So I thought I would do this instead…

First, I have a promise to redeem. Lili, who has posted two questions on the blog, asked after my dog, and I told her I would include a picture for her the next time I put a post on the page. So here, for Lili, is a picture of Spanner.

As I write this Spanner is asleep and snoring. Her snoring can be something of a distraction and I fear it is getting more pronounced the older she gets.

It’s only a week now before school ends for the term, and I can’t wait. Getting up and getting everyone out in the morning is horrid at this time of year – the mornings are so dark, and everyone is so fed up and has colds and just wants the end of term to come. But, we haven’t got long to wait. We’ve only got to get through next week.

The Christmas crowns that I abandoned last year have been picked up again. I’ve nearly finished the bell tower, and this weekend I’ll try to assemble the bowl of fruit, though how I’m going to do that I don’t know, as I seem to remember there was a really complicated way of putting it all together, and I’ve forgotten what it was.

A nice treat early in the New Year will be a trip to Brighton. The Toymaker has been short listed for The Southern School’s Book Award, and there is to be a presentation on the 14th, so whatever the outcome, I’m looking forward to that – a nice long train journey down to the south coast. I love travelling on trains. I like looking out of the windows and watching the world slip by, all those corners and hedgerows, back gardens and swings, people caught just in the moment of letting the dog out or crossing the street with their shopping. And then there are the special things to sometimes see, like a hare sitting in a field. I watch it all. And I’ll enjoy meeting everyone down there too. It will be fun.

But today, I need get on, because next week everything of a writing kind is going to have to grind to a halt, as there will be shopping to do and secrets to keep, and a house to get ready.

And a pineapple, a bunch of grapes, a banana, two cherries, an apple and a pear to somehow stick onto a crown.

And, probably, a mouse or two to evict. They should have got back by then.

……Introducing our first author blog on the DFB website! Jeremy de Quidt, author of the  fantastical, blood-curdling debut novel The Toymaker has posted for you all below -  the first in a series of guest blogs from DFB writers and illustrators. Hurrah! This sparkling post really tickled me, as they always do (if you haven’t read Jeremy’s previous posts, take a look at his author page). From now on, we’ll be asking a different author every month to post a blog on our website – so keep an eye out for glimpses of your favourite illustrators and storytellers!

…then all of a sudden they zip past. I looked out of the window yesterday and realized that it was almost Christmas. Actually, it wasn’t so much the looking out of the window that did it, it was the annual arrival of the mice.

Each year at about this time, we start to get mice in the house. Where they come from I don’t know, but I think they’re here for the presents and chocolate. One year they neatly trimmed off the gold paper wrapping from all the chocolate coins and took tooth size scrapes out of each one. Another year they chewed through an electricity cable and left us without lights for ages while we tried to track down where the damage had been done. We eventually found the culprit turned victim beneath the floorboards, its teeth, in death as in life, firmly clamped into the power cable.

But I’m soft hearted when it comes to mice. They’re just doing their best.

So when Alice announced that she’d heard one under her bed the other day, we laid out the trusty and well tried traps – not the ‘put your head here and it gets chopped off by a steel spring’ variety, but the ‘catch you in a box and let you go somewhere else’ variety. I’m convinced that the mice we let go are the same ones as come back, but there you go. The way these traps work best is for you to wait until morning, and if the trap is closed, you lift it to your ear and listen very carefully for the scratching sounds inside. What you don’t do is what Alice did. You don’t get up in the pitch dark and armed with a torch open the trap to see if there’s a mouse inside. If you do that the mouse pegs it for all it’s worth and you don’t catch it again for days.

But we did get him in the end, and he is probably even now slowly making his way back. I reckon another week and we’ll have to evict him again.

So, the year has moved on, and this is the view from my window as I look out today.

Alice has been getting on with the world atlas across the kitchen wall, but it has come to halt recently what with exams and school plays and the like. This is where she has got to.

And the post brought the original artwork of the German cover to The Toymaker. The artist, Betina Gotzen-Beek, very kindly sent it to me as a present, along with sketches to show how she had started, which was really nice of her. This is it propped up on my laptop.

All of which brings me to now – summer has been and gone, Christmas is in the offing, and at long last I have nearly finished the next story. Maybe by the end of the year I will have it done.

Now, that would be very nice. I might even read it to the mice.