Quite a few new reviews of THE 13TH HORSEMAN have gone online in the past few days, so I thought I’d collect them all here for you to take a look at. I’m happy to report they’re all flippin’ lovely. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed the book so far!

“With this new book Barry is very much staking a claim as one of the top authors writing for the 10+ age group today” – Book Zone for Boys

“The three horsemen of the apocalypse, War, Famine and Pestilence, are brilliant characters. By the end I adored all of them” – My Book Journey

“I have enjoyed this book incredibly and would recommend it to anyone who loves a humorous adventure story.” – Big Book Little Book

“If a book can make a trip to Birmingham from Brighton at half 8 on a Friday night bearable, you know you’re onto a winner.” – Emotionally Fourteen

“It’s such a great read and the pages turn themselves as you’re plunging into a world of Armageddon, danger and fun!” – Books and Writers JNR

And finally for now, author Edward Crane left a review on my Facebook page. You might have to scroll down a bit to read it. Be sure to Like the page while you’re there…

“The 13th Horseman is a truly original book, with brilliantly vivid characters, beautifully imagined scenarios, exciting action sequences, and truly comical dialogue. It is not a book to be missed.” – My Facebook Page

Don’t forget, there’s still time for you to win a signed copy of the book. There are eleven in total up for grabs – one over at Goodreads, and ten via The Phoenix Comic website. Also, you can win some promo stuff by posting a comment on this post on the blog. Good luck!

For the next fortnight I’ll be touring the country, bigging up my new book, THE 13TH HORSEMAN, to anyone who’ll listen. This week I got the chance to do some warm-up events at three schools here in Scotland. The first two events took place in East Ayrshire on Tuesday. They were great fun, and I really enjoyed myself.

But I want to talk for a bit about my visit to St John’s RC Primary in Edinburgh on Wednesday, because it’d definitely a contender for my favourite school ever.

I first encountered some of the pupils from St John’s when they came to see me at the Scottish Book Trust HQ in 2010. I was doing my first ever promotional events for MR MUMBLES, and it feels like a lifetime ago.

Last October I visited the school in person, when I was helping Jack and Jim from the National Literacy Trust on their epic fundraising run, and I was blown away by how much the kids there knew about my books. They were all really keen, and some of them had even drawn me pictures of the villains from the series. I came away from the event grinning from ear to ear, thinking “they won’t come much better than that.”

Fast forward four months and St John’s has only gone and proved me wrong. I was invited back to run two events – one for the lower half of the school, and one for the upper half. The lower half took in pupils from age 5 to 7, and we worked together to create a story on a big flipchart. It was noisy and manic, and the resulting story – about a bra-wearing monkey being accosted by skeletons – was bordering on the surreal, but that’s what made it fun.

After this event I visited a class that may well have contained my biggest fans in the world. As I walked in I was met by a word-perfect rendition of Caddie’s “Caddie Caddie Ha-Ha” rhyme from RAGGY MAGGIE sung by the whole class. Then they all lined up to gets books signed, and virtually everyone in the class had a stack of books for me to scrawl my name on.

Lots of the kids in the class had drawn their own Invisible Fiends inspired pictures, and some gave me them to take away with me. Look, see for yourself…

Pretty cool, huh?

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! Because that one in the middle isn’t just a picture. Oh no siree Bob. It’s…

Wait for it.

A SPIN-OFF STORY!

Rhiannon Magill has written a short story to go between THE BEAST and the final book in the series, THE DARKEST CORNERS. In the story Kyle and Ameena come face to face with an imaginary friend called Screecher, who combines the worst of everything they’ve fought so far. It’s a great little story, featuring cameo appearances from Doc Mortis and I.C., the boy Kyle saves from Doc’s hospital.

Rhiannon has really captured the spirit of the books, right down to the bickering between Kyle and Ameena. It’s a great piece of work, and I reckon that one day Rhiannon may well be writing books of her own.

The second event was a bit frantic, as I was trying out bits of my 13TH HORSEMAN talk and mixing it in with some stuff about the final Invisible Fiends book. Some of the pupils joined me at the front and became Horsemen of the Apocalypse, acting along as I read out a section of the story. I then read a sneaky little extract from THE DARKEST CORNERS, answered a load of questions, then I had to say goodbye and head home.

A great day, and the artwork I took away with me will now take pride of place in my office at home, along with Rhiannon’s story.

Oh, before I left I told the pupils how they could win a chance to become a character in the final Invisible Fiends book. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you, too.

Just not tonight…

A while back I asked on Twitter what people would like to see more of here on my blog. A few people said they’d like to see some reviews of books I’ve enjoyed. I already do write some reviews over at The Phantom Zone, but there are a lot of books I read which don’t necessarily fit on that site, so I thought maybe posting some here might be a good idea after all.

First up it’s Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe, which the lovely people at Bloomsbury sent me. I think this is the tie-in edition to go alongside the new film from Aardman, but I’m not 100% certain on that. A better man would do a bit of research and find out, thereby delivering a more informed review, but I’m not that man.

The plot, for what there is of it, involves some pirates – led by perhaps the greatest pirate of them all, the Pirate Captain, who board a ship they believe to be full of gold, only to discover it is full of scientists and monkeys instead. Chief among the scientist is none other than Charles Darwin, author of On the Origin of the Species.

When the pirates encounter Darwin, though, he has not yet written his world-changing book, and is instead focusing his attention of shaving monkeys, dressing them up in suits and monocles and teaching them to use flashcards to communicate. His hope is to create a “Man-Panzee” which he intends to show off in scientific circles, thereby making him more popular with women.

Unfortunately for Darwin, the evil Bishop of Oxford has kidnapped his brother, and is threatening to kill him if Darwin attempts to display his Man-Panzee, Mr Bobo. The bold Pirate Captain agrees to help rescue Darwin’s brother, and so begins their latest adventure.

That’s about it, story-wise, but this isn’t a book where plot is all that important. It’s a book that dedicates itself wholly to making the reader laugh, and make me laugh it did. The jokes come thick and fast, and I found myself smiling at every page, and laughing aloud at lots of them. It’s mostly silly, often surreal humour, and some of the jokes are older than I am, but Defoe writes with such apparent joy and enthusiasm that you find yourself laughing anyway.

Even bits that shouldn’t be funny, like Darwin’s love interest being killed by a cannonball, or John Merrick – The Elephant Man – singing a ditty about his unfortunate medical condition while simultaneously dancing a jig, leave you giggling.

From the overblown chapter headings which bear no relation to the events in the chapters themselves, to the utterly sincere (and usually very informative) footnotes dotted throughout the book*, P!IAAWS works hard to be entertaining, and the hard work pays off. I don’t remember the last book I read that made me laugh this much, and I’ll be setting sail to the nearest bookshop this week to pick up some of the other titles in the series. AAARRR!

Here’s a trailer for the film, which promises to be just as funny as the book.

*Look, I can do interesting footnotes, too! Jonny Duddle, who drew the covers for the Invisible Fiends books, was one of the artists involved in designing the look of the film for Aardman. So there.

It’s the 15th of February, and what does that mean? Yes it’s the day after Valentine’s Day, but that’s not what I mean. It has been four years since I wrote my first post on this here website. Look, here it is here.

A lot has changed since then. I’m older for one. And fatter for another. I have 100% more children than I had back then, too. I also have an infinite number more books out now, because back then I didn’t have a single piece of published fiction to my name.

Now, four years later, I’m putting the finishing touches to my final Invisible Fiends book (more on that at a later date) and my first standalone novel, The 13th Horseman is about to be published. In fact today I received my advance copies of the book, and it’s looking absolutely stunning. The lettering is all shiny an’ that, and my name is no longer tucked away in tiny letters at the bottom of the cover.

Prizes do not come bigger than this. Very often.

To celebrate the blog’s fourth birthday, I’m giving you the chance to get your hands on an exclusive The 13th Horseman postcard which will contain a message handwritten by me, along with an “I AM 4″ badge identical to the one Pestilence gives Drake in the book, and which you can see right there on the front cover.

To enter, just leave a comment below. 10 winners will be chosen at random on 29th February 2012, so be sure to leave your email address when you’re leaving your comment, or I won’t be able to get in touch with you. Alternatively, you can comment using the Facebook option thingy and I can contact you through there. The competition is open to anyone from anywhere in the world. Or any other world if you cover the postage.

Good luck!

Just a quick post to let you know about two chances to win signed copies of THE 13TH HORSEMAN, my new comedy fantasy novel from HarperCollins.

The first competition is open to Goodreads members only, but as it’s free and painless to create a Goodreads account, there’s nothing to stop you becoming a member if you aren’t already. To enter, just click the “Enter to Win” button below.

The second competition is open to everyone, and is being run in conjuction with The Phoenix Comic. You can find details of what you have to do to enter on this page. There seems to be a problem with the email address listed on the page at the moment, but it should be fixed soon. If you get an error message when you send the email, leave it 24 hours and try again and all should be working.

Don’t forget you can follow the build-up to The 13th Horseman story over at the Diary of the Apocalypse, which is running right up until publication day on March 1st.

Tomorrow (Sat 4th February) is National Libraries Day, a day when people up and down the country are being urged to get down to their local library and be reminded of just how flippin’ brilliant it is.

Because libraries are brilliant, and right now they really need your help, with countless branches being closed across the UK, and hundreds of library staff losing their jobs. National Libraries Day is a day when book lovers everywhere can stand up and show how much they value the services their local library – and libraries in general – provide.

But I’m not going to dwell too much on the politics of it all. Other people are much more qualified to do that than I am. (If you’re interested, though, it’s well worth checking out the blog of Alan Gibbons, a leading library campaigner and fab author to boot). What I’m going to talk about is what my first local library meant to me.

Caol Library was – and thankfully still is – a small but well-stocked building attached to Caol Primary School near Fort William, Scotland. Growing up I went to Caol School, and once a week we’d go to the library to choose a book. Even then, aged 5,  I considered books to be magical things. Walking into a library or bookshop always made my heart beat a little faster and my head race as I imagined the countless possibilities sitting spine-out on those shelves. The visit to Caol Library would always be the highlight of my school week.

I can still remember the smell of it – it was a comforting smell, a smell that said “here be fun and awe and terror and wonder. And some Mills & Boon, but ignore those”. From the moment you walked in the door it was a mild-mannered and oh-so-polite assault on your senses. The books, so many different colours, so many different sizes, so many different shapes. They were lined up neatly on shelves, spread out across tables, stacked on the desk patiently waiting to be checked back in.

And the silence! Oh, the glorious silence. I was never a fan of a noisy, rowdy classroom, and we were all under strict instructions to behave ourselves in the library. Amazingly, everyone did as they were told, and the thirty minutes we spent in near silence as we picked our books felt like a special time, when the world had been put on pause while I browsed through other worlds I might wish to visit.

Being a small library, there was only one member of staff. Mrs White was the librarian during my first few years at primary school, and then Mrs McAllister took over. Both of them were lovely. Both of them I still remember, long after I’ve forgotten half of the classmates I had at the time. Mrs McAllister let me stamp my own books and put the ticket into my little folder in her impeccably organised filing system. I was allowed to check out my own books! For a book-loving 9 year old, it was like being handed the key to the Universe.

There was also a monster in the store cupboard. I know this because both Mrs White and Mrs McAllister told us so. They would go into the store cupboard to fetch some books and scold the monster for misbehaving, or become locked in battle with it, their head popping around the door frame after a few seconds to assure us they’d soon have things under control.

It’s no longer my local library, but whenever I do go to Caol Library I know the monster is still in there, because the librarians – my librarians – made me believe all those years ago.

Shortly after my first visit with the school I became a regular visitor to the library outwith school hours. I’d spend whole days there sometimes browsing the shelves, reading, chatting to the librarian or just praying for a glimpse of the monster in the cupboard. Other days I’d go in, grab the first book I saw and take it home to devour it in an afternoon.

I estimate I was probably taking out aroud 100 books a year by the time I was 10, and reading dozens more in the library itself. My parents could not possibly have afforded to buy that many books, and so without the library my world would have been a lot smaller, a lot duller, and I doubt I’d be doing the job I do today.

A world without libraries – without luxurious silences, Mrs McAllisters and monsters in the store cupboards – would be a world with a little less magic floating around in it. I don’t know about you, but I think we need as much magic these days as we can get.

Nostalgia and magic aside, libraries are also a vital resource to so many communities, acting as everything from a social gathering place to an informal advice centre. I read a quote recently that said if you ask Google a question it will help you find a million answers. If you ask a librarian the same question, she (or he) will help you find one, but it’ll be the right one.

So whatever you’ve got planned tomorrow, make time to go visit your nearest library. If you’re not a member, sign up. If you are a member, bring a friend with you who isn’t. Browse the shelves. Chat to the librarians. Get to know the place, and in no time at all you’ll love it, and you’ll be doing your bit to help libraries stay open and stay around.

And when you’re there, if you happen to come across the store room and notice that the door is ever so slightly ajar, whatever you do don’t go inside…

For more information on National Libraries Day, check out the official website.

Another day, another new website to tell you all about. Pestilence – one of the Horseman of the Apocalype and a major player in my upcoming novel THE 13TH HORSEMAN – has started keeping a diary, which I’m publishing online without his knowledge or consent. I’ll continue to publish his diary entries right up until the book’s publication on March 1st, and maybe even beyond.

If you want to find out what Famine has eaten in the past 24 hours, uncover new and exciting rashes, or just get the lowdown on what it’s like to be one of the Four Horsemen, then check out the Diary of the Apocalypse at The13thHorseman.com.

As any writer who does events in schools will tell you, one of the most common questions we get asked is “Where do your ideas come from?”. There are as many answers to that question as there are writers in the world, but I thought I’d share the story of where my most recent idea came from. I can’t tell you the idea itself yet, because I plan writing this one some day. What I can tell you is that just the very thought of it made me laugh out loud, which is a good sign, I reckon.

Anyway, how it came about…

I was walking the dog. What, didn’t I mention? We have a dog now. Long story. I was walking her along a woodland path in the middle of nowhere. In terms of finding ideas, this is always a good place to start. Sitting at a desk forcing ideas to come can be a difficult, fruitless exercise, so if you’re looking for inspiration I suggest you get outside, or visit somewhere you don’t normally go. Museums and art galleries can be great places to find ideas. Often they’re hiding behind the exhibits, or camouflaged against the paintings, but they’re there if you look hard enough.

But back to my idea. There I was, strolling along the path, the dog running on ahead somewhere. I wasn’t actively looking for an idea. I wasn’t really do anything except walking. But then I saw it – a large shape swooping above me. I ducked instinctively. I made a noise a bit like “Woooawargh!” which I’m grateful no-one else was around to hear. I looked up and realised that what had startled me was just a canopy of leaves moving in the breeze.

I was still ducked down low when I felt the idea creep in. It came slowly at first, as if tentatively feeling its way into my head. If you’ve read any of my INVISIBLE FIENDS books you might remember the tingling Kyle feels at the base of his skull and across his scalp when he uses his abilities. I based that feeling on how I feel when a new idea comes to me. It’s a physical feeling, an electric buzzing through my brain that I couldn’t ignore even if I wanted to.

That’s what happened yesterday. Once the tingling started it quickly grew, bringing the idea in with it. “Wow!” I thought. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if that had been a <TOP SECRET WORD>?” I thought. And it would have been amazin. Although I’d probably now be dead.

I kept walking, and with every step the idea got bigger. What if this happened? What if that happened? Before I knew it I had the general concept worked out, but I didn’t have any idea of a story because I didn’t yet have any characters, and characters are what make stories happen.

A few hundred yards later, I came across this:

Dare you enter the Forest of Implausible Fractions?

I have absolutely no idea what the numbers on that tree represent. I don’t really care. That was enough to steer me in the direction of the next part of my idea. My characters would be school kids. More than that, they would be school kids who really weren’t very good at fractions. I mean, who ever heard of thirteen quarters?

I kept walking and this new idea jumbled around with the original one. My brain felt like it was vibrating now. I had a spring in my step and butterflies were throwing a party in my stomach. I can’t speak for other writers, but when a new idea grabs me I get a real adrenaline rush – one I can only liken to those first few moments on a rollercoaster, as the cars clank up and up and up towards the top of the first hill.

My characters developer further. They weren’t just poor at fractions, they were failing at all their school work. They became a group of badly behaved teens who were about to be expelled from their inner city school. A setting like the one I was in would be completely alien to them, and I could already hear them complaining and arguing as they trudged through the darkening woods. The characters we coming alive in my head, although I didn’t even know their names.

An hour later I got home from the walk. It took another hour to scribble down all the different parts of my story idea, and as I wrote down what I’d come up with new ideas started to force their way in, too. I now have several pages of notes which include a rough plot outline, five character biographies, some ideas for specific scenes and even some lines of dialogue.

Had I sat at home that morning and told myself to come up with an idea then those notebook pages would likely still be empty. That’s because it’s easier to find ideas than to create them from thin air. I found my latest idea lurking in the woods. Where will you find yours?

A big thanks to the fantastic Lari Don who inspired this post by talking about where her own ideas come from. You can read Lari’s post here, and if you haven’t checked out her books yet I highly recommend that you get your finger out.

I’ve been clearing out an old external hard drive tonight as I attempt to get myself organised for the new year ahead. While doing so I came across this rough cover design for the first Invisible Fiends book, Mr Mumbles. The art, as ever, is by the brilliant Jonny Duddle.

Which cover do you think is best – this one, or the one that actually appeared on the final book?

Concept cover for Mr Mumbles

As if that’s not scary enough, I also came across a photograph I took at the house we lived in until very recently. It was an old farm house and prone to the odd spider infestation. I saw this ‘un clinging to a net curtain one day and had to take a photograph. Shortly afterwards I killed it by luring it outside then hitting it with the car. Make sure you click the image to see it in its full hairy-kneed horror…

Run! Run for your very lives!

Frickin’ horrible, isn’t it? No wonder we left.

And that’s it for today. No blog tomorrow, but be back here on Monday when I’ll be posting some new advice for writers. Assuming the spiders don’t get me.

Tomorrow (5th of January) is the official publication day for the penultimate Invisible Fiends book The Beast. I’ve decided against doing blog tours of any of that stuff for this book and will instead be posting a lot of content here on the blog that you’ll hopefully find interesting.

I’m going to start by talking about the evolution of the character of the Beast, and in doing so talk about the evolution of the Invisible Fiends series as a whole. My hope is it will not only reveal a bit about this book, but about my writing process in general.

Still, before we get to that, let’s take a look at the official blurb for the book:

Kyle is having trouble with the neighbours. They’ve turned into black-eyed, flesh-eating zombies. Now would be a good time to leave town but out there, on the snow covered streets, something far worse is lurking.

There is a beast in the shadows and the only way for Kyle to fight it is to use his powers. But every time Kyle uses them, he weakens the barrier between this world, and the terrifying, world of the Darkest Corners. If the barrier breaks there will be more killers on the streets.

And here’s the front cover to give you an idea of what the Beast itself looks like:

Quite the charmer, eh? This is the Beast’s first appearance in the Invisible Fiends series, but that wasn’t always going to be the case. In the first draft of Mr Mumbles (then called “Imaginary Friends Reunited”, or “Project IFR” to long time blog readers) there was a character with the same name who looked just as monstrous as the creature above.

That Beast arrived somewhere near the end of the book. Below you’ll find an extract taken from that first draft which shows the Beast’s first appearance. Before you read that, though, I should set the scene…

The first draft of the book that would eventually become Mr Mumbles was written over a period of about a year. I was working full time and juggling a young family (not literally, that would be dangerous and probably illegal) and dreaming that one day I might be able to call myself a writer.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the book was short. Way too short for the age group, in fact, as just under 20,000 words. The finished final draft would be 44,000 words long, but that wouldn’t happen until about a year down the line, and the full details of that process will be a story for another day.

Not only was it short, it was a bit naff in places, too. Don’t get me wrong, it had plenty of strong points, but there were a fair few clunkers of ideas in there, too. The biggest of all the duffers was the ideas that the imaginary friends could be hurt by “factual” things. Because they were imaginary – or fictional – anything containing factual information was like Kryptonite to them. At one point in the story Kyle fashioned himself a shield using pages from a dictionary, while swiping at Mr Mumbles with a rolled up world map. As you’ll see in the extract below, he also used his birth certificate to somewhat devastating effect.

And I think the point I’m trying to make – if there is one – is that it’s OK to write some naff bits in your book. As I always say, a first draft doesn’t have to be right, it has to be written. I’ve spoken about that in a bit more detail in this post (warning: contains sandwiches). The first draft of Mr Mumbles was far from perfect. It took another year to get it as close to perfect as I was able to get it, and then the time came for me to leave it alone and move on to book 2.

With unlimited time I would almost certainly have edited and tinkered forever more, but I had to leave it be and let it stand on its own two feet and do you know what? I’m damn proud of it. I’m proud of the nightmares it has given people. I’m proud of the emails I’ve received from parents and teachers telling me ol’ Mumbles turned a previously reluctant reader on to the joy of books. I’m also proud I gave one kid a raging phobia of hats and, presumably, people who wear them.

The final draft of Mr Mumbles was many times stronger than the draft the extract comes from. I like to think that’s because I improved as a writer while working on it, and I hope I’ve continued to improve since then. As I say in my workshops, writing is exactly like anything else in this world – the more you do it, the better you get. If you’ve pitched a book recently and had a rejection, don’t be disheartened. Understand that it means you’re one step closer to being published. The next book you write will be better. The one after that, better still. If you truly want it, you won’t give up – you’ll never give up – and all the practice will pay off in the end.

Anyway, The Beast, then. Um… it’s a big monster thing and it sort of always ways, so I don’t suppose it has really evolved at all. Apologies for the vastly misleading blog title. It was in the first draft, I took it out, but realised it would lend itself to a story much later in the series. So that’s what I did. Did I mention it’s out tomorrow?

Here’s that extract I promised. Enjoy.

Extract from Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles – draft 1