My new website

My new website has been designed for me by Anne Rooney. It is my fourth in about thirteen years. And the great thing about this one, made using Wix, is that I can update it myself.

Well, when I say "I can," it has been a bit of a learning curve and I'm not at the crest of that wave yet. But it is really learnable and will get easier every time I do it. Anne gave me good instructions and then held my hand through the first update (well, not literally: I needed both hands to do it).

One of the problems is that I have written an awful lot of books and an awful lot of kinds of book. Not really "awful" - at least not most of them. And not as many as Anne.

But I think it's a lot easier to navigate round the new site. Even though it has made no difference to how well I navigate round my working life. You can't have everything.

Where have all the Canalettos gone?

We haven't had a guest post on Book Maven for a while, but today we welcome a special one. It is publication day for Michelle Lovric's The Fate in the Box, her fourth children's book for Orion. This, like all Michelle's other titles, for children or adults, take inspiration from Venice as a setting. In her guest post for Book Maven, starting off her Blog Tour, Michelle talks about Venice then and now and what has happened to all the Canaletto paintings for which the city was the subject.

Rio dei Mendicanti

Antonio Canaletto’s painting of this area shows it as it was in 1724 – a poor, crowded place with pennants of dyed cloth drying on racks on the roofs. ‘Mendicanti’ means ‘beggars’ in Italian. One of the city’s poorhouses was on this canal, and it doubled as a famous musical academy for young orphan girls. It was such during the late eighteenth century. the time that my new children’s novel, The Fate in the Box, is set.

My young heroine, Amneris, wakes every dawn to the lovely sound of the singing orphans’ hymns floating across the water to her home in the Calle Berlendis where she and her family eke out a humble living embroidering silk and fashioning parasols for the noblemen and women of Venice.

Here is my photograph of the same scene, taken last summer. The pennants are gone but the Rio dei Mendicanti is still remarkably similar, at least in terms of the external architectural elevations. The changes are all internal. The Mendicanti has long since been taken over by the Ospedale Civile, possibly the most beautiful place to be sick in the world. It is possible to wander around the ground floor, from tree-filled cloister to tree-filled cloister, listening to the songs of birds that have replaced the musical orphans. The church of San Lazzaro is ‘incastrata’ inside, and it is always worth pushing at its formidable door in case it’s unlocked.

Another secret of the hospital is the green space which, I’m fairly sure, once enclosed the stables where Venetian noblemen kept their horses. The surrounding accommodation looks more suitable for horses than for nuns, and the well might well have served the animals, given its great circumference. Now it is occupied by a colony of well loved cats.

So – everything stays the same in Venice, and nothing stays the same. But something that has changed quite grievously is the number of paintings by Canaletto that can still be seen in his native city. Extraordinarily enough, given the artist’s vast output, only two remain in the city. The rest are to be found in collections around the world, with many in England.

There is an English reason for this too. Canaletto’s agent, for a considerable period, was Joseph Smith, who served as the British consul in Venice between 1744 and 1760. Even before his official tour of duty, Smith, a friend of Casanova’s, brokered the sale of paintings to British Grand Tourists. He organized Canaletto’s sojourn in London from 1746 – 55. Smith also acquired a large number of Canaletto’s works himself, eventually selling his entire collection to George III. They can still be seen in the Royal Collection at Windsor. Four others are at Castle Howard; there is a fine group in the Wallace Collection and another in the National Gallery.

Although his reputation declined after his London sojourn, the market in Canaletto’s works never ceased to thrive. His paintings have ended up in the Hermitage, the Louvre, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, and in museums in New York, Washington, Harvard, Indianapolis, Yale, Houston, Fort Worth, Melbourne, Cardiff and Ottawa.

Apart from the Rio dei Mendicanti, the only other painting that has remained in the artist’s birthplace is Venice, Grand Canal from Palazzo Balbi toward the Rialto (1720–1723), also at Ca’ Rezzonico.

Am I the only one who finds it rather sad that Canaletto should be so poor represented in the city whose image he did more than any other painter to create and refine for the Grand Tourists of Europe? Canaletto created a Venice full of energy and joy. His canals are crowded with regattas, working boats and real Venetians. Later artists – and writers – have often preferred to show the city in a state of picturesque decline, projecting misery upon her to serve their own ‘poetical’ purposes. But I love Canaletto, because he showed the city at work and play, self-conscious of her beauty and outrageously nonchalant about her wonders too. This is the Venice I prefer to write about, and plan to keep celebrating in my books as long as I possibly can.

Other stops on Michelle's Blog Tour include The History Girls, Bookwitch, ABBA, the Courtauldian and  Writers in Italy.

The Fate in the Box is published May 2 by Orion Children’s Book

Michelle Lovric’s website

New website pages for the book are here.

Lucky thirteen at LBF?

There were nearly three weeks between Bologna and the London Book Fair but in the meantime I had another trip to Italy, teaching American women writers on the Writers' Renaissance course. The organiser for that, Julie Hedlund, took the above photo of the LBF entrance, where I managed to meet her at the end of a bewildering day. I wonder how many people, like Julie and myself, have had a really hectic literary spring?

Last year, three of us went to LBF together: myself, Lucy Coats and Anne Rooney. This year, with the same companions, I had fewer appointments and more time for talks and seminars (must get my act together sooner next year!). But I found almost all the sessions I went to deeply disappointing - not enough preparation or thinking by the participants and too many people not delivering what the label said on the tin.

There was nothing I went to as good as Nicolette Jones' interview with Patrick Ness last year but I might just have been unlucky. Not sure why I wrote "kill me now" in my notes but that was in one of the better sessions.

As always, it's the serendipitous encounters that make a Fair worth attending by an author.

This was our "office" last year, a table in the Illustrators' Bar in the Children's Zone. And indeed we did start with coffee there this year but soon found a quieter area near the seminar rooms upstairs. The only trouble was at times many other people had found it too but I did have one very good talk with an academic I had arranged to meet at LBF.

People ask "why should a writer go to a Rights Fair?" and mutter darkly about cattle and markets but I think you need to know what you want to get from your visit. Here's my list:

• a chance to meet people who will be in London for the Fair (convenient to fit appointments all in one time and space, especially if you no longer live in the capital)
• a further chance to catch up with your publishers when the whole team is likely to be there - editorial, sales, rights, publicity
• an extra meeting with your agent
• serendipitous encounters in the aisles
• random parties and launches which are fun and might lead to useful new contacts
• a sight of forthcoming books and possible identification of trends
• possible insights from sessions attended (sparse this year)

You come back from the Fair with catalogues, flyers, a sheaf of business cards and, if you're lucky, a headful of ideas. But you have to go with an open mind and be determined not to be overwhelmed by thoughts of insignificance in the face of giant posters of authors' faces and book jackets of bestsellers. You have to be more like Zaphod Beeblebrox faced with the fairy cake in the Total Perspective Vortex and less like Fanny Price arriving at Mansfield Park.

Chutzpah is the essential ingredient that will get you into parties, make you memorable to publishers and promote your books or even your "brand" if you are lucky enough to have one.

These charming young people were advertising Superego by Julia Wurz, wife of Formula 1 racing driver Alex Wurz, who had self-published her novel.  I haven't read it but I admired the promotion.

Self-publishing was one of the dominant themes of the Fair, according to the Bookseller, who bring out a daily edition on all three days. The Alliance of Independent Authors was celebrating its first birthday and if you want to know what they do, you'll get a better idea from Orna Ross's article in Publishing Talk than from the session at the Fair.

Self-publishing and the setting up of small independent publishing houses, like Peirene Press, were everywhere. You have to find a gap in the market, a niche that no-one else is interested in filling.

Su Swallow, Andrew Macmillan and Anne Rooney

This is the launch of a brand-new imprint, ReadZone, so new they weren't in the Fair catalogue and didn't have a stand. This was their office this year:

But I expect they'll have a much bigger presence next year! ReadZone launched on the first day of the Fair, offering titles for 5-25 year-olds. They bought a lot of books from Evans when it ceased trading and have an attractive catalogue full of everything from a tie-in with the film Untouchable to graphic novel versions of Dickens and Shakespeare. I predict we'll be seeing a lot of their stylish orange owl in future.

Social Networking continues to be a big issue, though there are few signs of its being well-used by writers. We can't all be John Green - alas - but it should surely be easy enough to help writers learn the difference bewtween a website and a blog, Twitter and Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest. The difference between a personal Facebook account and an Author Page.


One of the best sessions I attended was on Blogging. Nina Douglas, Publicity Manager of Orion and Kat McKenna, Children's Marketing and Publicity Executive for Simon & Schuster interviewed Casey Devoren of Dark Readers and Jo Stapley of Once Upon a Bookcase. They were both hooked on YA books and series, Jo especially on Urban Fantasy. Actually, from the way they spoke, it's probably New Adult (NA) that really floats their boats and they have extended their reviewing to cover adult titles too.



This session was full of useful references and links and even advice for would-be bloggers. Watch this space to see what I have learned!

New Adult was another theme of the Fair but does it really exist? Not many people had a satisfactory definition for it. Brenda Gardner of Piccadilly Press thought it a convenient term. Victoria Barnsley, HarperCollins m.d., had suggested to Radio 4's You and Yours programme, which broadcast live from the Fair on the first day that it was a "publishers' construct" that she didn't really believe in. Cat Banks, however,  who is the Children's category buyer for Bertrams, thought NA came "between where young adult ends and contemporary women’s romance starts”.

One very experienced scout, who shall be nameless, gave me the definition for NA = "badly written" and what I heard of the genre, if it is one, at the Fair gave some credibility to that. So far, it seems to be YA + sex. The most interesting thing I heard about it is that most titles sell 70% digitally and 30% print.

London Book Fair is not as easy to understand as Bologna; the signage is poor and people waste a lot of time getting lost - though this can also lead to those serendipitous encounters which are so important. Maybe it falls somewhere between Bologna (children's only) and Frankfurt (where I have never been). The Rights Centre on the first floor is certainly more Orwellian than the Agents' Centre in Bologna; maybe that's appropriate for the rash of Dystopian novels that keep coming.

But they do have a branch of The Ivy up there, where you can get seafood and champagne. I dread to think what that might cost when a small bottle of water is £2.20 and a sandwich and drink can set you back £8. On one of my visits upstairs, I limited myself to a cup of tea, courtesy of a friend and literary agent in the US. I am, please note, a cheap date.


Still, I'll be back next year. I think I have become a Book Fair addict. Is there an App for that?

Bologna 2013 Day Three

This was a special Bologna - the 50th anniversary of the Children's Books Rights Fair that had started back in 1964 with about twenty publishers round a table in a palazzo in the town centre. This year there were 1,200 exhibitors from more than 70 countries. Since 1967, there has also been an Illustrators' Exhibition and this year's Special Guest was Sweden.

My first official port of call on Day Three was Scholastic but I had time to nip in quickly and say hello to Kate Wilson on the Nosy Crow stand. They are now publishing in over twenty languages and are up to fifty titles a year - which Kate thinks is a good limit. Lucy Coats  has a very disgusting pirate picture book coming out with them next year, called Captain Beastlie's Birthday, illustrated by Chris Mould, who is currently on the shortlist for the Kate Greenaway Medal.

Scholastic had some nice picture books too - The Snatchabook by Helen and Thomas Docherty and Woolly by Sam Childs, about a baby mammoth born naked and chilly. M.D. Hilary Murray Hill was very upbeat about the future of books, not giving any credence to the idea that YA was on the wane.
"The quality of the writing comes first," she said, about any book that comes over her desk, whether YA or whatever age group and in whatever genre.

It was a bit disorientating to visit Alyx Price on the Macmillan stand! She had been their head of Publicity eight years ago, when she went to Scholastic at the same time as Marion Lloyd, Kate Wilson and Alison Green. Now she's back at Macmillan doing maternity leave cover and was telling me about their new books only weeks into the new job.

The gold standard picture book author and current Children's Laureate Julia Donaldson has a new title, Sugarlump and the Unicorn coming out next year, illustrated by Lydia Monks. And the new young talent Rebecca Cobb, who had just won the Waterstone's Prize, has a new book called Aunt Amelia, which was attracting attention. It was a bit retro, nicely reminiscent of the early days of Joihn Burningham and Brian Wildsmith.

I promised to tell you the story about the Faroe Islands. Above you can see me and Ros talking to our Faroese Publisher, Niels Jakup Thomsen at the launch party. Janetta mentioned it in her speech but this what happened: The Faroese government had a debate coming up on Gay marriage, so Niels thought he would give every MP a copy of The Great Book Book of Families, which happens to contain one line and one illustration that takes it for granted that some families have two mums or two dads.

There are only 33 MPs in the Faroese Government but it was an imaginative plan. A television company filmed one of the three Christian Party MPs opening the book, with the predictable harumphing. So then Niels himself was on the TV defending the book!

So, it was Day Three and we were going home in the afternoon. I just had time for three more appointments.  First up was Stephanie Thwaites, the Children's Agent at Curtis Brown. She made an interesting point that it's harder to sell books with male protagonists than female. (My two current projects both have male leads!) Her client Martin Bedford, who had done so well at Walker with his book Flip, had switched to a female lead for his new title, Neverending.

Stephanie was not the only person to suggest there is a trend developing towards contemporary romance.

I met three students from Oxford Brookes' Publishing MA, who were enterprisingly visiting the Fair and seemed very on the ball with all the latest developments. And then it was time for a final lunch in one of the restaurants at the Fair - this time with Venetian Professor Laura Tosi, who has written a book in Italian about English children's books, and critic Peter Hunt, a now retired academic, who wrote many articles for the children's literature journal Signal.

And back to the UK, after another 40-minute wait on the runway for the same reason as on the way out and a baggage-reclaim delay caused by a machine getting stuck in the doorway!  I crawled into bed at midnight after three full days and three short nights, knowing I must sort through pages of notes, handfuls of business cards and a suitcase full of Rights catalogues.

Not everything was the same as in years past - including the weather - but on the whole another good Fair and a sense that children's books were holding up well in the recession.

Bologna 2013 Day Two

Philip Reeve, Sarah McIntyre and the Seawigs at OUP's stand

My last post began with a picture of Sarah McIntyre  and this one opens with the lady herself in all her pantomime glory! She and Philip Reeve attracted a lot of attention in the costumes they donned to promote Oliver and the Seawigs, a quartet of books initially inspired but soon elaborated from the CWIG group of the Society of Authors (which actually stands for Children's Writers and Illustrators Group). A happy conjunction all round for OUP.

And a more cheerful sight than Lucy and me gnashing our teeth and pulling our hair over the non-functionality of WiFi in our hotel and at the Fair. That is not pretty.

But there was not long to lament it as my first hour was at the big Bonnier stand, first with Hot Key and then with Templar.

Hot Key go from strength to strength. They publishing nine titles last year, one of which - Sally Gardner's Maggot Moon - won the children's Costa Award and is shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. In 2013 there will be fifty! This is Maggot Moon's adult cover, which I much prefer, with its flavour of Stalinist propaganda posters.

One of the things much talked about as a new trend in YA was crime and thrillers and Hot Key are publishing next year the sequel to Anne Cassidy's Looking for JJ, which will be called Finding Jennifer Jones. It will be ten years, coincidentally, since Anne herself was shortlisted for the Costa, when it was still called the Whitbread, with Looking for JJ (and won the Booktrust Teenage Book Prize for it).

If YA Crime really is making a comeback., Anne Cassidy will clean up, since she has always written in that genre and has a series out at present with Bloomsbury, called The Murder Notebooks. Hot Key publish a large range of genres, from historical fiction by Lydia Syson to Matt Whyman's The Savages, about a family of cannibals.

Templar had one of the most attractive picture books at the Fair, Winter's Child by Graham Baker-Smith.

They were celebrating ten years of their -Ology titles with Dinosaurology, the twelfth in the series, which has sold 16 million copies in 35 languages. Another exciting forthcoming title from them is Cate Cain's The Jade Boy, a début novel in September about what really started the Great Fire of London.

The rest of the day went on my own work, first meeting with Liber magazine, an Itlain journal for children's books, for which I write the occasional article and then the Italian publishers Lo Stampatello, who publish my Great Big Books from Frances Lincoln.

Riccardo Pontegobbi of Liber and Maria Silvia Fuengo of Lo Stampatello

I am writing a very hard book for Frances Lincoln and Lo Stampatello! More of that next year perhaps. But in Bologna we were spending part of the second day launching The Great Big Book of Feelings, written by me, illustrated by Ros Asquith, edited and published by Janetta Otter-Barry and Art Directed by Judith Escreet. We really are an "awesome foursome" when working together.

First there was a splendid party at Frances Lincoln's new stand, as part of Quarto.

Me with my Slovenian publishers and Rights Manager Caterina Favaretto

That's prosecco we are drinking. I don't - perhaps fortunately - have a photo of the multi-course meal we had at da Fabio afterwards, so here is a picture of the book we are celebrating!

Next time I will try to post a link to the video and tell you the Faroese story.

Bologna 2013 Day One

Photo by Sarah McIntyre At Heathrow 24th March 2013

It starts Day One minus one really, as large numbers of publishers, agents and a small sprinkling of writers and illustrators gather at the airport on Sunday. In this picture you see Liz Cross from OUP, Christine Baker from Gallimard, myself, Jane Churchill, who organises the Cheltenham Book Festival and scouts for Gallimard, and fellow author and Fair Companion Lucy Coats. Whacky artist (of which more below) Sarah McIntyre took the shot.

We also saw writer Philip Reeve, illustraor Axel Scheffler, agents Catherine Clarke, Claire Wilson and Sophie Hicks and publishers Fiona Kennedy, Helen Boyle and Ingrid Selberg. On the plane I sat next to agents Sarah Molloy and Jennifer Custer from A M Heath and had plenty of time to chat as we waited for an hour for an unaccompanied bag to be taken off the plane. Surely no-one in the children's book world would have gone to the bar at 3pm and become too tired and emotional to board the plane for Bologna?

So we missed our first party (Random House) but had a much-needed glass of prosecco with Lucy's agent Sophie Hicks and then dinner. We were all ready to hit the Fair bright and early for the first real day.

We both visited the Press Office first, bypassing the huge queues, as I was covering the Fair for BookBrunch and Armadillo and Lucy for Publishing Talk.  And my first appointment was very easy - coffee with my Finnish publisher from Tammi in the Agents' Centre bar.

I am always amazed by the output and fame of writers in other countries that we simply don't know about here.Salla Simukka has written ten books already and is still only thirty; Elna Rouhiainen is only 24! If only we were less resistant to translated European literature.

Then my proper meeting with Sarah Molloy and Jennifer Custer and an introduction to a new genre for me - the "wilderness thriller." S. R. Johannes had developed her book Untraceable through the Alliance of Independent Authors, a collective of self-publishing authors and advisers that Jennifer works with a lot. Untraceable is already an Amazon bestseller and Johannes is not bothered about a conventional publishing deal.

Dodging two ?men in bright green velour onesies (this sort of thing happens all the time at Bologna) I met with Jane Walker from Barrington Stoke. They've had a great year, which saw their fifteenth anniversary, with profits up 20%, reflecting the wider scene in children's books, which has been by far the healthiest part of the publishing industry. Barrington Stoke prides itself on getting top names to write for them and have new titles from Meg Rosoff, Darren Shan, Anne Fine, Gillian Cross and Eoin Coifer.

They are also getting into picture books, with titles by Michael Morpurgo, Mike Rosen and Charlie Higson. And they are not the only ones. I met with Charlotte Williams who was covering the Fair for The Bookseller and we agreed that though day one was early to judge, the revival of picture books was a marked feature. Faber were starting a picture book list - four titles at year - and Templar have started the Big Picture Press.

I'll have more to say about picture books in my next couple of posts.

Wild About Britain

Rebecca Cobb's illustration for Hare's Birthday

Do you remember the RSPCA's Wild About Britain competition that I wrote about here a few weeks ago?

The three winners were ‘The Chase’ by Ayasha Kawakita, 14, from Hailsham in East Sussex in the 12 to 16 category and ‘A New Neighbour’ by Charlotte Pearce, 11, from St Ives in Cambridgeshire was the winner of the 11 and under group.

‘Hare’s Birthday’ by Louis Baxter Wedderburn, 11, from Wolverhampton won the People’s Choice category, voted for online by the public

These children had the thrill of having their stories illustrated by professional artists:

David Roberts' Illustration for The Chase

Paul Howard's illustration for A New Neighbour

 

To read the full stories along with information about the silver and bronze award winners in each category, visit www.wildaboutbritain.org.uk.
 

What's a weekend?

Photo by Janine from Mililani, Hawaii, United States

I started this weekend thinking I had three major tasks to do before Monday and then got an email adding a fourth that had to be completed too.And that got me wondering when I last had a weekend off.

I'm not complaining; it is the way of life of most freelance, self-employed people. And we willingly trade it off against a packed commute in all weathers to a workplace where we have to do as we are told.

Next weekend I'm off to Bologna for three days at the Children's Books Rights Fair, which is one of the reasons my tasks for this weekend have been urgent. I'll be writing about the Fair here, on Bookbrunch and for Armadillo magazine.

Most children's writers and illustrators are aware of how the book fairs - Bologna and the London Book Fair in the spring and Frankfurt in the autumn - impinge on the working lives of our Editors, Art Directors and Rights managers. Increasingly they affect our own work patterns too, working towards having texts, mock-ups, covers and proposals ready to show to foreign publishers.

But the day-to-day work also has to continue. I've been doing a fair bit of work on my new website, which goes live next week. But no-where near as much as my web-designer, obviously. And whatever book I am working on (usually more than one - currently five, I think), new things crop up all the time.

Just this week I've had an approach for permission to turn a play based on Amazing Grace into an ebook; ongoing edits on the short graphic novel I surprised myself by writing to commission; submitting a picture book text and getting feedback on it; dealing with my other blog The History Girls; fixing and altering Bologna appointments ... the list goes on. I expect everyone's life is like this really.

What I HOPED to be blogging about this weekend was the launch party for Tracy Chevalier's new novel The Last Runaway. But thanks to an overturned lorry on the M40, I didn't get to London until the party would have been finishing. Here is a picture of the cover to console you:

This time next week I'll be in Italy - yay! (I wonder if it will be snowing?)

All the things that aren't writing

I'm sure I've written about this before but as a professional writer I do spend a great deal of my time not writing. I'm not talking about writer's block or lack of inspiration (a commodity I don't really deal in) or lack of commissions. I mean all the other things I, and other writers, do that are essential or desirable but not the core of our working life.

Since I last posted here I have been to two conferences/retreats for writers. The first was the SAS annual meet-up in what-used-to-be-Coventry-but-is-now-Peterborough. Stroppy and Crabbit were there again (and still my favourite firm of solicitors) giving talks in Orton Hall.

Stroppy, a.k.a. Anne Rooney, had been asked to contribute to a panel on "Ups and Downs of my writing year" and in spite of some relatively shallow troughs had managed to write or at least do work on 34 books. That made us all gasp a bit as there were also websites, trailers and more.

Crabbit, a.k.a. Nicola Morgan gave TWO talks, one about changing writing habits and ending "Write or die!" (I know she said that because I put it in my notes). The other was also full of excellent advice about customising one's Facebook Author Pages. I will definitely do that but it is yet another "thing that is not writing."

We had lots of wonderful contributions but, seeing as it's the SAS, I'm not allowed to go public with most of them. I can tell you however that this year I manged to swim in the spa and that next year I am organising the weekend with Stroppy. For some reason, people seemed to feel a bit sorry for the hotel managers.

Last weekend I was at another conference, on  "Women and the Novel" at my old Alma Mater, Newnham College Cambridge.

Newnham is so rich in literary Alumnae that we had talks by Margaret Drabble, Patricia Duncker and Jenn Ashworth and I spotted Elaine Feinstein and Nicola Baumann (founder of Persephone Books) as well as fellow children's author and History Girl, Caroline Lawrence. Ones not present were Sarah Dunant and Sally Vickers.

Margaret Drabble learned a lot about a lot of things, including how to cook various recipes, from three key texts: Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Mary McCarthy's The Group, not too mention Edna O'Brien's advice on how to cut carrots, Gertrude Stein's on omelettes and Iris Murdoch's strange enthusiasm for Vesta curry in The Sea, The Sea.

But more importantly, she took away Plath's determination not to "dwindle into a wife." And she championed Berdardine Bishop'sUnexpected Lessons in Love so convincingly that I'm sure Bishop's Amazon rankings must have shot up. I inwardly cheered when she ended the question session by saying she loved the novel for "its thingness." Me too!


It was wonderful to be back and when Patricia Duncker mentioned Moses and "God's hinderparts" which I first heard about in John Broadbent's English lectures in the '60s I felt quite nostalgic. The enthusiasm for D. H.Lawrence also brought back my time at Newnham very powerfully.

In between conferences, I have been to London, whither I am also bound this afternoon, for a research trip to the Tower of London, followed by meetings on three separate projects with the same publisher. Just as vital as writing, since we looked at roughs, finished artwork, dummy books etc. etc.

I've also done a school Skype visit, written a graphic novel version of a classic story (oops, no - doesn't count as was writing!) continued to organise my appointment schedule for Bologna, worked on my new website (watch this space), dealt with emails from four publishers, one agent, two illustrators etc etc.

And I expect I am not untypical. It's just that non-writers, especially would-be writers, think in terms of our spending all day and every day at the computer producing great works and there is so much more than that.

Meanwhile, here is my latest book, just to prove I do actually sometimes get the words on to the page!

Published this month by Frances Lincoln and illustrated by Ros Asquith

Quick footnote to last post

This however seems to be a genuine Writing Competition for Children: http://www.britishgas.co.uk/blog/articles/have-you-entered-generation-greens-latest-competition