I’ve had lots of questions about the beautiful bracelet on the cover of the books, and I thought I’d tell you a little bit about how it came to be made.

The bracelet is absolutely unique – there is no other like it, and we had it specially made to be photographed for the covers. I had the chance to brief the jewellery designer about what I wanted: I gave her the passage in the book which describes it (page 48 of Small Blue Thing), and also a couple of sketches with my ideas of what it should look like.

Unfortunately my imagined design was impossible to make, so the designer came up with some options which she could make and I got to choose
the final design. I then got to pick the stone which is set in the middle, and I think we got one with just the right amount of the various colours – blue and green, obviously, plus little flecks of gold which sometimes seem red. The whole thing had to be BIG – something that you would be really, really excited about finding in the mud, as well as being beautiful. The picture above shows my sketches, plus the finished bracelet. As you can see they are quite different.

Seeing it for the first time was unreal; it is such a fantastic piece of jewellery. And right now, I get to keep it for a while. I have it so that I can take it with me on my school visits, so if you want to see it, ask your school librarian to get in touch, and I’ll bring it to your school!

A new blog has just been announced for UK Young Adult/Teen readers. All the books have a UK theme and the site is designed to be useful to readers everywhere. There’s even a section which translates some of those weird English expressions which make no sense to non-native speakers and Americans! It’s run buy some awesome authors who have written some fantastic books. If you have enjoyed my books, please do go on over and see what they recommend, and keep on reading while I write you something new! Find the blog HERE

Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@SCRansom) will know that I was at an awards ceremony last night. Small Blue Thing was one of five
books nominated in the teen category for this year’s West Kent Schools Themed Book Award. The overall theme this year was London, so all the shortlisted books were set in or around London. I was up against fierce competition:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle                 Sherlock Holmes short story

Charlie Fletcher                               Stoneheart

Benjamin Zephaniah                      Refugee Boy

Matt Whyman                                  Street Runners

I mean, with a short list like that, you can imagine I was sure that I had no chance! But the voting was done by the students at the West Kent Schools, hundreds and hundreds of them. The evening was brilliant, with some music, dancing and a fancy dress competition, which I was rather surprised to find that I was judging.  It was too hard to decide between the London literary characters, all of whom were done brilliantly, so I gave first prize to that ever-present Londoner, the pigeon.

Matt Whyman was also at the event, and he and Ben Aaronovich (Rivers of London, YA category) had a discussion on stage and answered
questions. As Matt and I were up against each other for the prize we each fixed on our smiles and waited while they tore open the envelope…  I was sure Matt was going to win – his book sounded brilliant, and was going to appeal to the boys and the girls in the audience – but they called out Small Blue Thing! I was so surprised that I forgot to say anything and sat right back down again after getting my certificate.

So thank you, all of you who voted for my book. It means the world to me that you enjoy it.

(The picture is of me with the girls from Maidstone Girls’ Grammar School, some of whom had dressed as characters from SBT, with home-made
amulets too!)