One of the Monsters in here has just handed me a very fancy, slime coated invitation… to an award ceremony! And I think if I do a little dance for the gatekeeper monsters I might be allowed out to attend. Turns out that my first Jimmy Coates book is up for the Enfield Children’s Book [...]
Archive > March 2009
Monster Cooperation.
I’ve been scanning through the archives and believe I have discovered the moment that sealed our fate … the moment monsters began to cooperate! Even though these two were favourites of mine as a child, I’m beginning to wonder if my love of them wasn’t misplaced! Don’t you just love the Count’s laugh? Hmm, but [...]
Edumacational Monsters
Here are some beautiful LETTER MONSTERS that I’ve been meaning to post about here for a while. They were (ahem!) “found and trained” (??!!) by illustrator Joey Ellis. My favourites are these Q dudes (below). Click here to get to a post on Mr. Ellis’ blog, where you can download some designs for paper versions [...]
Cor!
Spotted this recently and thought I’d post it here. It’s the first poster for the upcoming live action film of Where the Wild Things Are. As my favourite film website, Twitch, put it: “Furry” ;p Spike Jonze, the film’s director, has apparently had a fight on his hands keeping it as properly dark and scary [...]
ARE YOU A MONSTER?
Monster? Normal? Pwincess? Try the TBM fun quiz and find out about yourself. Because, obviously, you haven’t a clue without this kind of help, have you?
PHLOOF
After five months bashing my head against it, the new draft of my current book is DONE. And I am happy with it. If the monsters will let me, for the next few days I intend to look something like this: The caption is The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. It’s by Francisco Goya.
Finding the Fox
I’ve always loved the idea of shapeshifters. I think my affair with them began with David Eddings’ Belgariad series where the sorcerers regularly turned into wolves, owls or hawks. When I wrote Trail of the Huntress I had a shapeshifter, but it was an evil demon called a gorvath that used its powers to fool its victims before [...]
Free Horrid Henry audiobook
Today I spotted a leaflet on the floor of my cave. It was from Lloyds Pharmacy, and was advertising a free Horrid Henry book that’s available to download up until 31st of March. I’ve scanned the leaflet so you can see all the details. It’s at the bottom of this post. Basically, thought, to get [...]
A Ghastly Warning
Check this out, from possibly my favourite illustrator ever, the masterful Gustave Dore: The caption is (what else?) The Gnarled Monster. In retrospect, like so much of the art I’ve found in the Monster Archives since the monsters kidnapped me, you can clearly see that Dore intended this piece metaphorically. The geezer in the pointy [...]
An interview with little old me
Recently I was approached to give an interview for a website that’s all about children’s books. Being stuck in a cave made attending the interview tricky, so instead the whole thing was conducted via email. In the interview I talk about a wide variety of writing topics, including how I got my first start in [...]
