The Book Lantern

Is teen angst, lust and abuse the new, true love? Or is it love triangles? Just what is it about those bad boys: brooding, Byronic and broke?

Loving the brilliantly spiky, sparky posts on THE BOOK LANTERN.

And thanks to Ceilidh of The Sparkle Project who wrote a great piece about Scottish YA fiction.

Hoping for the Nowhere People

Tonight I'm worrying about people I've never met, hoping that they have survived the tsunami: the people of the tiny island nation of Kiribati in the heart of the south Pacific, whose plight against rising oceans inspired me to write a whole trilogy. Yesterday, I was talking to young people in Scotland about the young people of Kiribati. So tonight, while I have fun with friends, and Japan reels from its nightmare, I'm taking this moment to send my hopes to the all those people so far away.

"To be part of a nation that might be under the sea, gives me a feeling that I am from nowhere." - young i-Kiribati native.

Low-lying islands that were the first in the tsunami's path - Kiribati, tonga, Guam - ordered people to move 30 metres inland and look for refuge well above sea level, the Guardian reports tonight.

But on Kiribati there is nowhere above sea level to run to.

New covers!

EXODUS and ZENITH have just been re-issued with these great new covers and AURORA, the final part of the story, will be published in June.

THE BEAUTIFUL FREEDOM CAGE, Radio 4

There is a bridge in Venice at sunset, a loch in the ancient forests of Scotland of a primeval stillness that makes me shiver, a fishing harbour on a Greek island beside the tiny church of the Mermaid Madonna - these are my heavenly havens, enchanted places where the worries of the world seem very far away.

Last summer, watching a tangerine moon rise up over the Mermaid Madonna church (above), my fantasies about spending a winter there one day, writing a book in that perfect peace, were interrupted by sirens and the dash of police cars through the cafe tables. We couldn't see what was wrong and the locals only shrugged. We shrugged too and carried on eating, relaxing, dreaming...

Half a year later, in the depths of a Scottish winter, a newspaper article revealed what the strange harbour panic had been. Our idyllic Greek fishing harbour is not as 'out of this world' as we thought - all of a sudden, it is right at the heart of the modern world. Skala Sykaminias, so close to Turkey that I often wondered if I could swim across the turquoise strait of sea, has become a crisis point for refugees to enter Europe.

Most of the refugees are young boys from Afghanistan, many still children, fleeing Taliban attacks in their war-ravaged land, enticed by the promise of a new life in Europe by smuggler gangs. Some survive the epic journey, only to find themselves caught at the very end; some drown.

So when asked for a story for Radio 4 to mark the 150th anniversary of JM Barrie's birth, inspired by a Peter Pan chapter, 'Come Away, Come Away', I knew what I had to write. It is a story tinged with the stuff of Peter Pan - brutal pirates, flight, lost boys... and yet it is no fantasy. It's all happening right now in the place I will be going to on holiday again this year. But it will feel different, this time. And the story is not going away. Some stories decide they want to grow into books. We'll see.

Mine is one of three 15 min stories - the others are by Geraldine McCaughrean and Michael Morpurgo broadcast Tuesday 4th and Wed 5th May.

And I never knew till now that JM Barrie and I share the same birthday!

THE BEAUTIFUL FREEDOM CAGE Radio 4 on Thursday 6th May 3.30pm.

All 3 stories available on i-player.

AURORA

The End. It's done, at last. AURORA, that is.

I'm still fiddling and editing but I feel a bit like the cleaner sweeping the stage after an epic play. The characters have exited the stage and walked off into their futures - or not, having shuffled off their mortal coils, some of them. Well, 'shuffle' is a bit of an understatement for what happens to some of them but that's all I'm saying for now.

I miss them. I'm busy writing other things and planning the next book, yet I catch myself thinking about them all, wondering what they're doing now. Then I remember they're not real, and they're not doing anything at all 'now'. They're only imagined presences in an invented world of 2115 - but I've lived with this lot so long, they feel quite real to me.

It always surprises me that they feel real to other people. That is the magic of a book - my dream can become yours too. So I loved this animatic of THE WEAVE from Exodus on youtube, where Mara meets Fox. (The Weave is a crucial part of the story in Aurora too.) It's amazingly close to what I imagined. Thanks to the young students at Ravensbourne College who created it.

I Read The News Today...

...with a sickening sense of foreboding. Two teenage girls, just 14 and 15, held hands and jumped together to their death last night from a high bridge not too far from my home. There was a girl I was thinking of, hoping it wasn’t her. All I can do is mark her short life here. RIP Georgia with the puppy-soft eyes.

Once upon a time there was a world...

On a brief skive from the last great heave on AURORA, I clicked on a Guardian podcast on 'climate change books' and heard the lovely Sarah Crown from the Guardian books blog saying very nice things about Exodus and Zenith (about 23 mins in). It was a little gift from the ether. Moments before, I'd hit a Friday afternoon slump, telling myself I'd get somebody to slap me if I ever had the urge to write an epic trilogy ever again. I really just needed a Kitkat.

The podcast is worth a listen as there are a number of good books discussed - some of my own favourites like Cormac MCarthy's The Road, poetry from Don Paterson and Sean O'Brien, Earth From The Air. Sarah finishes with a great quote from Philip Pullman about 'Thou shalt not' reaching the head, but what touches the heart is 'once upon a time' - the very words, as it happens, that Exodus opens with and Aurora ends on.

The podcast and booklist is HERE.

A few more links I've been too busy to put up before: THE BOOK SMUGGLERS on YA apocalyptic-dystopian fiction. And HERE. Some Glasgow Dystopia. And I loved the look of IN SEARCH OF GIANTS.

Next blog, a moving Once Upon A Time...