I didn't win the award, but I got a slice of this awesome cake, so really I'm the winner!!!!

This week I was honoured to be able to attend the wonderful Wandsworth Fabulous Book Award ceremony for the second year in a row! Last year Furnace Lockdown was shortlisted, and came second (after Rachel Ward's Numbers), and this year it was Death Sentence's chance to vie for the coveted award.

It was an absolutely wonderful morning, with pupils from seven local schools taking part – including Ashcroft Academy, my second home in London. Each school did a presentation on their favourite book (or books) from the shortlist, and the highlight of my morning was when the awesome pupils from Graveney did their presentation on Death Sentence. They even acted out the scene where Alex, Zee and Simon make it to the control room and face off with a Blacksuit. It was brilliant! They also held a Furnace quiz, and I won a Mars Bar for getting an answer right (although I kind of felt like I was cheating, since I wrote the books...)!

Some awesome comments about Death Sentence!

After the presentations and some discussion groups the winner was announced. And it wasn't me!! I wasn't even in the top three this year!!! But I managed to ignore my urge to grab the award and run away and settled for a lovely bottle of bubbly and a piece of the awesome Fab Award cake. The winner was Alyxandra Harvey for My Love Lies Bleeding, which is a vampire book. I guess you really can't compete with lovelorn vampires! But she lives in America, and although they are sending her the award I doubt she'll get a bit of cake, so who's the real winner? Me!

Anyway, congratulations Alyxandra, and thanks to Susan and everybody at the award for a wonderful day! Maybe I'll be back next year, and you never know – one of these days I might be the bride instead of the bridesmaid!!