The winner of the Set the Scene competition, to suggest a location for the fourth and final First Aid for Fairies book, is:
EMILY WRIGHT!
She suggested the gorgeous Traquair House and (this is what won it for her) Traquair House Maze….
Today I met Emily at the maze to present her prize, with various photographers and journalists there taking pictures and interviewing her.
Emily was fabulous. Really calm, patient and great at answering questions.
But it was one of the weirdest photo calls I’ve ever done…
Because we were presenting the prize in the maze. So a nice man showed my publisher the quick way to the middle, then he went off and left us.
But all the journalists and photographers turned up at different times, and once we’d taken the first journalist into the middle, all the press who arrived later got lost on their way in! We were in the middle getting our photo taken (which is my least favourite bit of being an author) and we kept hearing footsteps wandering around a few hedges away, so we’d have to shout: “Are you here for the photocall? Are you lost? Do you need us to come and find you?” The lady from Borders TV managed to fit herself and her camera through a little hole in the hedge, which was very impressive.
So it was quite spooky and very dramatic doing an interview in the middle of these high hedges, with lost people all around, and with my publisher shouting instructions like “left, no the next left, oh you’ve gone too far, go back…”
Then everyone else went away, leaving me and Emily in the middle of the maze on our own, so they could get a nice picture from high up on the terrace of Traquair House. They left us. In the maze. On our own.
And I wasn’t the one who’d been shown the way in or out!
So, has it taken me til this evening to escape?
No, it’s ok – they came to get us out eventually, but the feeling of being stuck in there was pretty good practice for imagining Helen and Yann trapped in there… which I should probably go off and write now!
So well done Emily, and well done the brilliant runners up, from Inverkip, Tain, Ullapool and Falkirk. And well done too to the other 250 kids who entered. It was very hard to choose a winner, because all the ideas were fabulous. I wish I could write a book about every single one of them. But I can’t, or not this year anyway! But you all have great imaginations and you all know your suggested locations really well, so why you don’t set an adventure there yourself and let me see what you come up with!
Here are some photos of me and Emily at the maze!
And please notice, I managed this whole blog without using the word “amazing” at any point. I wonder if the local press will be as be restrained.
Lari and Emily posing completely naturally
Lari being interviewed by an intrepid BBC reporter who found his way in
We escaped! And doesn't the maze look wonderful?
Ooh, looking forward to reading this! Yet another wee corner of Scotland with which I’d been unfamiliar until now. (Would be an East coast location that won, wouldn’t it? Hmmph! Only joking, it looks great!)
Well done to Emily, and well done to you for skillful avoidence of the word “Amazing”. I have a similar problem with the word “Awesome”…
Yes, it’s East, though hardly coast! Stop being so West Coast-y! It was the best entry! But there will be at least one West Coast location in the book, and two of the four runners up are from the West as well. The fabled beasts can find magic all over Scotland!
What a brilliant location. You have to mention the secret staircase too!