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Why are my co-author Philip Reeve and I in Daunt Books Marylebone looking VERY excited?



We'd found out we'd won the children's book category for Pugs of the Frozen North in this year's Independent Bookshop Week Award! It's a celebration of indie bookshops, booksellers, and the amazing way they know their books so well and can stock and recommend just the right titles, and be real hubs in their communities. Besides selling books, indie bookshops have hosted wonderful events for us, knitted pugs, and encouraged us on social media, and we love them.



Philip has already blogged about it, and you can read more about the award in this Guardian article by Emily Drabble and over on the IndieBound website. And there's another article in The Bookseller here, by Lisa Campbell.




Big congrats to Emily MacKenzie, who won the Picture Book category, and Anne Enright, who won the Adult book category. Thanks to all the judges (Nicolette Jones, 2015 winner Sally Nicholls, Steven Pryse from Pickled Pepper Bookshop and Carrie Morris from Booka Bookshop). And thanks, of course, Britain's marvelous indie bookshops!



This kicks off Independent Bookseller Week and the best way to celebrate is to go down to your local indie and buy some books! :) If you don't have a local, Stephen Holland at Page 45 in Nottingham and lots of other shops are more than happy to post things to you. (Stephen's hand-sold SO many copies of Pugs of the Frozen North! Oh, and here's a link to my website in case you want to knit a pug or learn how to draw one.

Louisa Mellor at Den of Geek is compiling a list of top indies so go on over and add your fave if you don't see it there. You can watch developments from the week over on Twitter: #IBW2016

Hooray!
I finally finished illustrating my upcoming book with Philip Reeve, Jinks & O'Hare Funfair Repair!
The book's not finished; Jo Cameron still has to do a lot of placement work with all the files I've had to fix because there were little picture mistakes, and Liz Cross is checking with the proof reader that there aren't any text mistakes, and then it has to go the printer, etc. With Cakes in Space, Liz, Clare Whitston and Jo had to send the books back to the printer because I'd used SO much heavy ink with all the black outer-space stuff that the pages didn't have enough time to dry and went wrinkly! (But the printer fixed it and everything was okay in the end.)



For Bologna Book Fair, the OUP book team printed up a sampler with the first three chapters, so here's a little peek at them. These are what are called the 'endpapers', even though they're right in the beginning and set the scene.



Philip really likes the slappy satellite. (I'm not sure why it's slappy, I just stuck a glove on it to make it look more interesting.)



And here's Emily, in her bedroom on Funfair Moon!



Emily's based very much on my studio mate Elissa Elwick and Emily wants to be a funfair engineer more than anything in the world. (Not our world, an alien world that's all funfair.)



That's Elissa on the right in the yellow, celebrating with cake, and craft team Lauren O'Farrell (who designed the knitted Pug, Sea Monkey and Jampire patterns) and her working partner Sami Teasdale.



The book doesn't come out 'til September but I'm already excited! Go go Jo and Liz and book team! :D

Edit: Here's a photo just in from designer Jo, who is ON THE CASE! :D

Even though two of my three publishers are based in Oxford and I go there often for meetings and such, the town has a special magic to it that never really goes away.



This year for Oxford Literary Festival, I got to stay in Exeter College and have breakfast in their dining hall, which was pretty awesome. (Also slightly embarrassing because I didn't have time to get into costume after breakfast, and the few people in there were too polite to ask questions.)



The very first event I went to, I got to sit in the audience to hear Philip Womack interview Philip Reeve and Frances Hardinge.




Here they are, getting papped by festival photographer KT Bruce. (You can see her photos here on Facebook.)



Philip talked about his new Railhead book and Frances, about The Lie Tree, which deservedly has got lots of press lately when it won the overall Costa Award. They're both brilliant books, I recommend them to adults and teenagers alike.



Respect to Philip Womack: moderating an event is much harder to do and takes more time with research than talking about one's own books. I wish I could have heard him talk a bit more about his book The Broken King but at least I managed to nab the bookseller's last copy.



On the way out, I finally met Katherine Rundell, author of Rooftoppers, which beat out Oliver and the Seawigs for the Blue Peter Prize.. and I didn't mind, because it turned out to be very good! (If it had been bad, I would have been FURIOUS!) ;D



I was too caught up in my Pugs of the Frozen North event with Philip to get any good photos of the Story Museum setting, but we had a good crowd and a great time, and I recognised a certain pug hat from World Book Day dressing-up photos I'd seen on Twitter:



The pugs in the back of our book all have names, but Philip and I loved how these girls found the unnamed pugs at the beginning of the books and gave them all their own names!



Here's a little close-up. Pimples, Macaroon and Sticky Tack are all very fine names.



Another girl had started writing a sequel to Pugs of the Frozen North, called Pugs of the Special Spring. We hope she keeps going with it!



Ah, and evidence of another World Book Day Pug costume. Love the pug costumes.



After our event, I changed out of Pugs gear into something a bit more comfortable and ran into James Mayhew back in the Green Room. James does live drawings at concerts with full orchestras backing him, which sounds incredibly daunting, but he pulls it off with panache.



Oo, and it's Cathy Brett, who was waiting for Jo Cotterill to arrive to do their event about Electrigirl, their book that's not quite a comic, not quite a novel, sort of a mix of several things.



My second event was right next to the awe-inspiring Sheldonian Theatre with its mad-looking heads.



And right there at the base of the theatre, it was so great to see people reading my Dinosaur Police book.



Inside the Blackwell's Marquee, I read from Dinosaur Police and then taught everyone how to draw silly T-Rex characters. We got some good ones from people of all ages!



Here's Andrea Reece who organised the children's part of the festival and invited Philip and me. Thank you so much, Andrea!!



We had dinner with Andrea, our fabulous OUP publicist Harriet Bayly, Philip Womack and Seonaid MacLeod (pronounced 'Shona'), who was at the festival bigging up a Reading Ambassadors scheme, promoting reading for pleasure. Besides the great company at Brasserie Blanc, we got to order a Baked Alaska, which we hadn't had since Philip and I first signed our contract for Oliver and the Seawigs. And it was JUST AS TASTY.



Right before I headed back to the station, I stopped by the Eagle & Child pub (where the Inklings used to meet) to see friends Sally Nicholls and her new baby, comics friends Jenni Scott & Richard Buck and their kids, and my amazing OUP designer Jo Cameron. The kids were very excited and sitting is hard in a pub, so we ended up doing lots of drawing, which always suits me just fine!



(You can find out about more of my events over on the events page of my website.)

My co-author Philip Reeve and I are excited to share the title of our next book with you!



Jinks & O'Hare Funfair Repair will come out this autumn, and I'm working like mad on it right now! You may remember my very first published collaboration with Philip Reeve, a comic strip that I wrote, he drew, and I coloured for The Phoenix Comic (Issue 44). It featured these two friendly alien repairmen:



And it was set on an amazing planet that was ALL funfair! A dream come true.



When I was little, I LOVED playing with LEGO and trying to build the most exciting funfairs I could think of. But I was always a bit disappointed with the results, I could never capture the funfair in my mind, it was supposed to be WAY better than that. I thought that growing up was how I'd acquire all the skills that would equip me to making a proper awesome funfair. But even though my dad was a top engineer, I never quite managed to master the maths and physics I'd need to build funfairs. ...But now I can DRAW them. I can build funfairs in people's MINDS, ha ha. Here's Emily. She's a bit like LEGO-kid me, but she looks very much like my studio mate, Elissa Elwick.



Inspired by our original comic, Jinks and O'Hare are very much supposed to be the main characters in this book, fixing the rides that go wrong on Funfair Moon. But Emily lives in the Lost Property office and she's rather ambitious. So we'll see what happens with her.... Here are a couple work-in-progress drawings:



The way I've been working is to draw thumbnails with pencil, working to Philip's text. (Philip came to London and helped me draw these). Then our designer, Jo Cameron, figures out how they can fit with the text, and we fiddle them around a bit. Then I draw them with pencil in more detail, and use my light box to trace over them with an old-fashioned dip pen and ink. I'll scan them into the computer, colour them in Photoshop, and they'll be ready to send back for Jo to put into the book! Now I'd better get back to the drawing...



Be sure to catch up with our other books before this one comes out! :)



PS Jinks & O'Hare Funfair Repair isn't a comic, it's the same format as the last three books. But if you love family-friendly comics, do have a look at what The Phoenix Comic is coming out with, it's brilliant stuff! You can either subscribe to the weekly magazine or buy their awesome compiled comic books. (Their Star Cat by James Turner won the top UK comic prize this year, the Young People's Comic Award.) Absolute essential books for any library.

Something strange happened this year in the New York offices of Random House Kids. Little eyes peeking around laptop screens, grabby little hands stealing cookies from editor desks. Little tails whisking through coffee cups and splashing onto book proofs. They had an INFESTATION.

...Of what, you ask? Well, they had so many lovely copies of Oliver and the Seawigs lying about that some of the Sea Monkeys ESCAPED. This happens from time to time. Here's our designer, Jo Cameron, in England, being mucked about by one of these rascally critters:



For a few hours, no one knew why so many things were going wrong in the office, but Sea Monkeys love ATTENTION and didn't stay hidden for long. In fact, they swarmed the board room, pinned down our editor and the design team and INSISTED they get full credit on the book cover. MONKEYS MEAN BUSINESS.


As seen previously in Manchester

Despite the concept of a 'Seawig' being a fine thing, the team had no choice but to give in to the wriggling hoard and accept their terms. So, in America, our book, starting in July, will be called... OLIVER AND THE SEA MONKEYS.



If you're in the USA and want the pre-monkeyed version, you'd better get on the case quickly, otherwise this is the one you'll see popping up in shops (and screeching EEP EEP EEP).

You can get lots of of fun free story-themed stuff on my website, including a pattern to knit your own Sea Monkey (designed by Lauren O'Farrell aka Deadly Knitshade):


As seen, also in Manchester


Learn how to draw your own Sea Monkey:



(Camilla's drawn a Sea Monkey, so you can, too...)



And design a Seawig!



I've also done a four-video series comics class that teachers can use with their classes, featuring... you guessed it, Sea Monkeys! Click here for all four linked videos, and do share, if you think any other schools would find it useful.



Philip Reeve and I have several videos you might enjoy:







If you're on Twitter, you can browse the #Seawigs hash tag to see lots of fun costumes, Sea Monkeys and shenanigans, or start on the new hash tag, #OliverandtheSeaMoneys.



Here's the link to our Reeve & McIntyre Facebook page! And here's the Random House page for Oliver and the Sea Monkeys.

Little portrait drawing, which looks a bit like Edith Sitwell and may or may not be based on certain jaunty photo of Philip Reeve, heh heh...

I love how the town of Kendal in the Lakes District puts on a good display when it's time for its Lakes International Comic Art Festival!



One of the highlights for me of comic festivals is when I see young comics creators publishing their own work and experimenting with fun ways to market it. Check out this great stand by Zoom Rockman! (He's been publishing since he was eight years old.)



Here's his Skanky Pigeon character and, hey, a few friends and I have little cameos in The Zoom comic!




When I first saw Zoom at LICAF, he was drawing grumpy faces onto the spuds he put into his Unhappy Meals (shown here). He's @The_ZoomComic on Twitter.



And hey, two more familiar faces!



Here's Jordan Vigay, whom I first met at Animated Exeter festival, and then again at The Phoenix Comic festival in Oxford. He publishes The Red Crow comic. (He's just joined Twitter as @JordanVigay.)



And here's Jonny Toons, whom I first met at Thought Bubble festival in Leeds. His comics magazine's called Crystal Orb and you can follow him on Twitter at @JonnyToons.



And this week The Bookseller reported that both Jordan and Jonny will be contributing to The Phoenix Comic, which is very exciting!



The other awesome thing about LICAF was being there when Philip Reeve and concept artist Ian McQue met for the very first time! Ian's art is hugely inspired by Philip's Mortal Engines quartet, and I think Ian's artwork has helped shape how a lot of fans see that world now. (Here's an early image of the traction city of London.) I had dinner with them and it was fun seeing them be such mutual fanboys. Philip's Railhead publisher, Oxford Univerity Press, commissioned Ian to do several book-related images, and here's his digital painting of a Hive Monk:



I wasn't able to go to their Railhead event because I had an event at the same time (gah!!) but I hear it was packed-out and amazing, with Ian doing live drawing while Philip did readings from the book.


Photo by Sofi Croft on Twitter

Philp and I felt honoured to be asked to features our new book together, Pugs of the Frozen North, for the festival finale show. Here on the Reeve & McIntyre Sofa of Mystery are some top snow scientists we discovered in the audience.


Photo by Jody Lawson on Twitter

It was fun meeting people after the show; check out this beautiful crocheted pug! (Here's a free pattern if you want to try knitting a pug!)



And we even had our portraits drawn by a couple member of the audience! (Thanks to Forbidden Planet for hosting that signing.)



Other exciting things: seeing Skipton-based comics collective Team Ketchup and their second comic anthology.


I think Jody Lawson took this photo, too!

Hey, spot the yeti from when I illustrated the Summer Reading Challenge! So fab!



I didn't have a lot of time to run around buying comics, but I really, REALLY wanted to get copies of the 24-Hour Comic Marathon publications. I took part in the 24-Hour Comic Marathon last year (you can read my comic here) and it was a gruelling thing to do - make a 24-page comic book in 24 hours - but a lot of fun, too, and sort of therapeutic to pump out a book that fast, and then have it printed and ready to sell the very next day. (Publishing can feel so SLOW sometimes!) And here are all six comics from this year, completed the day before I bought them!



Emma Vieceli was one of the artists who took part (and she's also a LICAF Patron):



Here's John Allison's comic:



And Jade Sarson's!



Here you can get a peek of some of the interiors...



Check out this page of Jonathan Edwards (Jontofski)'s 24-Hour Comic, and its pencil rough! He painted the pink tones first, then drew the black ink on top. Such beautiful compositions. Hopefully all six comics will be collected into a book, like the 24 by 7 book that Fanfare published of our comics last year.



Dan Berry and Richard Short also made 24-Hour Comics. But not all the comics that weekend were drawn on paper; Joe Decie (who took part in the 24-Hour Comic Marathon with me last year) painted a comic with acrylic pant on a wall in the walkway between two pubs.



You can see more photos here on Joe's Tumblr page.



The other terrific thing I saw at the festival was The Three Rooms in Valerie's Head, a performance by writer David Gaffney, comics creator Dan Berry and musician Sara Lowes. I had no idea what to expect - Dan gave me the tickets on the street - and it was FASCINATING. Dan, David and Sara were like a band, immersing us, the theatre audience, into their weird and wonderful story. We could see them looking to each other for the timing, and it was fun watching Dan's face as he could see and hear people's immediate response to each panel of his comic on the screen while David Gaffney gave a dramatic reading of the text. There weren't any speech bubbles in the artwork, David supplied all the words, which made it almost like watching a rough animated film. The story was, in turns, creepy, mysterious and very funny.



Like last year, Dan had been in charge of this year's 24-Hour Comic Marathon and taken part himself again. He also teaches, and hosts the incredible Make It Then Tell Everybody podcasts, and I don't know where he found the time to make SO MANY images for this peformance, but it was wonderful. I really hope they take it on tour, to places such as the Edinburgh Book Festival; people will love this show.



Oh, and another highlight was meeting Nev the Pug, together with his devotee Laura Sneddon.



There wasn't a lot of dressing up at this particular festival, but I did spot a few ace costumes, including this Batgirl in my signing queue in the Page 45 room. (Spot my Jampires book with David O'Connell - which started with a Comic Jam! - and my picture book There's a Shark in the Bath.)



Page 45 is a terrific Nottingham-based bookshop, hosted by the hugely knowledgeable Stephen Holland and Jonathan Rigby. And Stephen was having a big birthday! Philip and I drew him a card with lots of cuddles from pugs and Sea Monkeys. (You can read Stephen's highly illustrated review of Pugs of the Frozen North on the shop website. They ship internationally!)



But I wasn't just doing Pugs events, I also hosted a Dinosaur Police event, along with a handy local police officer.



Check out the T-Rex drawings kids made!



I wasn't sure what age the audience was going to be, but we had five-year-olds, teenagers, adults, and it was good fun.



Oo, there's one by a mum, on the right. I love it when the adults get involved and draw, too.



I had everyone create a profession for their dinosaur:



And this guy started turning his Football Dinosaur into a comic. I hope he kept going with it!



Philip Reeve and I also led a Comics Jam session in Kendal Libary. (Here's a selfie with the people who took part in the background.)



The great thing about a Comics Jam is that everyone comes away with a comic, and they all take exactly the same amount of time to create!



Here are a couple of the comics people made.



Hey look, it's Dr Mel Gibson, a genuine comics doctor! And she's brought her suitcase of recommended comics for her own workshop.



I could tell a lot of these kids in our sessions had comic-creator parents; the level of drawing was very high!



And it was great to catch up a bit with people I hadn't seen for ages, including the small-but-very-remarkable Felt Mistress, Louise Evans.



Felt Mistress and Jontofski are such a power couple: Jonathan draws creatures, Felt Mistress sews them, and we all get to enjoy them.



It's Supercrash author Darryl Cunningham!



And Canadian artist Kate Beaton! I love her history comics SO much and she has two new books out: a picture book called The Princess and the Pony and a collection of comics called Step Aside Pops!.



It's Asia Alfasi! I first met her at Hi-Ex festival in Inverness, but I hadn't seen her in years, and I wish I'd had more time to catch up with her. (Can someone remind me of the name of her tablemate? I used to know and I've blanked!)



Great to see Sally Kindberg and Steven Appleby:



In the pub, it's French creator Boulet, Nora Goldberg, Joe Decie, Warwick Johnson Cadwell and John Allison:



My former studio mate Ellen Lindner, over from New York City with her husband Stephen Betts:



Andrew Ruddick (aka Pud) and Emma Vieceli (who often has a hard time getting all her books at comics festivals, and Page 45 had ALL THE BOOKS. Wahey!)



Ed Hillyer (aka ILYA) and Jontofski:



Stephen Holland and Jonathan Rigby:



And, of course, a HUGE THANKS to the red-shirted team who ran the festival so beautifully! Julie Tait, Carole Tait, Angela Diggle, Phil Welch, Katie White and everyone who helped out! And my wonderful hosts at Ash Meadows Guest House, Philippa and Peter!



You guys were amazing. Follow LICAF on Twitter at @comicartfest!

My co-author on Pugs of the Frozen North, Philip Reeve, has had a strangely divided autumn, promoting our book, and his own entirely dissimilar novel Railhead, also published by Oxford University Press. (I should add, Railhead is amazing, everyone go read it right now.) He's doing an A-Z of Railhead blog tour and I'm lucky enough to host the letter 'L'!



L ...is for Letting Sarah McIntyre Read The Early Versions

Railhead was written in very much the same way as I wrote Mortal Engines. It came together slowly, over a number of years, using and re-using bits from many abandoned experimental versions. That’s pretty much how I always work, but in recent years, with publishing deadlines to meet, I’ve had to compress the process, and limit the number of early drafts. I didn’t have a contract for Railhead, so I was able to take as long as I liked. I ended up writing two or three whole novels before I finally hit on the idea of the trains, which ties the finished book together.


Sarah interjects: This photo I took of Philip appeared in the back of the book, and I got a little photo credit!

In the past, I’ve always been very secretive about what I’m writing. I hear about authors who sit down at the end of each day and read the latest chapter to their partner, but I don’t even like talking about mine. Things changed, however, when I wrote Oliver and the Seawigs: that was a joint effort, with a story and characters which I created with Sarah McIntyre, so of course I had to show it to Sarah as I was going along, so that she could chip in ideas and suggestions. That was fun - it was such fun, in fact, that it made me want to write another full-length book of my own. And I’d learned to trust the Judgement of McIntyre, I started showing her bits of Railhead as I was writing that.



It wasn’t called Railhead then, of course - it was called Untitled Space Epic. It didn’t have Zen as its hero, although I guess the heroes it did have were all forerunners of Zen. It had all sorts of stuff that never made it anywhere near the finished book, although a few names and settings appeared early on and stuck. (The water-moon Tristesse was in there from the start, but it was called Saudade until I realised that M John Harrison had used that name).



I tried out all kinds of different plots, putting rich characters and poor through wild adventures, gradually finding out how this future society worked, the Corporate Families, the Guardians… And McIntyre read them all, or most of them, and she was always complimentary, and ready with helpful observations. I think knowing that someone was waiting to read the latest instalment kept me going long after I would otherwise have given up.


Railhead tribute artwork by concept artist Ian McQue

Sometimes I made more of a character because Sarah liked them - the android called Nova, for instance, but I didn’t always let her influence me. There was a subplot about a girl who had become addicted to a virtual world, and then banished from it. Sarah really liked that part, especially the tragic ending, so I polished up a bit, working out along the way a few details about the Datasea, which is the internet of my future world. But in the end it didn’t fit into the story, so Sarah is the only person who will ever read it. All that survives of it in the final book is the girl’s name, Threnody, which has been given to a different character.



And then I decided that trains, not spaceships, should be what the book revolved around - Sarah was the first person I told about that - and fairly quickly a final(ish) version emerged, which I felt able to show to my agent, who showed it to OUP… and here we are. But we wouldn’t have got here without McIntyre. And while I was preparing the final final version, I Skyped her every day for about a week Sarah interjects: When I was ill with the flu! It was so cheering! and read her the whole thing (it’s very good practise to read your writing aloud, but you feel a bit silly doing it to yourself).



So the first thing most people probably knew about Railhead was Sarah’s picture of the Unshaven Author reading away on her Skype screen. It isn’t a Reeve and McIntyre book, but it wouldn’t be the same book without McIntyre, and it might not be a book at all. Thank you, Sarah!

You're very welcome, Reeve!



You can buy Railhead right here and you can follow Philip on Twitter - @philipreeve1 - and his Facebook page and our joint Reeve & McIntyre Facebook page.

I've done lots of events in the past, but last week was the first time I've ever gone on an Official Book Tour! Here are ten things I learned, while travelling around the country telling people about Pugs of the Frozen North with my co-author, Philip Reeve.



1. Touring turns me into an incurable fantasist: When Philip and I talked with kids enough about our 'Refrigerated Pug Bus', it almost feels like we were really touring in one. Our bus had a huge yellow ribbon painted down the side with 66 pugs tumbling along it, and a giant rotating pug sculpture on top of the bus. Sadly we didn't manage to take any photos of it.



2. People who love pugs REALLY LOVE PUGS: It's not like other animals, the Pug Love is completely obsessive and since pugs are great little animals, the love is well deserved.


Fabulous pug owner at Simply Books, Bramhall (near Manchester), super pug fan at Cheltenham Lit Fest

3. Anyone can draw a pug: Some of the best pugs were drawn by people who said they couldn't draw, and some of the really wonky ones were the best and most characterful. (If you want to learn how to draw - or knit! - a pug, click over to my website.)




4. Most of the real work happened before we even arrived at the school: The most eager, attentive, involved children were (rather unsurprisingly) the ones who had already read the book. But even kids who just knew who we were and had been given a bit of buildup by their teachers before the event got way more out of the visit than the kids who had no idea who Philip and I were. We had wonderful audiences except at one school where even a teacher at the end of the event said, 'So... are you the ones who wrote and illustrated this book?' (The book itself and the poster with our book covers, and everything we'd been saying for the past hour hadn't been a clue.) And the same went with book sales: way more kids were able to get excited and take home a book to read when they had pre-ordered books, assisted by our fab booksellers who came along with us. (Kids almost never remember to bring book money on the day and then feel gutted they can't have a book.) There's something very exciting about meeting authors and then immediately being able to go away and read their book, a dedicated and signed copy that they might treasure for a lifetime.



5. I can't get any other work done on tour: I brought along all these other projects - character development for a new book, a magazine article that needs writing, I was going to blog each evening - but with early morning starts, and rolling back from dinner at 11pm or later, all I could do was wash my tights and flop onto the bed, hopefully not forgetting to set my alarm clock.


(The bits where we get to hang out with pugs is more energising than tiring, actually.)

6. Being tired makes me really stupid, and I love my publicists: I had a Frankfurt Book Fair deadline right before the tour and was staying up until 3am to finish artwork. So by the time I went on tour, I was already tired and the first thing I did was have a massive panic that I'd forgotten to pack my yellow costume skirt. After getting my kind next-door neighbour to agree to go upstairs and send it to me courier, I realised I'd rolled it into a tiny ball and stored it in my handbag, and just forgotten to check there. I felt like such an idiot diva. Having a publicist there meant I could focus all my energy and brainpower on the events and the kids, and Philip and I were able to do more events than I would have been able to do in a day I'd organised all by myself. I've been so busy with book deadlines that I haven't been able to take on hardly any school events this year, but with the publicists stacking them all up together for one tour, I was able to hit loads of schools at one go. By the end of each day I was practically jibbering and the pubicists were very patient.


A constant stream of pugs requires the occasional chihuahua break. Publicist Alesha Bonser was very accommodating.

7. I should have made sure my costume had room for expansion: I could have ordered salads every night at the restaurants. But at the end of an exhausting day of school events and travel, I always thought, I deserve this burger/pizza/etc.) Also any cake offered mid-day, like anyone's really going to turn down cake or a biscuit after running around in front of 300 kids. Book tours don't come with a personal trainer and I was bursting out of my dress. Philip and I had a No Pudding Pact, which turned into a No Chip Pact and neither resolution lasted very long.


Home-baked pug biscuits at Simply Books bookshop; publicist Liz Scott with knitted pug 'the pug made me order it'; Bath dinner with Andy Mulligan, Simon Mason, JAKe, Robin Stephens, festival organiser John McLay, Harriet Venn, publicist Alesha Bonser, Philip; and girfan (@MrsHirez) makes the world's best brownies, as seen on the train from Bath to Cheltenham

8. Book tours are awesome: I never could have organised that many visits on my own or met that many people, and Philip and I got better and better at our stage show as we practiced it several times a day. We live far apart, so often the first time we do a show at a big festival, we haven't rehearsed it even once. But after awhile, we start figuring out which activities are a bit cringe-y and which lines get a good laugh. And we get little ukulele blisters on our fingers, which makes us feel like proper musicians, even if we're not.



9. A book tour ends with a huge list of people to thank: Big thanks to Oxford University Press for sending us out! To Liz Scott for all the overall organising and meeting us for the Manchester leg of the tour, Sarah Howells and Karin Andre for the midlands, Hattie Bayly for Essex and Cheltenham, and Alesha Bonser for Essex and Bath, Phil Perry working in the background, and my husband Stuart, for putting up with my packing frenzy and having a lovely hot dinner when I returned.




Huge thanks to Sue & Andrew and their team at Simply Books (including their Knit & Natter team who knitted all the pugs!), Sheryl at Chorleywood Bookshop, Ros with Federation of Children's Book Groups, and Caroline at Just Imagine, and Peters Books Showroom, Earls High School, Stockport Grammar School, Greenbank Prep School, Olive Hill Primary School, Newfield Park Primary School, Butler's Court School, Pinkwell Primary School, Buckhurst Hill Primary School, Alderton Junior School, John McLay and Gill McLay at Bath Kids Lit Fest and Jane Churchill at Cheltenham Lit Fest for hosting us! You can see a few more photos on Twitter at #PugsRoadshow and Philip has blogged about the tour here.





10. Despite all this collaboration and working together malarky, you can only fit one author in a chair at a time. (Yes, I'm looking at YOU, Philip Reeve.)

'So what's happening in Reeve & McIntyre land?' I hear you ask. (Did you ask? Well, let's pretend that you did.) We're just about to embark on the PUGS ROADSHOW!



And up north, near Manchester, a certain bookshop in Bramhall has been completely invaded by lovely knitted pugs...



Who could have created such wonders? 'Tis these lovely ladies, friends of Simply Books, where Reeve & I will be visiting next Monday evening! Here's the link to the free pattern if you'd like to knit your own pug (and tweet us a photo!).



The Simply Books event is now sold out, but you can still book tickets for fun Pugs of the Frozen North sessions in Bath, Cheltenham, Kendal and London (details here) and we'll also be doing lots of school events. You can follow our progress on Twitter at the #PugsRoadshow hashtag.

We'll be stopping in Bath, and John McLay and the Bath Kids Lit Fest are having a fundraising auction selling red chair artwork by a whole host of amazing artists. Do check out the catalogue here! Philip and I have both contributed artwork, and they'll launch the online auction here on Ebay starting on 1 Oct.



In Pugs of the Frozen North, we talk about some of the fifty kinds of snow you get in 'True Winter'. And today I've learned from this Guardian article by Alison Flood that the Scots have at least 421 words for snow. I really must check that thesaurus to be sure they include some of the fifty kinds of snow in our Pugs book: stinksnow, singing snow, shrinksnow, I'm sure they must all be there.



And while we're at it, I have to brag that a few weeks ago I had dinner sitting next to Susan Rennie, who translates Tintin comics into Scots dialect. How cool is that?

On Thursday in London, my co-author Philip Reeve and I celebrated the launch of our book Pugs of the Frozen North with a Pug Walk!


Photo by Dannie Price

Our team at Oxford University Press had been getting very excited in the run-up to the Pug Walk, and had invited The Pug Dog Club to join us. I wasn't quite sure what to think: what would happen when we got so many pugs all in one place? What if it rained? What if some of the pugs got in fights? Would pugs mind a complete stranger picking them up and putting jumpers onto them? Would the owners get annoyed at me if I made them growl? We met on the Southbank in London, wondering what would happen.



Pugteam's Liz Scott came down from Manchester with some marvellous knitted items for the pugs. Do you remember my blog post about all the amazing knitted sea monkeys at the Manchester Children's Book Festival? Well, Liz's friend Ally from Ally's Wonderland, who had created those, took on the task of making pug jumpers! Here you can see the exciting packages:


Photo by Ally's Wonderland

But would the pugs want to wear them? Here's club member Sam, and Liz, putting a jumper onto little Benny Bean.



Okay, what do you think, little pug?


Photo by Dannie Price


You know what I discovered about pugs? They don't seem to mind being dressed up...



On top of that, they don't mind posing for photos. In fact, they seem to LIKE posing for photos, and they turn their heads so we can photograph them at all their best angles.


Photo by Dannie Price

I believe they might be almost as vain as I am.


Photo by Dannie Price

And then the owners started handing us lots of their leads, and I thought, Eek! What if they don't like each other? But this was not a problem! The pugs were such placid little things, they sniffed each other and nosed about, but they seemed as happy as they could be. And gosh, were they cute.



The only time they got slightly ruffled is when someone came by with a slightly wolfish sort of dog - not a pug - and the pugs made little muttering noises and moved about restlessly until he'd gone away.


Photo by Dannie Price

We picked up quite a crowd while we were there; everyone, it seems, loves a pug, and the more pugs, the better. Here we are with the pugparazzi.



Would the pugs mind us picking them up? ...Not at all, we discovered!


Photo by Dannie Price

Oh my goodness, they are SO FUN to cuddle.



Here are two of the pugs, having a little chat.


Photo by Dannie Price

SO CUTE.



We read them a bit of Pugs of the Frozen North and they seemed to like that.



Then we took them on a little walk down the Southbank to Foyles Bookshop (making many stops along the way). Oddly, I didn't see one pug do as much as a wee, they were almost strangely tidy little dogs.


Photo by Dannie Price

And they're quite strong, there was a lot of power at the end of those leashes. Philip and I thought that perhaps Sika and Shen in our book might not have needed all 66 pugs to compete in the sled race to the North Pole; 20 or so might have done just fine. When we reached Foyles, we saw they'd created a big window display for our book!


Photo by Dannie Price

We took a group photo with the pug team. I wish I could remember all the names of the pugs. There was Coco and Tuppence and Princess and Pudding and Benny Bean... a proper grumble of pugs. (That's the collective noun for a group of pugs!)



I got awfully attached to them.



Here's Coco and his lovely Colombian owner:



And this is Sam and her Benny Bean, who fell asleep in my lap while I signed everyone's books.



He had his chin on my wrist but he never knocked my pen once. The pug club people were very friendly and it was fun seeing them chatting and exchanging numbers. Some of them are involved in the Pug Dog Welfare and Rescue Association UK, and they'll be auctioning off some of our books, pug goodie bags and several of Ally's beautiful pug jumpers that you see here. (I'll let you know when they announce it!)



I was totally smitten. I used to think that if I was ever going to get a dog, I might get a labrador. But I think, living in the city, if I got a dog, now it would be a pug. I'm a Pug Convert.



Huge thanks to Liz Scott and the Oxford University Press team, the Pug Dog Club, Ally's Wonderland, Foyles for hosting the signing, Dannie Price for taking photos (along with Keo Baxedine and Alesha Bonser, who passed my iPhone around) and Philip, of course, for writing such a brilliant book! Here's a closer look at Ally's jumpers:



You can see they're directly inspired by illustrations in the book. Here's Sika, when she first learns Shen's dogs aren't the big sled-dog huskies she was hoping for:


Photo by Ally's Wonderland

And here's a pug with SNOBOT, Professor Shackleton Jones's robotic companion which proves very good at digging him out of a deep snowdrift.


Photo by Ally's Wonderland

Here's the fearsome Kraken of Kraken's Deep, which the 66 pugs defend Sika and Shen against:


Photo by Ally's Wonderland

And a yeti! I won't give away the secrets of the Yeti Noodle Bar, but it's a combination of much yumminess and terrible peril.


Photo by Ally's Wonderland

Thanks so much, Ally! You can follow her on Twitter at @allyleeswonder and here's her Facebook page. And you can see a few more photos on Twitter under the #PugWalk hashtag. (Ha ha, if you WANT to see more photos! I had such a hard time whittling this blog post down to, like, 200 of them.)



I actually felt myself going slighty teary when I had to leave the pugs to go sign more books in Foyles, I didn't want to get Benny Bean off my lap or say goodbye to everyone. So all those pug owners, please give your pugs an extra cuddle when you read this and say it's from Philip and me. Cheers!


Photo by Dannie Price

**Click here if you'd like to learn how to draw a pug or download a free pattern to knit your own pug!**

The Guardian asked if they could airlift me in to draw them some pugs... Read the whole thing here!



And Guardian Books are selling Pugs of the Frozen North in their online shop here.



You can find out more about the drawings over on the Oxford University Press blog!

A couple weeks ago, I got an excited e-mail from a teacher named Claire Williams:

I'm not sure whether you'll remember me - I was sat next to you at the Book Awards dinner in Nottingham and we talked about how Pugs of the Frozen North sounded like an exciting novel to use for the Polar Bear topic that I have to plan for the first two weeks of term with my Polar Bears class. Well, I've read it, I just know that the children will LOVE it and I have also decided that if we're going to get as much enjoyment out of it as it has to offer, it's going to need more than two weeks! I'm going into school tomorrow to turn my classroom into the North Pole and the novel is going to be at the heart of our topic for the whole first half of this term, which I think I'm going to call ‘The Race to the Top of the World’ … I just wondered whether there is any chance that you and/or Philip might be able to spare a few minutes to come up with some sort of writing challenge based on Pugs of the Frozen North?



So we did! And since we'd done it for Claire, it made sense to turn it into notes that more people could print out. I consulted with Claire to get the notes as accessible as possible for teachers to use and adapt.
**Click here to download the notes as a printable PDF!**

Here are FIVE WAYS to use Pugs of the Frozen North in the classroom!

1. Draw a Pug!

Give your students confidence in character creation by making a pug out of simple shapes. It’s much more fun to write about a character who looks back off the page at you!



How you could build on this:

• Have everyone draw their pug on brown paper (such as parcel wrapping paper) in thick black pen. Give them pastels to make the whites of the eyes stand out and have each child design a different colour jumper for their pug. Have them cut out the pugs and display them on a class bulletin board.

• You could expand on this by having each child name his or her pug. Perhaps the child could write a paragraph about the pug’s personality and achievements, such as which sled races it’s already taken part in. Cut out these text boxes and hang them next to each pug as part of the classroom display.


Pugs drawn by Katie Hand, Keara Stewart, Teri Smith's daughter, Sam Reeve and Sam Decie
Browse a large gallery of all-ages pug drawings here!


2. 50 Kinds of Snow

In Pugs of the Frozen North, True Winter brings fifty different kinds of snow. With the class, create a list of all the kinds of snow mentioned in the book. Continue writing the list until the class reaches fifty, imagining what other sorts of snow might exist in True Winter.

Songsnow, screechsnow, gigglesnow, fartingsnow

How you could build on this:


• Divide up the snow: Write the fifty kinds of snow on slips of paper, fold them, and have each child draw a piece of paper from a hat to decide which kind of snow each child will focus on for his or her project.

• Create a 50 Kinds of Snow class comic book: Each child creates a one-page comic strip. At the top of the page, they draw the title of their comic, which is the name of that particular kind of snow (Singing Snow, Shrink Snow, Farting Snow, Giggle Snow, etc).

Have the children think about what angle they want to take with their comic strip. Some ideas: a scientist could demonstrate how that kind of snow behaves. A pug could encounter the snow during Shen & Sika’s race and have a mini-adventure which shows how the snow behaves. A snowball made of that kind of snow could be the main character in the comic. Or they could show what would happen if that kind of snow in their own school yard. (The possibilities are endless.)

If you’d like tips on how to make comics, I've has created a series of comic-making videos for Book Trust. They’re based on the Sea Monkey from Oliver and the Seawigs, but the same comic-making tips would apply to Pugs or any book or comic the children create.



Click here for all four Comic Jam videos

The advantage of making comics is that the visuals will pull along the writing and make the overall book a more appealing object. There's also more of a chance that children would want to read each other's work if it's in comic form, and the kids would have to work on making their comics read clearly to each other.

Collect the comics into a book and add a title page, and possibly a short introduction. The introduction could include a one-line quotation from each child on their favourite thing about Pugs of the Frozen North, or a class book review. Look at the pug endpapers in Pugs of the Frozen North and create your own endpapers, possibly using scans or photos of the pugs the children have drawn. Or create more simple endpapers using white paint blobs (snowballs) on coloured paper; liven this up by giving each snowball eyes. Create a cover and have the children come up with a blurb for the back cover. Include the children’s names on the title page and on the page with their comic.



You could expand on this by having the class create a promotional book video trailer, and posters for the book.

• Make a class video about the 50 different kinds of snow. Each child presents a 'snowball' and introduces that particular kind of snow to the camera. Perhaps you cut away during each short talk to pictures or comics further illustrating the snowball's capabilities. Each child could also write out the name of that kind of snow for the camera to focus on before they begin talking.

You can feature one kind of snow per child (‘a selection of the 50 kinds of snow in Pugs of the Frozen North’) or show all 50 kinds. If you want to make the video public on YouTube or Vimeo and there are privacy issues, the children without video permissions could do voice-overs while the camera focuses on their snowball and artwork.


3. The Great Sled Race

Create a Great Sled Race mural on a bulletin board or long strip of paper.



Have each child decide what sort of creature (real or mythical) will pull their particular sled, and how many of these creatures they will need to pull their sled. Have them draw the creature in the top of half a piece of paper and write a short paragraph beneath it, explaining what kind of creatures are in their team, why they think their team is best suited to win the race, and what they have packed in their sled. (This can be serious or jokey.) Make sure the children’s creatures are facing toward the right-hand side of the paper (so everyone’s sled will be going in the same direction).

Have the child go over the outlines of their creature drawing in dark black pen. Cut off the lower half of the paper with the article on it and save this. Have the child trace over the first drawing to create multiples of that creature. (If their team has four dragons, trace over the first dragon three times.) Have them colour their team in bright colours and cut out the creatures. Get them to create a sled out of coloured paper. (This could be as simple as a rectangle, or one of these shapes):


Print out a larger version of this in the downloadable PDF!

For an extra challenge, children could create harnesses for their creatures and draw on coloured paper a picture of themselves riding their sled. For younger children, you could cut around the second shape, glue a headshot photo of the child into the parka hood, and have the child decorate the sled, parka, mittens and boots. A bit of decorative ribbon might make a nice belt. Patterned origami paper might make eye-catching sled blankets.

Create a bulletin board with a coloured background (blue?) and display the sled teams and sleds on the board. Use thread, string or narrow ribbon to connect each sleds to its creatures. Next to each sled, attach the short paragraph the child has written about his or her sled team.

If you have space, have the children cut snowflakes out of paper and add them to the picture. Perhaps you could add a title along the top of the display, such as ‘Race to the Top of the World!’

In Pugs of the Frozen North, the pugs say ‘Yip!’ and ‘Arooo!’ You could create speech bubbles for the children’s creatures with the sounds their various creatures make while they’re racing.



Take a photo (or photos) and tweet it to Philip Reeve at @philipreeve1 and me, Sarah McIntyre at @jabberworks!


4. Polar Board Game

Create a giant board game, adding wonders and perils from the book and inventing some of your own!



Part 1: You'll need a large piece of paper, possibly a roll of paper or paper covering a display board. In the bottom left corner, create the starting point (possibly the name of your school). In the top right corner, draw the North Pole (possibly an actual pole, with a label reading 'North Pole').

Part 2: Draw a curvy track (two parallel lines) connecting the two points, to form a game board race course. Divide the track up into boxes (like a railroad track).



Part 3: Talk about wonders and perils in the book. What might racers meet along the way, that would either help them or hinder them in their journey? You can debate the merits of each (Fartsnow might set you back three squares because it's horrible, or propel you two spaces forward.) Examples include encountering yeti, avalanches, the Kraken, crevasses, polar bears, Northern Lights, snowstorms, ice palace mirages. You can either write or draw onto the game board the different wonders/perils or have the children do it. The class can decide together if each encounter means going forward or backward (and how many squares... -2? +4?) or missing a turn. Write these directions onto the game board.


Kraken Deep!

Part 4: Create two paper markers with blu-tack on the back of each (possibly using a pug face from the How-to-Draw-a-Pug activity or a sled from the Great Race activity). Divide up the class into two teams. Select a person from each team to roll the dice for that team (or take it in turns). Have each team roll the die to see who goes first, then play the game!



Part 5: Discuss with the children how creating a board game is very much like plotting out a story: there's a beginning, and end, and events and setbacks that happen to the characters in the middle. Consider having each child create his or her own board game as a way of plotting out a story. Have them choose a starting point, a finishing point, and decide what their character might encounter between those two points. Then get them to tell or write the story as though they're playing the game they've created.


5. Heart’s Desire

If you could win the Great Race and get your heart's desire, what would it be?



Part 1: Have the children write the answers to these questions. They may feel very private about these answers and not want to share them with the class.

1. What would you want more than anything?
2. What do you think someone else in your family would want more than anything?
3. Is there anything you feel you ought to ask for, even if it's not what you really want?
4. What would happen if you got your heart's desire? Would it make you happy, could it cause problems, or both?

Part 2: The children could use these answers to inspire a story, showing a character who gets his or her heart's desire, how getting this might make things go wrong, and then showing what they'd do (or not do) to make it right again. The story could be in comics form or in writing with illustrations. They could be serious or silly-surreal stories, depending on how they want to approach the subject.



Further ‘Frozen North’ reading: The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean, The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London, Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill, Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson, Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

Click here to download the notes as a printable PDF. And visit my website - jabberworks.co.uk - for other book-related activities (including how to knit your own pug).

I heard back from Claire, who's already started reading Pugs of the Frozen North to her class:

Sarah, I am absolutely buzzing and I just have to pass this feeling on because you are responsible! I read the first chapter of Pugs of the Frozen North to my lovely new class this morning - I'd only planned to read one chapter to them but they were SO desperate for more that I just had to read a second and then they went on at me so much when I finished the second chapter to carry on that I had to read the third chapter and then we were late for PE but they LOVED it!!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you for creating such enjoyable experiences of reading and books for those children - amazing for them but, as a teacher, best feeling ever when learning becomes that exciting!

And thanks for inspiring us, Claire!

Today's our official publication day for Pugs of the Frozen North!



With a dog sled team of 66 pugs, pug lovers will not be disappointed. But what about the other characters, which one is your favourite? Mine is Helga Hammerfest, a gentle giant of a women who's in tune with nature and instead of dogs for a sled team, has two polar bears named Snowdrop and Slushpuppy. She also has a luxurious beard, which comes in handy when the pugs get too cold:



When my co-author Philip Reeve and I were talking about characters we wanted in the story, Helga was top of my list. I'd set myself the #NonIdentikit challenge to draw attractive women who weren't beautiful in a Hollywood standards sort of way, and facial hair on women is such a taboo in our society. Which made me want to defy that standard, so I drew this girl:



I think this was Helga as a teenager, growing up in Anaktuvuk Pass, or whatever remote place she came from. After drawing that, I started making decisions about how the Helga in our book would look. Here's an early drawing I made of her for the book, in India ink and dip pen. (I'm tracing from the pencil drawning, on my light box. Helga's meeting Mitzi Von Primm, who very much plays up to fashion and finds Helga a bit disturbing:



When I first start drawing pages, they start as 'thumbnail roughs', which are small (but not quite as small as thumbnails, in this case). And then I move on to sketching it out in pencil, in the size I'm going to draw it for the book. (I drew most of the images at either 100% or 110% of their final printed size.) I sent scans of the pencil roughs to our editor, Clare Whitston, and our designer, Jo Cameron, to make sure that the drawings showed the right things and worked with the placement of the text.



Then I put the penciled page on my light box and trace over it with dip pen and ink. I have to be very careful not to smudge the ink! If I do, I can fix it later in Photoshop, but it takes time and is fiddly, and I like to get it right the first time if I can.



Next, I scan the ink drawing into my computer and open the file in Photoshop. I colour it using my Wacom pen. Here you can see the coloured layers under the ink! I'm only allowed to use black and one colour for the inside pages - blue - but I can use different opacities of the colour, which let me have darker and lighter blues, and a lighter shade of black (grey).



I e-mailed the picture file to Jo Cameron, and she placed the text around the picture and sent the book off to print. Huge thanks to our Oxford University Press team for all their work on this book! With our publisher Liz Cross, editor, head designer, design group, publicists, rights sales team, publicity tour coordinators, printers, it's quite a large team!



And big thanks to Stephen Holland, Page 45 owner, who's written an indepth review of Pugs of the Frozen North for his amazing blog! You can read about (and buy) the book from him online or in his Nottingham-based shop which sells comics and illustrated books.

For London's very first Guardian Children's Lit Fest, it seemed important to make an effort...



...or at least to MAKE AN ENTRANCE.



My co-author Philip Reeve and I were thrilled to be part of it. The Guardian Children's Book website hosts loads of amazing material in a time when children's book journalism in the major newspapers is very scarce. Emily Drabble and her team have been doing a great job of getting the word out. You can follow them on Twitter at @GdnChildrensBks. (I've done several how-to-draw tutorials for them, including how to draw a Hungry T-Rex, Jampires and a Silly Unicorn.)



So Philip and I brought along our brand new book, Pugs of the Frozen North:



And encountered several PERILS along the way:



But together with the audience's help, we plotted our way through them to reach the North Pole.



Here's a picture we drew right before the event: I drew Philip and he drew me! (It's fun working with a writer who's also an illustrator.)




With the addiction of a giant die, things got awfully exciting:



Sadly, I didn't get a chance to go to any of the other events, but they looked ace. On the way to our book signing, I passed Joseph Coehlo in poetry mid-flow:



And I'd seen on social media that Paul Stickland had been preparing to paint a giant dinosaur:


Photo by Paul Stickland

And I was just about to jump in and paint with him...


Photo by Paul Stickland

... but then I was whisked away, back into the sky. (Thanks for the photo, Paul!) I think Paul's posted a video somewhere of the giant T-Rex he drew; it was pretty awesome.


Photo by Paul Stickland

...Back in the sky, where I was met by my trusty steed, the Dartmoor Pegasus. Ha ha, I just had to share this one, posted by Mathew Tobin (@Mat_at_Brookes on Twitter, GrimResistance on Reddit):



Big thanks to the Guardian team, to Emily, to everyone who came along, to OUP publicist Sarah Howells, and to Stuart for carrying ukuleles, blowing up the giant die and being generally fabulous.

Dartmoor Pegasus started as a little 'artifact' created by Philip Reeve at least a decade ago, before I knew him.



And today it's printed in story form in the Telegraph! (Thanks, illustrator Cathy Brett, for alerting us!)


Photo by Cathy Brett

We originally created the story for my blog, day by day. Philip adapted the story slightly when the newspaper asked us if they could print it, so it would work with less images, and you can read the whole fully illustrated version here on my blog.



I love drawing the Dartmoor Pegasus so much! And he so came to symbolise fun, supportive co-authorship to me that we ended up making him the logo for our #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign to get illustrators credited properly for their work. Making stories with a friend is the best thing EVER.



PicturesMeanBusiness.com

PS Funnily enough, our story's across from an article about Doctor Who, and Philip wrote a Doctor Who story! You can see my fan art for it here.

Once a lonely hunter ventured out upon the ice
The wind was howling fearful cold
It wasn't very nice
Then out of the swirling snow some tiny dogs burst forth...
PUGS.... OF THE FROZEN NORTH!


Photo tweeted by Tom Gates author Liz Pichon

They said... YIIIIIP! yip YIIIIIP! yip YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP!
...And thus begins the theme song of the new Reeve & McIntyre book, which launched at this year's Edinburgh Book Festival!

Now, Philip Reeve and I might get taken more seriously by grown-ups as Proper Authors if we turned up for events wearing black turtlenecks, stroking our chins, and taking turns giving dour gazes into the middle distance. But that's been done before and isn't half as much fun.


Photo tweeted by writer Gwyneth Rees

Last year we came space-themed (photos here), and this year we started with a handy shirt my husband, Stuart, had bought years ago in a market in Moscow, and built up the costumes from there. We thought we'd avoid blue (too much like another Frozen) or red (I'm not Mrs Claus) and I love the yellow on our book cover, a look I'd borrowed from the Japanese edition of our earlier book Oliver and the Seawigs! I seldom think foreign publishers actually improve on our covers, but the Japanese totally did.



Here's our Pugs cover evolution. (And I just saw that our American publishers have gone public with a blue cover.)


Photo by Stuart

Of course books aren't ALL about cover colours and costume. But there are millions of books in the world and somehow we have to figure out how to make ours jump off the shelves. Besides, dressing up makes going on stage much easier somehow. It's like being in a play. This time the excellent Esther Marfo sewed my dress to my drawing of it. Here she is in her workshop:



And here's the icicle tiara I made, with plastic soda bottles, a comb, scissors, a candle and a glue gun.



You can learn how to do almost anything on the Internet. Here's a tutorial I adapted to make the tiara. It was a lot of fun to make, and not too tricky, after I'd messed up the first couple icicles.



And my Aunt Joy just happened to give me this dog-paw necklace on my recent trip to the USA, so thank you, Auntie! Selfie with Stuart in our Edinburgh hotel lift:



And yes, we did look a lot like traveling balalaika players. Which is GREAT, everyone loves a good long balalaika album, or two, or twenty-two. Our Oxford University Press designer, Jo Cameron, created this terrific album cover for us:



And Philip created a special edition of our standard anti-yeti spray. Very important to take along, when you're journeying to the Frozen North.




Ah, a chance to try it out in the Author Yurt, on one of Edinburgh's most famous yeti, Philip Ardagh!



Hmm... did it work?



Oh dear. Not only did it not work, but it seems to have caused that yeti to REPLICATE. ...Or wait, is that writer AF Harrold? It's hard to be sure.


Printed photo by festival photographer Chris Close

I was thrilled to bits that illustrator Steven Lenton came along to our event and took this Pugs-in-action photo. He's the first speaker in Nosy Crow's Illustrator Salon, hosting its first event in London on 14 Sept (with plans to feature non-Nosy Crow illustrators, too). Nosy Crow's Tom Bonnick set it up partly in response to the #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign to get illustrators credited for their work, and encourage people to take an interest in talking about a book's pictures and finding out more about who made them. You can book tickets to the Illustrator Salon here, and read more about the campaign at www.picturesmeanbusiness.com.



Philip and I can't imagine not bigging up both the writing AND the pictures in our book, and we love how kids get excited when they discover they can make a simple drawing and have it come out well. Here are some of the audience's pug drawings that we got to see when we met them afterward at the book signing.



You can learn how to KNIT your own pug over on my website here.





I love this girl's drawing of me, and Philip and me in our preferred way of arriving at book festivals.



After we finished our first event, Stuart, Philip and I popped over to Blackwell's Edinburgh to meet Fiona and sign some copies of our various books. (You might still find a few signed Pugs books there if you're quick.)



Thanks for the lovely write-up, Fiona! :)



Then it seemed appropriate to pay our respects to Edinburgh's own canine hero, Greyfriars Bobby. (You can read his story here.





But it wasn't all PUGS at Edinburgh, that was just the latest book! I also had a storming DINOSAUR POLICE event to do. Here was the view of Edinburgh Castle on the second morning, from the stairwell in our hotel.



I donned a vintage frock and yellow gloves I'd found last week in Seattle with my sister and met up with Dinosaur Dave, aka David Sanger from Scholastic UK. Dave made a great dinosaur, roaring, rampaging around the tent and falling asleep on the floor and snoring loudly, right in the middle of the stage. Thanks, Dave!



I wore my lucky Officer Brachio badge, stitched by Sami Teasdale.



And here are some T-Rex drawings!



In Dinosaur Police, Trevor the T-Rex escapes from the pizza factory with pizzas still stuck all over his body, so a lot of these dinosaurs had food stuck to them, too.



RAWWRRR!



One of the coolest thing was seeing kids who were repeat visitors, either from previous years or from the previous day's Pugs event. Thanks for coming back, guys!



And I love it when everyone draws, not just the kids! Here's a fab T-Rex tweeted by writer Pamela Butchart. Big thanks to everyone who came along! You can learn how to draw your own T-Rex and more on my website right here.



My one big disappointment about this year's Edinburgh Book Festival was that my event was on at almost the exact same time as Philip Reeve's event with his co-author Kjartan Poskitt. They worked together years ago on the Murderous Maths books, and recently have been doing the Borgon the Axeboy books together, with Reeve illustrating and Poskitt writing. (Poskitt's name also appears as a god in the Mortal Engines books.)



Of course, I pestered them as much as I could before and after our events...



...But I saw this photo tweeted by their Faber publicist of Philip lying on the floor on stage, and was GUTTED I hadn't see it myself.



When we were out and about with Stuart, we caught sight of the bus to Clovenstone, the name Philip borrowed for the land where he set his GOBLINS trilogy.



Go read the GOBLINS books, they're ace!



A few other sightings of writers and illustrators whose names you may recognise... here's writer Moira Young with Philip Ardagh:



And writer Patrick Gale, who hosted us at last year's North Cornwall book festival!



And here in the centre is the excellent person who runs the whole show, the children's book section of the festival, Janet Smyth! I got to meet all three generations! Here she is with her mum and daughter, who was also working for the festival. Huge thanks for making it so fabulous!



Oo, it's the always-super-photogenic comic creators, the Etherington Brothers! (Who are actual brothers and make comics together, which is the coolest thing ever.)



And Naomi Alderman, who writes the scripts for Zombies, Run!, among many other things.



With writer-illustrator Steve Anthony:



Comics creator Jamie Littler, who recently illustrated a book with writer Danny Wallace:



Liz Pichon's Tom Gates fingernails:



Writer Nicola Morgan has done loads of work for the Society of Authors CWIG committee (Children's Writers & Illustrators Group) and done research into why Author Visits to schools are such an important thing in getting kids excited about reading, writing and drawing, and advice on Author Visit fees.



Amazing double-act, illustrator Steven Lenton and Tracey Corderoy (and friends):



Illustrator Emma Dodd:



And I even got to catch up and draw with some of my Scottish relatives! Here's a picture I drew of Eve and Callum at dinner:



Stuart and I were so busy at this festival that we didn't get much time to wander about, but we did take a good walk along the Royal Mile and see all the other performers, which made me feel very normal in my own costume.



Excellent elephant puppet:



Big thanks to Janet Smyth, my Scholastic team Dave Sanger and Sophia Pemberton, our OUP team Elaine McQuade and Keo Baxendine, Joely Badger and all the staff and volunteers who made the festival run so smoothly.



And biggest thanks to lovely Stuart, who read through my Pugs script with me, listened to my ukulele practicing, helped me zip up costumes, helped carry luggage, and generally made the trip more pleasant. My hero! :)



I meant to draw a nice festival round-up picture on the train, but I was so shattered that this was all I managed:



If you missed our events in Edinburgh, we're gearing up for the PUGS ROADSHOW, so check on my Events page to see if we stop near you!

You can read Philip's Edinburgh blog here, and the Bookwitch has already blogged about our Pugs event here.

I've just been updating my website Events page (do have a peek!), and SCBWI have just announced that Philip Reeve and I will be keynote speakers at November's conference!



In fact, there will be four keynote speakers, including Jonny Duddle and David Fickling, and there are about twenty other people speaking (some more famous than us) who could easily have stepped in!



SCBWI Conference is such a great opportunity for anyone who's starting out in children's books and wants to find out how to get in deeper, or who's been in the business for awhile and fancies mixing with company, learning some new things and sharing experiences. Here's the programme. The cost of a packed weekend is £220 for SCBWI members, £250 for non-members and you can book here. I've been to several of these conferences and they're a big part of how I got into the business.

Sometimes my books with Philip are called 'middle grade' and Philip hates that term, for good reason. So he's written a new blog post about it, and you can leave comments or tweet your thoughts to him on the subject at @philipreeve1 or leave a comment on our Reeve & McIntyre Facebook page.


Keep reading...

Yesterday was an exciting day for Oliver and the Seawigs when Oliver, Iris, Cliff the rambling isle and a jabber of Sea Monkeys picked up a UKLA Award! UKLA is the UK Literary Association and I've heard this award called 'the teacher's Carnegie' because it's judged entirely by teachers and it's a big honour to win it. Here's coverage in the Guardian:


(Read the rest of the article here.)

Even the journey to the ceremony in Nottingham felt a bit special when, in honour of Wimbledon tennis, East Midland Trains surprised everyone with complimentary strawberries.



My co-author Philip Reeve snapped pictures of me busily making a #PicturesMeanBusiness cover for my phone.



When we arrived at the National College for Teaching and Leadership, we ran into fellow Oxford University Press-published author Gill Lewis, our Seawigs publisher Liz Cross and UKLA's Joy Court (who's been very helpful with the #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign).




And here's writer Jo Cotterill, and Sarah Howells from OUP who was looking after us for the event.



We were supposed to be schmoozing teachers before the ceremony but Reeve was most uncharacteristically reserved.



Here's UKLA's Lynda Graham opening the ceremony with a slide of all the shortlisted books for the three categories of awards.



We got to see teachers talk about each book and how they'd used in their classrooms and how the children had responded to them.



I loved hearing from these kids about Oliver and the Seawigs. Check out the knitted Sea Nonkey, and that boy in the middle had made a clay version of Oliver!



While Seawigs won the main 7-11 award, Heather Butler's Us Minus Mum received a special commendation for dealing with death and grief. It was great to see a special award created for that book that will be very important for specific children going through these issues.

After the ceremony, teachers came up to us afterward and raved about how important the Seawigs illustrations were to getting kids in their 7-11 age group reading and enjoying the experience. They can't get enough of quality illustrated chapter books. Philip and I didn't go into making these books because we saw a huge niche in the market - we just thought it was a great way to tell a story - but it's amazing to hear all the testimonials of how these illustrated books really hit home with kids. Philip and I took turns giving a short speech and making this drawing, and I talked a bit about #PicturesMeanBusiness and urged teachers to encourage their colleagues to talk just as much about the illustrator as the writer when they read and do class projects on books, so kids could have two sources of inspiration instead of one.



Here's Philip and Chris Haughton mucking around after the dinner UKLA laid on for us.



Huge thanks to UKLA's David Reedy, Lynda Graham and Joy Court, award sponsor MLS, all the teachers and kids who read the huge stacks of books, Marilyn Brocklehurst from Norfolk Children's Book Centre who provided books on the day, our editor Liz Cross for coming along, and Sarah Howell for being so helpful and organised! Oh, and Philip, of course for making an ace book with me. That guy constantly amazes me with the story stuff he comes up with.



If any teachers are reading this, check out my website for free printable activities to go along with our books Oliver and the Seawigs, Cakes in Space, and the upcoming Pugs of the Frozen North.



Time to use that award bowl... it's strawberry time!

Yesterday I got to be a RAILHEAD AMBASSADOR at a special early-preview event for Philip Reeve's upcoming novel, Railhead. (Look at me, being all railway and ambassadorial in gold braid and hat. Also slightly overheated.)



Funnily enough, I used to go to lots of ambassadorial events when I first met my husband, when he was working for the British Embassy in Moscow. Back then, I was very studenty and didn't really have any dress-up clothes, so I pretty much wore black jeans, a velvet shirt and Doc Martens everywhere. All the foreign service wives had perfect English-bought clothes for every occasion and I always felt a bit awkward and gauche. So it was nice to be going to an ambassador event when I'd stopped caring about not blending in and could look like a twit with the greatest of joy, ha ha.

Anyway, back to the book, and I'm really excited about this one. Here's a snapshot of one of the posters on display at the event:



'Gentlemen Take Polaroids' is definitely my favourite train name. And here are the other assembled Railhead Ambassadors! Some of them had won a competition to attend, and others were young reviewers for the Guardian Children's Books website.



Here are a few of the tweets from Philip's first Railhead reading:




After the reading and Philip's answers to some very well-thought-out questions from the audience, we had drinks upstairs with Darren Hartwell from BookZone, Caleb Woodbridge and Laura Heath of the aforementioned tweets.



Here's Guardian Chidren's Book website editor Emily Drabble (who, incidentally, commissioned our Seawigs Comics Jam, my How to draw a hungry T-Rex, How to Draw Jampires and How to Draw a Silly Unicorn.)



Then I got to meet some more of the ambassadors while Philip signed advance review copies for the guests. (This version isn't quite finished - there will be a few more tweaks and editions in the final version - but it's ready enough to show to reviewers, to give them an early jumpstart before the book comes out in the autumn.)



These guys made me laugh. They're like, 'REEVE? We are going to CRUSH HIS VERY BONES.'



I'll look forward to reading their reviews! And I'll post a review here nearer to the publication date. But I CAN say that Railhead is ace.







And here's a good showing from the Oxford University Press Railhead publicity team: Keo Baxendine, Liz Scott and Alesha Bonser. You can check out what people are saying over on the #RAILHEAD hash tag.



Funnily enough, on my way to meet Philip, I met a REAL train driver! In fact, I'd met James Bacon before at a comics convention, but I had no idea he drove the Heathrow Express. (How cool is that?)




One more thing: Railhead is Philip's solo book (I'm not a co-author), but there's been a lovely review of our joint book, Oliver and the Seawigs by Stephen Holland of the excellent Page 45 comics shop in Nottingham. Stephen's a legendary reviewer, so I was hugely flattered to see that he'd taken time to focus on Seawigs, which isn't even a comic! I love reading his reviews: they're so exuberant, and he comes up with the most original descriptions and observations. And it's wonderful to see a review that talks so much about the illustrations. Thanks, Stephen! You can read the whole review here (scroll down a bit).

Blog written with my co-pilot Philip Reeve: So our shiny silver space shuttle set us down in sunny Glasgow, where we’d been invited by Scottish Book Trust to do one of their Authors Live events.



These events take place at the BBC’s Glasgow studios; there’s a small invited audience of children from local schools, but the show is also broadcast live online to any other schools who want to sign up for it.



We arrived on Wednesday afternoon to meet Scottish Book Trust’s Heather Collins and some of the team who were going to be in charge of the broadcast. Part of the Cakes in Space show involves a video transmission from some spoon-crazy alien life-forms called the Poglites. At all the festivals we’ve done we’ve used a video which Philip and his wife Sarah Reeve shot on his phone, of two Poglite puppets in a spaceship set made out of old polystyrene packaging.




But to be shown by the BBC it needed to be ‘broadcast quality’, so we brought the puppets with us and re-shot the whole thing in one of the vaguely futuristic-looking stairwells at the BBC.





The actual show took place on Thursday morning. We suited up and waited nervously in the hotel lobby for the shuttle to take us to BBC HQ…





Filming was to take place in an open atrium area in the middle of the BBC building, which had been decorated for the purpose with stars and silver podia (grammar). It takes a LOT of people to arrange even a simple broadcast like this. Here are some of the team…



And here are some of the audience - a weird and wonderful collection of interstellar oddballs shipped in from a neighbouring star-cluster.


Photo by Alan Peebles

They seemed friendly though. One of them, Abena, brought us this nice letter, so we knew they Came In Peace.



We’d never done a live broadcast before, so we were a bit nervous, but everything seemed to go well.


Photo by Alan Peebles


Photo by Alan Peebles


Photo by Alan Peebles


Photo by Alan Peebles


Photo by Alan Peebles

And you can see for yourself, because one of the great things about the Authors Live scheme is that recordings of the shows are kept on the Scottish Book Trust website, where anyone can watch them whenever they fancy. So we now have a lasting record of the Cakes In Space show, which future generations will be able to look at and say, ‘WHAT were you THINKING?’


Click on the image to watch the video!

It’s especially nice to have this record because this was the last Cakes in Space show we’ll be doing (at least for a while). In the autumn we’ll be unveiling a whole new show based on Pugs of the Frozen North. Big thank yous to Heather and her team from Scottish Book Trust, teacher Jennifer Buchan (who created Author Live's Cakes in Space Learning Resource page), and Janice Forsyth, Donald, Irene, Neil, Liz, photographer Alan Peebles and everyone at BBC Scotland for making it all possible.



While we were in Glasgow, we also managed to catch up with Sarah's Glasgow Auntie and our friends Adam Murphy (who draws the Corpse Talk strip for The Phoenix and his comics colourist partner Lisa Murphy. (Great to see you guys!)

Huge thanks from Philip Reeve and me to all the schoolchildren from 120 schools in Lancashire who voted for Oliver and the Seawigs to win the Lancashire Fantastic Book Awards! The awards committee presented Reeve and I both with special fancy pens, so we could write a couple letters back to them:



The Lancashire Fantastic Book Awards is a great scheme that encourages kids ages 9-12 to love reading, not for any specific educational target, just to get stuck into reading because it's exciting, full of adventures and unexpected companionship, and something they can have the thrill of doing for the rest of their lives. Find out more about the award and the other winners over on their website. Sadly we were unable to attend the ceremony because we were doing a tour in Frankfurt, but here's a short video Reeve, a Sea Monkey and I recorded a week earlier, while were were doing our Cakes in Space show in Stratford-upon-Avon.



Thanks so much to all the schools, teachers, librarians and award team! (Oh, and to Oxford University Press and super-talented Reeve, of course, for creating such a smashing story with me.) Check out this great mural by Lowerhouse Junior School!



Love those Rambling Islands. Awesome.

Look! Seawigs have reached Germany! Here are some young rambling isles who we met last week at the European School in Bad Villbel, near Frankfurt.



Dressler, our German publisher, had asked us to go and visit some international schools to spread the word about Oliver and the Seawigs, or Schwupp und Weg as it’s known in those parts.






Our main host was Stephanie von Selchow who is the librarian at the European School in Frankfurt.



She’d arranged for us to do two sessions there, for her own students, and a visiting class from Textorschule, Sachsenhausen. A lot of the kids had already read Oliver and the Seawigs, so after we’d talked a bit about it we went on to Cakes in Space, which has just been published in Germany as Kekse im Kosmos. Most of the audience spoke good English, and it seemed to go down well... of course, some of the show needs no translation; the bit where I hit Philip over the head with a mandolin case goes down well in any language.



That afternoon we had a quick wander around Frankfurt, and tried to draw some of the odd but attractive nobbly linden trees which line the riverside.



They're quite tricky trees to draw, and I'd love to have another try at them. One of the school kids had a picture of this kind of tree in his Oliver and the Seawigs artwork and he got the funny shape of it just right.



Then it was off to the Literaturhaus restaurant, where we had dinner with Stephanie and some of her colleagues from ESF and other schools.



As you can see, it was very grand, and the food and company were first-rate.



The next morning we were picked up by Manuela Rossi, who whirled us down the Autobahn to Bad Villbel, where we talked Seawigs and Cakes to some of the students of the European School Rhine Main.



Utte, the librarian there, showed us some of the great artwork the children had produced, including this fantastic tower of houses. It looks a bit like a Traction City out of Philip’s Mortal Engines books.



Most amusing question of the day: Where did you get those GIGANTIC SHOES?



Then it was back on the Autobahn to yet another international school, Accadis in Bad Homburg.



We’d met Samantha Malmberg and Caitlin Wetsch from the school at the previous night’s dinner, so it was good to see them in their natural surroundings, and meet their students, who were VERY EXCITED TO SEE US.
Some of the classes had done whole whole projects on Oliver the Seawigs, complete with some great drawings.



And after that we had a little bit more time to mooch around Frankfurt...



...in the guise of Mitteleuropean crime-fighting duo Peek & Cloppenburg.



Strange things were going on in Frankfurt city centre. Nobody seemed to be bothered by the fact that the shopping mall was being devoured by a wormhole…



But we discovered a natty German-style TARDIS and were able to save the day.



And we both found excellent covers for our pop albums, should we ever find time to write and record them. Here’s Philip, waiting for the Trans-Europe Express…



Heaven knows what mine is going to sound like.



But whatever it is, it will be lovely: some things are Better Than Perfection.



Thanks to Stephanie, Utte, Sam and all the staff and volunteers who helped to make our visit to Frankfurt so enjoyable. We were very sad to leave!

Now who wouldn't love to have a little knitted pug for a friend? Can you knit, or do you know anyone who does?



My latest book with Philip Reeve, Pugs of the Frozen North, doesn't come out with Oxford University Press until September...



...but people have been asking to get a head start on making their own pugs in preparation for the book's arrival. After the success of the knitted Sea Monkey for Oliver and the Seawigs, the fabulous Lauren O'Farrell (aka Deadly Knitshade) came up with a new Pug pattern, and she assures us that this one's even easier to make!
**You can download it free, here on my website.**



This pug's named Tuggle and we love him. But there are 66 pugs in the book, so there will be lots of names to choose from (and you can come up with your own, of course). Lauren's a champion knitter and worked in the same studio room as me until she outgrew the space, about the time that she was knitting the world's largest solar system for the Science Museum. She knows all about exploring the outer reaches of knitting, but this pattern is actually very simple.



So Tuggle and I are pals - I've never had a dog before! - but Philip's poodle on Dartmoor, Frodo, can't quite decide what he thinks about this pug invasion. SIXTY-SIX there will be, Frodo... all the companions you could ever want!



If you knit a pug, please do share a photo! We'd love to see yours, and let us know its name. (Philip and I are on Twitter as @philipreeve1 and @jabberworks and Lauren is @deadlyknitshade. And we have a Reeve & McIntyre Facebook page here.



You can also explore the activities we have online for Oliver and the Seawigs and Cakes in Space. And you can find out what else Lauren's made over on her website.

If you wonder why I haven't been blogging much recently, it's because of THIS. Here's a preview sampler of a couple chapters of my upcoming book with Philip Reeve, Pugs of the Frozen North:



The artwork for the whole book is due very soon and I'm working with the energy of a whole pack of 66 pugs on it! It's not easy, drawing 66 pugs. I must be careful with my pug count:



Hee hee, and they are quite noisy, too:



I'm drawing it the same way I did for Oliver and the Seawigs and Cakes in Space but with a different colour this time (turquoise). My favourite part of the job is using my dip pen and India ink to draw the ink layer, after I've done the pencil rough drafts:




Here I am at the library, doing some of the digital colouring.



Check out some of the printed pictures in the Pugs sampler! Funnily enough, there aren't any pugs in these chapters, it's all about YETIS. Who make noodles from snow.



Why have a Yeti Noodle Bar in the middle of our book? Well, because I've always wanted to draw a Yeti Noodle Bar, that's why.



But you can't just eat your noodles and run. Oh, no.



Much frozen landscape:



And eccentric characters, including lovely bearded Helga Hammerfest and super chic Mitzi Von Primm.



I've been posting the occasional peek at the artwork on Twitter, so feel free to click over and have a peek here!


From The Bookseller, Fiona Noble's top picks

(Click here for a peek at Dinosaur Police!)