Posted Tuesday June 30th 2009
by James Smith

‘A Booktrust exclusive!’

Three words (and one exclamation mark) that trip happily off the tongue (or, in this case, the fingers) as we reveal a new, never seen before, story by our first-ever online writer in residence, the indefatigable and hard-working Patrick Ness.

Patrick is halfway through his six-month online residency. In that short time he has: written a blog; put together a series of writing tips; talked to a class at Graveney School, London, about The Knife of Never Letting Go; and been interviewed about the writer in residence experience by ABC Radio in Australia.

Somehow, Patrick’s also found time to run the London marathon (if you’ve been following the blog, you’ll know that some Ness skin was torn and some Ness blood was shed, but that he made it to the finish line), and write a brand-new story about Viola, the determined heroine of The Knife of Never Letting Go and its sequel The Ask and the Answer (the first two parts of the Chaos Walking series).

Those of you who have read Knife – if you haven’t and don’t want to know even the tiniest thing about the story, stop reading now – will know that Todd, the book’s hero, discovers Viola in a swamp, surrounded by the shattered remains of a spacecraft. Patrick’s new story, called ‘The New World’, explains how and why Viola ended up in this awful situation. It is by turns gripping, horrifying and, like Knife and Ask, rather moving.

You can click through the story online (the further in you get, the faster you’ll click) or you can download it to read at your leisure (only this time it will be the printed pages that you’ll be flicking through at a rate of knots).