I met two Ghost Goblin fans during my visit to Chandlings School, Abingdon a few weeks back. I have since been sent these great pictures. I present to you William and Thomas Kent.

Or rather: Butt-Knuckle (top), and Cold Jack (bottom).

And the great thing is - they’re twins!

Like Barry and Tommy, I found myself shipped off to Glasgow for the Aye Write Festival.  Alas, we were not only separated by hotels but also by days – apparently having the three of us together on the same day is a security threat.  However, I heard very good things about Tommy and Barry’s sessions (and subsequent failed escape attempts)…

The Aye Write was terrific fun – thanks to everybody who came to my sessions, I believe we almost screamed the roof off the library!

The last two weeks have been crazy as I’ve bounced around the country from school to school – thanks for everybody who took part.  Below are Sophie, Jade and Jess from Burford School with my new books HERO.COM4: CHAOS EFFECT and VILLAIN.NET 4: COLLISION COURSE:

And a cool display created by Crookhorn College of Technology:

(Did they really choose the bald guy as the villain?)

That’s not forgetting everybody at Icknield Community College, Thomas Bennet School in Crawley, Parkwood Academy in Sheffield, and everybody at the Portsmouth Litquiz.

Now back in the cave, I guess I better start reading a few books, carry on writing my Top Secret project… and plot my escape…

I like to think of myself as a patient person. But I expect patience is one of those things like driving, where we all think we’re above average, but we can’t possibly all be above average, can we?

In the last 12 months I’ve had to learn that patience is a huge part of being a writer. But I don’t like it. The publishing business seems to move at the pace of a snail covered in treacle driving an electric car up a hill in reverse. Decisions take weeks. Action takes months. Negotiation takes forever.

Compared to all of that, writing is a speedy whippet of a thing, breezing through a racehorse stable with a jetpack. Trouble is, that makes it all the more frustrating that projects progress so slowly. To be honest, even when things are going well I find it incredibly demoralising. Maybe this is a symptom of my short attention span. Sometimes I get news (good, bad, indifferent) on projects I’ve forgotten I’m even involved with.

It makes me think that if I had the technical expertise I would just bypass the whole industry and publish everything I write on a website to sell (or give away) my stories directly. I’m not talking about rushing out something that’s substandard. I still take great care over what I write and I never even show it to anybody until I’m happy that it’s as good as it can possibly be. Then I enjoy the process of continuing to rewrite to satisfy excellent notes from my agent and editors. It’s everything else that seems to take so long.

Surely the future is quicker…

I’ve just finished, this very morning, my small A5 sketchbook. Looking back, I started it in November 2009. That’s just over 4 months. Hmm, not very impressive. I thought I filled them more quickly than that. But then again I do have several sketchbooks on the go at any one time. There’s my everyday, carry-it-whenever-I-can A5, my sit-down-in-front-of-the-TV A4 and my sensible no-point-in-messing-around-here A3, which I use at my drawing board.

There’s no real order to them, other than the A3 sketchbooks which I allocate for each book I’m illustrating. And then there are the square sketchbooks (small, meduim and large), that I can’t resist buying and play around with for a couple of weeks before they dissapear under a pile of – well, usually books. I have way too many of those in my studio. Come to think of it, a lot of them are probably neglected and half finished sketchbooks.

But I digress. Back to my recently finished A5. Well, I’m always a little reluctant to say goodbye to the sketchbook I have on the go. It’s the closest I get to a diary, and it carries my most recent thoughts around with me. When I start a new one I sometimes like to carry a few of the more interesting drawings over, copying them again on the first few pages. It helps to give me a footing, somewhere to start.

Here’s a page I quite like. I’d been thinking about a story with a wolf and a sheep. I say a story, not even that, I just liked the idea of this unlikely couple. So I started to draw them. Scribbles really. But sometimes I feel I have something. So I decided to paint them.

I’m still not sure where they will go, if anywhere, but I’ve grown quite fond of them. I think I’ll start drawing them first in my new A5. Perhaps by the time I’ve finished this one – sometime in June, I guess – I may have found a place for them. A story, a poster, or just a few more pages in a half finished sketchbook..only time will tell.

It’s been a big week of school events for all of us, I think. I’m looking forward to posting a few reflections on things that I’ve been storing up for a while, but in the meantime I wanted to share with you all one of the highlights of my week.
In the library at Walthamstow Academy today some of the Year 8 and 9 students found out that I used to be a songwriter, so they challenged me to come up with a song about biscuits on the spot.
I think I passed their test – just. Here is as much as I can remember of my efforts:

I just woke up from a very bad dream.
I was walking up the aisle with a custard cream.
Everyone was smiling and I tried to look festive,
But it’s hard when you really love a chocolate digestive.
The custard cream took off its veil. Should I kiss it? Could I risk it?
Spend the rest of my days with a stale, old biscuit?
I couldn’t face it. Had to go back to my true love, so pretty,
So I admitted, ‘Sorry, darling, I’m in love with Miss McVitie.’

Anyone who IS anyone will of course know what that is. The verbal representation of the Blue Peter theme tune. A tune that has been in my head quite a lot this week. I’m not going to go on about it but I had a Pretty Good Day on Wednesday. Yes – ANOTHER Pretty Good Day. If you’d like to see why, go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r96jb/Blue_Peter_03_03_2010/ and have a look.

The green jacket has received almost more plaudits than its wearer!

And this was followed by a really fantastic visit to Elson Junior School in Gosport, Hampshire – and I really could not have picked a better stop off for celebrating World Book Day and all the stuff that’s gone on in the past fortnight. If you ever get an invite here, boys – say YES!

Diddle-ip-ip-diddle-diddle-ip-ip-doo…

What a great start to the week – first of all, we managed a mass breakout from the caves by digging a secret tunnel and hiding the molten earth in Tommy’s trousers (although I thought he was supposed to let the soil dribble from the bottom of his trouser leg when we exercised around the puke grass?  Instead, Tommy just has swollen trousers).  Anyway, this enabled us to start visiting schools for World Book Day… Week… whatever… and I had a terrific time at Icknield Community College in Watlington (where, apparently, Jeremy Irons and Captain Birdseye live).

My second exciting discovery was that HERO.COM 1: RISE OF THE HEROES had won the Weald Book Award!  Hurrah!

I must dash, the monsters are searching for me and I have to reach Thomas Bennett School in Crawley before dawn!

Ever since my brother and sister, Adam and Nicki, got one each for their brilliant poster entry, I’ve nursed a brooding need. Where was MY Blue Peter badge, eh? How had I failed to achieve this dream when they had succeeded?!!

30 odd years (and they have been odd) later, it’s all been set right. I got a badge this week. And – ahem – an award. Frozen In Time won the Blue Peter Children’s Book Award – Book I Couldn’t Put Down category.

Hard to describe my delight, but cold flannels and rubber bands have since been employed in a bid to get the grin off my face (it gets scary after a while). If you’d like to see the point at which the grin arrives, go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r4xcv/Blue_Peter_23_02_2010/ – to about the last six minutes of the show.

As I have stated in a previous post, somewhere back in the mists of time, I’m a huge fan of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines. I would go as far as to say it is my all time favourite book for the YA market. As such, when I saw that he had written a story about dragons – even one with such an erroneous title – then I had to buy it and see if it lived up to his previous work.

No Such Thing as Dragons tells the tale of a young mute lad, Ansell, who is sold to a travelling dragon hunter named Brock. His new master is full of grand stories of his adventurous career in slaying the enormous creatures and he is also full of himself and his reputation. However, Ansell soon discovers Brock’s secret. He is a fraud. He has never really encountered a dragon and doesn’t actually believe in their existence. It comes as no great surprise to the reader when the two travellers arrive at a village who are living in fear of a dragon and discover there is more to the legends than Brock thought.

This story is written for a younger market than the Hungry Cities series. Philip’s descriptive writing is as breathtakingly brilliant as ever and I will most certainly read this book aloud to my son when he is old enough. However, for fans of the Mortal Engines series, I wouldn’t recommend this as a book to progress to because it doesn’t have the depth of his previous works. The story lacks the twists and turns that he so masterfully engineers in his other books, but makes a superb introductory book to the dragon genre for younger readers.

One bone I would have to pick with Mr Reeve is his choice of title … is he yet another author who has not heard of our plight? Of course there are such things as dragons! If I ever get the chance to meet him … and I hope to do that one day … I shall be quick to raise this issue. Maybe I’ll even introduce him to a dragon or two.

Here’s a touching Valentine’s message to show to your favourite tasty human.

And look! The dude in specs at the back looks just like me!

-Sam