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I haven’t put a blog on the site for a while and as usual I’m sorry – but as usual I’ve got an excuse. Alex Rider 8 – or CROCODILE TEARS as it now officially and definitely called.

I was actually really happy with the title when I thought it up because it fits the book exactly, it hasn’t been used by anyone else (as far as I know) and it somehow fitted in really well with the other seven books. The problem started when a guy at Walker Books (no names…but he’s tall and smooth-looking and he’s a published author himself, his initials are MS and I’m going to do for him in my next book) complained that he thought the title was “soft”. He wanted something like “death” or “bullet” or “hell” in the title and he was worried that boys would be put off a book that had “tears” on the front cover.

He also said that nobody knew what “crocodile tears” meant. Is this true? Curiously, my American publisher had never heard of the phrase either but then he thinks Tooting Common is the name of an Egyptian pharaoh. Anyway, here is the first page of CROCODILE TEARS as it will appear in its entirety:

 

crocodile tears: fake or hypocritical tears. From the belief that crocodiles will pretend to cry in order to attract their victims…and will then cry for real as they devour them.

So that’s sorted that out.

The book does have crocodiles in it, by the way. Part of it takes place in Kenya which is where I happened to be last Christmas. I spent five very happy days in Larsen’s Camp in the Samburu National Reserve and you’ll find a version of it in the new book. I also saw loads of crocodiles out there – in fact I’m going to paste another photo that I took myself into this blog to show you just how close I got. I should warn you (I’m trying not to give too much away) that Alex gets a lot closer.

 

 

 

Not bad – eh? Whenever I look at this picture, I find myself thinking about my sons.

Anyway, now to explain the heading of this blog. I’ve just got back from an amazing five-day visit to Scotland. The first part of it was organised by the Scottish Book Trust and I found myself talking to around 10,000 Scottish kids live on the net. I was interviewed a couple of times – by The Scotsman (the main paper in Scotland for all those south of the border) and by a radio show called The Book Cafe. All good publicity for Necropolis which came out in paperback last week.

Then I went up Arthur’s Seat with my wife, which was fun. I had dinner with my son, Nick (he’s studying Chinese at Edinburgh University).

But the best part of the trip was the train journey from Edinburgh to Aberdeen – which was so beautiful (passing through the Cairngorm National Park) that I didn’t do any work as I’d planned but just gazed out of the window. I then killed a day in Inverness before meeting a brilliant man called Kenny Dempster who’s a civil engineer with Scottish and Southern energy and who drove me up to the Monar Dam which is what you can really see behind me in the photograph.

CROCODILE TEARS ends with a huge climax at a dam in Kenya and I needed to examine one at close quarters – and I couldn’t get any closer than this. Kenny showed he how the whole thing worked and I have to say that as I clambered around it the whole last chapter of the book came tumbling into my head. That’s why I so love visiting the places I write about. Somehow the truth is always more exciting than anything I could make up…or perhaps I should say that the truth underpins the fantasy and makes it more believable. Anyway, I wish I could describe Glen Strathfarrar in the book because it was also awesome and beautiful with red deer everywhere and snow still visible on the mountain peaks, even in May.

I wish I could also describe the slice of lemon cake that I had at the cafe just outside Beauly on the way back as that was pretty nice too. But we don’t do lemon cake in Alex Rider books. And the dam, as I have explained, is in Kenya.

Progress on the book? My computer is telling me 69,455 words – and I reckon it’s going to be finished at around 90,000…so I’m nearly there. I’ve been really worried about this adventure. After all, it’s the eighth in the series and I was beginning to wonder if I could invent any more chases, gadgets, fights, whatever. But I say for sure that this book has more action than any of the others. It’s probably the most violent (until my publishers get their hands on it). And it has the single most frightening chapter I’ve ever written. As a matter of fact, I finished that today.

Other news…

I’m off to Hay-on-Wye tomorrow for the book festival, which is always fun. When it rains, the entire festival turns into a huge bog. Writers have been known to get sucked in, never to be seen again. We also start shooting the third, and possibly the last episode of Foyle’s War tomorrow. TV drama is getting more and more difficult as nobody has enough money to make it any more…but if this is the end of the series, at least we’re finishing on a high.

And then I have a load of trips. China, Greece, America…all for different reasons. I’ll explain more when I come back.

In the meantime, have you noticed my page on TWITTER? I really enjoy twittering as it’s so short and easy and I can do it wherever I happen to be, using my iPhone. I try to make it amusing. Anyway, do take a look at my page or whatever it is you call it, if you want to stay up to date.

Enjoy the good weather. Good luck to all of you doing GCSEs or A-levels. I hope you’re doing more revision than my son, Cass.

May 2009

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I don’t know about you, but for me, the year has been disappearing faster than the finger food at a cannibal’s picnic. I mention cannibals because I’ve just finished editing my new series of horror stories…but we’ll get to that in a minute.

First of all, I’ve been all over the planet since January, starting with the last days of my holiday in Kenya…which is where, by coincidence, Alex Rider is also heading.

I started on the wonderful island of Lamu (no cars, just donkeys and amazing beaches, turtles, beautiful old dows and much too much to drink). Then I went on two safaris. The first was brilliant. I saw cheetahs stalking their prey, herds of elephants, giraffes…and I got so close to crocodiles that I could have taken the cover photograph for my new book. The second safari was less good. I saw lots of flies. Anyway, I wrote all about it for the Mail on Sunday. Some of you may have seen the piece.

I hadn’t been home for a week before I was off to Cairo for a book fair organised by the British Council. My recent photo competition showed me standing in front of the famous pyramids on what was an unforgettable visit. I arrived at first light, half an hour before they opened – but for some reason I was still allowed in. For the next forty minutes I was there almost entirely on my own. Just me, my guide -  and the pyramids! He showed me into some tombs far underground. I saw statues and paintings thousands of years old…an entire boat that had once sailed before Christ was even born. If I had hairs on the back of my neck, they would certainly have risen. Actually, maybe I do have hairs on the back of my neck. I’ve never looked.

After Egypt, a couple of weeks at home, then off skiing in Switzerland. (By the way, if you’re thinking that I don’t seem to have been doing much work, my notebooks and computer come with me everywhere). I’m not a great skier but this year the conditions were perfect. Fresh snow, loads of sunshine and even though it was half term, not too many crowds. You may have noticed that I’ve opened an account with TWITTER – it’s shorter than these blogs and more immediate. I filed quite a few reports from the slopes.

Two days after Switzerland, it was another book fair, this time in Dubai – which will feature strongly in the fifth volume of the POWER OF FIVE series. It’s a bizarre place, a major city which doesn’t seem to have any sensible reason to exist, certainly not in its desert setting. The oil has run out. The tourists are running away. The whole place could all too soon be run down. I’ve got great ideas for a nightmare sequence to be set there.

That said, the festival was a lot of fun. The writers were all treated like royalty and I liked hanging out with so many famous authors, some of them (including an incredibly foul-mouthed but much loved children’s writer) were nothing like I’d imagined them. Notice how discreet I’m being. No names. “What goes on tour, stays on my tour,” as my son put it.

Five days in Dubai, then straight back to Orford, in Suffolk – which is where I’m writing this now. I may have mentioned this before, but Orford is quite simply the most beautiful place in the world. There’s a great expanse of silver water, the River Alde, right outside my window. A scattering of boats. Gulls and cormorants wheeling overhead. It’s a miracle really I get any work down at all. I could just stare out of the window all day.

But I have been hard at work.

This week I visited the John Innes Centre in Norwich which is one of the main centres for the study of genetically modified crops. I got shown round the whole place, given lunch (including their own Norwich Bio Centre Blend coffee…modified for a better taste?) and, best of all, I was able to tell them the plot of CROCODILE TEARS and it works!!! It’s really important to me that the Alex Rider books should be based on scientific fact. I wonder if my readers know anything about GM crops? Well, they will soon…

After that, it was off to the nuclear power plant, Sizewell B, which is just up the coast from Orford. The people there really were incredibly kind, particularly as I’d told them that I planned to blow up a power station in the new book. They kitted me out in safety helmet and goggles and showed me round…not everywhere of course. But I did see the vast turbines in the turbine hall, and the very deadly, spent fuel sitting in a bright blue swimming pool in the storage chamber. They wouldn’t let me anywhere near the reactor though.

And it turns out that it’s much harder to blow up a power station that I had originally thought. There are so many safety measures that you can’t even walk down a staircase unless you’re holding the rail. The reactor is contained in a building with concrete, steel-reinforced walls 1.3 metres thick. And just to be on the safe side, that building is in another building so even if there was an explosion nobody would really notice.

This is all extremely annoying. My idea – a cleaner with a floor polisher packed with high explosive – has gone out of the window. Of course, there are no windows at Sizewell B. I’ll have to think again.

Which brings me back to where I began.

I’m five chapters in to CROCODILE TEARS and so far I think it’s going well. At least, I’m enjoying writing it which is always a good sign. I’ve finished the entire Scottish sequence (set around Loch Lochy) and now I’m back in London.

At the same time, I’ve completely finished my next book, out on Halloween and now named: MORE BLOODY HOROWITZ. I hope you like the title. It was dreamed up by my eighteen-year-old son, Cass. Walker Books showed me the cover last week and I think it looks great. Expect cannibals, a deadly game show, a robotic nanny that goes out of control, a haunted Sat Nav system…and more.

Now I’m off to Aldeburgh with Dreary (the dog). The best fish and chips in England.

Suffolk – March 6^th 2009

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Christmas seems to have come tearing round the corner at around 100mph and it couldn’t come soon enough for me. Reaching the end of the year has completely exhausted me with tons of work including two new scripts for FOYLE’S WAR, being shot next February, plus original short stories for the New Statesman (PRISONER 2412 – you can find it in the Christmas edition) and the Sunday Times (THE OLD MAN OF N3, a horror story, it’ll appear in January), watching cuts of the 2009 TV series, COLLISION and working on the new Alex…about which, more in a moment.

OLD MAN OF N3, a rather grim tale about an MP3 player and the misery of getting old, will probably appear in my new collection of horror stories appearing on Halloween, 2009 which will be either my 35^th or my 36^th published book. COLLISION is an epic, five-part series based on a multiple pile-up on the A12 and I honestly think it’s the best work for television that I’ve done with a fantastic cast headed up by the brilliant Douglas Henshall (from Primeval) and featuring one of the most expensive car crashes ever filmed for TV. Oh…and can I mention that I’ve got a short play called A HANDBAG which will be doing the rounds as part of the National Theatres “Connections” programme next year? Do look out for it!

I was really happy that NECROPOLIS did well this summer and thanks to everyone who went out and bought it…around 190,000 of you, or so I’m told. Lots of people thought it was the best one in the series so far and I’m looking forward now to the fifth volume which will finish the adventure as each one of the five gatekeepers travels across the world to meet one final time…with civilisation crumbling all around them. Even I have no idea when the book will be finished but as it will probably be about 200,000 words long and will include a series of fairly epic battles, it could be a few years.

The important thing is to get on with Alex 8 and the good news is that the plot is more or less bolted down and, better still, I finally have a title and that’s the whole point of this brief Christmas message. Exactly one week from now I’ll be in Kenya, hopefully relaxing in the sun, but also searching out some of the locations – jungle, the villain’s island hideaway and a giant dam – because that’s where the second half of the book takes place. As for the title, I’ve been struggling for the last six months, searching for something short and snappy (quite literally as it turns out) and I’ve even been offering money when I’ve been on school visits although sadly with no success. 

Recently inspiration struck and finally, finally I have a title which I have actually concealed inside this blog and anyone who has read THE SHORTEST HORROR STORY EVER WRITTEN (More Horowitz Horror) will know how to find it.

So – I hope you like it and I wish everyone a fantastic Christmas and a prosperous, healthy New Year.

 

Anthony Horowitz

December 2008

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