I popped along to the North East Teenage Book Awards on Friday where my pal Sam Enthoven‘s brilliant book, The Black Tattoo, had been shortlisted for the prize. The other nominees were:
Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine
Angel by Cliff McNish
The Knife That Killed Me by Anthony McGowan
The Falconer’s Knot by Mary Hoffman
Slam by Nick Hornby
Sam was, as ever, as excited as a jet-powered puppy to meet all his fans and while he chatted with the other nominees; I must get to see one of his full events some day, providing there’s somewhere dark and cool to lie down afterward, of course.
The event started and Sam kicked off proceedings with a reading from The Black Tattoo, and then answering an inspired audience question about tying up loose plot ends at the close of a book. The other authors followed to talk, read and answer questions themselves.
Eventually – the winner was announced as Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine and the authors took their places at the signing table to meet and greet their readers. It really was incredible to see so many teenagers, many of them carrying well-thumbed, ragged copies of their favourite books, queuing up to meet the writers and chat. The air was buzzing with debates over characters, plots, twists and more!
Sam’s queue was the last to end and, after a brief chat with Anthony McGowan (we think we have persuaded him to write a guest post for Trapped By Monsters) we repaired to a local hostelry for refreshment. This, however, didn’t go quite as planned and we soon found ourselves in a darkened tunnel, running from our monstrous captors – see the picture below!
More on that part of the evening, see the crazy, creepy Trapped By Monsters site!
