Apologies if you've seen this already on Facebook or Twitter - I just wanted to post it on my blog for the record.
The Guardian has been featuring one of the eight nominees for its Children's Fiction prize each week and this week was my turn. It looks great -- though I really ought to send Random House Publicity a new photo, I've got a few better ones now I think. You can check out the features on the other nominees in the list below.
I'm a really bad one for reading emails carefully. I saw the words "make a video" and "answer the quickfire interview" ... and thought they wanted me to make a video answering the quickfire interview.
Well it turns out what they wanted was for me to make a video introducing Shine and then -- separately -- they wanted me to WRITE DOWN my answers to the quickfire interview.
Well, I made the Quickfire Interview video and only afterwards, read the email again. Duh.
Never mind. It was really fun making the video anyway -- and because you geeks always ask, I made it using the webcam of my laptop, propped up on a tall pile of thick books. The sound is pretty good considering I didn't even use a microphone.
Here's the video the Guardian really wanted:
Guardian Weekly Feature on the Children's Fiction Prize Nominees (So Far)
Flora in Love by Natasha Farrant
Phoenix by SF Said
The Dark Wild by Piers Torday
Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
The Lost Gods by Francesca Simon
Shine by Candy Gourlay
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
She is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
If you're a kid and you love reading and you have an opinion about what you read, why don't you join The Guardian's Young Critics Competition? You can enter on your own or as part of a school group. If you win, you get a full set of the 2014 nominee books plus book tokens! Come on, you know you want to join! Find out more