Robin Stevens's Blog, page 61

You’re Invited to my First Class Murder Launch!

I can’t quite believe how quickly this time has come around again, but here we are: First Class Murder, Hazel & Daisy’s third adventure, will be released on 30th June 2015, and to celebrate that exciting fact, I’m holding a launch at Waterstones Cambridge on Saturday 1st August.

Details of the afternoon’s festivities are still being ironed out, but rest assured that there will be readings, there will be activities, there will be signings and there will be CAKE. Possibly even train-shaped cake, if I can manage it.

So please, come along! Absolutely anyone is welcome, and I would love to see you there.

Murder Most Unladylike Events: Summer 2015

Summer is almost upon us, and I have many events coming up that I’m extremely excited about. The current list of where and when I’ll be appearing is below, but keep checking back: I’ll update it as new dates are announced.

Tuesday 19th May, 6:30pm, Waterstones Piccadilly: I’ll be on a panel with brilliant children’s authors Lauren St John and Kenneth Oppel to discuss what makes a true modern classic.

Monday 25th May, 1pm, Hay Festival: I’ll be speaking with fellow mystery girl and author of The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow, Katherine Woodfine, about history, mystery and bunbreak. We’ll be on the Starlight Stage, and tickets are £6 from the Festival website.

Tuesday 9th June, 7pm, Waterstones Hampstead: I’m immensely excited to be appearing alongside bestselling crime writer Sophie Hannah, to discuss writing Agatha Christie in the 21st Century. Tickets are £5 and can be bought by calling the store on 0207 794 1098.

Saturday 13th June, 3pm, Oxford Central Library: Join me for a free event – I’ll be talking about the books, giving readings and helping readers with their own detective activities.

Sunday 21st June, all day, Storytellers Inc Bookshop, Lytham St Anne’s: On Midsummer’s Day I’ll be appearing as part of Storytellers, Inc.’s little literary festival for middle-grade readers. Join me and my fellow mystery writers for a day of talks, readings, workshops and signings with an interactive mystery for our young sleuths to solve.

Saturday 1st August, 3pm, Waterstones Cambridge: It’s launch day for my third book, First Class Murder! Please come along and celebrate with me. There will be readings, there will be train-themed activities and there will be bunbreak!

Happy publication day, Murder is Bad Manners!

The time has come at last! No longer will my grandmother have to single-handedly keep our friends and relations in America supplied with copies of Murder Most Unladylike by ferrying them over in her luggage: from today, my first book will be available in stores the length and breadth of the USA and Canada.

Its title in North America is Murder is Bad Manners, and its publishers are Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, who have done the most gorgeous job with it.

It’s a very satisfying hardback with illustrations and cover by Elizabeth Baddeley (I am so in love with that cover that I have it framed on my wall).

I am so proud of the way it looks – and, of course, of its contents as well. I had a very fun time working on the Americanizations for it (in this edition Daisy and Hazel sport athletic underwear and have a penchant for cinnamon buns, which delights me) – but I promise you that all of the really important things have remained the same. And I’m particularly pleased that the USA is about to be introduced to the concept of bunbreak.

So, America, I hope you like my girl detectives! I can’t wait to hear what you think of the book. Happy launch day!

Author and author copies!

 

Deal Announcement – Daisy & Hazel are going to Germany!

This week is London Book Fair, at which agents (including my own, the fabulous Gemma Cooper) and publishers are all trying to sell foreign rights in their books.

And I’m very happy to say that for us, the Fair has got off to a brilliant start: the first two Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries have just been sold to Knesebeck Verlag in Germany.

I’m absolutely delighted that Murder Most Unladylike and Arsenic for Tea will soon be available in German, 30% longer (it’s all of those compound words) and also quite probably 30% more awesome.

And now, I’m off to have a slice of celebratory gugelhupf for my bunbreak.

Carousel review of Murder Most Unladylike

Carousel magazine has reviewed Murder Most Unladylike!

‘When Hazel Wong left Hong Kong for Deepdean School for Girls for the perfect English education, she never expected to be playing Watson to another pupil’s Sherlock Holmes. Her best friend, Daisy Wells, becomes President of the secret ‘Wells and Wong Detective Society’ and makes Hazel secretary. Unexpectedly, the society is suddenly catapulted from investigating missing ties to uncovering murder, deception and blackmail, Their first big case starts with the unexpected discovery of Miss Bell’s dead body which then mysteriously disappears. Luckily, Hazel’s clues and deductions are just as vital as the more charismatic Daisy’s assumptions and speculations in helping the two girls uncover the trail of a murderer at Deepdean. Set in 1934, this boarding school detective story is exciting and enthralling, but also full of public school eccentricities and period charm. Robin Stevens could well be a new Agatha Christie for young readers.’

– Benjamin Scott, Carousel.

Arsenic for Tea included in the New Statesman’s Easter round-up 2015

Amanda Craig has chosen Arsenic for Tea as part of her round-up in the New Statesman of the best books for children this Easter. She says:

‘Robin Stevens’s Wells and Wong detective novels take our heroines from boarding school to Daisy Wells’s posh home, where her mother is falling for a crooked art dealer. When he is poisoned, there is a limited cast of suspects and a murder for the girls to solve. Stevens satirises the upper classes and the English amusingly but it’s her Hong Kong-Chinese narrator Hazel Wong who makes this a feast for readers between nine and 12.’

Arsenic for Tea included in the Telegraph’s Easter 2015 round-up

Arsenic for Tea has been included in Lorna Bradbury’s round-up of the best books for children this Easter! Lorna says:

‘Arsenic for Tea is the second in Robin Stevens’s Wells and Wong mystery series, a feelgood blend of Malory Towers and Cluedo in which our two girl detectives, the alpha female Daisy Wells and her more sensitive sidekick Hazel Wong, newly arrived in England from Hong Kong, have a murder to solve. The first mystery was set in their boarding school, Deepdean, and involved the death of a teacher; the story this time has been transposed to Daisy’s country pile during the Easter holidays, and it is not a teacher but the flirtatious poseur Mr Curtis who is at the centre of the plot. Stevens has upped her game in this new volume: her cast of suspects is more distinct and fleshed out, and the girl detectives have properly come into their own as living, breathing characters.’

The Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2015

Ready to head to the prize ceremony!

Here’s a story. A few years ago, I had written the first draft of Murder Most Unladylike, and I was very confused by it. It was about two children, but it was also about murder. I’d never really read anything like it. It seemed a bit too weird, a bit too dark, a bit too silly, to really work for either adults or children – and besides, who liked historical murder mysteries other than me?

I nervously sent it to my friend Moniza, and a few days later we met up in a cafe to talk about it.

‘I like it,’ she said cautiously. ‘It’s quite funny. Apart from the murder.’

‘But who do you think would want to read it, apart from us?’ I asked. ‘Who is it for?’

We both pondered this.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said at last. ‘But I suppose – it’ll find its niche eventually.’

My good luck note from my publisher!

Which is why, when my name was read out as the winner of this year’s Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for Younger Readers category, I burst into extremely surprised tears. I wrote Murder Most Unladylike for me, aged 12, and I spent such a long time thinking of it as something that would only appeal to my younger self that it still bewilders me to discover that other people like it too.

There were a lot of things I wanted to say as I was standing on the podium, but since I was desperately trying not to cry for most of the time, I didn’t manage to get them out properly. So here is what I meant to say …

A lot of emotions and few words…

This award means a tremendous amount to me. It genuinely and literally is a dream come true – I used to imagine winning a Waterstones Prize in the way that other people imagine winning an Oscar. I read every one of the other books in my category, and I genuinely adored them all – they are all so fresh and funny and clever and true that I was just proud to be included in their number. Cowgirl, Boy in the Tower, Girl with a White Dog, Violet and the Pearl of the Orient and A Boy Called Hope are all books that I love, and would recommend to everyone – if you haven’t, you should go read them immediately.

I am so lucky to have the support of Waterstones – of Melissa Cox and the rest of the head office team, and of each individual store and their children’s booksellers. I know how rare this kind of passion for a book or series is, and I can’t believe that my books have received that love and attention.

The people behind my books – my agent, Gemma Cooper, my editor Natalie Doherty and my publicist Harriet Venn, as well as the whole Penguin Random House team from editorial to sales – are fantastic, and they have made the books so much more than they could ever have been otherwise. And my friends and family, too, are just the best there could be – I am the luckiest of human beings in that respect.

Sally Green and Rob Biddulph, the other category winners, both wrote completely fantastic books, and Rob is an utterly deserving overall winner – Blown Away is adorable, funny and totally gorgeous to look at, a classic in the making.

The three category winners!

My congratulations from my publisher!

Below are a few more pictures from the evening and the next day. What a time! I just couldn’t be happier.

The shortlist window at Piccadilly

Outside Piccadilly

A most exciting meeting – me and Malorie Blackman!

A rather tragic face during award acceptance …

… and then happiness!

With fellow category winners Sally Green and Rob Biddulph

My beautiful award!

And here I am the next day, celebrating with a lovely afternoon tea bunbreak!

Thank you, Waterstones, and thank you to everyone who has supported me! I feel like the luckiest author ever.

Murder Most Unladylike wins an Oxfordshire Book Award!

Today I am absolutely delighted to be able to tell you that Murder Most Unladylike has been selected as Best Primary Novel in the Oxfordshire Book Awards 2015. It’s incredible to have won – I am such a fan of my fellow shortlistees – and this award means something particularly special to me.

I grew up in Oxford, went to the Dragon School and came back several years later to work in the Broad Street branch of Blackwell’s bookshop (that’s where Murder Most Unladylike actually began, in the upstairs break room during my lunches!). Oxford is one of my very favourite places in the world, and it still feels like my home turf. I just can’t express how pleased I am to have been given this award by Oxfordshire’s children.

A heartfelt thanks to them, and huge congratulations to my fellow winners and runners-up. I can’t wait to receive my award at the ceremony in November. Oxford, you’re wonderful!

Announcement: Audio for Hazel & Daisy!

It’s a good week for my mystery girls – on Monday we announced that I’ll be writing two more books about Daisy & Hazel for Penguin Random House Children’s Books, and today I’m able to tell you more  good news.

Murder Most Unladylike, Arsenic for Tea and (after its release) First Class Murder will soon be available as audiobooks! The recordings will be done some time this spring, and the audiobooks themselves should be available to buy this summer. I don’t have firm dates yet, but Penguin Random House Children’s Books (and I) are very excited about the project. I can’t wait to hear Hazel narrating her stories!