Hello. It’s Michelle Paver again.

Thank heavens the weather’s cooled down a bit! At least, it has where I am, although if you live elsewhere, you may still be enduring a heatwave. This morning I was out in the woods just after dawn, and I ended up climbing one of my favourite trees. It’s an enormous beech, and I only climb it a few times a year - last time was the summer solstice, and before then, Christmas Eve – but it’s worth the scramble to get about twenty feet up. I find it comforting to spend time with a being which existed long before I did, and will probably outlast me; and I enjoy puzzling the squirrels, who aren’t used to sharing their tree with a human. Funnily enough, most of the dogs who happen to trot past don’t even notice that I’m there.

You may have seen that my website’s front page now has a list of upcoming events, where I’ll be talking about my new novel Rainforest, as well as answering readers’ questions about my stories. The list currently only has a few events - but be assured, we’ll be adding more as soon as we’ve confirmed the details, so it’ll be worth checking the website from time to time.

It’s been a busy few weeks for me. Apart from putting the finishing touches to the cover for Rainforest, this autumn is Dark Matter’s fifteenth birthday, so to celebrate, there’ll be a special Anniversary Edition in September!  It will have a splendid new cover (I’ll share it on my website soon), plus two special bonus items. I wrote one of them, about where I got the inspiration for the story and how I wrote it, as well as readers’ responses to it over the years. The second is a brilliant piece by a long-time admirer of the book, Simon Pegg (many of you will know him from Hot Fuzz, the Star Trek and Mission:Impossible films, and of course Shaun of the Dead).  Simon describes his own very individual response to the story. His piece is full of thought-provoking ideas, and I found it fascinating.

I’ve also written a short ghost story for the next Sphere anthology, The Witching Hour – which, like Rainforest, is published in October. At first when Sphere asked me to write a story, I said no. Oh, I had all sorts of excuses: I was too busy with Rainforest, and as well as spending every afternoon caring for my elderly Ma (which I still am), I needed to work on my next Gothic novel – and to cap it all, I’d never written any short stories and didn’t think I could. But having flatly refused, I then started having second thoughts. Don’t be such a wimp, I told myself. Why not just give it a go? So I did, and it ended up being one of the most enjoyable pieces of writing I’ve done in years. I also think it’s one of my best stories. Which just goes to show that you never know what you’re capable of until you try.

And on that optimistic note, I shall leave you until the next time, with some pictures of that beech tree I climbed this morning.

Stay steady, and happy reading!

Michelle

P.S. Rainforest is published on 9 October, but you can pre-order a signed copy today on my website.  You can also pre-order a copy of The Witching Hour too.

And I welcome messages or questions from readers: just go to my website and click on "Ask Michelle Anything".