GIVEAWAY UPDATE/MONDAY MISCELLANIOUS

Look at all this snow! And before Christmas too. Is anyone else slightly worried that The Dark Is Rising? Watch out for ravens! (I tell you, I crack myself up - that's the second time I've told that joke today, and it's still just as funny. To me, anyway).

For years and years I have loathed snow. Often, people would wonder why I greeted their cheerful announcements that it was snowing with groans of despair. They assumed I was some kind of Scrooge, wanting to rain on their snow parade.

But the moment the white stuff started falling my head would be filled with memories of slush filling my boots and snow melting through my coat on the way to work, so that I had to spend all day at a chilly, air-conditioned office in damp clothes - and the inevitable sneezing, sore throat and general unwellness that would follow. Of slipping on ice and bashing my knee or elbow as I tried to get on the bus and nearly passing out with the pain. Of buses that never arrived and taxis that were cancelled so that I would be left stranded by the stop for hours, getting colder and colder. Memories of finally managing to make it to the office, only to get sneered at and told off by bosses who, of course, owned nice warm four wheel drives and couldn't understand why a little snow needed to make anyone late.

If anyone had asked me a week ago how I felt about snow, I would have told them flatly and without a thought that I hated it. I now realise that isn't true. It never was. What I hated was having my simple, childlike glee in the beauty of snow, and the way it transforms a familiar landscape into something different and new, stolen from me by my adult responsibilities (and the bunch of complete *******s that I used to work for).

For the next little while I have the enormous privilege of being a full-time writer, and that means apart from taking my dog for a walk three times a day I don't have to go anywhere. Everything I need is right here. I can even, in this day and age, get my shopping online and talk to all the people I like via email (please, God, do not take my broadband from me). I'm able to look at the streets, houses, marshlands and coppices that I see every day with completely new eyes and just enjoy it all. It is, quite frankly, blissful.

But I know that there are soooo many people out there who ARE still suffering, in various ways, through this unexpected cold snap. They have my sympathies, and for their sake I hope the snow goes quickly. I'm just glad to know that, for the moment, I have been freed from hating something that I never wanted to hate in the first place.

Moving on! Over the weekend I made a trip to London (and got trapped in Doncaster for an hour because of the snow, but even that wasn't enough to upset me) in order to take part in an event at my publishers. Some loverly, loverly bloggers came out to hear about Walker Books new Undercover promotion, which includes Shadows on the Moon, and I spoke to them about that for a while, and then about writing, and books, and jewellry and all kinds of other stuff. I had a very nice time indeed. Many thanks to Liz, Sarah, Lauren, Lynsey (did I get the number of y's right?) and Becky!

However, something else very important happened during that visit:

I GOT MY HANDS ON MOAR ARCS OF SHADOWS ON THE MOON!

Which means, instead of the single ARC that I was previously offering, I can now promise *three*. Three! Your chance of winning one just tripled... If, of course, we get 200 followers by Christmas. 

Go to work, little grasshoppers!