My Book Is Available To PreOrder!

Hi Chaps,

I mentioned this in my last post, but I thought I'd cover it a bit more fully in this one.

'Watch Your Tongue Cecily Beasley' with illustrations by me is due out in September, and is now available to pre-order.

The story is about a girl, Cecily Beasley, who makes faces and sticks out her tongue at people all the time, but she learns her lesson when a Mockingbeak Tongue-Snatcher bird makes a nest in her outstretched tongue.

A very nice rhyming story written by Lane Fredrickson, which was great fun to illustrate.

It's being published by the lovely people at Sterling in New York, so everything was done via email.

I work digitally so roughs and artwork were emailed back and forth, and ftp'd and it worked really well.
Which I think is interesting. Not so many years ago, working for publishers in New York would've been really impractical, but now, pretty much all my work is done this way, even if working for someone nearby.

But here are a few spreads from the book, as a bit of a sneak peak.

So, as it was done with US publishers, it's available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble over there, and they are also publishing it over here in the UK too, so it's available on Amazon and The Book Depository here too.

Here are the links.

UK
Amazon     Book Depository

US
Amazon     Barnes & Noble

And more soon on another book :)

London Book Fair

Hiya Chaps,
Last week was the London Book Fair, which I went to, so I thought I'd write a roundup post.
I was intending to write a post beforehand, but didn't manage it, so I'll just have to make do with this one :)

I managed to bump into a few people I know, and say a short hello, or even a fairly long hello, in a couple of cases, so that was nice.

It seemed to be a bit slim on the talk/seminar side of things this year, compared to last year. Or for things I was interested in anyway. But I did see a nice talk by Julia Donaldson about the Picture Books she's chosen for a promotion she's doing with Waterstones as Laureate. There seemed to be some interesting unusual ones, as well as some more common choices, so I think I shall pop in to a branch and have a good leaf through.

I also saw a talk with Patrick Ness, who's just published A Monster Calls, which has fab illustrations by Jim Kay. Very interesting talk about writing, and he seems a v. nice chap.
And the Walker stand had a copy I could have a look through.

Also on the Walker stand I noticed a copy of an Abney and Teal Picture Book, by Joel Stewart, to come out as a companion to the tv series on CBeebies which is a big hit in our house.

The Little Tiger Press stand was good as well, they always have lots of good stuff to see.

And, bit of a stop press highlight - on the Sterling Books stand was a copy of Watch Your Tongue Cecily Beasley, which is illustrated by me. Bit of a thrill to see it in real life, and I had a nice chat with the chap manning the stand too.
But here's a picture. A bit blurred inevitably, but you can see it ok.

It's due out in September, and, in case you're interested, it's available to preorder on Amazon here

But anyway, if you went to LBF as well, do let me know what you saw.

New Website Image

Hi Chaps,

I've just put a new image up on my website, so I'm putting some accompanying sketches up here.

The image is of a Pensive Wolf. I think I may name him Hemster Whealhough.

But. he's really having to think hard over a period of time, bless him.

So I wanted to show the passing of time with four different images of him thinking, but wanted to have variation, and keep it interesting.

Here are my first idea sketches,

which developed into these poses

Which became this series of pictures, showing his cogs going round.

And you can see the colour image on my website here second row, on the left.

Shall I Make My Story Rhyme?

Hiya chaps,

Here's a sketch for a book I'm working on.

This one ended up not being used, it's all sort of moved on a bit, but I do have an affection for it.

So I thought I'd pop it up here.

BUT, In between doing this, I'm working on a story as well.

I've just got the start and the end, and I know what's going to happen, so it's 'just' a matter of filling it all in.

But what I was wondering was if anyone had any thoughts or experience with rhyming stories.

This one is at the very early stages of becoming formed but it's threatening to be rhyming.

They sort of keep popping out, and seem to fit the feel of it.

But I have heard that publishers prefer straight prose, cos it's easier to translate with co-editions, so I was wondering if I should wrestle it into straight prose instead, or just go with it.

Will it have a better chance of being picked up if it doesn't rhyme?

There are of course rhyming books that get published and do well, Julia Donaldson's stuff being an example, although maybe she is an exception, because she's very very very very good at it :)

Has anyone else out there done a rhyming story, or would you advise against it while there is still time to change?

Christmas Doggie In The Snow

Hiya Chaps,

I've just posted a picture on the LittleBitBunny Blog here - http://alittlebitbunny.blogspot.com/2011/12/festive-one.html

of a little doggie playing in the snow in a Santa hat.

But I thought it might be nice to augment this a bit by posting a couple of my working sketches :)

I did one dog character sketch, which I refined, before changing direction to the character I stuck with, which was then refined a little bit for the final doggie design.

But do have a quick ook at the LittleBitBunny Blog, there's some good stuff on it :)

It's easy to write picture books.

Thoughtful blog post here, chaps.
I've read a few things about writing picture books, and some articles talk about how lots of people want to write a picture book, thinking it will be easy, and the articles say it's harder than writing a novel, because every word counts, and requires thought, and economy and skill to get the ideas across.
And I've also read articles that say that of course it's easier than writing a novel, because it's much shorter and you can rattle one off in a day or two.

Well, it's been trundling about in the back of my mind, and I've ended up thinking about it a bit, and I can kind of agree with both points of view, they both have elements of truth.
But I think the problem is that they're making slightly different points.

And I've thought of an analogy.

Is it easier to run 100m or 10,000m?
Well, one takes less than thirty seconds, and one takes quite a while.
Now most people can run 100m, whereas only people of a certain fitness can actually run 10,000m, so you could argue that one is easier than the other.

But... it's just as hard to win a gold medal in either.
Which I think is sort of the point, really.
Just because something's short, doesn't make it easy to do well.

Though it is maybe easier for more people to give it a quick go.

And having written this (for me) fairly serious post, here are a couple of sneak peek sketches from a book I've been working on :)
They're all bits of illustrations and backgrounds, so as to not give much away, but they are hopefully interesting too :)

Little Bit Bunny - Badger

Well, it's a new month, and a new theme on the Little Bit Bunny Blog, and I've just put up this months post, and it's got a bit of colour this time.

You can find it here - LittleBitBunny

And yep, does look like this is where I'm headed.

I've still very much got a fringe, though, but the sides of it now have to cover more ground than they used to :)

But here's the initial sketch I did when I first got the idea.

As you can see, it didn't really change much from here, just redrew it, and had the idea of it being a sort of diagram in a guide.

I think this guy looks like an English Teacher.

Maybe he'll turn up in something else.