Michelle’s News

The Clan is having a massive makeover… and it’s all taking place over the next few days.  Sorry, but there will be some downtime and some inconvenience… but it WILL be worth it!

We’re running a treasure hunt with Swapit.co.uk from now until the 6th January 2013! There will be an image linking to the Swapit treasure hunt somewhere in the front page – right now it’s embedded somewhere a little hidden in the past…can you find it? You’ll need to be registered with Swapit before you can follow the link in the picture – get hunting!

Hi all,

Just a quick notice to let you know that the art and writing competitions held on The Clan since its beginning have returned this autumn in the form of the new Quarterly Competitions! Check out the announcement in the Quarterly Competitions forum by MidnightSWolf for more details, but in a nutshell, the new competitions combine the best of both the artistic and writing competitions with a new, totally open format – you can choose whatever medium you wish (whether painting, writing, sketching, sculpting, singing or anything else you can think of – we dare somebody to enter through the medium of interpretative dance!) as long as your entry fits the theme of this quarter’s competition. This time, the theme is Gods and Goddesses. For more info check out the announcement in the Quarterly Competitions forum!

As you may have seen on the Clan Events page, Michelle Paver, author of Gods and Warriors, will be visiting Gothenburg from the 27th until the 29th September at the Gothenburg Book Fair! Any Swedish readers – or anybody in Gothenburg around that time – if you’re a fan of Gods and Warriors, the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness or Dark Matter, get in touch for more details about Michelle’s visit! It’s Michelle’s last overseas trip before the end of October so if you’re in the area, be sure to get in touch!

Dear all,

Keep an eye on The Clan’s front page over the next two weeks – starting August 4th there will be audio snippets of the first chapter of GODS AND WARRIORS released over a week through a lucky few literary blogs across the internet! We’ll be publishing the exact details of the blogs closer to the time, but get excited now – you’ll be getting a chance to hear the first chapter of GODS AND WARRIORS very soon indeed!

Dear Clanners,

It’s my pleasure to announce to you an exciting new competition being run here on The Clan to start the countdown to the fantastic new series by Michelle Paver, Gods and Warriors!  Thanks to Puffin (the publishers of Gods and Warriors) we have some fantastic prizes to give away to those who pre-order their copy of Gods and Warriors.

The premise of this event is simple – we’re looking to reward Clanners for pre-ordering Gods and Warriors from 16^th July until August 27th. All you have to do is pre-order your copy of Gods and Warriors through Amazon.co.uk, and send the confirmation code you receive as part of the pre-ordering process to Puffin at the following email address, and you will:

• receive a  FREE poster of Gods and Warriors, signed by Michelle, which will be mailed to you the week following publication;
• be entered into a draw for four (4) tickets to Michelle’s event at the Bath festival on 7^th October 2012 (note that travel and all other expenses will be the responsibility of the winner)
• be entered into a second draw for an exclusive sneak peek of the first chapter of Gods and Warriors!

There’s absolutely no catch – all you need to do is pre-order your copy of Gods and Warriors through Amazon.co.uk before the 27^th August and send the confirmation code to godsandwarriors@uk.penguingroup.com. Puffin will be monitoring the pre-orders very closely, so get cracking – these exclusive bonuses will only be available to members of The Clan until the 27th August!

If you have any queries regarding this event please send me a private message through The Clan’s interface and I’ll get back to you straight away. Gods and Warriors is on the horizon – the countdown begins now!

The Nanuak

Happy New Year to everyone!

I know I’m a bit late, but I always use Christmas as an excuse to shut out the world and do some serious writing, so for the past six weeks I’ve been completely immersed in Book One of GODS AND WARRIORS.

I hope everyone in the Clan had a good break over the New Year, and that you managed to avoid the coughs, colds and flu which seemed to be laying people low. I’d like to thank ALL of you who sent me such lovely messages about GHOST HUNTER winning the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize – and also all of you who simply got in touch, not only in the UK, but in Chile, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Indonesia…

I was also very moved to learn about what CHRONICLES OF ANCIENT DARKNESS has meant for some of you. Many of you started reading Torak’s story years ago, and so, in a sense, you’ve grown up with Torak, Renn and Wolf. For others, the books kept you company through some difficult patches, for instance, when people were picking on you at school. I know what that’s like, because I went through it myself when I was at school, and my whole class ganged up on me for a year. Reading helped me through that period too (in my case, it was THE LORD OF THE RINGS), so I’m truly glad if CHRONICLES has helped some of you.

A while ago, there was a thread discussing the question of whether or not the Clan is dying, and I read the posts with interest. My own view, for what it’s worth, is that it isn’t dying, it’s changing – just as it’s been changing every day since it began. This is because the Clan is created by each and every one of you, and it’s perfectly natural that as you grow up, you move on to other things.

But that doesn’t take away from what you had when you were a Clan member. It’s just life. And no doubt, new members will join, and so the Clan will go on, changing imperceptibly every day, as it always has. So this is nothing to be sad or annoyed about, it’s just what happens.

As Fin-Kedinn says in OUTCAST: “Everything changes, all the time. Mostly, you don’t notice… The thing to remember is that not every change is bad.”

Things are changing for me, too, because, having written DARK MATTER (and my thanks to all of you who’ve got in touch about how you enjoyed it) – I’m now writing about a new set of characters, and different animals, in a new setting, for the first book of GODS AND WARRIORS.

I’m afraid I’m still not going to say much about GODS & WARRIORS just yet, mainly because if you talk too much about a story when you’re writing it, you risk spoiling it. (I don’t know why that should be, but I know that it’s true.) What I can tell you, though, is that this spring I’ll be off on a research trip to an island in the middle of an ocean, to study some large creatures which will be featuring in Book One…

But before I go, I’ll return to CHRONICLES and all things Wolf, for a moment. As many of you know, I’m still a patron of the UK Wolf Conservation Trust in Berkshire, and just before Christmas, I visited the wolves at the Trust, and we took Torak (the wolf) out for a walk. It was the most magical time: extremely cold, so all the trees and fields and hedges were covered in brilliant white hoar-frost. Torak – who is normally a rather reserved wolf, just like Torak in the books – greeted me with a big, slobbery wolf kiss, licking me all over my face, which is most unlike him. It made me feel very honoured.

Then he had his first encounter with fire: a bonfire of dead branches and leaves. In true wolf fashion, he approached cautiously, sniffed, then extended a wary paw and touched the (non-burning) end of a branch. But being a grown wolf by now, he had too much sense to burn his paw, unlike Wolf in WOLF BROTHER!

Well, that’s all I’ve got time for, I’m afraid, as I’ve got to go and do some more work on GODS AND WARRIORS.

Once again, my thanks to each and every one of you who has got in touch. And as always…

MAY THE GUARDIAN RUN WITH YOU!

MICHELLE PAVER

Photo by by Express Monorail

After months of speculation, we can finally tell Clanners that yes – there WILL be another BIG series by Michelle – and it will be published by Puffin Books!

The new series will be called GODS AND WARRIORS. It’s set during the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, and Michelle has already begun work on it.

“I’ve been overwhelmed by Puffin’s passion for GODS & WARRIORS”, says Michelle. “As a child, my bookshelf was crammed with Puffin paperbacks, and I’m thrilled that my next series will become part of that tradition.”

In fact, Puffin’s Editorial Director is a Clanner herself!

“I’m so proud to be Michelle’s new editor here at Puffin” says Elv Moody, “and the very first thing I wanted to do was say a warm hello to The Clan. I’d love to get to know the Clanners in the coming months. It would be great to meet you, and while the new series is still very much under wraps, I’ll answer any questions I can!”

Elv has very kindly agreed to pop into THE CAMPFIRE over the next few days just to say hello and answer any questions. So Clanners – if you’d like to meet Michelle’s new publisher and ask any questions, there’s a new thread in THE CAMPFIRE right here!

As you know, we’ve made a commitment to the Clan to try to make sure that you always are the first people to know about important news concerning Michelle and her work. And as many of you know, in addition to being “admin”, I’m also her agent.

So I want you to be the first to know some important news about the projected Wolf Brother movie.

We sold film rights to Wolf Brother pretty soon after the first book in the series was published. There was major interest in the series and in film rights, and we decided to go with a very distinguished producer and director, Sir Ridley Scott.

Here I have to explain a little bit about how the film world works. Although Sir Ridley was the person who wanted to make the movie, the actual deal was done with Twentieth Century Fox. All went well for a time — a great script was written and a good director was appointed. Then, however, the director was offered another job – actually, directing the first Twilight movie. That was good for her, but it set our project back.

After several more years (the film business can be very slow) it began to look as if the film would be made in China. I was less than keen about this, because although I do like Chinese movies, Wolf Brother is not really a Chinese story!

Finally, we have just (yesterday) decide not to proceed with the film for the moment. This was a really tough decision, because it will inevitably disappoint a great many readers. However, both Michelle, I and indeed her publisher believe it’s the right thing to do at this stage.

So… this sets us back to square one. I am still more than keen to see Wolf Brother made into a fantastic movie, and over the weeks and months ahead, I will be talking to lots of producers and directors again. And of course, I’ll keep you posted here.

Keep the faith!

Admin

All six adventures in Michelle’s Chronicles of Ancient Darkness will be coming together on November the 4th… in an exclusive edition limited to 1000 copies only. All copies are signed by Michelle and the production values are lavish! The publisher’s price is an imposing £100… but if you search online, you can find the complete limited-edition set for as little as £62… So if you were wondering what to get for Xmas, now you know!