It's Not a Series!

Puffin have sent me some publicity fliers to herald the arrival of The Seventh Tide, which will be available online and in the shops on 3 April 2008. This is good. We LIKE publicity. And the flier is bright and eye-catching, and looks like this:


And there you see the problem. It looks for all the world as if The Seventh Tide is a sequel to Questors, AND IT ISN'T!!! This is not a series. They are both stand-alone novels. They do not share characters, settings or indeed ANYTHING - except for things like having the same author, the same publisher, being the same genre, and, oh, I don't know, both being printed on paper.

Or so it seems to me. Do you think I am overreacting? (It has been known to happen.)

Whether I am or not - keep your eyes open on Thursday 3 April and let me know when you spot The Seventh Tide!

Cheers, Joan.

P.S. New book to add to the Favourite Book I Am Currently Reading List (see previous post): Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan. He's great!

My Favourite Anything

They always ask me. Go into a school and somebody always asks, "What's your favourite book?" or "What's your favourite movie?" or even - and I'm in real trouble with this one - "What's your favourite football team?" Nobody ever asks, "Who's your favourite son" (I don't have any daughters) but all those favourite questions feel a bit as if they had. I mean, how are all the other books and movies and football teams going to feel if I don't choose them?!

If only the question were worded, "What book/DVD/football team have you read/seen/heard of recently that you enjoyed?" Then I could answer without getting all twisted.

Recently Read Book: Making Money by Terry Pratchett - and it won't be for the last time, either - Terry Pratchett re-reads so well - all of them.

Recently Seen DVD: Stardust - loved it! Neil Gaiman is an extraordinarily prolific, unfairly young-looking guy who seems to be involved in a gillion really interesting projects. (If you haven't seen Mirrormask, by the way, you really should.)

Recently Heard-of Football Team: Hamilton Academicals, because my brother in Canada thinks they're cool.

That wasn't too bad ... so from now on, when I get asked for my favourite anything, I'm going to say, "I'm glad you asked me that question" and then not answer it.

Joan.

P.S. Already I'm having to add on - just saw the DVD for Beowulf (Neil Gaiman again) and though I probably shouldn't have laughed quite so much every time a candlestick/elbow/chandelier/fog bank arrived to hide the eponymous hero's naked nether regions, it was still pretty neat.

The Seventh Tide

You must see this ... (click on the picture)


Pretty amazing, right?! It's always a canny move to be married to your webmeister ...

Cheers, Joan.

Warning: May Have Side Effects

School/library/bookshop/festival visits - I still don't know what the generic name for these things should be - would, if prescribed, probably come with a long list of possible side effects. There are the obvious ones, like:

May cause insomnia, unsettled stomach and a raised temperature beforehand, and lethargy, a need for chocolate (preferably injected) and shaky chills afterwards. (Also mood swings. garrulousness and a tendency to want to adopt passing children or any adult who says nice things to you.)

But the label would have to also include:

Euphoria.

It's an enormous buzz talking to kids. I love getting them to laugh, getting them on my side, getting them excited about what I'm excited about. (Teachers have to do this all the time, and I know I would be in a gibbering puddle by the end of my first term if I tried to do their job. I'm in the middle of a two-week stretch of 14 events and I'd have said that was about my limit.)

The moral of the story is: some side effects are worth it.

Cheers, Joan.

P.S. I should have said - the events are about The Wickit Chronicles, as a launch for the third book in the series, Ice Road, which just came out.