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I’m standing in the driveway of the house where we used to live in Norfolk

It’s morning and there’s been a sharp frost. The gravel beneath my boots is bonded together by ice. The sky is pale grey. The air is cold in my throat. I see my breath rise up in visible wisps.Ìý

And then the barn owl floats in on my left side.

Not just silently, but broadcasting silence � like another thing might scatter sound.

I tell myself to be still, then, as it flutters past, it turns its faceÌý and looks ...

It is the early 1970s and I must be twelve or thereabouts. It’s Easter and I am in the Scottish borders with my mother and father. My older brothers and sister have all left home now and I have effectively become an only child. We are staying in a caravan on a farm just outside of Jedburgh.

I am walking a sun-dappled path alongside a wood. In my hand is a .22 air rifle with a telescopic sight. I’ve a box of pellets in my pocket, a sheath knife on my hip.

Walking along the path I am Hawkeye...

I pull over. The rain is hammering against the windscreen. It has rained relentlessly for the best part of the day. Even with my wipers on full pelt I can barely see the road ahead.Ìý

So I pull over into a lay-by next to a wood.Ìý The kind of place you would have found discarded porn mags back when I was growing up.

Occasionally a truck goes by in a blur of spray and rocks the car, but mostly its quiet; Just the odd bit of faint twittering or rustling and the arrhythmic ticking of rain drops on...

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Yes I, did know where I was. I was in the stroke ward of Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. So that was good.

In a way.

What I did not know, and still dont, is why

Nine years ago, I was sitting at my computer looking at Google Maps trying to work out the route to the Sundays football match. My son was in a village football team and I usually drove him and often a couple of his team mates to the game. I picked up my mug of tea and noticed my arm felt dead. I didnt trust it to carry the tea...

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The is on at the moment and last weekend I did an event with my old friend . Weve been talking about doing something together for a long time but had never previously managed to sort it out.

The event was styled as a Sketch Off but it wasnt really that. I think wed have had to have had some sort of split screen for it to work. Id have lost such a duel in any case. Chris has been drawing as performance for years now and its not something I do at all....

Chris Priestley has moved to Wordpress. I am now to be found . Apologies to all who have come here and found me absent. Much has happened since I was last here and I hope you'll catch up with things on my new website.

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Hello. I have finally managed to sort out a new website and blog. Im still playing around with it, so apologies for any glitches.ÌýThere are links to my Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr feeds here, but this website provides a static home for all my books and provides the opportunity to have galleries for my artwork. Apologies to all those who have been visiting my unloved and dusty Blogger site. All visitors will now be directed here.

The German language paperback editions of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror turned up in the post. The Tales of Terror always look good in German - it seems to suit the books very well. I hope they read as well. I'm guessing they must do if they have gone into paperback.Ìý

I went along to the opening of the British Library's Terror and Wonder: the Gothic Imagination exhibition last Thursday. I had received an invite quite some time ago and I remember being flattered to be on the British Library's radar after a bit of a quiet year. But then, on the day before the opening, I had an email from Phil and Sarah Stokes who are in charge of Clive Barker's archive to tell me that a poster I did for Clive, way back in 1982, for a play of his - Frankenstein in Love - had been selected for display.




So that was why I had been given an invite, I assumed. I met up with fellow author (who took the photo of me above) and we went round together to hunt out my poster. And there it was - looking very important under a glass case and with other bits and pieces, like that Clive Barker poster idea up in the top right.

But as we carried on round I suddenly came face to face with a wall decorated with David Roberts's lovely illustration of Uncle Montague sitting in his armchair (it's on the wall behind me in the photograph). Then realised there was a glass case with Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror in it (alongside Chris Riddell's Goth Girl and Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls. ÌýIt was a massive honour to be included in a show that features many of my heroes - and many of the inspirations for writing the stories in the first place.

It was such a lovely surprise - although why it was a surprise is a bit of a mystery. I wasn't told and neither it seems was Bloomsbury. It was great to see children's Gothic fiction being acknowledged like this but odd for the creators to be left slightly out of the loop. There is a schools programme and events in connection with the exhibition, which is run in conjunction with the BBC, for the life of the show, which runs until January 2015. I hope get to do something - maybe with my old mate Chris Riddell.

Meanwhile - if you are anywhere near the British Library - or even if you're not - get yourself along to the exhibition, which is stuffed full of fascinating things.

I'm delighted to be say that The Dead Men Stood Together has been included on the longlist for the in the 12-16+ category. I'm up against some incredible writers so I will be very lucky to make it to the shortlist, but it is an honour as always to be noticed at all.