I’m CJ, the author of the Night School series. Welcome to my web world! Feel free to browse, get the latest news about the book or read an extract. 

First, though, please take a minute to watch the awesomely chilling Night School trailer, made by my favourite director.

Night School Trailer

This song always makes me happy. I hope it makes you happy, too!  Have a great weekend, everyone.

So, a few minutes ago the doorbell rang, and who should be there but the postman, with a great big box of wonderful.

The new batch of Night School bookmarks is now in! You wonderful people raided the last batch so quickly I hardly had time to fall in love with them before they were given away.

Get your bookmark!

In celebration of restocking, I’m giving away  signed bookmarks to the first five people to comment on this post. This is open to the entire world!

Today is Night School’s publication day in France, where the lovely Robert Laffont has translated it and is releasing it into the wild.

I’m so proud I could burst.

France et moi

France and I have always had a romantic friendship. My aunt and cousins are French, and I studied French in high school and at university, certain that I would become fluent, move to France and live a romantic French life (like the amazing Amy Plum).

One day my French professor told me I had developed a ‘Parisian accent’ and I practically fainted from happiness.

As if…

Then I graduated and reality set in. I got a job and went to work like everybody else and soon my French got rusty. There’s not much call for French when you’re a crime reporter in America, although once when a French couple lost their camper van and didn’t speak English and nobody on the police force spoke French, I acted as translator until we found it.

That was awesome.

Pas pour moi

The chance to live in France never happened, although the opportunity to live in England did, and for many years now I’ve been happily in the English countryside. From here I can travel to France easily. Every time I go,  my French comes back just a little more.

I love my life in England but  I always look at France a bit wistfully, in a Sliding Doors kind of way.

Because, as countries go, it’s the one that got away.

Vive la France!

In recent months, I’ve chatted with a couple of people who hate love triangles.

Hate them like burning. Hate them like paper cuts.

Really hate them.

Personally, I’ve got nothing against triangles. They’re just another geometric shape that life can sometimes emulate. I might prefer a parallelogram or rhombus but that’s just because I like to say “parallelogram and rhombus”. Not because I like those arrangements any better than triangles.

But they made me think about Night School and Allie’s complex love life. And I have to say, I don’t really see Night School as a love triangle. I see it more as a crooked line – she likes one boy and then, when that doesn’t work, she decides she likes another.

Either way, to me it doesn’t really matter because I don’t think romance is ever neat. And the idea that your first love would be the right one for you… well.

Let’s just say it doesn’t usually work out that way. And that’s Ok. Because kissing a lot of frogs to find your prince is fun.

The geometry of love

To understand where I’m coming from, you should probably know that I change my mind. A lot. I mean, how does anybody NOT do that?  Changing my mind is like breathing. I can change it in mid-step. Mid-thought. Mid-explanation.

And when I was a teenager, I was even more changeable. I considered making up my mind about anything to be a kind of failure.

Perhaps because of that, I liked the wrong people way too often. Even when I liked the right person I would worry that they were the wrong person right up until we broke up, at which point I was always certain they’d been the right person all along.

It was a NIGHTMARE, people. A tangled web of worrying and guessing and panicking.

Life is messy

I’ve read that when you meet the right person, “you’ll just know.”

As if.

Life doesn’t come with neon arrows pointing at people and “This one’s Ok!” spelled out in magenta LED letters only you can see.

It’s entirely possible that when you meet the right person you’ll be in a bad mood. Your hair will be frizzy, your mascara will be smeared. You’ll drop your bag and a tampon will fall out and roll across the floor to rest gently against his foot. And you’ll think “He’s not all that” as an act of self-defence.

It might be the third date before you realise you really like him.

A triangle seems simple by comparison.

This is not a love song

According to my journal, the year I was sixteen I had epic crushes on five boys.

FIVE.

So the idea that a teenage girl is having trouble making her mind up about which boy is right for her feels perfectly normal to me. And I fear she won’t make up her mind any time soon, because I love Allie’s indecision. I can relate to it.

Long may she waver.

Londoners, come meet me!

I’m going to be chatting to Night School fans at Foyles bookstore in London on Charing Cross Road on 2nd May.

With me will be the amazing Amy Plum (author of Die for Me), the talented Ruth Warburton (author of A Witch in Winter) and lovely Sara Grant (author of Dark Parties)!

We’ll sign books, give away bookmarks and generally make a nuisance of ourselves.

Please come along!

Get your tickets

The event is free, but ticketed. You can reserve your free tickets on Foyles’ website.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012
6:30 pm
At Foyles, 113 Charing Cross Road, London
For tickets:  0207 437 5660

I hope I’ll see you there!

I don’t know what’s up with me, but I’m feeling very girl powery today. Maybe it’s because I’m reading an early edition of Sarra Manning’s fabulous new book, Adorkable. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t been very well and I’ve been stuck at home for two weeks being almost kitten-like in my weakness.

Whatever the reason, I’ve been listening to a song that’s been my favourite You-Get-Fired-Up-Girl song for a very long time now. And then I started thinking how my Rachel would like this song, because she quietly rebels against injustice. And she’d probably make Allie listen to it. Allie would be more drawn to hip-hop and street music, so she’d only listen to make Rachel happy. But then, one day, she’d play it just for herself… and it would make her smile.

This would be on summer break, of course. Cimmeria doesn’t allow MP3 players.

But I do.

So, in Rachel’s honour, please allow me to force some 4 Non-Blondes on you. Because they are AWESOME.