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The Well - Awards at Banf
New Twittertale - The Time Machine
Loosing It
A new short story, published in Loosing It - an anthology of short stories about loosing your virginity.
It's a great selection of writers with many different angles on what is perhaps the most important rite of passage ... so to speak.
Check out the Loosing It website here.
The Well Wins TWO Banff Awards
This innovative cross platform event has won no less than two Banff awards at the 2010 Televsion awards in Banff - best cross platform project and best interactive project.
Congratulations to Conker Media who devised and carried out the idea - it was a real pleasure to work with this exciting team. The idea of integrating a game with a drama is a brilliant one, adn something I'd love to do again.
The Well is still available online. You can see the show and play the game to discover the "fifth episode" - the pieces of drama hidden inside the game, that add up to a whole new story.
PLAY THE GAME, FIND THE GHOST, REVEAL THE STORY.
THE WELL was my first work for TV and online. It's a scary one. Stay away if you don't sleep well at night ...
The Well shows on four, ten minute episodes with game play online in between. You have to play the game to release the hidden story - ghosts, in a word - to find out what exactly happened last time the well was opened ... and stay a lttle ahead of the show.
See the episodes and play The Well game - it's like Resident Evil, according to Time Out - but with real ghosts ...
THE WELL - With Karen Gillan on the left, who is going to play the assistant in the new series of Dr Who currently being filmed. Don't forget - you saw her here first!
Nicholas Dane Paperback out June 3rd
This is the Penguin paperback of Nicholas Dane. Dramatic, eh? This image doesn't do justice to the flashy siilver arrows. I'm very happy with it.
I'm doing an event at the British Film Institute on the South Bank at 2 pm on June 5th for the launch. Also, I'm writing an article in the Guardian and doing an interview for the Sunday Times. Last but by no means least, Sugar magazine are using Nicholas Dane to launch their online book club - great stuff.
Win an interview with me and a signed copy of Nicholas Dane. Enter here.
Astonishingly, the BBC has just announced that at the heart of it's much heralded cut backs is a plan to completely abandon all provison for teenagers. BBC Switch and BBC Blast, the showcase cross channel provison for teenagers, are BOTH out. Is this really how the BBC plans for the future? - by abandoning youth? or is it just that they don't give a toss? As usual, the newspapers are full of stories about BBC6 (yet another music station) and give barely a mention of the fact that, once again, young people are bearing the brunt of the cuts.
DONT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT! Young people have no vote, no money and consequently no voice. Parents, teachers and all adults who care about our young people should put their voices in now to object to this careless dismissal of our youth, as well as teenagers themselves and children of all ages. Kids of nine or ten can look forward to turning on the telly and finding nothing for for them in a few years time when they are teens themselves.
Sign the petitions here and here.
Moan as much as possible - on Twitter (#savebbcswitch) and Facebook.. and anywhere else you can find.
And then they'll moaning about kids standing on street corners with nothing to do. If you're fourteen, fifteen or sixteen you can't watch films suitable for your age unles syou sneak in the cinema and spy on adult films, beause the age censorshop laws cut out out/ If a book comes out that adrresses the issues you think about every day everyone starts squeaking in outrage. TV only has Skins, which they don't serve up until after midnight anyway. There is virtualy no media produced for young peole in tehier teens and what there is is just about to chopped away.
Meanwhile, there is more and more pressure on teenagers to perform better at school combined with less and less free time ... education is increasingly about training and producing an easily measureable product for university and the workplace .. what is there left for them to do? Take drugs, hang yourself or go out mugging
Come on, BBC - this needs re-thinking.
Visits to India and Lithuania
Howlucky am I? This Wednesday (Feb 10th) I'm off to India for an eight visit withe the British Council as part of their LitSutra Programme - meeting with high school students, under-grad and post-grad students in Mumbai, as part of the Kala Ghoda Festival), Kolkata and Kalyani.I can;t tell you how much I'm looking forward to this - I love India. It's always great to do things with the British Council and take the opportunity of talking about books and writing in other parts of the world.
Then off to Vilnius in Lithuania, where I'm doing some publicity for my publishers over there, Alma Litera. You can see the work they publish for young people here and some of the covers here.
I've been to Vilnius before, had a great time. The young people there are so radical - interested and curiouis about everythingm adn prepared to take a chance on anything. It's the only town in the world where they have a moument ot Frank Zappa. So it's me and Frankie!
I'm blogging about all this - read my TRAVEL DIARY. I'm been in Mumbai, Kolkat and Delhi, and now I'm in Vilnius, capital of Lituania, for the Book fair ..
One of my most recent works - a memoir of my teenage years - has been dropepd by the publisher becaue of fears of litigation. Read about it in The Guardian here. Read my response here.
The Time Machine
"Does that mean you can travel to yesterday or forward to next week?" asked Tom.
"No," said the inventor tiredly. "It a time machine, not a bloody bus. It makes time.
"Although that in itself isn't exactly true. You can't make more time than there already is - not yet, anyway.
"But the same is true of any manufactory. Ice cream, for example, is just cream, eggs and flavorings re-arranged. That's what I do with time. Re-arrange it.
"See this, for instance" he went on, shaking an empty jar of Branston in front of Tom's nose.
"This is a really dense time. Full of the stuff. I had to screw this one down really tightly. Any more and it would burst out."
"Such concentrations can only exist for short periods, of course, relatively speaking.
The containers age so rapidly. Then, ping! - the time escapes, joins into the temporal atmosphere, and it's gone."
"Still, I suppose there's still plenty left," said Tom.
"It's not the quantity, it;s the quality," said the inventor, "Anyway, collecting it's a bloody nightmare."
He handed Tom the jar. Tom looked at it closely. It was utterly ordinary.
"I can't see anything," he said doubtfully.
"Of course you can't. What does an hour look like - or even a millennium? They are totally transparent. Doesn't mean they don't exit.
"How much time is actually in there?" asked Tom.
"Eight years, three months and seven hours," replied the inventor promptly.
"Theoretically it's possible to pack thousands of years into a space that big, but at such densities, time itself ages rapidly.
"Who knows what would happen if that escapes? Old time - ugh." He shuddered theatrically and smirked at Tom.
"Nothing would ever be young again."
"Or sometimes it stops working properly. Patchy. You end up with an old face and horribly young legs or something. Yuk."
"Really?" asked Tom.
In reply the inventor rolled up his trousers. His legs were only ten years old. "Paradoxical, eh?" he said. "But true."
Tom glanced at his face. The old man nodded. "I'm only thrity four," he said pathetically.
"Could be marketable as a cosmetics line," said Tom thoughtfully. "What's the most you've stored, then?" he asked.
"In this gold container," said the inventor, picking a small golden, screw top jar, "I have over one hundred thousand years."
"Don't touch!" he warned. "If anything should happen - bang! Time bomb. Think of it - a hundred thousand years in a split second! We'd be archeology before you could blink."
"Weapons industry," murmured Tom. "That's where the big money is."
"Never," said the inventor. "I want to be rich, not to help wipe out humanity."
"What other sorts of time do you have?"
The inventor cross his young little legs and creased his old face in thought.
"Young time, old time. Lumpy time."
"Wavy time?"
"Might be possible."
"Cosmetics again. Hairdressing."
"Thin time."
"Perfect! Instant weight loss .." exclaimed Tom excitedly.
"No! A corridor of aging," snapped the inventor. "Leave off the cosmetics. This is the biggest thing since physics began. I want to do something useful with it."
Tom sighed. "Everyone wants to make money, no one wants to get their hands dirty. Save the philanthropy until after you're rich.
Weapons. Cosmetics. Think about it."
The inventor shook his head. Tom sighed. "What sort of thing were you thinking of then?" he asked.
The inventor closed his eyes and smiled. "Feng shui," he said dreamily. "I want to be a Feng Shui magnate.
Tom sighed tiredly. The inventor looked indignant.
"But it really works," he exclaimed. "Time and space. All you have to do is make sure the furniture is in the right arrangement and you can influence time any way you want.
"See that armchair at that angle to the coffee table? Think of it as a baffle. Then that long corridor down between the settee and the fire screen?"
"I was wondering why the fire screen was in the middle of the room," said Tom.
"It smooths out the wrinkles of time. Surely you've felt the atmosphere in here - how calm it is?"
"There are people with their living room furniture in the most disastrous formations. No wonder they get anxious, or age fast.
"Just removing the wrinkles out of time is so beneficial, but that's just the beginning.
"Towns can be built in temporal Feng Shui arrangements. Parks and gardens can be planted to enable slower aging and quicker learning.
"Orgasms could last so much longer.
"With these new techniques, we can bring the crime rate down, increase educational standards - anything we like."
"Politics will never be the same again."
Tom nodded and got up. "Interesting idea," he said. "I'll see if I can come up with a marketing strategy for it."
"Won't make as much as cosmetics or weapons, though. But if you're happy to be merely rich ..."
"Merely rich will do fine," smiled the inventor.
He showed Tom out, hurrying along on his little young legs, and shook his hand enthusiastically at the door before they parted.
Tom left the house and made his way down the street to the car, where his partner, Anna, was waiting.
"What was he like?" she asked.
"Nutcase," answered Tom. "Trying to get me to market Feng Shui for him. I ask you!"
Anne rolled her eyes in sympathy. "So go on - did you get it?" she asked.
He reached in his pocket and handed her the small gold container. Anna shook it thoughtfully.
"Careful," said Tom. "There's one hundred thousand years in there.
"Funny thing, though," he added. "You can unravel the secrets of the universe but when it comes down to making money, you're a complete looser."
Anne smiled and dropped the years into her handbag. "We should go out and celebrate," she said.
"Maybe, but we'll want a clear head for tomorrow. What time's the flight?"
"Early evening, 6.30. We have time for a lie in.""
He smiled. "We age the whole of LA by ten years on Wednesday evening. They'll begging to pay us anything we ask."
They looked at one another and laughed. "Time terrorists," he said. "Talk about a change of career."
She put the car into gear and drove off.
ENDS
Previous Twittertales.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Censorship against teenage readers
An interesting report from the US about the spread of censorship against teenage writers - read it here. I wonder how much this kind of thing is happening over here as well? I know some bookshiops have not been stocking my own books becaue of complaints. How many peole I wonder ....? The usual one or two, I suspect ...
Any reports of this kind of thing over here? I'll be happy to post them ...
Journalism
My top ten teenage books - read it here on the Guardian online - top ten teen books
What's wrong with families - appeared inThe Guardian fmaily section, Saturday 13th June
Events
I did an interesting event recently at Manchester Deansgate Waterstones with William Nicholson, talking about love and sex in teen fiction. Bill Nicholson is a fine writer and his new book, Rich and Mad is a great exploration of a first sexual encounter.
Read this write up of the event from the Bookwitch. Many thanks to Ann Giles for covering it.
SHORT STORIES
Get the latest installment of the current story, How to Murder a Troll
You can catch up with past Twittertales on the blog.
Read an interview with me about the Twittertales on Candy Gourlay's blog - Notes from the Slushpile.
Follow me on TWITTER.