Back from England!

Lo, I have returned to the snowy shores of Canadia (as one of my hosts on my last night in the UK jokingly called it), tired but happy. It was a busy week packed with school visits, store events, and meetings with booksellers and sales reps, not to mention plenty of time in planes, trains and automobiles getting from one point to another.

But the folks at Orchard Books took excellent care of me, and the schoolchildren and loyal readers who attended my events in Fleetwood (check out the amazing Rossall School where I did my first school visit -- Hogwarts, eat your heart out!), Benton Park High School in Leeds, Newcastle's Royal Grammar School and the rather nifty Cramlington Learning Village, and London's Muswell Hill were all wonderfully attentive and charming.

I was also pleased to meet several folks I'd been chatting with online, some (like davidbrider and alawston) long before I was published, and also spent a lovely final evening with the Bradnam family in East Croydon, who made me very welcome.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and would gladly do it again! Though not perhaps for another year or so...

On one of my last couple of days there, I did a special interview with Orchard Books answering questions posed by readers on Twitter, such as "Which author inspired you the most?" and "Are the characters of Knife, Rebel and Arrow based on any real people?" You can see the answers here ( under the cut )

And I also came back with glorious swag, including some books for my boys, and an especially nifty little something you can see demonstrated in this video ( right here )

Now I get to spend the rest of February researching and preparing to write Swift -- my bedside table is piled high with books on Cornwall right now. I've already learned some quite interesting things about the faery legends of that area that are making me excited to start this new chapter in the series!