No fooling, it’s CRAWLERS LAUNCH DAY.

I’ve just checked my work journals. I first started putting the ideas together in July 2007 and here we are at last: boxes of Crawlers will (I hope!) be being unpacked in bookshops all over the UK as I’m typing this. It’s a very weird feeling. This might be my third time at this ‘being published’ caper, but I’m not getting used to it at all. 😀

Several things. First, this week on Trapped By Monsters I’ve posted a couple of pieces on the subject of how to get published. Click here for Part One, and here for Part Two.

Second, from today the excellent Bookzone4Boys is running an entire month of Horror themed posts – and I’m honoured and thrilled to say that the start of these proceedings is marked with a brand new interview with, er, me. 😉

Third, if you have a website and you’re up for supporting Crawlers this way, RHCB have produced an embeddable Flash widget with the first thirteen pages of the book. If you press the ‘+’ button, you’ll see that all sorts of colours are available, from bilious green, urgent orange and pustulent purple to my own traditional festive BLACK. Click the link to check it out.

Finally, here’s something I’ve been saving for you. I’d like to celebrate the launch of this, the latest of my mutant offspring to wriggle from my skull and wallop off into the world, in what seems to me to be the only appropriate way — namely, with a video clip of some real-life mysterious and horrifying creatures skulking and pulsating in a sewer.

If this video makes you feel nervous or nauseous — and if you don’t, secretly or otherwise, quite like being made to feel that way once in a while — then I should say right now that maybe Crawlers isn’t for you. For anyone else, Happy Reading! HEE HEE HEE!

My first finished copies of Crawlers have now arrived. The book is real, and it’s waiting in warehouses to be dispatched to bookshops and libraries and readers everywhere. One would think that I would be ready for this: after all, it’s taken me two years of work to get to this moment – but no. Over the last few days since the books got here I’ve been nervous as hell.

The early reviews for Crawlers have been unanimously positive. More importantly, I’m not going to war or having a baby or undergoing major surgery: I’m launching a book, not flying to Mars or being fired out of a cannon. But telling myself those things makes no difference. I’m fretting.

The big question for me is: What Will Young Readers Think? I’ve done my best: I’ve written the best book I possibly can. But this is a book for young people, so until some young people have got hold of it and read it and told me what they think, everything is up in the air.

Today I gave a talk at Peterborough Central Library, to a fantastic group of around 80 students from various schools in the area. My hands were shaking a bit; I babbled (yes, even more than usual) and a couple of times I had to remind myself to stop talking and breathe in! But the group listened to me with impeccable attention – especially during the readings – and I think the whole thing went well. Here’s a photo from afterwards with the biggest of the school groups. In the back row beside me you can (just!) see Bali Rai and Dave Shelton, two awesome authors also published by Random House Children’s Books.

I can tell you, there’s nothing like a roomful of people looking up at you expectantly to snap you out of worrying about stuff. I’ve got another talk to give tomorrow. Bring it on. 😀

To Shiplake College near Henley-on-Thames today, for a fine Q&A session with a group from the school’s Years 7 and 9. Here’s a pic of me reading from Crawlers in what looks like a restrained and low-key manner.

But of course that impression would be entirely false, because as always…

…I seemed to spend most of the talk waving my arms about like a black-clad, bald baboon. ;D

Well, shots like this are a traditional part of my News Pages, so I guess it’s only appropriate to start this one off in the way that it’s probably going to go on!

My thanks to everyone I met at Shiplake for their warm welcome.

Check out this latest review of Crawlers, by Marcus Gipps. Disclosure time: Marcus is an old friend from my bookselling days – but as you’ll see, that’s no guarantee he’ll pull his punches when it comes to reviewing me!

For me, creating characters is the hardest thing about writing: monsters and action are a joy to write, but characterisation makes blood well out of my eyeballs. So I’m especially thrilled by what Marcus said about the characters in Crawlers.

In other news, the serialization this week of the opening scene of the book on Trapped By Monsters and the Tim News Page seems to be going great guns, particularly on my Facebook. SNEE HEE HEE!

I am grinning like a fool after some excellent events for World Book Day 2010.

Here I am above doing my stuff yesterday at The Oakwood School in Surrey, where I spoke to three great groups from the school’s Year 7, Year 9 and Year 11. [Particular thanks to Aaron for his wonderfully detailed questions about The Black Tattoo.] Then today I was at CLR James Library in my home borough of Hackney, for a fine Q&A session with a sparkling group of Year 5s and 6s (literally sparkling, in the case of the young lady who wore her fairy crown to the talk) from Holy Trinity Primary School. All four sessions were an absolute delight. My thanks and best wishes to everyone I met and spoke to.

Sam here. Welcome to the Crawlers News Page. From now on this is where you’ll be able to find the latest about what I’m up to – or it will be, once this site is officially launched! ;D

Before that happens, as a way of winding things up on my previous blog, I’m going to serialize the opening scene of Crawlers over there, together with some astonishing visuals by Malcolm Harrison, the artist behind this wonderfully sinister image:

But if you’re reading this, you don’t have to wait! Just head over to the Extract Page of this site, and check the whole thing out for yourself right now! In fact why not click around all over the place, make yourself at home – and then tell me what you think of the site on the brand new Crawlers Guestbook.

Thanks for being in at the start of this thing. I’m very excited! 😀

All best,

Sam