BarryHutchison.com

Just moved house. No proper internet access. Blogging nigh on impossible. Will sort something out for tomorrow and do a write-up of my festival appearances then. That is all.

First up, here’s a review of Mr Mumbles from Weirdmage’s Reviews. It’s a good ‘un. I particularly liked:

I have to end this with a little note. As you may have noticed this book was published by HarperCollins Children’s Books, and on the back cover there is a label that says 9+. This should in my opinion be treated like video-game labels, not fit for children under nine, but with no upper limit of how old you should be to enjoy it. My + is 27, and I see no problem in recommending this to anyone who likes a good scare regardless of age.

I couldn’t agree more with that, and judging by the amount of positive feedback I’ve had from adult readers, it’s not just children enjoying the series.

Now, Raggy Maggie is published on 5th of August, and press copies are only just being sent out. So, I have no ‘proper’ reviews to tell you about, but I think the following is more revealing that any review could be…

Yesterday, I started reading Raggy Maggie to my son, Kyle. The first few chapters have one or two unsettling moments, but in general aren’t too bad. We made it to about chapter six before calling it a night, despite his protests that he wanted more.

Tonight he got more. We read up to chapter eight and I put the book down. Chapter eight, however, ends on a BIG cliffhanger, and he begged me – literally – to read the next chapter. Eventually, I gave in, and we read chapter nine. That was two hours ago.

He’s still awake. And still terrified.

I’ve tried everything to get him to go to sleep, but he’s too scared to close his eyes. While I was through comforting him, his baby sister started crying in the next room. He grabbed onto me, shaking with fear, telling me not to go in case it was a trap.

I told him that if the book was scaring him that much, we should stop reading it. But no, he wanted to continue, he wanted the next chapter right then. And the next one. And the one after that. He’s more scared than he has ever been in his life, but he doesn’t want it to stop!

I call that a result.

And possibly a serial killer in the making.

Just spotted two of the new Ben 10 Alien Force books I wrote on Amazon. They come out around the same time as Invisible Fiends: Raggy Maggie, so obviously, if you only plan buying one book that week, Raggy Maggie is the one to go for, because it’s utterly, utterly brilliant.

If you’ve got a few quid left over, though, or you don’t think you can cope with the horrors of Raggy Maggie, you could do worse than pick up these.

The German cover for book 2 has now been revealed. They’ve gone for a title change, calling the book “Caddie’s Game” as opposed to “Raggy Maggie”, which is the name of the book in the UK. The new title makes perfect sense, once you know the story, and I think the cover looks fantastic. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been home from the Spill the Ink tour for almost four days now. Those four days, like the tour itself, have gone by in a whoosh, and I’m still getting to grips with getting back to reality.

The tour itself was fantastic fun. Along with Sorrel Anderson (author of The Clumsies) and Kate Maryon (author of Shine), I visited 8 cities in 5 days, travelling hundreds of miles and speaking to just as many kids. It was tiring, but the number of nice people I met made up for it. As did the fancy hotels and the free food and drink.

Signing books in Liverpool. Ran out of stock!

The events themselves were very varied, covering well off and less well off areas, big groups and small. The more I did, the more I found myself enjoying them, and I was really just hitting my stride when the tour came to an end in Scotland. Still, it was very nice to get home to the family, although I’m already getting ready for my next mini-tour – in Orkney, this time – later in June.

One of the nicest surprises of the tour was when Tom Roberts – someone I got to know via Twitter – turned up at the Birmingham event. It was great to finally be able to meet him in person, and I was dead chuffed when he presented me with this…

Raggy Maggie's VERY cross...

It’s my very first piece of fan art, depicting Caddie and Raggy Maggie, the terrifying terrible twosome who plague Kyle in the second Invisible Fiends book. I absolutely love it, and will be framing it and putting it up on the wall.

Must go catch up with work now, but will be back later with more tour-related tales.

Just back from three hectic days at the Turriff Book Festival, where I was running six (count ‘em, six) events. The events took place in schools and in the excellent Turriff Library, and I had great fun speaking to the kids, meeting the festival organisers, and scoffing cake.

It’s always nice to meet people who are as passionate about children’s books as I am, and Marion and the other organisers of the festival were definitely that. All involved genuinely care about getting kids reading, and long may they continue to receive the funding to do what they do.

While at the festival, I met Alexander Gordon Smith, author of – among other things – the Furnace series. We didn’t get much time to chat, but from the few minutes we had to chat it was clear we have a lot in common, including our love of writing, our fondness of skipping off work to play the PlayStation, and our tendency to carry large, stuffed animals with us at all times…

Back row (L to R) Barry, Gordon. Front row (L to R) A giraffe and a horse

Before I left, we managed to get a photo taken to mark the historic meeting.

Just a quick post tonight to belatedly announce the winner of the signed copy of Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles. I was supposed to randomly select the winner on Tuesday, but … um … I forgot.

Anyway, I now have randomly drawn a winner, using the age-old names in a hat technique, and the winner is Joanne B.

Thanks to all those who commented and took part in the competition. I’ll be running more giveaways soon, so maybe your luck will be better next time.

Right, it’s been a looooong day. Off to put my feet up. Next week I’ll be beginning a month crammed full of events, workshops and a tour, but more details of that in the next post.

It has been a long, bumpy ride, filled with danger, excitement, and some stuff about water pistols, but we made it, loyal readers. We made it to 250 posts.

Being a naturally lazy person, with little or no inherent motivation to do anything that requires any effort whatsoever, getting to post 250 is a big achievement for me. It gives me hope that one day I might reach as many as 260, or even 285 posts! Can you imagine?

But let’s not get carried away. For now, let us enjoy post 250 for what it is – one post more than 249, and one less than 251. Look at it sitting there, all quarter-of-1000-esque in its charm and beauty.

Of course, 250 is a special number anyway. We all know there were 250 Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz (of which 4 didn’t commit suicide on set). There were 250 drafts of the script to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, each one infinitely worse than the one before. And, of course, there are 250 days in a year, if you take away 115 other days first. It really is a special, almost magical number, which is why I feel it must be celebrated.

But how to celebrate? A party? My house isn’t big enough for all of you to come. A special plaque of some kind? No, that costs money, and I’m far too tight to spend any.

So how about a giveaway? Two giveaways, in fact?

THE GREAT 250th POST GIVEAWAY #1

You’ve probably heard about my children’s horror novel, the frankly brilliant Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles. Maybe you already have a copy. But do you have a signed one? Signed and dedicate to YOU? Or to someone else you know? Do you? No? Well then this is the giveaway for you.

One lucky winner (just one, mind) will win a signed and dedicated copy of the book. To enter, you just have to leave a comment on this post, making sure you include your correct email address so I can get in touch with you if you win. The comment can be anything you like, as long as it makes some kind of vague, coherent sense. No single word/single letter comments, please. Say hello. Chat about the weather. Tell me you love me (you don’t ever do that any more). Whatever. Just leave a comment and you’ll be entered into the draw. The winner will be drawn on 27th April.

THE GREAT 250th POST GIVEAWAY #2

But like I said, there can be only one winner of the signed book. For those of you who don’t win (and for the lucky so-and-so who does) I’m offering another book for you to download and enjoy for FREE!

This is one of my early attempts at writing a children’s book. It’s a comedy sci-fi adventure for 9-12 year olds, called Johnny B. Weeyerd and the Cosmic Annihilator. It has everything – aliens, super-powers, purple hot dogs – they’re all in there somewhere, waiting to titilate and excite your eyes. It’s a first draft, so it’s far from perfect, but hopefully it’s enjoyable all the same.

The file is in PDF format, so you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open it, but that comes as standard on most PCs, so you shouldn’t have any problems. You are free to download the ebook, read it, pass it on to your friends, whatever takes your fancy. Try selling it or profiting from it in any way, though, and I swear to the gods I will hunt you down and beat you with a rubber hose. Capiche?

Grab your copy of the ebook by clicking here. You might need to right click and select “Save Target As”, depending on how your browser is set up.

So that’s it for post 250. Get leaving those comments to be in with a chance of winning a copy of Mr Mumbles, and if you read JBW, be sure to let me know what you think.

Caddie watched us, unblinking. She lurked in the shadows, half concealed. I was just able to make out Raggy Maggie’s porcelain head poking out of a pocket on the front of her dress. From here it almost looked like the doll was smiling.

She took a sudden step closer. The shadows fell away and I realised her white dress was stained all over with streaks of blood.

Invisible Fiends: Raggy Maggie – published 5th August 2010. Click the cover to pre-order it now!

I’m all abuzz today, because I’ve come up with a new concept for a trilogy of books. They’re sci-fi horror, and I think the concept is – as we say in Scotland – a stoater. Obviously I’m not going to tell you what it is, but I’m currently working it up into a proper pitch to send to my editor at HarperCollins. Hopefully he’ll see the potential in it.

Before I can get the pitch done, though, I’m going through a brainstorming process to help me generate some ideas for characters, scenes and plot points. The brainstorming process is great fun, as it lets your imagination be completely uninhibited, and you don’t have to worry about what’s good and what’s bad, what makes sense and what doesn’t. It’s all about vomiting ideas out of your head and down onto a piece of paper. Sorting through them and deciding what’s going in and what isn’t, that comes later on.

The working title at the moment is THE LAST DAYS, but that won’t be the title I settle on. I find it easier to come up with a title after the story is written, as you don’t truly know what it’s about until that final word is in place.

Anyway, that’s it for tonight. I’ve got a night class to go and teach.