Diary - December 2007:

Hello,

It's been a busy couple of months. As well as working on the third Barnaby Grimes book and the tenth and final Edge Chronicle, we've also been touring round parts of the country, meeting our readers and talking about our books. Lots of you had already finished the Lost Barkscrolls and it was great to hear how much you'd enjoyed it.

We visited Bishop's Stortford, Northampton, Dudley and Halesowen on a recent trip. A big thank you to all of you who turned up at our events. We also appeared at the first Bath Literary Festival. Our session was on the Sunday morning and we weren't expecting that much of a crowd, but 200 of you turned up and we had a fantastic time. I'm sure that this festival is going to go from strength to strength, so I'd recommend checking it out next year. We also took part in the Cheltenham Festival, where we had a lovely time meeting fans, old and new.

You may have noticed a 'new' book in the shops and libraries. It's a big fat tome called The Twig Trilogy, and is a bind-up of the first three books in the series: Beyond the Deepwoods, Stormchaser and Midnight over Sanctaphrax. With its new cover, it's looking very smart.

It seems so long ago that work started work on the Edge Chronicles, that Paul checked his diaries to see just when it was. The first conversations about the world that became the Edge took place in 1995 - so over ten years ago, and before some of our younger readers were even born. The series has grown and grown since then. Now, there are various threads we need to tie up. What happened to old Sanctaphrax? Was Twig alive or dead when the caterbird returned him to Riverrise, and what did really happen to Cloud Wolf when he disappeared into the White Storm? And what is under the jutting rock that forms the Edge? All will be revealed in Book 10. Just as medieval sailors believed that the Earth was flat, so Edge characters had their own beliefs. They thought that anyone who fell from the Edge would drop for ever. But three hundred years later, these assumptions are being questioned, and Descenders are exploring the depths to find out once and for all what lies down there...

By the way, we have a provisional title for the book. It might not end up the final title, but we thought that you on the fans' website should be the first to hear what we're thinking. The title is: The Immortals. It would be interesting to hear what that conjures up for you... At the moment, our main character - Nate Quarter - is in Hive, the second of the three great cities that have sprung up in the Deepwoods. Some of the things that have been happening to him there have surprised even us!

The second Barnaby Grimes book - Return of the Emerald Skull - will be out at the beginning of January. It is a dark tale in which a band of schoolboys prepare to sacrifice their teachers... We've been working on the third book as well, which will be out in July. It's called Legion of the Dead, and in it our hero Barnaby Grimes is confronted by his grimmest challenge yet.

Better return to Hive now, and find out what Nate's been up to...

Keep reading!