anthonyhorowitz.com

I promised Olivia – my whip-wielding assistant – that I would write a quick blog before next month gets underway and here it is. The clocks went back today and it feels that winter has finally drawn in. And there’s my old winter coat stretched out on the sofa in my office with my old dog stretched out on top of it. The sun is setting and it’s only 4.00pm! As usual, the year has gone past like an express train (not the most brilliant of comparisons but I’ve just stepped off the Eurostar from Paris so trains are very much in my mind). And why was I in Paris? Read on. Although actually, I’m not entirely sure myself.

I went to Paris for a reunion of secret agents who worked for the SOE, the Special Operations Executive in the second world war. I wrote about the SOE a few years ago in an episode of Foyle’s War and developed a huge admiration for them…they were incredibly resourceful and brave. Nowadays, the survivors are extremely old but still as sharp as knives…in their case the Fairbairn-Sykes double-edged commando knife with eight-inch blade that was developed for their use. I listened to a talk by a saboteur who must have been almost ninety but looked thirty years younger. I also met a lady whose job was to “seduce” SOE agents and see if she could get information out of them. If she succeeded, they were sent home. It was bizarre because I actually created such a character when I was writing Foyle…and here she was for real!

While I’m on the subject of TV, next month COLLISION is being shown on ITV, starting on a Monday and ending on a Friday. I’ve mentioned this programme before and here it is again but I’m really proud of it and hope it’ll do well. When you make TV programmes, so much can go wrong. You get the wrong director or the weather’s bad or you run out of money or whatever. But this time everything went perfectly and I honestly think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. You can expect to read quite a bit of it in the month ahead and there are going to be some big posters too. Let’s just hope it pours with rain so people stay in and watch.

And at more or less the same time (I don’t have the exact dates), I’m setting off on my CROCODILE TEARS tour which takes me to Edinburgh and Birmingham before I head back to London and finally – at the end of the month – Dublin. If you’ve ever been to one of my talks, you’ll know that usually I just walk onto the stage and answer questions for an hour. This time, we’re doing it rather differently. It’s going to be more of an interview with clips from STORMBREAKER, COLLISION and FOYLE’S WAR. The interviewer is a journalist/presenter called Paul Blezard who does a brilliant job. He could make a study of thirteenth century paint drying techniques sound interesting. There’ll still be time for questions from the audience – but it makes it all a bit more varied and, more to the point, less work for me.

I will, of course, be signing copies of CT – and the publishers have come up with a special stamp that’s unique to these events. And I can catch up with my family on the way. My son, Nick, is at university in Edinburgh and my mother-in-law lives in Birmingham so maybe they’ll come along and heckle.

Then I’m off to America, which I mentioned in my July blog. The cities have now been chosen and include Boston, Detroit, St Louis, Raleigh, Atlanta and Washington DC. So many flights! I’ve begun to worry about my carbon footprint which may surprise you but I’ve been researching global warming for my next book – the last in the Power of Five series – and the facts do seem to be rather alarming…which is probably the understatement of the millennium. I’ve also joined something called 10:10 which is a rather smart campaign by The Guardian to get everyone to cut their emissions by 10% in the year 2010. Normally I don’t join campaigns. God help me if I become a do-gooder in my old age (actually, He likes do-gooders so He probably will). But it seemed hard to refuse this one. Apart from anything else, I’ve noticed the water getting closer and closer to my little house in Orford. I used to live beside the sea. Now I seem to live in it…at least some of the time.

And here’s something else that I’ve joined. I’ve become a judge for Divine Chocolate who are running a poetry competition. You have to write a poem (which can be rude, funny, sad, serious, whatever) called “If I owned a chocolate company” and the winners will receive large quantities of chocolate, book tokens and a recording of the poem by me. Since I have a stammer and a lisp, this may not be the best part of it, but I’d say otherwise it’s definitely worth a go. It was my friend, Anne Fine, who introduced me to the competition and I have to say I do absolutely love the chocolate and I suppose I ought to mention (doing good again) that it’s a Fair Trade product and so worth supporting. You can find more details on their website:

http://www.divinechocolate.com/news/showNews.news77.aspx

I recently judged a short story competition too. The quality of the writing was very high but I have to say that a lot of the entries were rather depressing. Subjects included suicide, self-hatred, cancer, autism and disability…and those were some of the more cheerful ones. I met the winners at a reception at 10 Downing Street and that was rather depressing too. G. Brown looked worn out and miserable. Not surprising, I suppose, given the bashing he gets in the press. Anyway, if you want my advice, if you do write poems, you’ll find something cheerful to say. But then how could owning a chocolate factory not be fun?

Finally, while I’m away, I’m going to be tweeting again. I joined Twitter last year and twittered or tweeted every day for a while but then I got fed up with it. I thought it was getting a bit naff what with people like Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry even twittering when they tied up their shoelaces. But my American publisher insists that it’s worthwhile and my son Cass is currently on the road in Australia and he may pick up some of my messages so as from today, I’ll be sharing my own trivia with the world once again. If you’re interested, you can follow me on tour.

The next time I write a blog, it’ll be Christmas. In fact, in half the shops in my area, it already is. Sometimes, I’m tempted to throw bricks…

Happy Halloween!

Anthony Horowitz

25th October 2009

This is a picture, my son, Nick, took when I was in Kenya, researching Crocodile Tears. And it's not a long-distance lens! He managed to snap them moments before they attempted to snap him.

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