LoveReading4Kids

It's been impossible not to panic about the likely reception for A Ravelled Flag - the middle movement of the Strong Winds trilogy - a bit longer, structurally more complex, less charming perhaps, certainly darker. I wonder whether Louise Weir, founder and director of Love Reading, realises quite what her generous comments on this second volume have meant to me? (Or indeed, Seona Ford, Chairman of the Essex Book Festival, who wrote a personal letter saying how much she had enjoyed this sequel.)

The Lovereading comment:

The story of 14 year old Donny and his new found friends that began in The Salt-Stained Book continues in this gripping sequel.  Donny's long lost great Aunt has arrived from China on a boat and rescued him and his mother from the care system. Her gorgeous boat Strong Winds (a Chinese junk) becomes their home but it's not long before Donny and his friends and family are caught up in yet more dark, intense and suspense-filled action and adventure that is cleverly interspersed with Chinese tales from great aunt Ellen's life and a good dose of wit as well. It's a great read.  Volume three Ghosting Home will be published in Summer 2012.

And more than that, Louise called the SSB "a very special book"   Phew!

A private view

 Francis has had an operation for a slipped disc disc and I've no idea who allowed cartoonist Nick Newman into the recovery room to capture this unerringly accurate sketch.

The good news is that the 'agreeable red' appears to be working its wonted magic (who needs blood in their veins after all?) and Francis will be returning to the fray in good time for the Essex Book Festival and a trip to Glasgow next month. (Perhaps I'll need to replace the drip with some fine single malt a few days beforehand to help him acclimatise. You can keep your morphine and extra strength pain killers, he says.)

April 4th 2011. Depressingly, Francis isn't better. A disc in the lower back is now causing great discomfort. Standing and travelling no fun at all and any illicit morphine offers would be gratefully received.

new cover for Strange Days Indeed

I find myself at a loss for words ..

Monday March 8th 2010. Well, that's what I said (or didn't say) to start with but, now that I've seen the UK paperback in its strange new guise at both the Essex Book Festival launch and the Aldeburgh Literary Festival, I think it's rather brilliant.

(It also manages to match Francis's flashy new Essex Cricket Club Vice-President's tie!)

ramshackle, huh?

I like Essex journalist Pat Parker. I like her personally and I like the care she takes over her articles. She's interviewed Francis twice - once some years ago for the East Anglian Daily Times and again recently for Essex Life (possibly to be included also in a Suffolk sister magazine) but the first time Francis made a tactical mistake - he allowed her to look inside his shed. Now Francis's shed is a den; it's a hideout, a late night bolt hole, an area not covered by any conceivable health and hygiene regulations. Predictably Pat recoiled -- anyone would -- and her subequent article was fairly entitled 'My Untidy Shed'. Not 'My Great Mind' or 'My Incisive Take on Life, the Universe and Everything' but 'My Untidy Shed'.

When she offered to come again, in advance of the 2010 Essex Book Festival, we were certain that we weren't going to be caught twice. This interview would be indoors only. I hoovered, he cleared surfaces, the dog and cats were on their best behaviour and best of all Victoria Morris had recently repainted the entire sitting room -- kitchen and conservatory too. Pat's word this time was 'ramshackle' -- okay she did intend a compliment (and we do still like her) but what must we do if she ever comes again? Rebuild?

countdown to the Essex Book Festival

Tickets to the Essex Book Festival go on sale today so Francis (in his capacity as Patron) was on BBC Essex's Dave Monk show giving a plug to Joanne Harris (who's appearing at our children's school in Dunmow) and to our joint event at Essex University but modestly saying nothing, as far as I heard, about his own talk at the Essex Record Office. I meanwhile was looking at the programme drooling with anticipation at various nautical events - Richard Woodman & his 'Nathaniel Drinkwater' novels  being but one treat on the horizon. Then I discovered Steven Russell writing in the East Anglian Daily Times about the headline appearance of Alastair Campbell and other Book Festival news and I realised just how much had happened since this time last year. In January 2009 The Adventures of Margery Allingham was a file on a printer's system - as her brther Phil's Cheapjack is now. I hadn't been to America or met Jim Huang and Jennie Jacobson of the Crum Creek Press and Francis's Strange Days Indeed was still scarily unfinished business. Steven Russell and Neil D'Arcy Jones were the first journalists to take an interest in the re-publication of Margery's biography and I was so grateful to them. For me it was the start of a quietly wonderful year.