Tag Archives: mcintyre

CBC Writing & Illustrating A Picture Book Course

If you’ve ever thought about writing or illustrating your own book, then Curtis Brown Creative have launched a series of online courses for aspiring picture book creators. They asked me and my fab friend and Jampires co-author Sarah McIntyre to help come up with content for three courses: one for writing (me), one for illustrating (Sarah) and a combined course offering material from both of us.

When I quit my day job to work in children’s books I spent a long time floundering around: I was completely clueless as to how to go about it. We’re passing on our experience so you don’t have to make the same mistakes and can get on with being creative.

There are detailed notes and accompanying video content, creative exercises and mentoring, all to help you make your picture book idea a reality. The courses start in October, so sign up now at the CBC website.

Choccy bits

The Chocolate Factory Ghost didn’t have an official launch party, but illustrator Claire Powell and I did have some drinks and a social meet-up for some friends last night to mark the occasion. Here’s a couple of pics that my friend and Jampires co-author Sarah McIntyre took:

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The second photo is of Claire and I with our with brilliant designer Andrea Kearney (left) and amazing editor Lucy Mackay-Sim (2nd left). Lucy told us that The CFG is already going to be reprinted which is great news!

And this morning, Claire spotted The CFG in WHSmiths children’s chart! It’s so exciting to see our book nestled amongst the celebrities and big name books. Fingers crossed it does well.

Spring happenings

Here’s what has been happening with me for the first part of this year.

When I’m a Mummy Like You!, the picture booked created by me and Francesca Gambatesa was released into the wild in February! We had a launch party at Gosh! Comics in Soho to celebrate (pic by Sarah McIntyre). It’s also out now in the US as When I’m a Mommy Like You! You can read a lovely review at Bookblog Book Monsters here. Francesca spotted the book in Foyles window as part of a Mother’s Day display.

Meanwhile, I finished the illustrations for Tom Nicoll‘s Boyband of the Apocalypse that’s out in June, and I’m pleased to say there’s a sequel on the cards which I’ll also be drawing. I’m looking forward to that, as I really enjoyed working on Boyband.

Also in February, Sarah McIntyre kindly invited me to take part with her show at this year’s Imagine Festival at the RFH, along with Katherina Manoulessou and Stephen Collins.

We had to talk about our book characters and then lead the audience in a draw-along – the (huge) audience were very enthusiastic and some fantastic drawings were produced.

Read Sarah’s report here (from where I pinched these pics).

In March I had another big event at Leicester Author Week, organised by Whatever It Takes, an initiative to encourage reading within the city. I gave a talk to two sets of school children – about 400 children in all – about my work, followed by creative writing workshops. It was a busy day, but a lot of fun! Thanks to WIT for organising it, probably the best organised event I’ve been invited to. (Pic by WIT)

World Book Day (or at least, the UK version!) is in March and it always pleases me to see how many people dress up as Jampires, year after year. Here are some pics that appeared on Twitter:

So cute!

Currently, I’m working on the edits for the first book of my novel series with Bloomsbury books, which comes out next year. An illustrator has been chosen and I’m very excited about the whole thing. Fingers crossed that other people like it too!

Nice news

Firstly, lovely letters. Here’s a drawing from Theo, aged 7, a Monster & Chips reader. He’s drawn a brilliant monster with a snot-burger and chips. Great use of colours, too. You can almost smell the fart!

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I also had a very nice letter from Charlie, which was beautifully written, so I’ve taken extra care with my reply. Charlie, from St Bede’s School in Weaverham, said the Barry the cat was his favourite character in Monster & Chips so here’s a little picture of Barry that I drew at the bottom of the letter.

Recently, I finished the illustrations for the last Creature Teacher book. It’s a great series and I was over the moon when the first book won the Heart of Hawick Children’s Book Award! Woohoo! I couldn’t be more pleased for writer Sam Watkins as it was her first published book. 

Freshmade NYC are a cooking and craft studio that run cookery sessions for kids in New York City. They have a storybook cooking class, which sounds like a fab idea, and recently ran a Jampires doughnut making session! Here’s a pic from their Instagram feed:

Banana doughnuts! Yum.

What am I up to at the moment? I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately and a few weeks back finished a manuscript for a book idea that I’m really hopeful will prove to be publisher-friendly. It’s doing the rounds of publishers right now, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed and praying to the book gods that it works out.

I’m also working on a window artwork display for the nice people at Chicken & Frog bookshop in Brentwood. I visited them a couple of years back and am doing an event for the Brentwood Children’s Literary Festival which they are organising. It’s not something I’ve done before so it’s very exciting.

In the meantime, When I’m A Monster Like You, Dad! is out in the shops very soon! My advance copies arrived from the publisher today. Illustrator Francesca Gambatesa and I are hosting a launch event at Gosh! Comics in London on the evening of May 27th – all are welcome, so do come along if you can and say hello (and buy a book!).

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A Late Catch-Up!

Books

A second book of Sam Watkin‘s Creature Teacher series came out in August with me on art duties again. Creature Teacher Goes Wild is set at a theme park which meant lots of fun things to draw. Here’s a bit when Mr Hyde and the gang are on their way to Wilf’s Wild Adventure Theme Park – it gets messy pretty soon afterwards:

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There’s another Creature Teacher book out very soon – next week in fact! Creature Teacher Science Shocker introduces a new character who’s more than a match for Creature – but who is it?

The fourth CT book is due out in July and I’ll be drawing the illos for that any day – can’t wait to get started!

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CT is also coming out in Turkish which is very exciting. I love seeing books I’m involved with coming out in different languages!

Speaking of foreign editions, JAMPIRES is going to be coming out in Korean which should be really interesting to see as it’s such an attractive written language. My fab co-author, Sarah McIntyre, and I donned our Jampire gear for a spooky Hallowe’en window-painting session at the wonderful GOSH! Comics in London back in October.

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It’s very hard to paint on glass, never mind back-to front. I’ve borrowed these photos from GOSH’s Facebook page – they’re both taken by Mauricio Molizane De Souza and there’s plenty more of his ace work to be seen there too.

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I’ve was very pleased to be invited to join Alex Milway and Gary Northfield at the Discover Children’s Story Centre‘s summer Storyfest that took place at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford in July.

We talked about our books – all of them funny books – having visited the schools involved in the previous weeks to see what kind of funny stories they could come up with themselves.

It had to be one of the hottest days of the year – not a day to be dressed up as a lion fighting a zebra Roman gladiator.

Yes, dear reader, that is me in the furry onesie, having taken on gladiator Gary, and in the middle of my (very dramatic) death throes. A career highlight.

Finally, I’ve recently got to see the artwork for When I’m a Monster Like You, Dad!, the picture book I wrote that is being illustrated by Francesca Gambatesa. It’s been ages coming (for publisher scheduling reasons) and I was over the moon to see the final images. Francesca’s done such a great job so I couldn’t be more happy!

The second book in our collaboration is in production now and will be out next year some time, but WIMLY (as I call it) is out in the beginning of June – just in time for Father’s Day. I’ll be talking a lot more about this before then, but here is one spread from inside just to whet the appetite:

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Now: time to look forward to the challenges of 2016. Onwards!

May Recap

Creature Teacher

The first book of this series came out in April. It can sometimes be a bit confusing working on a set of books that are being published at relatively short intervals. Whilst book one was appearing in the shops I was working on the illustrations for book two and simultaneously working on the cover for book three! I keep getting the books mixed up in my head. Here’s a rough pencil-version of an illustration from book two, with the CT gang on the hunt for mischievous creature!

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Creature Teacher writer Sam Watkins had a very busy launch event at Thomas A Becket School in Worthing in May. She spent the whole day doing short events with children from years 1 and 3 – I think she was losing her voice by the end of it all.

I joined her for the afternoon sessions to do a bit of drawing whilst she read from the book. It was a lot of fun but quite exhausting! It was the first time Sam and I had actually met (she is lovely, thank goodness!). Sam even made some swirly biscuits to match the book cover design. I can personally vouch for how tasty they were.

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Here’s a pic of us at the end-of-day signing (we didn’t play the bongos, alas). Not sure who took this photo – apologies for pinching it.

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Our visit even made it into the Worthing Herald. Oh, the heady heights of fame. Here’s a clipping from Sam’s Twitter feed:

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(You can read the online version here.)

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We ran a competition at the school to design a cover for a Creature Teacher book – you can see all the entries at the CT website here. I love how much energy there is in all the drawings, but then it is a very energetic book!

More recently, Sam and I visited Brighton Waterstones for a drawing and reading session. Everyone got to design their own Creature Teachers, drawing or doing a bit of collage.  Here’s some photos from Sam’s Twitter:

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It’s great doing events with someone else – you get to bounce ideas off each other, as well as providing a bit of support. Sam and I will be doing more events together at some point soon.

Whilst in Brighton for the Waterstones shindig I popped along to the Brighton Illustration Fair, part of the town’s fringe festival.

It was good to catch up with comics chums Joe Decie, Warwick Johnson Cadwell and Amber Hsu, who all had tables, as well as bump into Matt Baxter.

Lots of lovely things to see, but I was very much taken with the drawing activity they had: rotating towers of cardboard boxes that you could draw on in a heads-and-tails fashion. Worth bearing in mind for a future event.

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Other news

I was thrilled to see Whitchurch School in Hampshire have been reading Monster and Chips as part of their Year 4 book group. The readers have been creating their own monsters and even making up their own ‘delicious’ menu:

  • Bashed Beetleburger AND CHIPS
  • Slimy Slug Surprise with antennae eyes
  • Eyeball soup with slug slime chips
  • Bogey burger gravy AND CHIPS
  • Smelly cabbage soup with poo plop croutons
  • Earwax tart

Poo plop croutons! Tasty. I hope you enjoy the rest of the book – I love seeing people’s reactions to it. Thanks to librarian and book evangelist Jo for the tip-off!

I was very pleased the group had read Jampires too! The US edition is out at the end of the month and my co-author Sarah McIntyre and I were very happy to have a nice review from Publisher’s Weekly.

Sarah has been very busy – and successful – with her Pictures Mean Business Campaign, trying to get more recognition for book illustrators in their contribution to a book’s success. You can find out more here, or follow the #PicturesMeanBusiness hashtag on Twitter

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Doughbots

I was delighted to hear from St Michael’s School librarian Sam Pope that the year 3 and 4 book group had been discussing Monster & Chips: Night of the Living Bread.

In the book, Joe and the monsters create a robot made from bread – a doughbot! – and the book group members even had a go at making their own versions. You can read all about it and have a look at all the photos here – there are instructions on how to make your own, if you fancy it (I recommend adding some tuna and mayonnaise and erm… recycling the doughbot parts afterwards).

I’ve pinched this photo to show all the doughbots lined up – aren’t they crumbily menacing? I’m particularly loving the hair extensions. Thanks so much, everyone! It’s great to see a school library being so actively used – do have a look at some of their book reviews and other goings on. It looks like a lot of fun.

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What else has been going on?

Jampires

I’m not the only creative person in my family – my Mum is an excellent knitter. She’s one of those knitters whose needles go all blurry when she’s working, she’s that fast! My childhood collection of Action Men were always warm through the winter, thanks to their mum-knitted balaclavas. Anyway, a Jampires knitting pattern was obviously going to be a done deal, and Mum revealed the finished item the other weekend:

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Bless him! I’m very pleased to have a Jampire of my very own. I have to keep him on a high shelf, as the dog has taken a fancy to him and he’ll end up buried in the back yard!

Here’s another wonderful Jampire made by Joy – thanks to Martin Hand for bringing that to our attention. This chap was made for his daughter Katie’s birthday (picture pinched from Martin’s Twitter stream):

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If you’re interested in behind the scenes stuff in the children’s book publishing world, my co-author on Jampires, Sarah McIntyre, has written a couple of interesting articles on the way illustrators are perceived as being something slightly ‘lesser’ than writers, particularly relevant to the creation of Jampires which we very much co-wrote/illustrated.

Here’s the first article: Why I hate the Word ‘Author’, and she’s recently written about how the problem seems to be ingrained in the publishing world’s very own reference systems: The Real Reason Illustrators Keep Getting Overlooked. Some excellent points made and well worth a read.

End of Year

I’m probably going to be staying off the internet for the remainder of the year, what with Christmas busy-ness and so on, so here’s a quick catch-up post. I’ve had a few computer issues recently so haven’t been able to update as much as I would like, particularly about November’s Thought Bubble Comic Festival up in Leeds.

Sarah McIntyre and I looked after a Jampires-themed kids drawing area which was very busy all weekend. We managed to sell and sign a lot of books (and some lovely badges) too!

Sarah wrote a magnificently comprehensive post about the weekend (you’re better off reading that than any account I could write) and what I really like about it is how she gets across how much fun the weekend was.

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Particularly because of the help we had from Matt Badham and Molly Bruton in manning the tables (see the photo I’ve pinched from Sarah).They were great company and marvellous sales-people, and it really made a difference having their help. I’m not planning on doing any comic conventions next year so this was a lovely event on which to end 2014.

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Speaking of Jampires, if you’re a crafty type and looking for last-minute gifts ideas, why not knit someone their very own Jampire? Graffiti knitter Lauren O’Farrell has conjured up a pattern to make a woolly version of our little jammy dodgers. I guess you could use whatever colour wool you like depending on your favourite flavour of jam. My mum’s a bit of a knitter so I’m hoping she’ll make me one!

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You can download the pattern from the Jampires website, from the activities page.

It’s been a good year, though not as productive as I’d like (but then I always say that). I had two books out in 2014, and will have two books out next year (that I illustrated) with books that I’ve written following on from that.

I still need lots more projects to keep me busy and all the bills paid, and I’ve loads of ideas, but it takes a while for things to happen, and I keep getting caught out by just how slow the publishing world is. You need to have many irons in the fire, all the time, as so many of the ideas you come up with won’t go anywhere.

I’ve been doing loads of writing and have joined an excellent writing group which has helped with that a lot.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and a brilliant New Year.

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Jampire Jamboree

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Yesterday was a bit of a busy one: off to Oxford for a workshop and ‘show’ (look at the purple-y poster I made for it!) at the fabulous Story Museum. It’s an amazing and highly unusual space devoted to story-making and telling, and a real gem amongst all of Oxford’s better known attractions.

I ran a comic-making workshop in the morning with a Hallowe’en-y/monster-y feel. Lots of keen comic-makers were there with loads of ideas – the beginning of a workshop is usually talkative and boisterous.

But the moment they had to get on with making their own comics the whole room descended into such an intense silence that I wished I’d brought some music with me!

And there were some fantastic comics made – we had some time at the end of the workshop for those brave enough to share their comics with everybody. Some were hilarious, some action-packed, some more gentle – I always try to get across that the great thing about comics is how versatile they are as a medium.
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I made a handout for the work-shoppers to take away. There’s a PDF version available to download from my activities page if anyone needs a bit of inspiration during half-term.

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One work-shopper brought along his collection of Monster & Chips books to be signed. I was so pleased to see how well-worn the covers were! Nice to meet you, Aydin! It was at that moment that Sarah McIntyre arrived for our afternoon event and she snapped me busily scribbling in the books.

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Then Sarah and I rushed off to do our JAMPIRES show! Our performance is still a bit wobbly in some places, especially after the last-minute addition of a Jampires song (!), but it all adds to the fun. I need to brush up on my tambourine skills, that’s for sure. Here’s a pic from after it was all over (pinched from Sarah) with some of the audience and their Jampire artwork:

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Sarah always manages to look so elegant in her costume whilst I just look a bit of a fool! Thanks to everyone who came along – both events were sell-outs – and huge thanks to the Story Museum for being such great hosts.

JAMPIRES! Out now.

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Happy publication day to us! Sarah McIntyre and I are most pleased to announce our picture book, JAMPIRES, is officially in the shops! So go get a copy – or else!

It’s been a long road to get here, and Sarah is blogging about some of the development work we did here. I’d forgotten about some of those sketches we did!

All the information you need about Jampires can be found at the JAMPIRES website, including activities and buying information. Phew! Time for a doughnut.

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JAMPIRES at the Big Feastival

It’s JAMPIRES week!

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The picture book I co-authored with Sarah McIntyre is out on Thursday and to launch it we did something a bit different: an event at Jamie Oliver’s Big Feastival food extravaganza! The Jampires are all about jam and tasty treats so it seemed appropriate (as well as giving us the chance to sample some rather lovely cheese and ice cream, amongst other things…).

But we brought our own treats with us – not just Jampires books but our own special Jampire Jam, courtesy of dapper jamologist Emma Preston-Dunlop. Emma joined us in a moment of relaxation prior to our event:

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And here’s the jam itself, with its own labels and everything! It’s raspberry and vanilla with a bit of sparkly silver Jampire magic in there too. It almost seems a shame to eat it – almost.

Emma explained how easy it is to make jam – she’s supplied loads of special custom jams for all kinds of occasions and has to be very creative.

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Then it was time for us to be creative. We did our first dramatic reading of the tale of the Jampires. Note the intensity of the acting taking place. Oscars all round!

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I’m holding a ‘prop’ doughnut, which I’m afraid had to be eaten in the cause of publicity. Check out Sarah’s amazing Jampire dress that she made with the help of her mom. I’m quite proud of my sequinned waistcoat and home-made Jampire hat too. I spent whole minutes stapling those ears on.

Our reading was followed by some Jampire-drawing and Jampire mask-making. This is us with honorary Jampire Logan, son of brilliant comic-maker Neill Cameron, who was at the show with our friends from the Phoenix comic.

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David Fickling, publisher of both the Phoenix Comic and Jampires turned up too, after cycling all the way over from Oxford! Time for a Sarah-selfie:

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The little Jampire was made by the super-talented Ann Lam – he proved so popular with one audience member he had to be gently ‘liberated’!

I’m so pleased with this book: it was a long time coming but I think it looks just lovely, as well as being a fun read. Sarah’s finishes are just magical. Here’s one of my favourite ‘spreads’ (pardon the pun):

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I get hungry just looking at it!

You can make you own masks, as well as download other activities, at the Jampires website – there’s more information there on where to buy the book too.

Thanks to Philippa Perry our publicist for working so hard on the event, to Devon Black, who apparently did a brilliant job as ‘Jampire Jill’ on Sunday, and James for driving us there and back again.

Meet the JAMPIRES!

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Who are the JAMPIRES?

They are these cheeky little chaps! And that’s their friend Sam too. They’re flying off to… well, you’ll have to read JAMPIRES to find out! It’s a picture co-written and co-illustrated by the super-brilliant Sarah McIntyre and myself that’s out on September 4th.

Sarah asked me years to ago to work with her on a book: she had an idea about little creatures who were like vampires but preferred jammy doughnuts to human necks! Interestingly, Sarah wasn’t a fan of vampires themselves and wanted to avoid all the easily recognisable vampiric clichés. We went all around the houses trying to come up with ideas – jampires are tricky little devils to pin down – but eventually found, as is usually the case, that one of the simplest ideas was the best. And it works, even if I do say so myself. A yummy, treat-filled book, perfect for Christmas (sorry for mentioning it in August but it really is!). We have a JAMPIRES website too where you can read more and have a go at some fun activities.

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The book is a true collaboration: we worked on the text together, then Sarah drew the finished art over my page roughs. I think this might confuse some people who are more used to the idea of author and illustrator being something separate but it can make for a very satisfying creative experience for the people involved. Sarah has gone on to further collaborative projects: her books with Philip Reeve (Seawigs, Cakes in Space) are also co-productions and have been widely acclaimed.

One of the collaborative tools we employed was the appropriately named ‘comics jam’. We improvised a comic together to generate story ideas, taking it in turns to write and draw a page, never knowing what was going to happen next!  You can read the whole comic here. We’ve had some copies of the comic printed – if you see us around we may let you have one. Here’s a page from the comic that explains how we worked (click for a bigger view):

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Comics jams are a great way to make comics with friends or classmates – we’ve used them in workshops and events and the ideas come thick and fast. Find out more about how to make your own comics jam on our Jampires activity page.

We are launching the book at the end of this month at Jamie Oliver’s Big Feastival. Our amazing publicist Philippa Perry has even commissioned a special Jampires Jam from boutique jam-maker The Butch Institute for the occasion. Can’t wait to try it! We’ve also had a photo shoot (photographer: David Warren) in our glitzy Jampires event costumes – so showbiz! There’ll be more about JAMPIRES and the launch very soon, so keep an eye on our Twitter feeds: @davidoconnell and @jabberworks for more.

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My Writing Process Blog Tour

I’ve been tagged by my JAMPIRES collaborator Sarah McIntyre for the Writing Process Blog Tour. It’s a like one of those chain letter things but actually useful and interesting – see Sarah’s entry here and follow the links back to see who else has taken part. We all have to answer the same four questions:

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What am I working on?

I’m currently writing the second of a three-book series of picture books that will be illustrated by the super-talented Francesca Gambatesa. They’ve not been officially ‘announced’ by the publisher as far as I know so I probably shouldn’t say much, but they all have a light-hearted take on family and relationships. Like JAMPIRES, they are all rhyming texts – an extra challenge. I belong to a writers’ group and one of the authors there described writing rhyming texts as like putting a puzzle together. If you edit one word you often have to reconstruct the whole verse from scratch. It can be very tricky.

At the same time, I’m writing what I hope will be the first part of a new young fiction series, similar to my Monster & Chips books. I’ve got a lot of young fiction ideas and it’s difficult to know which idea to tackle first. As soon as I start writing one thing it doesn’t seem fresh and exciting and I get the urge to pursue one of my other ideas.

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In addition to these ‘main projects’ I want to do a picture book where I’m both author and illustrator and am slowly putting a book dummy together. It’s something I’ve not done before on my own so I’m finding it a bit intimidating. Working with Sarah on JAMPIRES has been hugely helpful, as we collaborated on both the text and the images (there’ll be more on how we did this this as we approach publication day) but there’s a real art to putting a picture book together which is quite unlike writing a prose book. It’s very challenging.

I’m about to start work on illustrating a young fiction book that someone else has written so that doesn’t leave me with many gaps in the diary. I want to start work on a pre-teen novel that I’d like to have completed (or at least a first draft completed) by about this time next year. There’s nothing like an ambitious schedule…

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

It probably doesn’t very much. If you go into a bookshop there’s a veritable wall of young fiction (books for 6-10 year olds) and they do look very similar. Usually funny, sometimes gross, with LOADS of diary-style books about nerdy, hopeless kids unwittingly getting into trouble at school. The quality is variable and one of my editors was saying the other day how there’s actually a shortage of good quality books for this age group.

I like to think I spend as much time on character, plot and language as I do on jokes, but humour has always been the main aspect. With my newer ideas I want to make sure the focus is on quality story-telling over humour, rather than the other way around.

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Why do I write what I do?

Funny books are my thing, and it feels like I just can’t stop myself from putting a joke in a sentence if I get the chance. I don’t know why that is – I’m certainly not any kind of comedian – but I do like the idea that my readers might be chuckling away and given a bit of an escape from whatever is going on in their lives.

I write for this age group because I think I ‘get’ how their minds work better than other ages. As a relatively new writer they are an easier age group to write for because it’s important to keep the plot straight-forward and fairly linear. There’s no description, just action and dialogue. Whilst picture books are for younger readers, they are much more complex and multi-layered in the way they are constructed. Every word is analysed. And with books for older readers there’s all the emotional stuff – characters have to be far more fully-formed. Not that any of that will stop me having a go at trying to write for them!

How does my writing process work?

I have an idea and spend a while – a LONG while – sketching out characters and developing the idea in more detail. Sometimes I use drawings to work out character and places but mostly I just make notes. I use Microsoft OneNote to store all my ideas for projects so I can access them wherever I am, through my phone or online.

For the young fiction ideas I then make a book plan with a detailed description of the events in the book, breaking it down into chapters. I use that to launch into the actual writing: it’s the framework on top of which everything is built. I occasionally send ideas to my agent just to get a second opinion/sanity check so I can avoid wasting time on ideas that just aren’t going to sell or have been done by someone else. The writing group is good for testing things out too.

It sounds like I have it all organised but it’s not the case. There’s plenty of procrastination, coffee drinking, dog-walks and general work avoidance going on too!

The Joy of Events

I’ve surprised myself that I really enjoy book events – something I didn’t expect when I started out doing them. I work with a great age group that are enthusiastic and full of ideas, and are not afraid to push things a little!

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One such event took place at Oxford’s Bookfeast on Tuesday, as part of their annual schools festival. I did a couple of drawing-and-talking activities in the wonderful surroundings of the Pitt Rivers Museum, hidden at the back of the University’s Natural History Museum. The Pitt Rivers Museum holds a huge collection of anthropology and archaeology from around the world and made for an amazing venue. So many inspirational objects to look at whilst I scribbled away on the flip chart!

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The kids are also very good at asking very direct questions. These didn’t all come from Tuesday’s audience but are fairly representative of the type of things I get asked:

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I’m always trying to think of ways to improve my presentation and make it more entertaining, and am curious to see what other authors do.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to match author Veronica Cosantelli, however, who turned up for her event with her corn snake, named Thisbe, in tow. I tried to take a snap but Thisbe was just too busy to pose – she’d already done a runner in the car park! Gorgeous colours and patterns on her scales. I’m sure she was a hit with the audience.

As well as Veronica, it was great to meet author Dave Cousins too, and to briefly bump into Tom Gates creator Liz Pichon once again (the audience were very impressed that I’d met her!).

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Thanks so much to the organisers of Bookfeast for inviting me along for the day, and in particular to volunteers Sue and Mervyn who looked after me so well. As ex-teachers they were great with the kids which is always helpful.

My co-creator on JAMPIRES (coming soon!), Sarah McIntyre, has written a blog post for event organisers on how to make for a good author visit. There should probably be a companion piece on ‘How to be a good author when on a visit’ – it’s always good to be as prepared as possible!

Jampires, and other animals

The manuscript for MONSTER & CHIPS: Food Fright (or MC3 for short) has been handed in, and so I’m taking the opportunity of a brief break to catch up with various things before I’m plunged into rewrites and illustrations.

Jampires

jampires_doughnut

If you follow Sarah McIntyre or me on Twitter, you might have seen this announcement last week. Our long-in-the-making picture book, JAMPIRES, was on show at the Frankfurt Book Fair. It looks brilliant (though I would say that!) and I can’t wait to be able to properly be able to show it off to the world. It comes out in October 2014 – more on that nearer the time.

jpires_frankfurt_guide

Workshops

JAMPIRES started out as a ‘comics jam’ between Sarah and myself, where we took it in turns to improvise a story in comic form. I’ve been doing a bit of this in some recent workshops I’ve run at festivals and at schools. It’s such a great (and fast) way of putting a story together, with the pictorial elements (from my experience so far) being much better at generating ideas and stimulating the imagination of the participants than words alone. Here’s a lovely bit of imagination from a recent workshop:

Sir-Steve-The-Monstrous