The Graveyard Book

I have a Book Bag page on my website which I made so that I could let people know what books I have been reading, but for some reason I just never seem to get round to updating or adding to it so I thought it might be a good idea to start writing about them in my diary instead…

Just before Christmas I bought a copy of Neil Gainman’s latest – The Graveyard Book… I had just finished the last book I’d been reading (The use of Weapons by Iain M Banks), needed something else to read and couldn’t wait until Christmas.

Whilst having a look around my local Waterstone's (the only real bookshop left in the town) The Graveyard Book caught my eye. I was interested to find that it had been published in two versions – an adult edition illustrated by Dave McKean, and a version for younger readers illustrated by Chris Riddell. The text in the books is the same - only the artwork is different – so it didn’t really matter which version I bought. I chose the younger version as I love Chris Riddell’s artwork.
I regularly read Neil's blog/diary, though apart from The Sandman Comic Books, and Good Omens that he wrote with Terry Pratchett, I haven't actually read many of his books - but I'll certainly be reading some more... something I've been meaning to do since seeing the movie version of his book Stardust.

I’m not going to give the story away or tell you much about it other than to say that the tale is about a young boy that’s brought up by the ghosts living in a graveyard. Some people that have reviewed the book have compared it to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, but if you want to know anything else – you’ll have to read it yourself.

The book didn’t take me very long to read but I thoroughly enjoyed it and savoured each part. When I finished it I even turned back to the front page and started to read it again. I would have read it all the way through a second time if I hadn’t got another book for Christmas – I’ll tell you about that later.

Merry Christmas

Over the last few days we've been busy getting ready for Christmas... last minute shopping, visiting family and friends and lots of other things. We seem to have been travelling around a lot and have hardly had time to ourselves. I've not managed to get much writing done - and I've got lots of things that need doing so hopefully I'll get a bit done today.

As this is my last diary post before Christmas I thought I'd say a big Merry Christmas to everyone that comes along to read my diary (thank you). This Christmas picture was done by Rachel. We had planned to make it into a proper Christmas card and get it sent out to everyone, but but for now I'm putting it on here so you can see it.

Penalty-Taking Poets

Last Thursday I went to visit the National Football Museum in Preston so I could take part in an INSET day with some other writers, poets and groups of people involved in working with young people in the community. I've said before that I always enjoy meeting up with other writers as there's always lots to talk about... and it was great meeting up with Paul Cookson, David Harmer, Alan Gibbons, Craig Bradley and Terry Caffrey.

We were given a little tour of the National Football Museum - if you've never been there, you should go... it's great. We had a little time to share some of our poems with everyone else in the group and Craig, David, Paul and myself even had time for an extra penalty shoot-out at the end (See picture at the top). A great day was had by all...

Inkheart

On Friday night we all went out for pizza and then went to the cinema to see Inkheart. It was the films first day of release so I haven't heard people talking about it and spoiling the ending or anything else... I haven't even read the book so I don;t know that much about the story. I've been meaning to read the book, written by Cornelia Funke, for ages but just haven't got round to it. I normally say that I prefer to read the book first, but that usually makes me feel disappointed when I see the film as the films aren't normally as good - but having seen the film I now want to read the book to see how much more there is in it.

In the movie, Brendan Fraser (George of the Jungle, The Mummy etc) plays Mo Folchart - a man with the ability to bring book characters to life by reading out loud - he's known as a Silvertongue. The story is all about the power of books and words... it's a great adventure fantasy adventure story. We loved it.

It was quite interesting to see the trailers before the movie started too - it seems that Walt Disney have a film coming out very soon called Bedtime Stories which is also about the power of stories. In this film Adam Sandler finds that the stories he makes up his children become real. Interesting to have two stories coming out at the same time with a similar theme.

New Book Covers

A while ago I said that I'd been asked to write a couple more books in the Tales of Robin Hood series that I've done for Franklin Watts. The first four books were wonderfully illustrated by Martin Remphry so I was very happy when I heard that he had agreed to illustrate the two new ones... Robin Hood and Maid Marian and Robin Hood and the Butcher.

I saw the rough artwork for the covers a little while ago and thought they were looking good - but now I've received the finished covers and they look brilliant.
Here you can see the front cover of Robin and the Butcher and down below you can see the front and the back of Robin and Maid Marian. The design of these covers is slightly different from the design of the first four books (click here if you'd like to look at the older covers on the Robin Hood page on my website). The covers aren't quite as cluttered. I wonder if they will change the original one later?

Sunshine and Across the Border

It's been quite a dark week - weather-wise that is. The sun hardly seems to have been appearing at all. On Monday it was dark and gloomy all day, but yesterday the sun came out and it was bright and sunny here in Blackpool. I didn't stick around in Blackpool though - I drove up to Scotland to pick my brother up from Lockerbie. It was a lovely drive up the motorway - about two hours each way. The trees were covered in frost and there was snow on the hills... lovely.

After a quick stop for coffee and a mince pie - thanks Sue - we drove back to Blackpool in lovely sunshine. it was good to get out - even though I wasn't really outside for much of the time. I didn't get any writing done but that's ok. You need to ave a day off every now and then. I didn't take any pictures whilst I was up in Scotland so here's a picture of some christmassy looking trees near Blackpool.

Today's a writing and Christmas shopping day. Must dash...

Sorry...

I've just had an email from Sam and Ellie in Plymouth telling me off for not writing in my diary... so here's a big SORRY to them and I promise to get on and write in my diary much more than I do. I've not been lazing around with my feet up since visiting Gwladys Street Primary School - not at all... I've been busy, busy, busy.

Last Wednesday I went down to London on the train so I could attend the wonderful Hachette Children's Books Christmas party... and lots of fun it was too. The party was on the roof of the Century Club on Shaftsbury Avenue (the roof had a tent-like cover over the top so it wasn't freezing cold or soaking wet) and was packed with authors, illustrators, editors, publicity and design people and just about everyone involved with Hodder and Orchard books. It was great to see lots of old friends like the brilliant Lynne Chapman, the marvelous Chris Mould (author and illustrator - clever chap - of the Something Wickedly Weird.. see the picture) and to make new ones too like Hayley Welsh who, I discovered, did some of her art studies right here in Blackpool.

I've also been busy putting the finishing touches to a couple of new stories and making plans to write some more - bigger stories... I'll tell you more about that later.

I can now reveal the name of the illustrator for the little Viking story I've written... The book is now called Eric Boodaxe The Viking King and the illustrations are being done by the excellent Ross Collins. I've admired Ross's work for quite some time so it's great to get the chance to work with him on this. Sometimes I wish that I could illustrate my own books - but I'm just not good enough - and at other times I think it's great to have so many other artists/illustrators to do it for me... it certainly makes the books different and interesting. This morning I've received a copy of the rough artwork he's done for the book - and it looks brilliant.

One of the books he's illustrated is this one about Littlenose. which has recently been re-issued with all new artwork. The stories about Littlenose were some of my favourites when I was little.