Dreams and Aspirations

Following on from Chipping, I next did an event at another location very important to the books. At the invitation of Emma Parkinson, I visited Stalmine Primary School on its Prize Day to give a short talk on ‘Dreams and Aspirations’. It’s another school with a great atmosphere and the pupils did presentations telling us what they hoped to be when they grew up; this included a whole range choices from pop stars to policemen and one boy even wanted to be a writer!

My own children attended that school because it’s in the village where they grew up and I still live – the place that, with its boggart, ‘The Hall knocker’, gave me the inspiration for the series. The location even features in the first book when, at the end, Tom guides Alice there to stay with one of her aunts. Of course, I don’t use the name ‘Stalmine’; it goes under its older name ‘Staumin’.

Well, that looks like being the last event of the recent tour. August is usually quiet but I’m at the Marine Hall, Fleetwood, Lancashire, on August 1st (11am to 1pm). Called ‘National Play Day’, it features talent competitions and other family fun. I’ll be there with Tony, the bookseller from Pritchards, Formby and I’ll be signing books and chatting to anyone who wants to talk to me. Following that I’m at the Edinburgh Festival on August 25th to give a talk on my latest book and the series in general.

In my next blog (which I hope to do sometime next week) I’ll try to address some of the questions raised in your comments on the tour blogs.

Story-telling Festival in Lancashire, at the heart of the Spook’s World…

Today, accompanied by Mary Wynburg and her family of ‘The Corner Bookshop’, Garstang, I visited Chipping, Lancashire, to attend the annual Story-telling Festival presented by the children of St Mary’s School.

Organized by Chris Stringer, the day was really enjoyable with lots of interesting and spectacular events performed by the enthusiastic school children. Chipping has a really strong sense of community and it was a good family day out.

I gave two talks, to mixed audiences of children and adults; in the second group was a party from Lancashire Libraries who had been doing a Spook’s walk over Wolf Fell. It was the first time I have ever done an event in Chipping and for me it was a special occasion because that village (known as ‘Chipenden’ in the books) is the very heart of the Spook’s World and the place where he lives during the summer months. For all readers of the books it is a place you must visit one day - maybe next year’s festival at the school?

Babylon Lane

Things are start to calm down a little now but I still did two further enjoyable events last week. The first was at Baine’s Primary School, Thornton; the second was St Peter’s School, Bury. At both I met enthusiastic readers but the second had another significance because it is where my son, Stephen, is currently teaching. He generally works long contracts on supply and wherever he goes he reads from the books and tells his class about the series. As a follow-up to that I then visit the school. This must be about the sixth time we’ve done this. In fact my very first talk as a writer in 2004 was to Anderton County Primary where he was teaching at the time. The kids there asked me to put the name of the school in my next book. I did the next best thing. The school is in Babylon Lane and I used that for the location of the Spook’s brother’s locksmith shop.

Making sure that you buy the right Spook’s books!

After looking at what’s for sale on Amazon UK, I’d like to clarify some of the books, so that UK Spook’s fans don’t buy something by mistake that they have read before.

‘The Last Apprentice: The Spook’s Tale and Other Horrors’
This is a USA publication meant for the American market, which repeats ‘The Spook’s Tale’ which was available as a World Book Day flip-book. It also contains a new Grimalkin story and an Alice story that first appeared as a ‘bonus’ in the paperback edition of ‘The Spook’s Battle’. It is a good production with excellent illustrations and could be a present or provide an introduction to new readers of the series.

‘Spook’s Stories: Witches’ however, is a UK book which will be published in October 2009 in England. It contains five new stories not published here before. There is a story in which Tom and Bill Arkwright face a Banshee witch; ‘Dirty Dora’ a tale of revenge narrated by a dead witch; The Spook’s account of his full dealings with Meg, the lamia witch; an expanded version of the Grimalkin Story (larger than that contained in the USA publication above); finally, in ‘The Brain Guzzler’ Alice Deane tells of her attempts to survive the first week of training in witchcraft by Bony Lizzie. I’m quite proud of that story collection; in my mind it ranks alongside the best of the Spook’s Series.

I hope that clears things up. I hate it when people, by mistake, buy things that they have already read.