Barr, Brokenshire, Camden, Crossan, Reeve, Scarrow ...and Me.

Back in the day I read a fair bit of Emily Barr's stuff. I'm a fan of her backpacking travel-thrillers and loved The Sleeper, a train-based psycho-drama that pre-dates Emily Blunt staring boozily at her own reflection in that movie with the killer OST and ridiculous ending.

So it was a real pleasure to announce the winners of BASH 2018 and award the 11+ category to Emily's The One Memory of Flora Banks, a book I need to go out and read pretty smartish. 

It was a great day run by a team of super-smart enthusiastic librarians who, mired in the middle of awards season, have handed out so many prizes to so may great books they've forgotten who won what and have to check their Twitter feeds to recall what they were doing last week ;-) 

Plus I got to wear my new cap and stand awkwardly next to local dignitaries on one side and graphic artist Nick Brokenshire (Star Wars Adventures Issue 9, no less!) on the other... and a whole crew of fantastic kids eager to share their ideas for novels or pick my addled brains for writing advice. All good.

Also good - close to very good, I suspect - is Payback getting a mention in The Bookseller's July preview section. The Bookseller? Yeah, me too. I'm on Wikipedia right now. It's an industry weekly with 30,000 readers in the trade and it gets eyes in over 90 countries. But we knew that, right? 

There I am, folks, mixing it with Reeve and Scarrow. With Crossan and Camden no less. Me and Ness Harbour.

When I get the Payback graphics through from my lovely publishers, I'll go-all out updating the site and de-Lifers the headings and banners.

I know. I bet you can't flippin' wait.