I am fully immersed in Phase Three. Even after I hand in the first draft next week I’m probably going to have to go and stick my head in a bucket of something cool and wet for what may, I feel, be quite a long time. So for now, in lieu of proper bloggage from me (whatever that is!) here’s a link to an entrancing and utterly wonderful short film called OKTAPODI.

It’s less than two and a half minutes long, and as my thoroughly brilliant brother said to me when he passed on the link: “In case the writing is a bit grim (and heck, even if not), this should cheer you right up – it’s a terrific little cartoon with romantic octopi and car chases (what’s not to like?)”

Hope it does the same for you. Ink you later! ;p

So, now I have returned from my second excursion to Scotland as a published author! It was an absolute delight from start to finish – especially yesterday, when I was taken out by the Scottish Book Trust to visit two schools as part of their Outreach programme. In fact, this post (or a link to it!) may be appearing on the Trust’s brand new blog – glee! – so if you’re reading this from over there, a very happy Hello to you!

As you can probably tell from the frankly bloodcurdling smile above I, um, rather enjoy events, actually. 😉 Even the prospect of what, for me, is quite an early start (7.45am!) didn’t faze me – especially when the Trust’s supreme ninjas Jasmine and Chris picked me up in their spectacularly spiffy new bookmobile! Expertly placing me entirely at their mercy by cunningly plying me with Jelly Babies, Jasmine and  Chris whisked me away from Edinburgh and off to our first destination, where I spoke to around a hundred students from St Anne’s Primary School and Annebank Primary School, in Ayr.

This was a brilliant session. Excellent questions flowed thick and fast almost right from the start – which is just how I like it. In fact the students’ questions were so good that the hour flew past, with time for only one reading from Tim before it was back to the bookmobile! Following up their earlier jelly-based offensive Jasmine and Chris delivered me a stunning knockout blow with a baked potato for lunch, and by the time I’d recovered we were at St Cuthbert’s Primary School for the second engagement of the day.

Now, erm, before I say any more I think a word of warning is appropriate. As people who follow my blog will be perhaps all too aware(!) I tend to put a lot of wallop into my talks, and for reasons that even I don’t fully understand the results often seem to involve me waving my arms about like a big, black-clad baboon. But this…

Wow… it looks like I’m either about to take off, or burst into song! 😉

Well, I was excited. I was spending the day being driven from place to place like a rock star, before speaking to – and answering superb questions from – some vivacious, mannerly and thoroughly charming young people. I’ve got to say, in the words of Christopher Boone from Mark Haddon’s unforgettable The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, it was a super good day.

The only drawback of this ‘being an author’ caper, it seems to me, is that occasionally, it’s true, one is expected to produce a new book. That time has come again for me, so it’s back to the grindstone! But in the mean time my thanks to Jasmine and Chris, and everyone I met and spoke to, for their kindness and hospitality. This second Scottish excursion has been enormous fun. Here’s looking forward to the next one! 🙂

I’m writing this on my laptop. The ornery contraption seems to be behaving as of this moment, but given that today it crashed spectacularly on what was my first – and probably /last/ – attempt to use it in front of an audience as part of one of my talks (ho, hum), maybe I’d better make this quick! 😉

Here, as threatened, are a few pics from my first ever author visit to the Edinburgh Book Festival. [YAAAAY! Er, ‘scuse me. ;p] This (below) is me psyching myself up in the Author Yurt(!!!) with the undisputedly awesome Bali Rai…

No pics were allowed during the gig itself but the below, taken (thank you, Laura!) while the audience were settling down before the start, gives you an idea of the size of the crowd…

Yep, it was one of my biggest audiences for a while! So this was /not/ the ideal time for a certain machine to decide to throw its toys out of the pram while I was attempting to show some pics from my websites – GAH!! But thanks to the kindness of my listeners I think I got away with it. This was a fine session, with some terrific questions – and check out the signing queue afterwards…!

Here (below) is a pic of a young gentleman called Callum. My thanks to him and to everyone I spoke to for giving me such a warm welcome.

Today’s a public holiday here in the UK. Me, I’m just packing up my trappings before setting out on an overnight train to Edinburgh, Scotland for two days of events to do with The RBS Schools Programme of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. HURRAH! 🙂

-Ahem! Yes, as you can probably tell I’m rather excited. 😉 Over the next few days I hope to post some pics here and let you know how the trip went. Meanwhile here are a couple of quick bits and pieces before I go…

First up, I am absurdly delighted to announce that we have another winner for the ongoing Black Tat No Monsters Were Harmed In The Making Of This Website Competition: take a bow Xiaoyao from Australia (and Xiaoyao’s dad!) with… THIS. Don’t forget to click top right of that page to find out where this highly sinister and atmospheric image actually came from (HEE HEE HEE!) The next round of the NMWHIT MOTWC is now officially open. Send us your horrible things! 🙂

Next we have a fine new piece of Black Tat Reader Art, from Robert, of the band Siemi Suicide: click on the link and scroll down to check out his splendid penmanship. Robert wrote to the Black Tat Guestbook to ask permission to use Ashmon and Heshmim’s names for the band’s first album. I was delighted and honoured to say yes. Thank you, Robert!

Finally, if you have a few more spare minutes, here is an interview with me by Liz, charming co-creator of the excellent blog My Favourite Books. She’s also written a lovely review of Black Tat. Thank you, Liz!

And now… back to packing!

At something like 9pm last night I wrote the last sentence of my new book. Or, heh, at least I wrote the current last sentence, as you never know how these things are finally going to end up. But yes, I’m getting there with Phase Three.

…Floof.

My brain has turned to porridge, so since right now it doesn’t seem able to say much more about how I’m feeling than ‘Floof’, here’s a pertinent passage from one of my very favourite books about writing, namely THE UNSTRUNG HARP, OR MR EARBRASS WRITES A NOVEL, by Edward Gorey, who was a genius. If you don’t know about Mr Gorey already you’re in for a treat: to whet your whistle further you can read the whole of TUH and see his beautiful illustrations here. Meanwhile, this bit describes the day after Mr Earbrass gets to the end of one of his for the first time…

I don’t have a week. Or rather I do, but in that time I’ve got to bust on back to the beginning – to stitch the chapters together, Frankenstein-style, and administer the necessary jolt of lightning for the Phase Three beast to lurch to its stumpy feet and lumber off to its editors and agents by the deadline of Sept 1st (or, um, very soon thereafter!) -Yikes!

I’m /also/ – GLEE! – going to be heading off to Edinburgh, Scotland to take part in THIS. Quite apart from how much fun that’s going to be, it’ll be great to get away from this desk and interact (for a change) with people I haven’t made up. ;p

Watch this space. Oh, and if you haven’t been to see HELLBOY 2 yet, do. In true Del Toro style it’s got more imagination, monsters, fun, heart, colour and monsters (QUALITY monsters!) per square inch than pretty much anything else around right now. Give it a wallop, I say. 🙂

Today I’m taking a little bit of time out from writing Phase Three to write this instead. Partly that’s because this blog is (gulp!) a month out of date, and partly because…

Yes! I’m not into cake – strange I know, but true – so the above is exactly what it looks like: my lovely girlfriend Laura stuck a bunch of candles into an enormous tomato [one of my favourite things – that’s tomatoes nb, not candles, which tend to coat the tongue a bit I find] and rested it on a bed of [another of my favourite things] pistachio nuts.

Mmmmm. Pistachio nuts. 🙂

This post is mainly by way of an enormous THANK YOU – to anyone who happens to be reading this, but particularly to the people who have been sending me kind and lovely messages over the last month or so, whether via the Black Tat Guestbook, the Tim Guestbook, Jagmat’s MySpace, my Facebook, LibraryThing and Bebo profiles, or any other way they’ve managed to reach me. I’ve had my nose pressed pretty firmly to the Phase Three grindstone lately, and your encouragement is VERY MUCH APPRECIATED.

As, um, a token of gratitude – for whatever it’s worth! – I’d like to present an old short story of mine that I recently dug up from the archives and dusted off. It’s called Tongues and Other Parts. You can find it on the ‘Who Is Sam Enthoven?’ page of the Tim website, or just click here.

While you’re in a links-clicking kind of mood, check out the Black Tat Reader Art Page, where (if you scroll right down) you can see a beautiful butterfly that looks like it’s come straight off Esme’s wall – thank you, Daisy-May!

And now, also via my Bebo page, here’s an excellent bit of Q&A that neatly sums up exactly what I’ve been doing (and feeling) for most of the last six weeks, and probably will be for most of the next. Take a bow Beth, who says:

grr
i am a little annoyed with you at the moment
i am trying to write a short story (but it is turning into a long one)
anyway you write good books and they are really cool and i can’t write anything good. the plot either goes too fast or too slow. when i try to leave a bit of mystery in my characters it ends up that we don’t know enough. it is very annoying.
on second thoughts it’s not your fault it is just a bit annoying!
grr
p.s. Any tips??

Beth, I know what you mean: writing is incredibly frustrating sometimes. If it’s any consolation, I don’t really feel any different! I’m working on a new book right now, I’ve got lots of ideas for it, I’m very excited about it, but when it comes to /writing/ the d&mn thing it often feels as though all I’m turning out is SLUDGE! The difference between what you want to do and how a thing comes out first time is just infuriating. I’m sorry to tell you there’s no easy way around it. It’s always like this!

But at the same time, YOU WILL GET THROUGH IT: if you’re determined enough; if you learn to ignore (or trick) the critic in your head that tells you that everything you do is rubbish; if you /keep going/.

You learn how to write by doing it. You can only get better by failing first. Once you /finish/ a story, get to the end somehow, then you can go back over it and change it and polish it to make it better. But you can’t polish something that doesn’t exist.

In short, Keep Writing! Best, Sam

thank you i will keep trying!

tell me do you always know were the plot is going in your stories?? do you have to have an ending set out?? what are you working on now??
bibi
beth

We talked about keeping going, right? A planned-out plot can really help with that. If you know what’s going to happen it’s much easier to work towards it. You can also fill a story with things you’re really looking forward to writing (eg destroying the Houses of Parliament, in Tim!) And it helps give your story a structure, a satisfying shape – rather than just hoping that it’s somehow going to come together as you go. I plan my stories as carefully as I can, working out as much as possible before I start writing.

HOWEVER: there’s always a point where you realise that a lot of the answers in a story just aren’t going to come until you’re in the thick of it. The story I’m on right now basically involves nine young people who are stuck together in a small room – trapped there by something horrible. It was hard to know how those characters were going to interact (and who would survive!) until I started writing the scenes.

Still is, tbh! I’d best get back to it.
Chin chin!
Sam

Russell Hoban, who is one of my favourite writers, once said: “A writer at a desk is nothing very heroic and yet you have to find ways of feeling heroic because the effort required certainly is.”

Aside from the kindness and encouragement of others, current ways for me also include: rereading (again!) TRANSMETROPOLITAN, by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson; interviews with and dvd commentaries by John Carpenter; sushi; remembering to come out of the house and meet people who aren’t imaginary on at least a semi-regular basis – and listening at least twice a day to this. [NB: the LastFM playlist link in the post below broke about a week after I posted it, and now even if you click through to my profile you can only hear clips – why??]

Back to the bathysphere. Wish me luck. 😉

For the next couple of months my life is mostly going to look like this:

The end of the school year means no more visits for a while – which is good timing for me, because in September (eek!) I’m due to hand in the first draft of Phase Three of my Sinister Masterplan to Conquer the Universe. I’ve been working on it seriously for over a year now, but the next two months are the crunch. Yep, it’s time for me to focus on writing my next book.

My posts here may become a bit (as in ‘even more’!) sporadic. Well, as I mentioned on the Black Tat news page last time things reach this point there’s probably only a limited amount of ‘I sat here making things up and occasionally tearing the last of my hair out‘ that you’d be interested in hearing, anyhow! But if I’m not updating often enough for you over the rest of the summer, then I’m sorry. Rest assured, like the cheesiest (and best) kinds of villains, I will be back. 😉

-Couple of last things before I sign off, though…!

First up, contracts! To my great glee and delight I’ve just signed a deal for Tim to be translated into German, and I’m about to sign another for Black Tat to be published in Romania! I love the idea of my stories being translated into different languages, so this makes me very, very happy! HURRAH! 🙂

Next, here’s a lovely message I got this week through my Bebo page, from Jakub, who kindly writes:

“Dude you’re seriously so amazing (you were in the libary at elthorne i was there)
seriously you really inspired me……..i really want to like make a rock band in future and be the drummer in the band (i play the drums).
could you give me some advice?
oh and you dont have to answer this….but what music do you like?

P.S your books are awesome dude……….”

Aw, thanks Jakub! I’m blushing! ;p
Actually as a drummer (as long as you’re good at it, of course!) I think you’re in a good position. I’m a guitar player, and I can tell you there are loads more bands looking for drummers than there are ones looking for guitarists! So you shouldn’t be short of opportunities to chase that dream if you want it.

The problem, of course, is the other stuff.

Like writing, being a musician is not a steady life in terms of planning a long-term future, and that can be a problem for some people. The chances are you will have to put up with poverty at some point, and probably for what feels like a long time (learn to love veg – veg is cheap, tastes nice, and keeps you alive!!) You will have to work a day job (mine, a bookshop, was mostly fun but very badly paid) You will also have to deal with relatives – and probably many other people – who will think that you are completely mad (and like I think I said at Elthorne, they’ll probably be right!) But if you have a dream, your dream, and you’re prepared to work hard for it, you should definitely chase it. Life’s simply too short to do anything else.

As to music, well: www.last.fm/listen/user/othersam/pla…

That’s a list of things I recently picked out on Last FM – soundtracks, drum and bass, crackly old blues and other stuff I like. …But like the advice above, it’s just my opinion! 😉
Best wishes to you,
Sam

Oof. Sorry for the terrible pun, but the opportunity was just too good to resist. You see, while my US readers are off enjoying what I hope is a very fine holiday weekend :), over here in the UK the book trade is currently celebrating a rather wonderful new initiative…

This week(1st-8th July) is Independent Booksellers Week, part of the Love Your Local Bookshop campaign. Here’s how you can help. Step one: click here to be taken to a special search engine where you can find the nearest small, cool, unusual, original, awesome bookshop in your area. Step two: think about maybe paying them a visit!

By the way, here’s a quiet word from /my/ local independent bookshop…!

Yep, it’s the Big Green Bookshop, and they’re absolutely brilliant. Click on the link to find out more about them. 🙂

Meanwhile, here are some follow-up questions from my visit to Elthorne Park high school on Wednesday.

First up is Daisy from the Tim Guestbook, who says,

“Hi you came to my school today and you were talking to us in the library. I was really inspired and bought Tim, Defender of the Earth. You also then told us it might be turned into a FILM. If it is this might be a strange question but could i be in it cause i love acting and its my dream and you said to us follow our dreams so that’s what i’m doing. I’d love to hear more. Daisy.”

Thanks, Daisy!

OK. It’s true that (whisper it-!) my agent is currently negotiating a film deal for Tim with a major Hollywood film studio. I wasn’t going to say anything here on the site, because we haven’t signed contracts yet – so in fact that’s almost all I’m going to say on the subject for the time being! But while I’m delighted and honoured to hear that my talk inspired you, I’m afraid I’ve got to give you (and anyone else who asks me this) what might seem at first glance to be a bit of a discouraging answer.

If this deal does finally come together [we’re getting close!] …and if the film gets to the point where its makers start casting actors [which, incidentally, is a much bigger ‘if’: Neil Gaiman, who’s had quite a few film deals now, says “I’ve learned never quite to believe that one of my stories is going to be turned into a film until I’m actually buying the popcorn”!] …then even though I’m the author of the book I will have no control over who is in the movie.

I’m actually ok with that, by the way. Those kinds of decisions, I think, are generally much better left up to the people who are making the film. But to be blunt, I’m the wrong person to ask this question. Sorry!

If (if, if) a Tim movie does get to the casting stage, and if (if, if) the producers decide to give a general casting call for auditions, I will of course do my best to announce it here on the blog. That, however, is all I can tell you for now. But Daisy, I wish you the very best of luck.

Next up, through my new Facebook page, take a bow Oliver, who asks: “When you read passages of your books does it feel weird to read something that you have produced and made for yourself? Thanks for your time. Yours,
Oliver”

Hi Oliver. Thanks for getting in touch.

Reading your own stuff out to people is one of those things that definitely seems like it would be weird before you do it, but once you’ve done it a few times it actually gets less weird quite quickly. I remember watching authors and thinking, ‘Wow, what would that be like?’ Now I’ve been doing events for a couple of years I’m pretty much used to it.

It helps that I did a lot of reading aloud at school, performing in plays and whatnot: through doing that I learned to be a confident speaker, which has turned out to be very, very useful! Another thing that helps make it feel less weird is that I sometimes read my stuff out to myself while I’m writing or editing it. That, incidentally, is an excellent way of checking that one’s sentences are as clear and concise as they can be (eg, running out of breath? time to cut that sentence in half! ;p) And of course, before performing anything I’ve written, I try to make sure I’ve had plenty of practice.

But yes, the first time I try out new material on an audience… that is kind of freaky and nervous-making, I have to admit!

OK, that’s all for now folks. I’ve got to get back in my bathysphere for Phase Three. Today’s research topics have included virus reproductive cycles, spores, germination, and a biological basis for immortality. A very fine weekend to you, too! 😉

PS: Here are some astonishingly beautiful photos of migrating Golden Rays.

Hey there.

I’m currently back in full Deep Dive Mode for some serious heavy work on Phase Three. But before I go all intermittent on you while I’m away in my brain (writing my new book, in other words!) today I surfaced briefly for what was my last school visit of this academic year.

It was to Elthorne Park high school in Ealing, and it was an absolute pleasure.

I arrived in a tearing hurry, having foolishly believed that taking the journey-time promised by the London Underground website and doubling it might somehow allow me to get to the school punctually, like a professional. Silly me. Thanks – apparently – to ‘trespassers on the track’ (is there a story in there??) by the time I got through the door of the Elthorne learning resource centre my first audience was already sitting waiting. For one’s first visit to a school that’s just never a good look — very embarrassing, AAAAGH! But I jumped straight in, and things took off at top speed.

Here’s a shot of me putting my heart into my work…

Here’s me pointing at something, apparently with such great emphasis that the molecules of my arm began to lose alignment…

And here (below) is what I think is one of the silliest photos for a while – and that’s even by these pages’ fairly stringent standards of silliness. Take a look:

Explanation: at lunchtime a photographer from a local paper showed up, to take some pics of my visit. This was great, of course: all extra publicity is very welcome to the Sinister Masterplan! But what he wanted was for me and the students to pose – as if I was reading and the students were supposedly hanging on my every word. A sort of Listen With Mother effect, if you will.

While we all did our best – and much respect to everyone in the above pic for being so game! – it was just impossible to take this seriously. If you look at the pic again you can see the oh-so-fascinated expressions already beginning to fail. And in the end…

…we just cracked up completely. ;p

My thanks to Mrs Donnithorne for kindly inviting me. And a GLEEFUL thank you to everyone I spoke to today.

Floof. I feel like I’m still recovering. What a day it was!

First up was my second (see Monday’s post) Carnegie Shadowing event of the week, which took place at City University in the London borough of Islington. Schools from all around the area sent teams of keen young readers to make presentations about the books on the shortlist, and thrash out the knotty issues of which one they thought should be the winner.

The official Carnegie winner has just been announced – about two hours ago, as I’m typing this! If you don’t know the result already then I’ll say something about it at the end of this post. Yesterday’s favourite was APACHE, by Tanya Landman. That’s fine book, but I think the reason it won the biggest share of audience votes was largely thanks to a particularly brilliant and spirited presentation by these students from Stoke Newington School…!

It was a pleasure to act as master of ceremonies at this terrific event. A resounding HURRAH! to everyone who took part, and my thanks to Pam and the Islington Education Libraries Service team for inviting me along.

Next for me, however, it was off to spiffy new St Pancras station to catch a train to The Leicester Book of the Year Award for Teenage Fiction!

This was a WONDERFUL event. In fact I found myself grinning and giggling pretty much constantly for the entire evening: if anyone there found that alarming I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it, I was having so much fun! Students from no less than FIFTEEN schools in the Leicester area were involved, and the results of everyone’s hard work were spectacular. Here are some more pics to give you a flavour…

Here (above) is a shot from a glorious stage re-enactment of a scene from Black Tat – hee hee hee! The young gentleman on the left is called Nahid: see that white waistcoat he’s wearing? More of that in a second…

Here are (l-r) Kevin Brooks, Bali Rai, some grinning lunatic, and Ally Kennen…

…and here’s Ally Kennen, author of BERSERK, looking understandably thrilled after the Lord Mayor of Leicester has just presented her with this AWESOME award!

I’d’ve loved Black Tat to win, of course. But I’ve read all the other books that were shortlisted, they’re all terrific, so I’d’ve been every bit as chuffed and honoured and happy however this turned out. YAY! 🙂

Here (above) are those jugglers I mentioned, doing their stuff Poi-style. And here…

Here (above) is what Nahid had on his back! Even though I’d been asked to do it, I felt quite bad desecrating this beautiful piece of art with my ‘orrible ‘andwriting, But I tried to write something to show how I felt about it – and, indeed, this whole party. 😉

A HUGE thank you to Alison and Daisy for organising this fantastic evening, and to everyone who was there for their lovely warm welcome. This was my first time in Leicester, but I hope to come back very soon!

It’s been quite a mad week for me what with one thing and another. It’s also, frankly, high time that I got back on the case with Phase Three! But before I crawl back under my stone to play with my imaginary friends again (hur hur hur!) I just want to write a quick word on the book that was the winner of this year’s Carnegie Prize. It was HERE LIES ARTHUR, by Philip Reeve.

This was definitely my favourite book on the Carnegie shortlist, so I’m absolutely delighted that it won. The list seemed strongly skewed towards historical fiction this year, a style of writing that’s not normally (the magnificent FLASHMAN excepted!) my personal cup of dinosaur. But where one or two others on the list – mentioning no names! – got a little too tied up in exhaustive period detail for my tastes, HERE LIES ARTHUR was, I thought, a thoroughly rocking good read. The narrative voice was compelling, the characters were strong, the sense of time and place (and smell!) was wonderfully vivid and Mr Reeve’s take on the Arthur stories was refreshingly modern and subversive. But what struck me most of all with this book – and the reason, imho, that it deserved to win – was that all these elements were bound together by a rigorously disciplined focus on PACE.

On top of everything else it does, HERE LIES ARTHUR is a fast, exciting story. That, to me, is the mark of the best kind of storytelling — and as long as awards like the Carnegie and The Leicester Teenage Fiction Prize continue to help young people to discover great, thrilling books then it’s a huge delight and honour for me to be involved with them.

Thank you! 🙂