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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.

Just a few words before I pack my bags and head off to the South of France. I’m going to be there for a month and the original plan was to finish CROCODILE TEARS there in peace and quiet…but as you may know, that’s all changed.

The book is already finished – and in second draft. And the big news is that my publishers in the UK and the USA have decided to release it early. They want it in the shops in the run-up to Xmas which of course (as usual) has put a lot of pressure on me to deliver. The publication date is November 12th. As soon as the book is out, I’m flying to the USA for a ten-city tour which means planes, limousines, hotels, shopping malls, media escorts, sandwiches, signings, miles and miles of freeways, local radio stations and distant branches of Barnes & Noble. Not entirely my idea of fun and always pretty exhausting. The only good bit is meeting the booksellers and chatting to American readers but it’s always such a rush that in the end it just becomes a blur.

Anyway, enough complaining. The main thing is that (I think) the book has really worked. It’s probably the most violent and action-packed AR yet – though that may change once my various editors get their hands on it. The violence, I mean. My favourite things in it are a greenhouse full of poisonous plants, a nasty journalist, a climax that really does throw everything you could possibly imagine at the page and a last chapter which I actually planned about five years ago.

I’m trying not to give too much away.

Now I’m in that strange, nervy time between finishing a book and waiting to see it in the shops. Whenever I get to the last word, I always think that it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. Then the doubts set in. By the time publication day arrives, I’m convinced it’s no good at all. But you know what I’ve always said. Each book has got to be better than the one before and that, at least, is what I’ve tried to do with CT.

Incidentally, the early publication of CT means that my collection of horror stories, MORE BLOODY HOROWITZ won’t now appear until 2010. So you’ll have to wait a little longer to find out what happens to Darren Shan.

A few other bits and pieces about 2009 so far…

I’ve just got back from an amazing trip to China where I was a guest of Dulwich International College in Shanghai. I’d never been to China before and didn’t think I’d like it as much as I did. It’s all so strange…communist government, capitalist society – this vast region that has only recently connected with the rest of the world. I loved the people I met (very open, very friendly), the incredibly brash and innovative buildings (high point was the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing) and the foreign-ness of it all.

Of course, I was just a dip-my-toe-in-the-water tourist. Maybe you picked up some of my Tweets. The Forbidden City, the terracotta warriors, the Great Wall etc. But the trip was huge fun. My favourite thing – an extraordinary spectacle in a huge square in Xi ‘An. Late at night, thousands of people getting themselves drenched by powerful jets of water spraying out of the ground as classical music boomed all around and multi-coloured spotlights cut through the darkness. Everything was synchronised, the fountains exploding in time to the music. All this in 40 heat! I just loved it. Anyway, here’s a picture of me in the Bird’s Nest. Just for the hell of it…

Anthony Horowitz in China

This summer has also seen the completion of the new series of Foyle’s War. The last time I blogged, I mentioned that it might be the end of the road for Foyle – and I was a little horrified to see the story picked up by the tabloids. So let me say here that no decision has been made and I have no idea if I’ll be writing it next year or not. What matters is that the new series is really, good I think. Really well directed. And interesting stories including the Russians in England, segregation in Hastings and a weird organisation called the British Free Corps (British soldiers in Nazi uniforms). If you live in Suffolk, watch out for a charity screening this October, at the cinema in Aldeburgh. I’ll be there!

We’ve also screened Collision a couple of times. That’ll be in ITV in November or December and I’m really excited about it as it’s so different to anything I’ve ever done. And that’s it. I’m off to Marlborough today for my son’s last day at school (and no more school fees, thank God!). By the way, he’s got a great blog that’s worth checking out: cass for questions is the name. I like it, anyway. I’m spending quite a bit of July in Suffolk, probably working on the book once my editors have savaged it. I’ve got one more TV series to write this year but that’s just about it which is just as well as I’m pretty knackered.

I hope you all have a great summer and for those of you waiting for exam results, fingers crossed (Cass doesn’t seem to fazed…but then he revised extremely hard for at least one afternoon).

Have fun…

Anthony Horowitz

Here’s a quick blog to wish everyone a happy summer holiday with, hopefully, a bit of sunshine (and, of course, a good book…but that goes without saying).

So far I’ve managed a week in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia which might well crop up one day in an Alex Rider novel. It’s a horrible place. Boiling hot but no real sun due to the clouds of sand blowing in from the desert. Too much concrete. And a couple of skyscrapers that could have come straight out of someone’s bad dream. I was there as a journalist to visit a weird “prison for terrorists” where I drank tea with a suicide bomber who had managed to blow himself, and nine other people, apart. Somehow he survived. You can read all about it in the Sunday Telegraph on-line.

Then I went up to the West Coast of Scotland and stayed on a tiny island called Eilean Shona which would also make a good setting for a bad guy in an Alex book…complete with ruined castle, caves and basking sharks. It’s very private. Trespassers could be shot and nobody would know. During my time there I managed to kayak a reasonably impressive 14kms in three hours and swam every morning in water which must have been about zero degrees. My voice is now very high.

I’m writing this back in London and here’s what I’m doing for the rest of the summer…

COLLISION is a five-part TV series which I’ve written for ITV and which will be shot this September. It’s going to feature the largest road accident ever filmed and I’ve asked the producer (ie my wife) if I can feature as one of the victims. We’ll see.

NECROPOLIS is now being printed and it’s a bit of a monster at 105,000 words. It was fairly exhausting to write and when it was finished I decided it wasn’t good enough and wrote the whole thing again. It comes out in October and it looks as if I’ll be in Manchester, Leeds and York promoting it.

FOYLE’S WAR is returning. This is my other TV series which got cancelled last year by some idiot at ITV but which is being brought back “by public demand”. More murder mysteries set during the second world war.

HORROR STORIES. There’s another set on the way. My publishers have come up with a great idea for the look of the book which will be like nothing you’ve ever seen before, but so far we haven’t got a title. Their suggestion: DIAL H FOR HORROR. But that’s a bit lame. I wanted to call it: AAAAGH! At least it would come first on any alphabetical list. But perhaps you can do better. Twelve stories incuding a psychopathic massage chair, a lethal TV reality game show, a bloody French exchange, the murder of Darren Shan and a snake in a bed. Do send in any thoughts!

And ALEX 8…

I’ve had second thoughts about telling Yassen’s story, which was going to be the subject of this book. I’m thinking of leaving that to number nine. Instead, I’ve got the beginnings of an idea set partly in the UK and partly in Africa. Alex hasn’t been there yet. But it’s very early days. I plan to start writing in October/November for delivery in spring 2009. The challenge is always the same. How to make the book better than the last one. Only two more Alex Riders after this one and that’s it!

Finally, a goodbye to Horowitz HQ. This site has been run for the past three years by my assistant, Cat Taylor, who- for her own, mad reasons – has decided to leave. She says that working for me is something she will never forget…at least, that’s what her therapist tells her. But the website will continue. And I will still look in from time to time and answer questions as they arise.

That’s it. Have a fantastic summer.

Anthony Horowitz