Diary - February 2006:

Hello,

Well, as ever, the pair of us have been extremely busy. In late autumn, we went off to Germany to promote our books there. We went to Dusseldorf, Cologne, Bremen and Berlin. Paul used to live in Germany and decided to try and give the talks in German. It worked very well - even though it did mean that Chris couldn't understand a single word of what he was saying.

When we last wrote the diary we had just been nominated for a Nestles Children's Book Prize and, shortly before Christmas, we went up to the British Library in London - together with classes of children from all over the country - to find out how we'd done. We were absolutely delighted to receive a Silver Medal for Hugo Pepper, the third in our series of Far-Flung Adventures. Since both Fergus Crane and Corby Flood had already won medals of their own, we were very pleased, because otherwise Hugo might have felt a bit left out!

Around the same time, we were invited to a special Christmas Party at 11 Downing Street. A grand hall upstairs had been transformed into a Winter Wonderland and Chris and I drew for and spoke to loads of children before they went off to meet Father Christmas for their presents. Gordon Brown and his wife, Sarah, came in and spoke to us all - and we also got to meet their young son John and baby Fraser.

I don't know whether any of you saw it, but Jackanory was back on tv and the very first story they decided to do was our Muddle Earth. Unlike the original programme, where an actor sat in a chair and read, the new programme had an actor playing the main part and all sorts of animation and CGI effects. John Sessions was our choice for the narrator, and we thought he was absolutely fantastic. And as for Charlie Rowe, the actor who played Joe, we couldn't have asked for anyone better.

And talking of tv. Congratulations to Jack Henry from Oxford who chose the Edge Chronicles as his specialist subject on Junior Mastermind. Now there are so many books, it's a huge area to research and we thought we did fantastically well. After all, everyone knows that penguins eat krill but how many people know the monogram stitched into the hem of the Most High Academe's robes?

At the moment, we are putting the finishing touches to two pieces of work. The Return of the Emerald Skull is the second Barnaby Grimes novel. It takes place in a lock-up school, a Chinese laundry and on board a haunted ship - and is very scary. Keris is a short tale for our Edge book provisionally called the Lost Barkscrolls. It is about Keris Verginix - daughter of Twig, mother of Rook - and will form the third story in the book of four Edge tales that will also include Cloud Wolf and the Stone Pilot.

We are off to the States again next week for a promotional tour that will include cities as far afield as Portland, New York, Chicago and Atlanta. We'll tell you all about it in the next diary. Until then, keep reading!