This is my new book. It’s called Combat Zone. It’s out this week.

Combat Zone is about a school rugby team that takes part in the UK schools’ championship at the same time that most of the players’ parents are involved in a conflict in the Middle East with the RAF.

There is a lot going this autumn to help Combat Zone take off. The highlights are:

* an event at Cheltenham Literature Festival this Saturday 11th October at 3 p.m. – the event is called Football v Rugby, which means I have to bring both my football and rugby posts down from Leeds.

* a launch event at the RAF Museum in Cosford on November 20th, where we will be joined by some of the RAF rugby team. The RAF is a large part of the content of the book – and they and their children helped enormously with the research. You can read about that here.

* a day of events at my Patron of Reading school in Edinburgh, Stewarts Melville.

* a pilot set of events in East Grinstead, working with two schools the public library and the local rugby club, to see if we can reach a whole community through four different venues.

* dozens of school and  library events in rugby strongholds like Leicester, Exeter and more.

In addition, I am working up five projects to do with rugby union and literacy. For the RFU . To be delivered in 2015, Rugby World Cup year. There’s more about that on a previous blog, here.

Thanks for reading.