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Crocodile Tears is out in paperback!
The most action-packed Alex Rider adventure yet, Crocodile Tears, is out now in paperback and as an ebook or from the app store. Get your copy at www.alexrider.com. Want 30% off? Enter the code WALKER30 at the checkout when you place an order on the Walker website until 31 December 2010.

Plus, our two fantastic competitions to celebrate 10 explosive years of Alex Rider are still open. You could win a taste of the action with a two-week adventure holiday in Australia by entering at www.alexrider.com/australia or win one of five PSPs and a set of games by recruiting a new agent to the world of Alex Rider www.alexrider.com/newrecruits.

Visit our You Tube channel to watch Anthony Horowitz give a sneak peek behind the scenes of Crocodile Tears, http://bit.ly/c6p5nx and get the brand new fan pack, full of cool downloads http://bit.ly/bw031K.

Hunt down your special edition
Not only can you now buy Crocodile Tears in paperback, but there are two different editions to collect. As well as the new bronze edition, we’ve produced an exclusive red cover which is only available in WHSmith, so you can choose which you’d like to add to your collection, or treat yourself to both! It’s only available while stocks last, so track down your copy today!

Exclusive Anthony Horowitz stories for your gadgets
For the first time ever you can read three exclusive horror stories by Anthony Horowitz on your Nintendo DSi. The stories are available on EA FLIPS and you can download them now from the DSIWare service http://bit.ly/a05lzZ. Watch out for the publication of More Bloody Horowitz this September http://bit.ly/b1OrRk.

Meet Anthony Horowitz
Anthony will be at the Cottesloe Theatre on London’s Southbank to talk about the Alex Rider series and his other work on Wednesday 23 June at 6 p.m. This will be followed by a book signing. You can find out more details and book tickets here http://bit.ly/cuxrjr.

If you’re in Ireland, you can also see Anthony at the West Cork Literary Festival where he will be reading from his books on Wednesday 7 July at 2.30 p.m. You can find out more here http://bit.ly/9ZNxbX.

This document is for your eyes only. Destroy all evidence after reading.

Anthony introduces the latest Alex Rider adventure, Crocodile Tears in a short video which also includes a brief tour of his office – check out that cool secret doorway!

I promised Olivia – my whip-wielding assistant – that I would write a quick blog before next month gets underway and here it is. The clocks went back today and it feels that winter has finally drawn in. And there’s my old winter coat stretched out on the sofa in my office with my old dog stretched out on top of it. The sun is setting and it’s only 4.00pm! As usual, the year has gone past like an express train (not the most brilliant of comparisons but I’ve just stepped off the Eurostar from Paris so trains are very much in my mind). And why was I in Paris? Read on. Although actually, I’m not entirely sure myself.

I went to Paris for a reunion of secret agents who worked for the SOE, the Special Operations Executive in the second world war. I wrote about the SOE a few years ago in an episode of Foyle’s War and developed a huge admiration for them…they were incredibly resourceful and brave. Nowadays, the survivors are extremely old but still as sharp as knives…in their case the Fairbairn-Sykes double-edged commando knife with eight-inch blade that was developed for their use. I listened to a talk by a saboteur who must have been almost ninety but looked thirty years younger. I also met a lady whose job was to “seduce” SOE agents and see if she could get information out of them. If she succeeded, they were sent home. It was bizarre because I actually created such a character when I was writing Foyle…and here she was for real!

While I’m on the subject of TV, next month COLLISION is being shown on ITV, starting on a Monday and ending on a Friday. I’ve mentioned this programme before and here it is again but I’m really proud of it and hope it’ll do well. When you make TV programmes, so much can go wrong. You get the wrong director or the weather’s bad or you run out of money or whatever. But this time everything went perfectly and I honestly think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. You can expect to read quite a bit of it in the month ahead and there are going to be some big posters too. Let’s just hope it pours with rain so people stay in and watch.

And at more or less the same time (I don’t have the exact dates), I’m setting off on my CROCODILE TEARS tour which takes me to Edinburgh and Birmingham before I head back to London and finally – at the end of the month – Dublin. If you’ve ever been to one of my talks, you’ll know that usually I just walk onto the stage and answer questions for an hour. This time, we’re doing it rather differently. It’s going to be more of an interview with clips from STORMBREAKER, COLLISION and FOYLE’S WAR. The interviewer is a journalist/presenter called Paul Blezard who does a brilliant job. He could make a study of thirteenth century paint drying techniques sound interesting. There’ll still be time for questions from the audience – but it makes it all a bit more varied and, more to the point, less work for me.

I will, of course, be signing copies of CT – and the publishers have come up with a special stamp that’s unique to these events. And I can catch up with my family on the way. My son, Nick, is at university in Edinburgh and my mother-in-law lives in Birmingham so maybe they’ll come along and heckle.

Then I’m off to America, which I mentioned in my July blog. The cities have now been chosen and include Boston, Detroit, St Louis, Raleigh, Atlanta and Washington DC. So many flights! I’ve begun to worry about my carbon footprint which may surprise you but I’ve been researching global warming for my next book – the last in the Power of Five series – and the facts do seem to be rather alarming…which is probably the understatement of the millennium. I’ve also joined something called 10:10 which is a rather smart campaign by The Guardian to get everyone to cut their emissions by 10% in the year 2010. Normally I don’t join campaigns. God help me if I become a do-gooder in my old age (actually, He likes do-gooders so He probably will). But it seemed hard to refuse this one. Apart from anything else, I’ve noticed the water getting closer and closer to my little house in Orford. I used to live beside the sea. Now I seem to live in it…at least some of the time.

And here’s something else that I’ve joined. I’ve become a judge for Divine Chocolate who are running a poetry competition. You have to write a poem (which can be rude, funny, sad, serious, whatever) called “If I owned a chocolate company” and the winners will receive large quantities of chocolate, book tokens and a recording of the poem by me. Since I have a stammer and a lisp, this may not be the best part of it, but I’d say otherwise it’s definitely worth a go. It was my friend, Anne Fine, who introduced me to the competition and I have to say I do absolutely love the chocolate and I suppose I ought to mention (doing good again) that it’s a Fair Trade product and so worth supporting. You can find more details on their website:

http://www.divinechocolate.com/news/showNews.news77.aspx

I recently judged a short story competition too. The quality of the writing was very high but I have to say that a lot of the entries were rather depressing. Subjects included suicide, self-hatred, cancer, autism and disability…and those were some of the more cheerful ones. I met the winners at a reception at 10 Downing Street and that was rather depressing too. G. Brown looked worn out and miserable. Not surprising, I suppose, given the bashing he gets in the press. Anyway, if you want my advice, if you do write poems, you’ll find something cheerful to say. But then how could owning a chocolate factory not be fun?

Finally, while I’m away, I’m going to be tweeting again. I joined Twitter last year and twittered or tweeted every day for a while but then I got fed up with it. I thought it was getting a bit naff what with people like Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry even twittering when they tied up their shoelaces. But my American publisher insists that it’s worthwhile and my son Cass is currently on the road in Australia and he may pick up some of my messages so as from today, I’ll be sharing my own trivia with the world once again. If you’re interested, you can follow me on tour.

The next time I write a blog, it’ll be Christmas. In fact, in half the shops in my area, it already is. Sometimes, I’m tempted to throw bricks…

Happy Halloween!

Anthony Horowitz

25th October 2009

This is a picture, my son, Nick, took when I was in Kenya, researching Crocodile Tears. And it's not a long-distance lens! He managed to snap them moments before they attempted to snap him.

Just a few words before I pack my bags and head off to the South of France. I’m going to be there for a month and the original plan was to finish CROCODILE TEARS there in peace and quiet…but as you may know, that’s all changed.

The book is already finished – and in second draft. And the big news is that my publishers in the UK and the USA have decided to release it early. They want it in the shops in the run-up to Xmas which of course (as usual) has put a lot of pressure on me to deliver. The publication date is November 12th. As soon as the book is out, I’m flying to the USA for a ten-city tour which means planes, limousines, hotels, shopping malls, media escorts, sandwiches, signings, miles and miles of freeways, local radio stations and distant branches of Barnes & Noble. Not entirely my idea of fun and always pretty exhausting. The only good bit is meeting the booksellers and chatting to American readers but it’s always such a rush that in the end it just becomes a blur.

Anyway, enough complaining. The main thing is that (I think) the book has really worked. It’s probably the most violent and action-packed AR yet – though that may change once my various editors get their hands on it. The violence, I mean. My favourite things in it are a greenhouse full of poisonous plants, a nasty journalist, a climax that really does throw everything you could possibly imagine at the page and a last chapter which I actually planned about five years ago.

I’m trying not to give too much away.

Now I’m in that strange, nervy time between finishing a book and waiting to see it in the shops. Whenever I get to the last word, I always think that it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. Then the doubts set in. By the time publication day arrives, I’m convinced it’s no good at all. But you know what I’ve always said. Each book has got to be better than the one before and that, at least, is what I’ve tried to do with CT.

Incidentally, the early publication of CT means that my collection of horror stories, MORE BLOODY HOROWITZ won’t now appear until 2010. So you’ll have to wait a little longer to find out what happens to Darren Shan.

A few other bits and pieces about 2009 so far…

I’ve just got back from an amazing trip to China where I was a guest of Dulwich International College in Shanghai. I’d never been to China before and didn’t think I’d like it as much as I did. It’s all so strange…communist government, capitalist society – this vast region that has only recently connected with the rest of the world. I loved the people I met (very open, very friendly), the incredibly brash and innovative buildings (high point was the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing) and the foreign-ness of it all.

Of course, I was just a dip-my-toe-in-the-water tourist. Maybe you picked up some of my Tweets. The Forbidden City, the terracotta warriors, the Great Wall etc. But the trip was huge fun. My favourite thing – an extraordinary spectacle in a huge square in Xi ‘An. Late at night, thousands of people getting themselves drenched by powerful jets of water spraying out of the ground as classical music boomed all around and multi-coloured spotlights cut through the darkness. Everything was synchronised, the fountains exploding in time to the music. All this in 40 heat! I just loved it. Anyway, here’s a picture of me in the Bird’s Nest. Just for the hell of it…

Anthony Horowitz in China

This summer has also seen the completion of the new series of Foyle’s War. The last time I blogged, I mentioned that it might be the end of the road for Foyle – and I was a little horrified to see the story picked up by the tabloids. So let me say here that no decision has been made and I have no idea if I’ll be writing it next year or not. What matters is that the new series is really, good I think. Really well directed. And interesting stories including the Russians in England, segregation in Hastings and a weird organisation called the British Free Corps (British soldiers in Nazi uniforms). If you live in Suffolk, watch out for a charity screening this October, at the cinema in Aldeburgh. I’ll be there!

We’ve also screened Collision a couple of times. That’ll be in ITV in November or December and I’m really excited about it as it’s so different to anything I’ve ever done. And that’s it. I’m off to Marlborough today for my son’s last day at school (and no more school fees, thank God!). By the way, he’s got a great blog that’s worth checking out: cass for questions is the name. I like it, anyway. I’m spending quite a bit of July in Suffolk, probably working on the book once my editors have savaged it. I’ve got one more TV series to write this year but that’s just about it which is just as well as I’m pretty knackered.

I hope you all have a great summer and for those of you waiting for exam results, fingers crossed (Cass doesn’t seem to fazed…but then he revised extremely hard for at least one afternoon).

Have fun…

Anthony Horowitz

Anthony in Scotland

I haven’t put a blog on the site for a while and as usual I’m sorry – but as usual I’ve got an excuse. Alex Rider 8 – or CROCODILE TEARS as it now officially and definitely called.

I was actually really happy with the title when I thought it up because it fits the book exactly, it hasn’t been used by anyone else (as far as I know) and it somehow fitted in really well with the other seven books. The problem started when a guy at Walker Books (no names…but he’s tall and smooth-looking and he’s a published author himself, his initials are MS and I’m going to do for him in my next book) complained that he thought the title was “soft”. He wanted something like “death” or “bullet” or “hell” in the title and he was worried that boys would be put off a book that had “tears” on the front cover.

He also said that nobody knew what “crocodile tears” meant. Is this true? Curiously, my American publisher had never heard of the phrase either but then he thinks Tooting Common is the name of an Egyptian pharaoh. Anyway, here is the first page of CROCODILE TEARS as it will appear in its entirety:

crocodile tears: fake or hypocritical tears. From the belief that crocodiles will pretend to cry in order to attract their victims…and will then cry for real as they devour them.

So that’s sorted that out.

The book does have crocodiles in it, by the way. Part of it takes place in Kenya which is where I happened to be last Christmas. I spent five very happy days in Larsen’s Camp in the Samburu National Reserve and you’ll find a version of it in the new book. I also saw loads of crocodiles out there – in fact I’m going to paste another photo that I took myself into this blog to show you just how close I got. I should warn you (I’m trying not to give too much away) that Alex gets a lot closer.

Crocodile Tears?

Not bad – eh? Whenever I look at this picture, I find myself thinking about my sons.

Anyway, now to explain the heading of this blog. I’ve just got back from an amazing five-day visit to Scotland. The first part of it was organised by the Scottish Book Trust and I found myself talking to around 10,000 Scottish kids live on the net. I was interviewed a couple of times – by The Scotsman (the main paper in Scotland for all those south of the border) and by a radio show called The Book Cafe. All good publicity for Necropolis which came out in paperback last week.

Then I went up Arthur’s Seat with my wife, which was fun. I had dinner with my son, Nick (he’s studying Chinese at Edinburgh University).

But the best part of the trip was the train journey from Edinburgh to Aberdeen – which was so beautiful (passing through the Cairngorm National Park) that I didn’t do any work as I’d planned but just gazed out of the window. I then killed a day in Inverness before meeting a brilliant man called Kenny Dempster who’s a civil engineer with Scottish and Southern energy and who drove me up to the Monar Dam which is what you can really see behind me in the photograph.

CROCODILE TEARS ends with a huge climax at a dam in Kenya and I needed to examine one at close quarters – and I couldn’t get any closer than this. Kenny showed he how the whole thing worked and I have to say that as I clambered around it the whole last chapter of the book came tumbling into my head. That’s why I so love visiting the places I write about. Somehow the truth is always more exciting than anything I could make up…or perhaps I should say that the truth underpins the fantasy and makes it more believable. Anyway, I wish I could describe Glen Strathfarrar in the book because it was also awesome and beautiful with red deer everywhere and snow still visible on the mountain peaks, even in May.

I wish I could also describe the slice of lemon cake that I had at the cafe just outside Beauly on the way back as that was pretty nice too. But we don’t do lemon cake in Alex Rider books. And the dam, as I have explained, is in Kenya.

Progress on the book? My computer is telling me 69,455 words – and I reckon it’s going to be finished at around 90,000…so I’m nearly there. I’ve been really worried about this adventure. After all, it’s the eighth in the series and I was beginning to wonder if I could invent any more chases, gadgets, fights, whatever. But I say for sure that this book has more action than any of the others. It’s probably the most violent (until my publishers get their hands on it). And it has the single most frightening chapter I’ve ever written. As a matter of fact, I finished that today.

Other news…

I’m off to Hay-on-Wye tomorrow for the book festival, which is always fun. When it rains, the entire festival turns into a huge bog. Writers have been known to get sucked in, never to be seen again. We also start shooting the third, and possibly the last episode of Foyle’s War tomorrow. TV drama is getting more and more difficult as nobody has enough money to make it any more…but if this is the end of the series, at least we’re finishing on a high.

And then I have a load of trips. China, Greece, America…all for different reasons. I’ll explain more when I come back.

In the meantime, have you noticed my page on TWITTER? I really enjoy twittering as it’s so short and easy and I can do it wherever I happen to be, using my iPhone. I try to make it amusing. Anyway, do take a look at my page or whatever it is you call it, if you want to stay up to date.

Enjoy the good weather. Good luck to all of you doing GCSEs or A-levels. I hope you’re doing more revision than my son, Cass.

May 2009