Thunder City Diary Dates

It’s just under a month until the publication of Thunder City, my new novel set in the world of Mortal Engines. To mark the occasion I’m lining up a bunch of events in September and October: the itinerary currently looks like this…

On Monday, 30th September, I’ll be talking about the book at Waterstones in Bath as part of the Bath Children’s Literature Festival.

On Saturday 5th October First Draft Books in Bovey Tracey, Devon and Bovey Paradiso arts centre are arranging a whole afternoon of Mortal Engines, kicking off with a screening of the movie, followed by a chat with me and book signing.

On Tuesday 8th October I’m part of a panel event at Cheltenham Literary Festival along with authors Liz Hyder and Piers Torday, discussing the creation of fantasy worlds. This is a school event, but I’ll be signing books afterwards if you happen to be at the festival that day, or want to pick up a signed copy from the bookshop later.

On Saturday, 12th October I’ll be in Totnes for a late afternoon event with Eastgate Books - venue to be confirmed.

Friday 25th October is the opening day of London Comic Con, and I’ll be appearing there in the afternoon for more Mortal Engines chat and book signing. And I’ll be doing stock signing in some London bookshops around the same time, details to follow…

Thunder City isn’t the only book I’m launching this autumn, because the latest Adventuremice title, The Ghostly Galleon, comes out on 12th September. Top co-author Sarah McIntyre and I will be at the Marlborough Literary Festival on 29th September to talk about it (and I’d be happy to sign copies of my other books if you want to bring them along afterwards).

Thunder City and the other books in the Mortal Engines series are published by Scholastic UK and can be found in (or ordered from) all good bookshops. As can the Adventuremice series, which is published by David Fickling Books.

Comments

Merlin (1998)

I remember Merlin being shown on TV as a two-part mini-series over a bank holiday weekend. The version I found on YouTube is a single three hour movie, but I think it might work better in two chunks, as originally broadcast. It still works pretty well, though. Director Steve Barron is completely infatuated with video editing tricks and slightly primitive CGI effects that I’m sure were state-of-the-art when it was made, but he uses them quite inventively, and there are some very enjoyable performances. Since First Knight was such a washout, I guess this is the definitive ‘90s Arthurian film. Like Excalibur , the definitive ‘80s Arthurian film, it tries to tell the entirety of the Arthur story, but since it’s main focus is Merlin it covers a lot more too, and Arthur himself ends up being a bit of a side-character, with the rise and fall of Camelot packed into the second half. At first glance, Merlin seems to be aligning itself with what I’m coming to think of as the Low Arthurian tradi...

Lord of the Rings 7: Minas Tirith

'This is not a work which many adults will read through more than once,' claimed the historical novelist Alfred Duggan, reviewing The Lord of the Rings when it was published. But I've read it through LOADS of times and now I'm blogging my latest re-read, so what did he know? And so we come to Minas Tirith, Tower of Guard, citadel of Gondor, seven tiers of fancy white fortifications built against a buttress of Mount Mindolluin, with the Tower of Ecthelion rising a thousand feet above the plain. It seems to me the template on which a whole genre of knock-off fantasy cities has been based - I guess Robert E Howard and people wrote about such places before Tolkien, and perhaps there were cities of equal grandeur on Barsoom, but when concept art threads on Instagram throw up unlikely gold and marble castles built on mountaintops and over waterfalls they always look distinctly Minas Tirithy to me. I'm wondering now if London in Mortal Engines was subconsciously echoin...

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

One of the reasons the Arthurian Legends appeal so much to writers and film makers is that there is no single original version. If there ever was, it was a tale told by some Romano-British storyteller, sitting by a fire in a damp hall, perhaps expounding on the great deeds of a local ruler or late Roman general, and spicing up the action with some motifs borrowed from old Celtic myths. In the centuries that followed, the story grew, and changed. Lots of legends about other heroes got tacked on to it. French and German poets got hold of it and added Camelot, the Grail, and Courtly Love: Malory borrowed from them all in his Morte D’Arthur . Later, everyone from Tennyson to TH White to Rick Wakeman to little me retold the stories, altering them to fit our own vision and reflect our own times. So you can do whatever you like with King Arthur: everyone else has. At least, that’s the theory. Now here's Guy Ritchie’s 2017 box office catastrophe King Arthur, Legend of the Sword to destru...

Station Zero

Search This Blog