjoy the last weekend of the holiday!!!!!!!

Thanks to my lovely friend, Jennifer Oey, I now have a snazzy US version of the Lockdown: Escape From Furnace trailer.





Check out on the official MacMillan webpage and the Lockdown YouTube site, and if you're on Facebook become a friend of Lockdown here! Go on, you know you want to! These are all works in progress at the moment, and there will be an official Lockdown site coming soon. But check them out anyway as they're all cool!

Everybody, I'd like to introduce you to FURNACE: DEATH SENTENCE!!!!! It arrived yesterday afternoon, and is a 0.5lb bundle of joy! Well, okay, it's not exactly a bundle of joy, it's a terrifying roller-coaster ride of excitement and horror as Alex and his friends make one last bid to escape from the nightmare that is Furnace Penitentiary. But it's still a very welcome addition to the Furnace family and we welcome it with open arms!

Look how cool it looks with its brothers and sisters!!!



Kissy kissy, I love you little books!



Ahem, sorry. I heard that this book was out last week when a couple of people, including Liz from MyFavouriteBooks, contacted me to let me know they had received it. I was in Edinburgh at the time, and was incredibly miffed that Faber hadn't sent me a copy! But after a little prod they popped one in the post. I am so thrilled to see it. Somehow having three books in the series now makes it so much more exciting – The Inventors was a two-book series, which is so 2007 / 2008 :-)

I LOVE the design of this one. I think white was a risky colour to go for but it works. If anything it reminds me of bloodstained hospital bedsheets which, as anybody can see from the other elements of the cover, is actually perfectly fitting. Gruesome! And I was also very relieved to see that the picture Amazon have been showing on their website for the last few months was NOT actually the finished cover of the book. For those who haven't seen the Amazon cover, it appears to have what looks like a character from the sci-fi flick The Fly in the bottom left-hand corner. Why? I'm not 100% sure. But I was very relieved to see that this particular character had buzzed off of the final version.



It feels great to have five books out now, it all seems to have happened so quickly. Thanks again so much to everybody involved in the publishing and marketing of Furnace, you've all done an absolutely wonderful job! Now, on with Book 4!

A week or so ago I started writing something new. It started off as a joke, and was exceptionally silly, but then the idea took shape and I realised the project had legs, albeit very bendy legs that struggled to walk in a straight line. Anyway, I've just finished the first draft of the new book which, at 15,000 words, is probably a tad long. I'll let it sleep for a day or two then go through it. It's totally different to anything I've written before, but it's great fun and it might just end up going somewhere! For anyone interested, the book is actually written by The Bogey Brothers – which is me and my little brother Jamie (who co-wrote The Inventors). He came up with the main jist of the story. But the great thing about this book is not the story itself, but the way it is told. Maybe I'll post the first couple of chapters up here sometime soon and you can let me know what you think!

That's two books written this year, although they have both been very short. Oh, and a picture book too. One more to go to meet my annual target!

I've been working pretty hard of late (not like coal miner or teacher or nurse hard, but pretty hard by my standards) so I gave myself a few days off this week. I'm not a great one for holidays. I like them and all, I just never seem to have one (unless, like Lynsey always says, you include the non-stop holiday that is my life...). That's one of the problems of working for yourself – it's much harder to book a few days off because there always seems to be things to do. Work is like water, it flows out and fills up every available inch of space. Not that I'm complaining! But it is sometimes nice just to say "right, that's it, I'm having a couple of days to myself and I'm not going to do any work or check emails or anything". So that's what I did!

Not that I did anything immensely exciting. Although some of the highlights were:

A weekend of Kung Fu seminars that Jamie and I took, which were so much fun. We learned how to do Kung Fu board breaking, which was awesome (except when I tried to punch a watermelon and slipped off and punched the floor – there is a video of that which I'll try and post here one day) and joint locks, which was cool, and even how to defend ourselves from a knife attack using nothing more than a newspaper (which was fantastic, except when I tried to break a board with my newspaper and hit it with my hand instead, the same hand – I really need to work on my aim)! There was also a school BBQ which the four of us went to. It was great to meet the other students – because we have private lessons we only really see them in passing. Everybody is so lovely, it's like one great big family!

Lots of trips to the beach. We popped out to Waxham after the Kung Fu seminars. It's just the most gorgeous beach ever – miles of golden sand and warm (well, warm for England) water. The sun was blazing and we went swimming (with the seals) and played catch with the American football. So much fun! A few days later the weather was still great so we decided to go to the beach again. Lyns didn't want to go back to Waxham and I did, but in the end we went to Sea Palling (with Mum and Christopher and Matthew too) which is just down the coast and equally lovely. However, we'd only been there an hour or so before police flooded the beach and started telling us to evacuate. I thought it was a terrorist attack – in Sea Palling!!! We grabbed our stuff and vacated, only to see a bomb disposal van. It turned out that an old WWII shell had been uncovered on the beach and we all could have been blown to smithereens! It was a pain, but it was worth it for the fact that Lyns learned I am always right and should be obeyed at all times :-) We drove to Yarmouth instead and sat on the beach there for a while.




That hole would have been impressive if Jamie and Lucy dug it, but it was there when we got there! Jamie's er, new assets, however, were our doing :-)



I think this was actually taken at Wells a couple of weeks ago, but it's pretty cool!

Apart from that, and lots of Battlestar Galactica (the new series is soooooooooo good, I'll blog about it elsewhere), the week just involved hanging out with friends and having fun. I even bought a new bench for my garden and had a BBQ to celebrate:



Anyway, I'd better go get my stuff ready for Edinburgh!

For anybody who wants an insight into what went into writing Furnace then head over to the excellent Book Smugglers blog. It's run by Ana, one of the lovely people I met at the Guillermo Del Torro signing, and is an utterly fantastic place to visit for book reviews and giveaways. Ana recently reviewed Furnace (extremely positively, thanks!) and asked me if I wanted to do a guest post. I started to write something for her, and that something became a very personal insight into a difficult period in my past which ultimately led to the creation of Alex Sawyer, the hero (antihero?) of the Furnace books. There's also a chance to win Furnace goodies!

Anyway, check it out for yourself!

And thanks, Ana, for the chance to bare my soul!

Just a quick note to say that if anyone would like to win copies of Furnace 1 and 2, and The Inventors 1 and 2, plus related goodies, then head on over to the wonderful Tall Tales and Short Stories blog – there are loads of copies to be won! Good luck!

The wonderful Cristy Burne, author of the upcoming Takeshita Demons series (which looks truly brilliant) has taken time out from being a writer and a new mum to interview me on her blog. Take a look here!

I was late out of bed this morning, but I had a good excuse. Yesterday I was in Oxford for a Reading Agency Roadshow! Because of strikes on the trains (now, I just want to say that I have no problem at all with people striking if they want better pay and conditions, sometimes there's no other way to get what you want and deserve, but the trains in Norwich are so bloody awful anyway that I did think a strike on top of everything else was a bit much!) I had to get up at 5.00 – yes, there is such a time in the morning, apparently – which meant I had a full four hours sleep. However, I did manage to snatch a bit of kip on the train, which was cool. A taxi across London and another train got me to Oxford, where I met up with the fantastic Alex Milway, author of the Mousehunter books and another series due next year which looks awesome! We set off in search of the Oxford University Press offices.

Wow. The OUP offices are incredible – they look more like the British Museum than a publishing house. There's even a gym inside! But we weren't there to work out (thank god), so we hung out in reception and waited for the event to start. There were loads more authors there, including the lovely M. G. Harris, who I met before at the Guillermo del Toro signing in London, plus Ali Sparkes, who is wonderful (and who signed a book for me as "To Gordon, Oh great writer of epic poems" after something I wrote for Trapped By Monsters). We all grabbed a bit of lunch and then spent the afternoon mingling with an entire room full of librarians! It was great fun – librarians are always so cool to talk to, they're always so passionate about books, and it was brilliant being able to chat to them, even if the 'speed dating' format meant that you only had 10 minutes to talk to each group! Hopefully I'll be visiting a few of their libraries in the near future to talk about writing and Furnace.

After we'd spoken to everyone (and I'd bagged as many free books as I could carry) Al and I, plus Laura and Susan from Faber, went to Cafe Rouge for a well-earned pint and some fancy food. It was a wonderfully relaxing meal, which came to an abrupt conclusion when Al suggested we try and make the next train. This would have been all well and good except in order to do so we had to run for it. Yes, I did say RUN. I'm not kidding when I say I almost died! Al was good enough to take my bag of books, but even so I could only waddle for a few paces at a time for fear of either having a heart attack or being clobbered in the head by my own pendulous man boobs. I persevered, though, and we actually made the train with about 30 seconds to go!!! So thanks, Al, for getting me home!

It was a long old day – over 12 hours on the go for 3 hours of actual talking – but well worth the trip. It's always great to hang out with Al as we have a good chat about publishing and writing. Besides, I got the chance to read some more of Ramsey Campbell's The Grin of the Dark on the train, which is one of the most terrifying books I have ever read. I'll blog about it when I've finished!

So, probably back to work today. I say probably because I'm not sure I can be bothered... I might just read instead.

I just have to tell you all about the amazing sandcastle that we built on Wells beach on Saturday! Jamie and I popped out to meet Lyns and Lucy, and Lucy's great aunt and uncle, for the Wells carnival. Mum came too, which was lovely. After watching the floats and eating several buckets worth of ice cream we wandered up the coastal path to the beach and set about creating a masterful kingdom of sand.

I love building sandcastles – it's the same Imperial part of me that loves to build my own country in Civilisation and my own city in Sim City – it's just so much fun. And I have to say that the sand at Wells is absolutely perfect for it – it's very damp and oily, which means it holds together extremely well. We bought a giant bucket and a spade and got started on a moat, adding several turrets and a gradually ascending walkway to get to the main keep. And below is the finished result (viewed from the back, that giant mound holds the main keep, the vertiginous walls too steep for any invading army, and that wooden walkway is raisable)!



This is the view from the front (with Lucy to give a sense of scale):



Here you get a better idea of the various defences. You have to enter over a narrow bridge, guarded by a 'W' formation of towers. Invaders would have to pass into an open courtyard, leaving them exposed to attack, and would need to make their way towards the middle point of the 'W'. The only way onto the path is by passing through this tower, and anyone who does has to make their way up a steep, winding path to get to yet another tower (the upper right point of the 'W'), then through that and up another open, narrow path to reach the keep (the uppermost tower). By this point they'd have all been picked off! So all in all a pretty damn awesome construction – Peter jackson and the Lord of the Rings crew eat your heart out! The towers each represented one of the elements, with special flags, and there was a magical tree in the centre of the courtyard thanks to mum. The sand was even so wet that the moat held water for a few minutes, how cool is that!!

Here's one last picture of the architects:



Anyway, I should probably do some work now...

Wes, my editor in the US, has just emailed me to let me know that James Patterson – quite possibly one of the best-selling writers in all of history – has read Furnace Lockdown (well, the US version, so Lockdown: Escape From Furnace) and loved it! Loved it enough, in fact, to give us this quote to use:

"Fresh and ferocious, Lockdown will hook boys with its gritty, unrelenting surprises." --James Patterson

How cool is that?! I've read a couple of Patterson's Alex Cross novels for adults and they've been tense, gripping reads (I love the films too), so it's a real honour to know that he's read my book and liked it. Thanks James! With any luck it will help me sell a fraction of the 150 million books that he has sold to date!

When I went down to London to meet Guillermo Del Toro I met a few people who I'd been talking to on Twitter, including the lovely Ana from The Book Smugglers. Well she was good enough to read Furnace and post a wonderful review of it on her blog! Check it out here (and have a browse of the site, it's got some really fantastic stuff on it)!

I was Googling Furnace today (yes, again!) and found some reviews that I don't think I've seen before. They were written by some teachers in Australia, which is amazing! It's so great to get their approval! Anyway, I have posted them below in case anybody is interested!

Thanks everyone!

Furnace: Lockdown by Alexander Gordon Smith (MINOR SPOILERS)

The start of this novel is gripping. More importantly, any teen male reader will just want to turn the pages as quickly as possible. A prison that is chiselled out of a huge underground cavern is an amazing setting for the incarceration of teen male offenders. The twist arrives early in the novel when it becomes apparent that prison officials head out into communities and set up potential inmates. The chapter delineations also add to the tension that the author intertwines into the plot. The temptation is to read just one more chapter. Prison life is described with great detail and with multi sensory language that engages the reader. The use of guards and their wolverine type assistants spread a fear through the ‘Furnace’. There is no escape and the inmates recognise this hopeless state. During evening lockdown, the Warden of the Furnace sends out a group of creatures called ‘wheezers’. These beings visit the cells of the teen prisoners and mark the cell bars with a large cross. The significance of this action is not only literally terrifying for the characters in the story but also for the reader. There is graphic description of the aftermath of being selected by these beings and the unfortunate cell dwellers become transformed in what appears to be secret experimentation on human teenage bodies. As in all large gatherings of people, smaller social groups develop. As expected, some of the inmates tend towards dominating as many others as possible. Alex and his small group attempt to break this standover group with violent consequences. The underground cavernous prison does have a geological flaw which is discovered by the main character Alex. Seeking the help of his cell mate Donovan, a plan of action is developed to attempt an escape. But no one escapes from Furnace! The plan becomes known to two other inmates and one of them is Kevin, the leader of the standover gang. This puts a higher risk of failure to the group but they persist. Some action packed events then occur which makes the reader feel as if there is some justice at times, no matter how small. The final chapter provides an insight into the emotional desperation of Alex and friend Zee, as they make their way to an improbable escape from Furnace. Not all of the group attempt the final step and the torment of Donovan being taken from his cell the evening prior to the escape haunts Alex. If caught, death from the Furnace authorities would result. There was only one chance for freedom and Alex took it. However, success is not guaranteed.
Trevor Dangerfield, Elisabeth Murdoch College, Vic

Set in the future, in a time of zero tolerance of youth crime, following the Summer of Slaughter, Furnace: Lockdown transports us to a sinister penitentiary, the toughest maximum security prison in the world, named after its builder, Alfred Furnace. At some twenty six floors deep into the bowels of the Earth, it is a place of violence and evil, with giant guards in black business suits, mutant dogs to chew up inmates, ‘wheezers’, with filthy coats, ancient metal gas masks stitched permanently into their skin, and carrying syringes of contaminated blood and

Everyone seems to have been working really hard the last few weeks, so on Saturday we decided to give ourselves a break and head out to Yarmouth for the day. Once there, windswept and sunburned on the beautiful beach, we played hide and seek on the dunes. Well, they're not really dunes, more lumpy bits in the beach, but there were enough contours and sea grass tufts to hide us (even my belly remained hidden from view, which is really saying something). Jamie, being a grumpy thirteen-year-old, didn't want to come at first, and we practically had to drag him away from his dank pit of a bedroom. But once he was there, running about and diving into the sand like some kind of hyperactive beach monkey, he absolutely loved it.

An hour or so later, and with enough sand in our ears and underpants to supply a glass factory for a year, we headed up the seafront and grabbed burgers / hot dogs / bacon butties, plus eight donuts. God I love beach food! We were going to have traditional fish and chips, but being optimistic I suggested we had burgers for lunch then fish and chips for tea! Next we popped into the pirate crazy golf course for a quick game before the rain came down. Lyns had never played before (which explains a lot), but then neither had Lucy and she was ace. I, of course, scored a hole in one on the third hole. Go me! Here are the hang being all piratey and golfy:



I had to leave early to run and get the car before it was clamped, and we all got a bit damp in a sudden summer storm. But it really was a lovely day, and so nice to do something that didn't involve sitting in front of a computer for twenty hours a day! In the end we didn't stop for fish and chips, but I made up for it later by sneaking out and having a pie and chips at the chippy round the corner! Sunday was a DIY day – sanding the hall floor (which is the worst job in history) and trimming the hedge (which wasn't too bad). Unfortunately it's back to my desk now, at least until Kung Fu this evening!

There's a fab interview with me up on the wonderful Tall Tales and Short Stories Blog. There have been some amazingly interesting interviews up on this blog recently, thanks to Tracy, and it's great to have the chance to appear here!

Check it out here!

Also I forgot to mention the review of Solitary that appeared in The Independent on Sunday:

"The boys in Alexander Gordon Smith's relentlessly horrific and violent Furnace: Solitary (Faber, £6.99) are running, too, this time from a futuristic, nightmarish underground prison first described in Furnace: Lockdown. It's hideously claustrophobic as they try to escape from the "wheezers" and the very real threat of being surgically rebuilt into freaks. It ends on a cliff-hanger. Teenage readers will have to wait until October for Furnace: Death Sentence, the third part of the trilogy" Susan Elkin Independent on Sunday

I'm extremely chuffed with the review, although I'm not sure which makes a better a pull-quote: "relentlessly horrific and violent" or "hideously claustrophobic"!

Feeling very inspired after the Darren Shan news, I finally got round to finishing a book that I've been working on for a while now. It's a series for younger readers, tentatively called The Ghoultown Gazette. It's a horror comedy series, and the first book is called Attack of the Shadow Demons. I haven't really written for this age group before so I'm not sure if the book works, but I've sent it off to my agent Sophie and have my fingers and toes firmly crossed! I also sent off a picture book that I've been writing, which is just a bit of fun, really, but quite sweet! I'll let you know if anything happens!

I've also started work on a new story, for teens again. The idea just hit me last week and I rolled with it. I'm not really sure where it's going, yet, but I'm really keen on the story and the two main characters, Caleb and Amaya. It's horror, of course, and I think it's going to get quite gory. But that's the way I like it!!! The first chapter has Caleb biting a dog on the nose!!

It feels good to be getting a bit of momentum with the writing again, it's been such a busy year of shows and editing that I'm way behind when it comes to producing new stuff!