I’ve just started to think about what I’m going to do in my Edinburgh Book Festival event next Saturday morning. The first thing I do is read the programme, so that I can plan to talk about what the audience hoped they were coming to hear.

And this time, apparently, I am going to…

… tell you about her award-winning Fabled Beasts series set in Scotland but featuring monsters and heroes from Greek and Celtic myths. She’ll share her favourite legends and tell all about the heroes who face their fears and destroy the monsters.

So when you’re reading that and thinking, “that’s sounds fun, let’s go and hear Lari do that,” I’m reading it and thinking, “that’s sounds fun, how on earth am I going to do that…?”

And this is what I’m thinking:

Alright. All three books in the series. In 55 minutes. I’ll have to find short readings…

Celtic and Greek myths? Ok, I am inspired by Celtic and Greek myths (hard to deny that with a centaur and a minotaur in First Aid for Fairies, and Tir nan Og in Wolf Notes) but I also love Viking myths, and Storm Singing was mostly influenced by Orcadian legends and an Inuit myth, but I’m happy to chat about Celtic and Greek.

Then heroes destroying monsters. Great. I love destroying monsters. No. Hold on. Wait a minute. Heroes? HEROES? What about heroines? What about Helen and Rona and Lavender and Pearl and Emmie and all the GIRLS I write about defeating baddies?

Ok. NOW I’m inspired. Now I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to find lots of heroines from Greek and Celtic myth (and beyond), and tell you how they inspire me. And if they’re new to me, if they haven’t inspired me already, then their stories can inspire the next First Aid book. Because I’m not sure how to defeat that final baddie, and perhaps I need help from a few more heroines…

So, I’m off to start searching for legendary and mythical heroines. If you have any favourites, do let me know!

(And if you want to come along and hear about heroines and heroes defeating monsters, I’m at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday 27th August, at 10.30 am, and you can get tickets at edbookfest.co.uk.)

When I’m touring round Scotland (I’m doing six different Waterstones in a this fortnight, and five libraries in the couple of weeks after that, all the way from Hawick to Portree…) what do I do on all these journeys? Isn’t travelling a terrible waste of time when I could be writing? (The next book, Lari, get on with the next book…)

I don’t think it is a waste of time, because I do most of it by train and bus, and that adds up to a lot of thinking and reading and people-watching time. And quite a lot of wild dog time too.

In the last couple of days, I’ve sat at a very crowded station watching a very odd traffic jam at the ticket machines made up of folk on their way to T-in the Park (all wellies and manky rucksacks) and some very fancy ladies on their way to a wedding; and sat in a quiet train watching a group of girls experiment to see how many people could fit round one wee train table;

I’ve discussed the riddles in the Hobbit with a very well-read taxi driver;

I’ve read a book about maths (for fun), and a book of Native American Coyote stories (for research);

I’ve gazed out the window and seen wide-eared deer in a field watching the train go past, really tall foxgloves growing by the track, and a short but lovely glimpse of three foxes standing still in a railway yard.

And I write too. I always have a briefcase full of notebooks, for scribbling down ideas, or a laptop, if I want to write entire pages. (Or blog posts – both this post and the previous one have been written on trains.) And many of my books have been written when I was travelling or at least out of the house.

The first scene of Wolf Notes was written on a train back from Aberdeen years ago, and the first page of Storm Singing was written in a corridor while I was waiting for my kids to come out of a dance class. So out and about works for me, just like it does for the fabled beasts.

So all this travelling isn’t a waste of time at all – it’s much more inspiring than sitting in my study. And with a much greater chance of seeing foxes!

I’m visiting quite a few bits of Scotland during the summer holidays, but not on holiday!

Because I’ve had two books published in the last couple of months, my publishers are sending me round various book-y locations to read the books and chat about writing (and sign any books people want to buy!) I’m visiting bookshops, libraries and a cave. Is a cave a book-y location? It is, if you’ve written a book set in a cave!

And what am I doing in all these place? Usually I’m reading my picture books (How to Make a Heron Happy and The Big Bottom Hunt) and chatting with small people about stories, then after a quick drink of water, I’m shifting gears into Storm Singing and talking legends, myths, location research and cliffhangers with older readers.

It’s an uneven tour because it’s spread around places I know and have been before, like Skye, Ayr, Inverness; places I’ve never done an event before but thought might be fun, like East Kilbride and St Andrews; and the one place where Storm Singing is actually set, ie Sutherland. (That’s where I’m doing the event in the cave, and if you are anywhere near Smoo Cave on 28th July, it would be lovely to see you there!)

However, today wasn’t quite as exotic or dark as a cave, because I’m just back from meeting readers and families in Stirling, in the Waterstones in the Thistle Centre. And what brilliant readers they were. There was a lovely little girl who did a great grumpy heron face every time I read: “But the heron still looked….grumpy”; and then later, there was a large group of readers, lots of whom had met me at local schools, had read First Aid and Wolf Notes and were very keen to get stuck into Storm Singing. They asked the most fabulous questions I’ve been asked in a bookshop, including really complicated ones about publishing. I was very impressed with the calibre of bookbuyers from Stirling (and Clackmannanshire) and would love to go back and do more events!

So if you want to come and see me in the summer, check out my diary page and if my uneven and very unsystematic way of picking event locations means that I’m not coming anywhere near you, then do just ask your local bookshop or library or even your school to see if they can arrange for me to visit. Though I wonder if anyone else will ask such knowledgable questions as the Stirling audience?

I’ve launched Storm Singing!  The only book I’ve written (so far) which contains any boats is now well and truly launched into the big wide world.

My publishers held a launch party last night, and we invited some book groups and school pupils, who got to nibble some crisps, and listen to me read a little bit of the book, and then stand in a VERY LONG LINE to get books signed.  They also heard me announce a very exciting competition which my publishers are running to celebrate the launch of Storm Singing – a competition called Set the Scene, which is basically me asking for a bit of help with the next book.

I get so much inspiration from the feedback readers give me, that we thought it was worth tapping into that for the fourth and final book in the First Aid series.

And to be honest, I’ve started to run out of the bits of Scotland which I know, to use as locations for the next book.  Helen’s been to Orkney and Skye on dragon back, she’s been in the tunnels under Edinburgh with a phoenix, and now she’s rowed all round the cliffs and caves of Sutherland with a centaur (which isn’t easy!) so now I’m wondering what magical and marvellous bits of Scotland I can set the next adventure in.  So that’s what the competition is about – to suggest a location for the next book.

I announced this competition to the 50 or so kids at the launch last night, and they immediately started thinking of ideas (some of them even put their hands up right away!) and by the time they’d all queued up to get their books signed, they all wanted to tell me their ideas, so not only did I get to sign lots of the books (how do you spell your name?, what would you like me to write in it?) but I also got to hear lots of ideas for the next book and where it should be set!  But the kids who came to the launch won’t have any more chance than you to win – we’ll wait till all the entries are in, then we’ll pick the best place for a chase, the best site for a fight.  To enter, check out Floris’s website.

So, now that I’ve launched Storm Singing, I’d better start writing the next one.  I still don’t have a title for it (the folder on my computer is called Fourth Aid!) nor of course, do I yet know exactly where it will be set.  But I do have a baddie, and I do have a problem, and that is enough to be going on with for now…

But don’t worry!  You won’t need wellies or a rain coat. I’ve already got cold and wet and windblown on your behalf researching my next book, Storm Singing, and it’s very nearly here!

storm singing cover

And isn’t the cover fabulous!

I’ve actually held my own first copy of Strom Singing. In fact I’ve even read out loud from it, to some classes in Edinburgh and some classes in North Ayrshire, just to see how it sounds and how they reacted.  And luckily for me, they all wanted me to read on… But of course I didn’t, because my publisher was there, giving me a hard stare until I said:  If you want to know what happens next, you’ll have to read the book!  (available in all good bookshops and libraries etc…)

And now, this is the nerve-wracking bit for me, waiting for the actual publication date next week.  Because now I’m waiting to see what you all think of it – waiting til someone reads Storm Singing at top speed, then writes to me or emails me or posts something on my blog or chats to me in a bookshop and TELLS ME WHAT THEY THINK OF IT!

I don’t think it’s really a book until other people have read it.  Otherwise I could just mutter stories to myself in my study, and be happy with that. I write books to share them with other people, so waiting to see what you think of what I ask my characters to do, and how they react, is really important!  And in Storm Singing, I think I may have asked them, especially Helen, Rona and Yann, to do more difficult things than anything I’ve asked of them before…

So, once you’ve got your own Storm, let me know what you think!

Every time I read How to Make a Heron Happy out loud, I feel slightly guilty. Because there’s a line, near the end, about the heron flying away if it isn’t happy in the park.  And in between me writing that line, and the book being published, the heron in my local park DID fly away. It wasn’t happy, I assume, because all the ice last winter made it impossible to hunt. But it never came back.  And I felt slightly responsible, or at least, slightly embarrassed that here was a book about my favourite bird, set in my favourite park, and the bird was no longer there.  Was it my fault?  Was it some dreadful coincidence, or actually a consequence of my book?  That’s called magical thinking, apparently, according to a psychiatrist of my acquaintance – thinking that your actions could cause or affect something totally unconnected.  I do know that the heron didn’t fly away because I wrote a book, that it wasn’t divine punishment for hubris, or fate’s practical joke.  It flew away because we had a very bad winter.  I also know that when I used to produce radio programmes for the BBC, and once in a while some terrible social or health issue that I had researched then subsequently happened to me, or someone I knew, it wasn’t actually connected.  Because that’s magical thinking.  And therefore it must be a total coincidence that this week, when I’ve just done my last event to promote the Heron book, and I am about to move on to the very first event to promote Storm Signing, THIS VERY WEEK, I saw five herons in the park.  Five.  I ran round an extra lap just to count them again to be sure.  Magical thinking?  I suppose that if you write about selkies, centaurs and dragons, you do need to think magically!  However, just to prove I am not superstitious, I offer as evidence the fact that I’m entirely delighted to be meeting pupils from how many different primary schools in North Ayrshire this week, on the Storm Singing tour?  Thirteen.

After all my stress (see previous post) about being nominated for two awards on the same day, it all worked out fine.  I didn’t need to summon up an evil twin, I didn’t need to time travel or manage an out of body experience.  However I did win one!  The Big Bottom Hunt won the Heart of Hawick Picture Book Award, which was voted for by Primaries 1, 2 and 3 pupils in lots of schools in and around Hawick.  And the prize, oddly, is a beautiful carving of a heron, which leads wonderfully into my next picture book!

So, that was a good week (win one, lose one seems fair enough – and congratulations to Tommy Donbavand, who won the Hackney Short Novel competition), and now I want to turn my thoughts to writing the next book.  It’s amazing how a pat on the back from real readers can help you overcome a lot of very early mornings and a lot of rattly Borders buses to say – Chapter One, here I come…

I’m having one of those problems that football managers are criticised for moaning about – when they say they have too many players fit, so they don’t know who to play, and the folk in the studio with stripy shirts and unlikely hair say, “that’s the kind of problem everyone would like to have!”

So here’s my problem:

The Big Bottom Hunt has been nominated for the Heart of Hawick Book Award

The Mountain’s Blood has been nominated for the Hackney Short Novel Award.

That’s good, so far, isn’t it?

It’s just that both award ceremonies are on the same day.

So don’t moan, you say.  That’s good.  A bit of an odd coincidence, but good.  Yes?  But I’m attending the Hawick ceremony (sitting on stage in front of all their voters) and the Hackney organisers have asked me to be available for a live phone interview into their award.  And now I’ve just discovered that they both need me at exactly the same time.  Not nearly, or roughly, or almost the same time.  But EXACTLY the same time.

1.15.    Tomorrow.

How likely is that?  I’ve never really felt the need of an evil twin before, but she’d be handy this week.

Don’t worry.  I’ll cope.  With incredibly helpful people in both places, someone answering my mobile backstage, a bit of fancy footwork (and a time machine?) – I’ll be fine.  Probably.

And will I win? Either of them?  Not likely… The Hackney award has Sophie Mackenzie and Alan Gibbons on the short list, for goodness sake.  And the Hawick one has a very eclectic mix of birds, bunnies and bottoms.  But both are voted for by real readers, so whoever wins, I’m sure it will be the right result!

I’ve just opened my new Floris Books catalogue, and the page promoting Storm Singing looks lovely, but it also has a little circle beside the details of my very first book saying “Now available as an eBook”.  I shouldn’t be surprised, because it’s the sort of thing my agent does tell me about, but it did make me step back a bit.  Because I suddenly realised that my books, my characters, are now more technologically advanced than I am.  I’ve never read an e-book.  When I leave the house I still stuff my rucksack full of secondhand collections of Scottish myths and dog-eared novels.  I’m sure the extra weight keeps me fit.  So now I’m trying to imagine Yann the centaur and Sapphire the dragon not on pages of paper but on gently glowing screens.  Are they happy there?  Do they feel a bit out of place?  Or are they, like me, mainly interested in what happens next, not in the details of how and where the story is read?  Anyway – if anyone does get First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts on eBook, and wants to let me know what it’s like reading about Greek mythological monsters and Neolithic stone circles on 21^st century technology, then do get in touch!

AAAAARGH! I’m normally a fairly confident person, but for 10 minutes yesterday I felt like a spotty teenager with everyone staring at a ladder in my tights.  Really embarrassed and self conscious and wishing I was invisible.  I was on my way back from a book festival in Hexham and I was sitting on the train beside Philip Ardagh, who had also been talking to local kids about his books.  Philip Ardagh is a very well known, very well respected, very successful writer of very funny children’s books. He is also extremely tall, with an extreme beard.  The train was crowded, and we were sitting beside each other to chat about writery sort of things, which was lovely.  Then he asked if I had any of my books with me so he could have a look at them.  (I didn’t have to ask to see his books.  I see them in Waterstones all the time…) So he got my rucksack down from the luggage rack, and I pulled out the bag of my books that I show to kids, and I sat there on the train with the rucksack between us, my briefcase on my knee, crushed up against the window, while an writer I admire (who is also HUGE and scary) glanced through my books.  And commented on them.  He even read one of my picture book BACKWARDS.  Why would you do that?  I felt like making excuses for them.  I felt like hiding INSIDE the rucksack. I wanted to go for a wander up the train and not WATCH him read them.  AAAARGH!  But he was really nice about them.  About the first line of Rocking Horse War, about the dramatic description of Yann at the start of First Aid, about the pictures in The Mountain’s Blood (yes I know I can’t take credit for those, but when you’re squirming, you take anything you can), and just generally about the concept of Bottoms.  So, that’s alright. Praise from high places (and that’s just where his beard is when he stands up). But goodness me, I’ve never felt so squashed and embarrassed.