Today is a big day for me. It’s the day when I can officially say that I’m not an idiot with crayons sat in my bedroom. I’m not just some muppet who doesn’t know when to quit. I’m not just a whimsey merchant, pedalling picture-booky nonsense to all and sundry. In fact, it turns out that sundry quite likes my latest picture book. Because today, Where Has All the Cake Gone? (Illustrated by Aysha Awwad Read more…
There’s one very important thing every author needs to know if they’re going to do a book signing. It’s incredibly important. Super duper important. And that is the answer to “Where the heck is the bookshop?” You see, as a breed, authors are not always the most intelligent of species. (Case in point, when my brother told me on his wedding day I was in charge of the cravats, I inexplicably started trying to Read more…
Avast me Hearties! Drawing Pirates & Pirate Ships Last week (2020-05-13) in our livestream session we had an absolutely fantastic time drawing pirate ships on the high seas! I love drawing curvy waves and old wooden ships – there’s just something about that which never stops being fun – even when you’re a grown up. It’s always hard to decide who has created the best artwork each week – but this time around I was Read more…
Your latest picture book work is done. Your agent is at the Bologna Book Festival promoting your stuff. You’ve finished all but one of your Cadburys Creme Eggs, and you’re idly browsing fonts on www.dafont.com. “That looks easy! I can do that,” you think. After all, building a font is simple: You come up with a few basic rules/guides to follow (e.g. serif, futuristic, fixed width etc…) and then start playing around. Naturally, within a Read more…
I am fantastically excited to announce that this Thursday (28th February) I’ll be presenting Awards to a bunch of talented young folk at the JVenn Young Writers Awards Ceremony. The long and the short of it is that the JVenn Foundation is a fantastic organisation that helps lots of young people in the Hull area become the best that they can be. They provide grants and support to help young learners follow their dreams Read more…
If you’re looking for something awesome to do with your kids: try baking. For those of you not in the know, baking is like buying a cake, but you end up much more mess, washing up, and stuff for the dogs to lick off the floor. Happily, it also comes with plenty of joy and satisfaction, too. My mum recently gave me a recipe she’s made called Happy Honey Cake that eschews high amounts of refined Read more…
Thought Bubble is packed with a mixture of professional established artists and writers, enthusiastic amateurs, cheeky kids who have photocopied their own comic and everything in between. Every single person there is at a different point in their creative career, with different backgrounds, values and passions. But this year, around midday on Saturday, something hit me and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since: namely that there’s one unifying motivation within everyone Read more…
Creating images is something we do instinctively; give a one year old a crayon, and you’ll see unconfined joy as they clumisly rub it against paper, leaving delicate scribbles as they go – the happiness that spreads across their face when they realise that they are able to permanantly leave their mark on something is incredible. Now go take your crayon off them before they get near the wallpaper and start leaving waxy marks everywhere. Read more…
Today I bought a piglet and a bee hive. You can do it, too. You don’t have to have a garden. Or a fancy outfit. You can do what I did and buy on for someone else. In between doing book events in traditional books shops to promote my book, I Have and Orange Juicy Drink, I also like to do Oxfam Books in Beverley. It’s staffed by some of the lovliest people I’ve ever Read more…
