First of all let me say a HUGE HELLO to everyone at Etching Hill Primary School in Rugeley... I'm really looking forward to meeting you all this week. At the moment I'm busy working on a few different books - not always a good thing to do but sometimes it's something that I have to do. One of the books is called The Curious Case of Dr Salamander. It's a book I'm writing for Fiction Express - if you haven't heard of them before you might like to take a look at their website. Authors write the chapter of a book and give the readers three options that they can vote on to happen next. This makes the book really interactive and lots of fun. There's much more to it than that though - click HERE to go and take a look at their website.
I have just written two little books for Franklin Watts - one called Run Melina Run! set in ancient Greece at the time of the Olympic Games, and another story called A New Life on New Earth - a story set a long time in the future about a young boy and his family starting a new life on an enormous space station called New Earth. Just imagine how the young boy feels, having to go to a new school in a strange new place. I don't know who will be illustrating Run Melina Run! but I do know that the artwork for A New Life on New Earth is being done by a Spanish illustrator called Jose (Yayu) Rubert. So far I have only seen the rough cover but it's already looking great... I can't wait to see more.
One of my big books is on hold at the moment while I get another, not quite as big, book finished. I've been working on Mindy and Moose and the Howling Wolves for quite some time now and I'm determined to get it finished very soon. To keep me in track with this I've set myself the target of writing at least 1000 words a day to keep it moving along.
Writing that many words should mean that the book is finished quite soon, however, it's not quite as simple as that as I have to keep going back to edit and tweak things to make sure it all fits together properly. It's taken me a long time to write this book as I kept getting stuck... I think that the biggest problem has been getting the tone of the story right... I think of this as being the stories voice. Every story I think, has it's own voice and it can be tricky finding it or getting it right. Hopefully I'm on the right track now and Mindy and Moose and the Howling Wolves will soon see the light of day (or perhaps that should be the dark of night - with a full moon of course).