In one week, my book, The Wreck of the Argyll, is being launched in Dundee. It’ll be the first time I’ve been back in Dundee since the prize ceremony back in March, when it was announced that I’d won the Great War Dundee Children’s Book Prize, and I’m really looking forward to catching up with everyone… Read More
writing
The nice folk at Cargo Publishing sent me a preview of the cover of my book, The Wreck of the Argyll, a while back, and I’ve been itching to talk about it ever since. It would have been rude of me to start posting pictures before anyone else, so I had to hold off, but… Read More
Today was a very exciting day – my box of author copies of The Wreck of the Argyll turned up from those lovely people at Cargo Publishing. The official release date isn’t until September 25th, over a month away, but it’s one of the perks of being the author that you get the books a little… Read More
It was announced earlier this evening that Rosie Rowell and her editor Emily Thomas had won the Branford Boase award for Leopold Blue. This is an interesting book prize, in that it celebrates the editor of the book as well as the writer, and recognises that publishing a book is a collaborative process. So it seems… Read More
(Part one here.) We drove up to Dundee the day before the ceremony. It’s nearly 400 miles from Leicester to Dundee, but I’ve done the trip dozens of times before – Sandra’s family still live in Dundee, so we go up to visit them every year. I didn’t get an awful lot of sleep that… Read More
I’ve been writing for more years than I care to remember, but it’s really only been the last three years that I’ve applied myself wholeheartedly with the aim of seeing my work published. I’m not sure how many works-in-progress I’ve got cluttering up my hard drive – books I started, then came to a crashing… Read More
Yesterday, the winner of the Great War Dundee Childen’s Book Prize was announced at a ceremony in the Central Library in Dundee. There were dozens of children from schools across the city present, and the ceremony was presented by five pupils from Braeview Academy – two acting as masters of ceremonies, with one championing each… Read More
It’s the final countdown
One week today, it’ll all be over, one way or another. The results of the Great War Dundee Children’s Book Prize are announced next Wednesday, the 25th of March, and either I’ll have won, or either Joe Lamb or Lindsay Littleson will be getting their book published by Cargo Publishing instead. It’s all getting very close… Read More
Registration for the Nosy Crow “How to Write Children’s Fiction” Masterclass was due to start at 9:30. To make sure I wasn’t late, I booked train tickets leaving Leicester at 7am. To make sure I didn’t miss the train, I booked a taxi for 6:20am. To make sure I didn’t miss the taxi, I set… Read More
New Year Status Report 2015
I did one of these status reports on each of my projects last year, and I think it’s a useful thing for me to evaluate my progress (or lack thereof!) on an annual basis. The Chimney Rabbit My first completed book. After being sent to 27 agents and publishers, it received just one request from… Read More