Despite being what’s known in the business as an ‘old geezer’, I’m a big fan of the movies and music of a certain Will Smith. But not only that – I remember seeing him accepting a prize at the 2005 Kids’ Choice Awards and, in particular, his brilliant acceptance speech. It contains some of the [...]
Archive > February 2011
Step By Step…
I thought I’d let the pictures do the talking this week. Here is a short sequence showing how I go about illustrating the witch from The Totally Terrifying Three.…yep, the picture book I keep banging on about. It occurred to me it might be interesting to stop and scan my way through the painting and [...]
Wibble before WARBURG
Dell identifies the image below as “The Antichrist riding Leviathan, a Flemish 16th-century miniature from a manuscript of Lambert de Saint-Omer’s Liber floridus (c.1448).” As we poor trapped authors know all too well this picture was, like Nesbit’s, drawn from life. However, contrary to first appearances it does not contain two creatures, but one: the [...]
How Will You Measure Up?
Meet The Undertaker… He’s the terrifying star of The Backwater Gospel, a wonderfully doom-laden and gorgeously animated new short film by eight students from Denmark. You can watch the whole ten mins of it (and another video about how it was made) at my favourite film-related-stuff site Twitch. But before I give you the link, [...]
The Audience Either Notice Their Butts Are Numb Or They Don’t
This is Joss Whedon: Here (via Scriptwriting in the UK) are his Top Ten Writing Tips. They’re nominally about screenwriting and film-making, but they’re relevant to any kind of storytelling. As with any set of tips for writers (such as this from Alan Moore, and this from Elmore Leonard) you may find there are some [...]
Deadlines come and go…
Working round the clock to meet my deadline on this picture book The Totally Terrifying Three. It’s not going well (the deadline not the book). I believe it was Douglas Adams who once said something like: “I love deadlines, I like the swishy noise they make as they fly past.” I think that’s what’s happening [...]
COMICS SWARM!
I have been reading some fantastic comics lately… Having thoroughly enjoyed their previous book The Damned – a terrific prohibition-era pulp thriller of gangsters and demons – I had high hopes for The Sixth Gun: Cold Dead Fingers by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt. I was not disappointed. The Sixth Gun is a Western with [...]
The Lucky Winners are…
My children did the draw, so I deny all responsibility for who gets the free copies. The lucky winners of the three advance copies are: Thomas, Mikey Legg and Simon Ives. If you do want to get your copies early, then you can order them through the ‘Order signed books’ page on my website. The [...]
Fill Your Brain!
True Grit by Charles Portis is one of my very favourite books in the entire world. Here’s a quick review/synopsis I wrote back in 2007 on my LibraryThing Review Page: Recently reissued by Bloomsbury in the UK, this Western was turned into one of John Wayne’s best-loved films. The book’s even better! When her father [...]
