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Today was Jampires painting day! My co-writer/co-illustrator David O'Connell and I had fun mucking about with Posca pens in the front window of Gosh Comics in Soho.



Painting on windows is strange, the opposite to painting on paper, because the first colours you apply to the glass are the ones that show in front. So I kept running around to the front of the window to check we were doing all right. The other thing about painting on windows is that you have people watching you! Which is actually quite fun, because you can wave at each other and see them heading off with their freshly signed Jampires books. I love this photo of Lily with her new book, tweeted by Charlotte Hacking:



Ta-dah! All finished! We're keeping our fingers crossed that Gosh will leave it up for Christmas as well as Halloween. You can knit a Jampire to go along with your book if you want to download the free pattern (along with lots of other activities) at jampires.com.



Maybe they will; Neill Cameron's lovely Pirates of Pangaea painting is still in the window!



Dave and I signed a lot of stock, so you can still get copies of the Jampires picture book and mini comic, Dave's Monster & Chips series, and my Dinosaur Police, There's a Shark in the Bath, Morris the Mankiest Monster and You Can't Eat a Princess!. We also met a nice Scottish chappie named Mark Millar who also makes comics and film stuff, and ladies in nice costumes like to pose for photos with him.



I'm off to Norway for a week packed full of school visits and a festival, so I'll have more news soon (but I might be a bit slow getting back to e-mails and things).

Leicester earthlings got a surprise last week when my co-author Philip Reeve and I teleported in with our Cakes in Space roadshow! We drew a picture of ourselves, in case we couldn't be seen because our costumes were so blindingly shiny:



We were thrilled to take part in Leicester Author Week, and this is the first time there that I've been able to do a double-act presentation. Which was a lot of fun! The Two Steves have been doing this double act thing for years, here we are with them (Steve Skidmore and Steve Barlow) and writer Andy Briggs, who all worked with their own groups of kids on the day. And we got to see a lot of kids! Over the two days, I got to work with over 800 Leicester school children on the city's innovative scheme, Whatever It Takes to get kids reading.

**Philip Reeve has blogged (magnificently) about our Cakes in Space day over on his website**, so pop over there for a read! (You can print out Cakes in Space drawing resources from my website.) I think one of my favourite things about the day was watching all these kids at the end of the session, rushing up to give Philip big hugs. I don't think he got hugged quite so much when he was doing his Mortal Engines talks. :)



So... JAMPIRES DAY! I spent quite awhile talking about my co-author on this picture book, the excellent David O'Connell, and drawing, of course.



A teacher took this photo with the kids from her class, who were very appropriately dressed in jammy red school jumpers.



The team that run Leicester Author Week is what makes it great; they manage to combine a warm, fun atmosphere with total professionalism. The equipment always works, the planning is very straightforward, and every kid gets a book at the end of the day. Big thanks to technician Mark Lambell, multi-lingual storyteller Jyoti Shanghavi and head organiser Kate Drurey (with jam pot).




We started with a big stage event and I read JAMPIRES to the kids and teachers, talked a bit about how I made it, took questions and we sang the Jampires song. Then we all moved over to the workshop tables, and I led them in drawing their own Jampires. (Hey look, there's Philip drawing a Jampire on the following day!)



We talked about how foods can inspire characters, which can, in turn inspire stories. So we all wrote down our favourite foods and came up with a character who's obsessed with that particular food. The kids helped me come up with Peter the Pizzapire. Then they drew their own, and we started creating a world for their character, a place where the story could happen. Check out Icy the Icecreampire....



...and Pommy the Popcornpire! I hope the kids were able to take away their characters and settings and turn them into full stories.



Another fun thing about Leicester Author Week is getting to see lovely colleagues. Here are lovely writers Bali Rai and John Dougherty. (John helped me last year in Leicester to come up with the tune for my There's a Shark in the Bath song, with lyrics by Philip Reeve! It's fun being able to work together.)



I mentioned to the kids that they can knit their own Jampire if they like, and the pattern's available, along with lots of other creative resources, on the fab website David O'Connell designed, jampires.com.



Since every kid gets a book, and there are over 800 kids, that means a LOT of book signing! Luckily I got to sign both sets of books the day before, so I didn't have to rush too much. Here are the boxes of JAMPIRES books that met me when I first got to the hotel. Quite late in the evening, I was joined by John Dougherty, who had only just flown in from the Emirates Lit Fest in Dubai! (I did that last year, going straight from Dubai to Leicester without time to drop off stuff at home. Stuart rescued me by coming with a fresh suitcase of clothes and I had a dramatic and chaotic repacking session in corner of Gatwick Airport. An elderly lady was sitting on a bench nearby, and shaking with laughter as my suitcase kept popping with tentacles, massive petticoats and pirate gear.) Despite his travels, John remembered to bring a full range of pen colours.



Our Leicester hotel was nice and quite quirky. Check out the unexplained portraits of 'Wills' in the restaurant. And the stairway that led to nowhere except a big porcelain dog, marked 'The Kennel'.



I don't usually get any time to explore Leicester, but this time my hotel was right near leafy New Walk, which gave me a whole different impression of the city.



I even popped quickly into the New Walk Museum, which is well worth visiting if you're in the area: cool Victorian paintings, dinosaur skeletons, mummies, and a collection of German Expressionist paintings and illustrations, among other things.



And we even got to join our Leicester friends Selina Lock and Jay Eales and Steve's wife Ali for a curry, hurrah! Huge thanks to the Leicester team, including Juliet Martin, Dan Routledge, Sandy Gibbons, Nicole Dishington (here with Andy Briggs) and everyone who made it happen! You can follow Whatever It Takes on Twitter as @LeicesterWiT.

Thanks to a request by a Dutch translator named Sandra, you can now download my Jampires drawing as a card to give, along with your knitted Jampire (or Jampire pattern).



Click here to download the card as a PDF! Just print, cut around the edges, fold it in half, and there you go.




Speaking of paper folding, check out this amazing new video game, Lumino City, 'handmade entirely out of paper, card, miniature lights and motors'. So beautiful!

Lumino City - Official Trailer from State of Play on Vimeo.

Do you love Jampires, the picture book? Well, thanks to the sparkling skills of knitter extraordinaire Deadly Knitshade, you can now knit a companion to go along with the book! My co-author David O'Connell and I hope this little Jampire can warm up the cold season for you or a jam-loving friend.



Deadly Knitshade designed this pattern to be super-easy, even easier than the Stitched Sea Monkey, so even beginner knitters should be able to jump in. The pattern is completely free, and can be downloaded from the Jampires.com website. Prezzie ideas:

* Knit the Jampire to accompany the gift of a Jampires book! (Perhaps include some jam, from our jam partner, The Butch Institute.)

* Have a friend who can knit? Print out the knitting pattern and include it as a gift with the book and the knitting materials!

* Give YOURSELF a Jampire! Because they're cuddly and we can all use a cuddle.



So click over to the Activities section of the Jampires website, where you'll spot lots of other fun things to do. Hone in on the 'Knit a Jampire' tab, print out the pattern, and you're set!



If you get a chance to tweet photos of your Jampire, we'd love to see it! Tweet your photo to @jabberworks @davidoconnell @deadlyknitshade @DFB_Storyhouse and we'll be thrilled to see real Jampires in the wild! :D

Last weekend, the Jampires were out in force at Thought Bubble comics festival, to spread Comics Jam over Leeds! Here's team Jampires' David O'Connell, Matt Badham, Molly Bruton and me:



So what distinguishes Comics Jam from, say, raspberry jam?


Badges designed by David O'Connell; Jampires jam by the Butch Institute

A little explanation (as seen in the Thought Bubble anthology):




Our Comics Jam session attracted fellow Jampires like, uh, bees to honey. (These were Phil Welch and Katie White, who stayed with us and blogged all the way through the 24-Hour Comic Marathon at Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal, earlier in the autumn.)



We ran a Comics Jam competition, and here's the winning comic! It's by 13-year-old Jordan Vigay and 10-year-old Jonathan 'Jonny Toons'.




Congrats, guys! Here are Jordan and Jonathan drawing away at our activity area tables, buoyed up by jammie dodgers.



Actually, the competition was a close call. Their original Comics Jam was in black and white:



And was competing hard against this Comics Jam, which really zinged off the page with its colours.



So we struck a deal, that if Jordan and Jonathan promised to colour the comic right after the festival, they'd be the winners. (And they did, using a mix of digital and coloured pencils.) You can find out more about running Comics Jams at home (or in school!) over on the Jampires website.

So let's meet the creators: I filmed Jordan and Jonathan each giving a lesson on how to draw a character from the comics they self-publish. And you can get a glimpse of other kids getting involved with Thought Bubble:



If you're scrolling through this and can't see the video, here's the shot of Jordan and me with the Red Crow comic he publishes. (You can buy the latest issue, No.8, for £1.75 via his website.)



Issue 8 includes a Comics Jam that Jordan and I did at the end of my signing session in Page 45 bookshop's room at the Lakes festival.



Oh, and you may have noticed that Jordan dressed up! He's cosplaying as Captain Spaceington from James Turner's Star Cat (which is hugely funny and I recommend it for kids AND adults). Here's an interview with James on Comics Beat.



James was super-pleased to see his own cosplayer! Right behind him, you can see Liz Payton manning The Phoenix Comic table (a weekly comic which I also highly recommend).



And here's Jonny Toon's table! Not many 10-year-olds are on Twitter, but you can follow this one at @JonnyToons. (He's just tweeted the work-in-progress cover of his Christmas issue.)



I was very impressed with Jonathan's design skills for Crystal Orb...



...and the comics inside are funny and remarkably sophisticated for someone his age! Keep an eye on this guy, I think he may go far. It was great to see him teaming up with Jordan to draw stuff; they're a real power duo.





And of course, if you read the Guardian, Independent, Vogue, almost any newspaper, you'll have seen articles about Zoom Rockman, who's been making comics since he was 8. He's 14 now, and has a lot of issues under his belt. He sources local advertising and has been a real pioneer in kids self-publishing comics. Check out his website and you can follow him on Twitter as @The_ZoomComic



I love the Skanky Pigeon quill pens!



His younger brother, Ace Rockman, also loves to draw and drew up a storm at the activity tables. (Great hat, Ace!)



Here's a video Zoom made about how to make comics when he was much younger and still too shy to talk on camera.



And it was great to see the debut of TEAM KETCHUP with their comics anthology Issue No.1! They found local Yorkshire funding and the kids involved worked shifts at the table, selling their comic and badges and running their doodle area. If you have questions about how they did it, have a chat with coordinators @_Joolze, @Coldjenius and @beth_k_t.



And you can follow Team Ketchup collectively as @theteamketchup! Here's a recent tweet of their doodle wall:



One of the coolest thing about Thought Bubble is seeing parents and kids geeking out together about books, comics and artwork. It's such an awesome way to spend time with your kid and let them see that reading is fun, without turning it into a lesson. This family were a joy to watch, and that little Green Lantern Guardian went straight for the books and got stuck into them. Ha, one of the funny things about Thought Bubble was that my picture books sold much better than my chapter books. Usually it's the other way around at book festivals; people see Oliver and the Seawigs or Cakes in Space and prefer them to the picture books because they have more words and are therefore deemed more like 'proper books'. Whereas I'd see Thought Bubble people leaf through them, realise they didn't have quite as many pictures, and move on to the fully-illustrated picture books, with 'proper illustrations'. This crowd is a visual crowd, and they appreciate reading pictures as much as words. It's a wonderful place to be.



My Jampires co-author David O'Connell and I kept looking over and breaking into broad grins as we saw our teammate Matt Badham working his magic. He's SO GOOD at relating to people, I wish I could work with him full-time. He could talk to anyone, on their own level, and he made a lot of people feel very welcome. It was almost poetic. (And he also sold a heap-load of books. Matt could very easily lead courses for booksellers.)



Here's a look at the two activity tables we had in our area. We had four tables in total: one for display, one for talking with people, book signing, laying out drawing supplies, and two table with chairs around them for families (and anyone who fancied a sit-down) to gather and draw. Some people wanted to keep their drawings, but we hung a lot of them up on the backboards and had a flip-chart ready for people to draw on and other creators to come over and do drawing demonstrations.



Some people did Comics Jams with other people, but a lot of kids were happy just to draw comics on their own. We found they didn't actually want much adult intervention; most of them were familiar with comics and happy to be left alone to get on with making things.



There were LOTS of jammie dodgers. When we ran out, we gave Jordan and Jonathan money to go off to the Tesco and buy us more.



It was fun seeing people of all ages getting stuck in.



Some people were a bit young to draw comics, or just wanted to do something a bit more relaxing, and we had a sheet posted, showing them how to draw a Jampire.



I always love seeing the Jampire variations. (I hope someone someday writes a symphony called The Jampire Variations.)









Flip chart fun times:





(Who can even SPELL 'submarine'?)














Here's Jordan and his mum, running The Phoenix Comic tables for awhile, so Liz could run around and talk to people.



And look at the fabulous volunteers, in their matching Thought Bubble staff t-shirts! They're designed by partners Donya Todd and Jack Teagle. (I sat next to Jack and Donya for a full 24 hours to do our 24-hour comic, and they're both ace.) The lady in the middle was our main contact for the family activity area, Martha Julian, and she really worked with us to make the best possible space for everyone. Thanks so much, Martha and team!



Of all the comics festivals I've been to, Thought Bubble and Lakes have by far been the best organised, and you could really tell, the way everyone talked about them so positively afterward. They made creators feel welcome, and we didn't have to fight like cats to make sure we had all our backboards, and they went out of their way to get stuff for us, to make things work more smoothly. Having a team in matching t-shirts is really helpful, there's always someone in view that you can run over to and get some help. I also did some planning with Lisa Wood (shown here) and Clark Burscough. If you follow @ThoughtBubbleUK, that's Clark manning the Twitter feed.



Huge thanks from Dave and me, and team Jampires!



Another cool thing about Thought Bubble is that kids can meet their favourite creators milling about everywhere! Here's The Phoenix Comic's Matt Baxter at the activity table:



Hey, look, it's my studio mate Gary Northfield! Gary did some awesome drawings and little watercolour paintings at his table. Check out his family-friendly The Terrible Tales of the Teenytinysaurs and Gary's Garden comic books; they're ace. Gary's the guy who originally walked me through how to do workshops and went with me on my first library event.



Check it out, Glasgow-based Adam Murphy and Lisa Murphy, creators of Corpse Talk! Lisa's done colourist work for Adam, Gary and lots of other people, and she's an important part of The Phoenix Comic team. I'd never really talked properly with her and Adam (other than fleeting festival chic-chat) but we had dinner together on our first night and really got to chat, which was one of my highlights of the whole trip.



Here's a look at their latest Phoenix cover. ZING!



And it's Neill Cameron and family! Neill's latest book, How to Make Awesome Comics is something I've been waiting a long time for; something I can recommend to kids who want to know more about making comics but are too young for the Scott McCloud books. Neill packs in loads of inspiring challenges and tips to get kids drawing and writing comics. And he's great at running workshops, too. In fact, Gary, the Murphys and Neill are all good at that, book 'em into your event diary, librarians, festival people, teachers, etc. His wife, Di Cameron, works at The Story Museum in Oxford, so they're a story-packed power team.



Neill and Adam had printed up their own Comics Jam for the festival, a humourous horror story called The Curse of Barry Starkey, which you can read about on Neill's website here.



Thought Bubble was so large this year that it filled three separate huge venues, all inside the big square at the Royal Armouries. The Jampires Comics Jamtastic area was in the Royal Armouries Hall, and there was a real effort to make that area the most kid-friendly place, including a special chill-out lounge for people with autism. In the middle of the square, the organisers erected a white marquis called 'The Teepee', a slightly misleading name because it was Enormous. A lot of the celeb signings were happening in there. And across the square was New Dock Hall, which has much higher ceilings, black walls and hosted more of the grown-up comics (although there was still a lot of family-friendly stuff there).

I first made a bee-line for Philippa Rice's table. I love Philippa's comics, and she always makes the most beautiful table displays. When I do talks about getting kids involved in comics festivals, I always show photos of Philippa's tables because I think I would have LOVED to have made dioramas and things like this as a kid. Check it out:



And a closer look. Those are real lights in there! So awesome.



Last year I came to Thought Bubble as a punter and had a great time going to events, browsing comics and talking with people at their tables. I'm quite tempted to do that again, one year at table, one year as punter, on and off. This year I hardly had any time to see anything, but the Jampires team let me off for half an hour to run around and see as much of the festival as I could. (Huge apologies if I didn't manage to say hello to you as I madly dashed about!) This book by Becky Palmer caught my eye, La Soupière Magique (The Magic Tureen?). Becky originally wrote it as The Biggest Helping but she couldn't find an English-language publisher, so she got it published in French instead, by SarBacane. You can see some pages of it here on her blog and it is GORGEOUS. It's quite startling to think that this is her very first comic book. Wow!



Hey look, it's Dan Berry, who ran our 24-Hour Comic Marathon! He makes fab comics and always uses hand gel. If you're not following him on Twitter, get on the case: @thingsbydan. And he also makes wonderful, professional-quality podcasts with my favourite comics creators for his programme Make It Then Tell Everybody. Check it out!



Here's Mhairi Stewart and friend manning the Roller Grrrls table she runs with Gary Erskine. There were table neighbours at the very first comic con I did by myself, and I was very clueless and they made me feel incredibly welcome. I love those guys.



And I'm a big fan of all three people here! That's Moshi Monsters' Nana Li, buying prints from North-Wales-based Jonathan Edwards (aka Jontofski) and Louise Evans (aka Felt Mistress).



Coffee time for Lizz Lunney, Joe Decie and Joe List. ...Oh, look, Decie has posted a Thought Bubble DRINKS TASTE TEST.



On Saturday night, Molly and I trotted along to the British Comic Award ceremony, hosted by a blue-suited Adam Cadwell and David Monteith, where we got to hear Maura McHugh interviewing Hall-of-Fame winner Posy Simmonds. Here's Molly, Posy and Maura with Alison Sampson, who won the New Talent award. Congrats! I was also hugely chuffed that Isabel Greenberg won Best Book for The Encyclopedia of Early Earth. (You can read my fangirl meltdown blog post about it here.) And it was no surprise, Luke Pearson winning the Young People's Comic Award again, this time for Hilda and The Black Hound. The competition was stiff, but Hilda is MEGA.



You can read about the awards over on their website here. (Vern and Lettuce won it back in 2011 and you can read my blog post about that here.) I was a judge last year and it was great to see fellow judge Jamillah Knowles again! She caught me up on some of the comics I was missing out on by being at a table.



Okay, now for a few costumes:







Ha ha, here's when things started to get a little weird:



And finally, a good place to end, Dr Mel Gibson with the elephant in the room:



Oh wait! One more thing... what is this? Ha ha, this is what I look like to the kids I'm working with:



(THANKS, Jordan and Jonathan.)

I spent a lot of time with these little dudes: Jampire, whom I really ought to name, but who is still 'Jampire', and the Iron Bear, who is probably made of bronze and is really named Paddington, but I just like calling him the Iron Bear. Anyway, I spend a lot of time at Paddington station. And today I was Oxford-bound!



It's quite fun travelling in full costume, it makes so many people's faces light up. Also, I tried travelling with my Bakewell Tart hat in a bag last time and the cherry came off the top, so it's safer just to carry it on my head, all the way to Oxford's Story Museum. Which is where my co-author David O'Connell and I did our Jampires show!



Huge thanks to everyone who came along and drew with us! I'm lucky, both of my current co-authors can draw, so we can do fun drawing double acts. We taught everyone how to draw a Jampire, but then went on to create other beasties. (Mine here is a Sushipire and Dave's drawing a Ricepuddingpire.)


Photo tweeted by @DragonDentist John McLay

Oh, I must include the lovely poster Dave drew for our event. He gave me such excellent pointy feet.




Here are a few more drawings from the day! If you came along and want to do more activities, you can find them on our jampires.com website. Here's @helen_geekmum:




Tweeted by @McgrattanRj Rebecca McGrattan

We even sang our brand-new Jampires song, and got everyone to join in the jammy chorus! (Thanks for your help putting that together earlier this week, Philip Reeve!) I was nervous about forgetting the lyrics, and writer Holly Smale offered to come on stage again and help me. (The last time she did it was for my Shark song at the Hay Festival.) She didn't actually turn up, but she was well represented upstairs in a Narnian wood, dressed as the White Witch. (The best of the costumes in the 26 Characters exhibition, I think.)



And our Jampires jam-maker came along!



Here's Emma Preston-Dunlop from The Butch Institute here with her assistant. (Emma has just spotted a Jampire lurking in her jam, oh no!)



I came home with a jar of her Cherry Bakewell with Amaretto syrup and Almonds jam and must confess that already a shameful amount of it has been eaten. Uh... by the Jampires, yeah.



Emma gave a great demonstration about how to make jam, using very basic kitchen equipment, and everyone got to have a good sniff of the bubbling raspberry mix.



Bramble tats, that Emma is DEDICATED to jam, a proper Jampire.



When I arrived, Dave was still leading his comics workshop for older kids, and I caught the tail end of him signing his Monster and Chips books.



A fabulous day, thanks so much for hosting, Tom Donegan and the Story Museum!


Photo tweeted by @DragonDentist John McLay

Bye bye, Oxford! See you next time!

I've taken part again in The Guardian's 'How to Draw' series. This time, learn how to draw a Jampire! But you have to catch one first...



And here's a more simple tutorial, which you can print from the Jampires website.

I've taken part again in The Guardian's 'How to Draw' series. This time, learn how to draw a Jampire! But you have to catch one first...



And here's a more simple tutorial, which you can print from the Jampires website.

Jamtastic! Today's the official publication day of JAMPIRES, my picture book with my fab friend David O'Connell and our Oxford-based publisher, David Fickling Books! We're quite shocked, this book has been so long in coming - at least four years - that we sometimes thought it might never happen. But it HAS! :D


Photo by Dave Warren

So much development went into the making of this book that I'm going to run a small series here on the blog about how we made it. First, how did we design the Jampires characters? You can see them here, in some of the finished artwork:



Digging through old files, I quite like these ink sketches with their accompanying notes:




And here are some of Dave's sketches!


We both wanted the Jampires to have a slight vampiric quality to them, since they suck jam out of doughnuts, but I think I saw them as slightly more cuddly, whereas Dave's started out a bit more monster-like.


I think some of the monster stuff that didn't go into Jampires may have ended up in his Monster and Chips books.


Gosh, I'd forgotten this drawing until now. This was when we were still planning Jampires as a comic, and I think I was envisioning them a bit like Shel Silverstein, David Shrigley or Exploding Dog drawings.



And I wanted the colour palette and feel of the book to be very different to books I'd done before, but I hadn't quite hit on my new Jampires way of working in pencil. Here are some studies in tea, ink and gouache.



This was before both Jampires had hats; one of them was very bald.



I'll post more about our drawing technique soon, but I'll leave you with a Jampires mask, in case you think jam is so wonderful that you suspect you might just BE a Jampire. You can download it from our jampires.com website here!



Congratulations, Dave and TEAM JAMPIRES! Big thanks to our publisher David Fickling (who was very active in the story's creation), our editors, Hannah Featherstone in the early days and then Alice Corrie, designer Ness Wood, publicity team Philippa Perry, Manchester-based Liz Scott, Phil Earle and Anthony Hinton, to our lovely agent, Jodie Hodges, and to our partners and all our friends who gave us help and encouragement along the way!


Photo by James Petrie

Oo, and Jampires is definitely in the shops! Here's a photo tweeted in by bookseller Nora Goldberg at Foyles Southbank:

Photo by James Petrie

Hee hee, it's great fun to stand in the middle of a field wearing sparkly red platform heels when everyone else is walking around in wellies. This weekend my co-author David O'Connell and I launched our new picture book, Jampires, at The Big Feastival in Oxfordshire.


Photo by James Petrie

I couldn't believe it, I forgot to pack my Bakewell Tart hat! Nooooo!


Photo by Dave Warren

But never mind, our book was well and truly launched with a dramatic reading by David and me. (Dave's very good at doing the voices.) And I can rock a converted poodle skirt. (Thanks to my mum for helping me sew on all the Jampires.)


Photo by Neill Cameron

And I taught everyone how to draw a Jampire! 'But what is a Jampire?' you may ask. Well, if you've ever bitten into a jam doughnut and found it disappointingly dry and jamless, they are the culprits. These little critters suck out them jam. They LOVE jam. Our book is basically a hymn to jam.


Photo by James Petrie

And you can learn how to draw a Jampire, too! David and I have put all sorts of goodies on our new website, so do have fun exploring it: jampires.com


View as a PDF

We have masks, too! Check out the website! :)


Photo by James Petrie


Since the Jampires are obsessed with jam, we had actual jam on site...


Photo by James Petrie

...and an actual jam maker, who has joined our Jampires team! Meet Emma Preston-Dunlop, jam maker extraordinaire, who gave us a little lesson on how to make jam, and treated us to samples of her tasty concoctions.


Photo by James Petrie

Emma runs a jam company called The Butch Institute and while raspberry jam is always my favourite, she gives it a real run for its money with her Cherry Bakewell with amaretto syrup and almonds.


Photo by James Petrie

Since The Big Feastival's all about food, we explored, and went straight for the PIE. Gotta love a pie. Emma taught me how to eat it from a carton without getting gravy all over my skirt.


Photo by James Petrie

And our lovely publisher, David Fickling, cycled all the way over from Oxford - a two-hour journey across many hills - to be there for our launch. Hurrah! (He didn't cycle in his signature bowtie, but he put it on as soon as he arrived.)


Photo by James Petrie

JAM. Who doesn't dream about The Great Jam Pot in the Sky? *wistful sigh*



Dave and I couldn't be there both days, so actor Devon Black stepped in and led her own Jampires session on the Sunday, which looked brilliant. She made a costume, a whole new show, and I hear she did a brilliant job! Thank you SO MUCH, Devon!!


Photo tweeted by Philippa Perry

Feastival had some rival vampiric creatures, not all as small and cuddly as our Jampire.


Photo by James Petrie

After a little scare, he got a cuddle from Neill Cameron, and everything was all right.



So Neill was mostly busy drawing comic characters over in The Phoenix Comic area. He's the amazing creator of stories such as Pirates of Pangaea, Mega Robo Bros and has a new book out, How to Make Awesome Comics. Here's a Cyborg Mode Jamie Oliver (the chef who hosts the festival, along with Blur bassist-turned-cheesemaking-farmer Alex James):



The drive to Feastival was quite a long one, and our friend James Petrie was a hero and gave us all a lift in his car. As you can see, Dave and I were terrible back-seat drivers.



Lovely Dave. It's not just his genius talent, you see; I mostly work with him because he has such beautiful flowing tresses.



Big group selfie! Huge thanks to David Fickling for publishing us, Emma for being such a great Jam Master, Devon for Sunday's awesomeness, Feastival for hosting us, fab publicist Philippa Perry for organising the day, James for driving and photos, and Ann Lam for our knitted Jampire. Jammy times!



Head over to the David Fickling Books website to see their blog about Jampires, and jampires.com for all your jammy needs.

Jammy Twitter links: @davidoconnell, @DFB_Storyhouse, @ButchInstitue, #JAMPIRES

Last Friday I went to the huge international Science Fiction convention that is World Con, this year hosted right in my hometown! (And somewhat confusingly, also called < ahref="http://www.loncon3.org/">LonCon3</a>.) And I saw some familiar faces right away! Spot the family who were in my Nine Worlds convention blog post from the previous weekend... (The lady in the excellent Vivien of Holloway dress is Adela Terrell.)



And since I was going to lead a Comics Jam session, I wore my best Jampires dress! And brought along my beautiful new Jampire friend, knitted as a surprise by Ann Lam. Poor little Jampire; World Con was a BIG PLACE and he couldn't find jam anywhere, just post-apocalyptic landscape.


First photo tweeted by @ExLibrisNora


Meanwhile, I was schmoozing it up in the Green Room with writer Emma Newman in her amazing red frock coat. Wait, check it out, the Green Room at the Excel Centre was in this crazy pod on stilts. Funnily enough, I also sat right by George RR Martin in there, but since I don't watch or read Game of Thrones;, the experience was a bit wasted on me and I chatted with fab Hannah Berry instead. Cons are like that for me, I don't know any of the people I'm supposed to know, because I never get a chance to WATCH TELLY.



So for the Comics Jam session, I brought along a range of indie/self-published comics, a mix of work by adults and kids, to show to the group. And I talked about how writing and drawing are one thing, but making their own books is even better, because they can learn how a whole book is put together, practice the form, and play around a bit with marketing it, designing covers, etc.



Here we are, in the midst of the Comics Jam, everyone working on panel number three at the same time.



And a couple of the comics we came up with, each panel drawn by a different person:



One of the dads in particular was very interested in helping his son find out more about making comics, and I was hugely pleased to be able to recommend Neill Cameron's brand-new book, How to Make Awesome Comics. In the past, I've recommended Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, but I find Scott's book has a bit too much advanced technical theory for younger kids, say, under 10 or 12. Neill's book is a wonderful gap-filler and I know I will be recommending it often. (You can buy it here from The Phoenix Comic online shop, among lots of other great kid-appropriate comics.)



Oh, and as a side-note, Scott McCloud will be a special guest this October at the Lakes Internation Comic Art Festival in Kendal, which I'll be attending. Neill does lots of workshops at the Story Museum in Oxford and elsewhere, so keep an eye on his website events page.



If anyone from the Comics Jam is looking for guidance specifically on running more Comics Jams, I've created a guide with my Jampires picture book co-author David O'Connell on our Jampires.com website.


Click here to read more

I also spoke on another panel on art, and then went to see Audrey Niffenegger give the English PEN H.G. Wells talk. I sat next to Sophie Lyons, who'd studied on Audrey's novel writing course in Chicago. Audrey talked about Wells' short story The Door in the Wall, which I managed to find and read online late that night. It's like a dark inversion of one of my childhood favourites, The Secret Garden, about a man who once finds a wonderous door to a garden and then spends the rest of his life yearning for that garden; he's unable to find the door, except at the most inopportune times, when he feels he can't take time to walk through it. Good stuff.



And here are some of the LonCon team! There's Maura McHugh, Erin Horáková, James Bacon and Esther MacCalum-Stewart, and they all looked after me very well. Thanks so much!



I knew Maura from trips to Ireland, where she had hosted me when I spoke to the Dublin chapter of Laydeez Do Comics. Maura does loads of things, but you might know her for the famous list she made of currently practicing female comic artists in the UK and Ireland... Ah, and I see she's widened it to Wome in Comics in Europe! You can follow her on Twitter as @splinister.



I made a quick foray into the Dealers Hall and saw the art exhbition, and was particularly pleased to see my ol' studio mate Ellen Lindner's books on display at the Soaring Penguin table, manned by John Anderson and Nora Goldberg.



So my experience doesn't even begin to encompass the vast scale of the con, and it ran for five days. But I was glad to have a little window into it, for the day I was there. Thanks, Maura and James, for inviting me to be a part of it!



I'll leave you with a few more of the Comics Jams.

Have you heard what's lurking just around the corner???


Photo by David Warren

Have you ever bitten into a jam doughnut and thought, HEY! What happened to all the JAM??! Well... that jam was stolen... SUCKED OUT, in fact, by some mischievous little characters, called...



...JAMPIRES.


Gorgeous knitted Jampire created by Ann Lam. More about this soon....

And Jampires love nothing more than - you got it - JAM!



The stickier the jam, the better! Our publicist Philippa Perry teamed us up with local jam-makers at The Butch Institute to get this custom-made raspberry and vanilla jam with added sparkles.


Photo by David Warren

THE PICTURE BOOK: So my fabulous friend David O'Connell and I have written a picture book for you in rhyming verse, published by David Fickling, and we're very excited about it!



JAMPIRES will emerge hot out of the oven at the beginning of September, and it's not your usual book. Most picture books are written by one person and illustrated by the other. But Dave and I are both writer and illustrators, and for this book, we were completely co-writers and co-illustrators. AND we got our inspiration through comics! The story game we played together to come up with the idea is called a 'Comics Jam', and we loved how our Comics Jam was also about jam!



THE COMIC: Our picture book started out as this collaborative comic, and you can read the original version here on our BRAND-NEW JAMPIRES WEBSITE, designed by multi-talented Dave.



This Jampires website is absolutely JAM-PACKED with things to explore and activities to make and do. Have a browse!

JAMPIRES is mainly a picture book, but we did print up a small number of Comics Jam comics, which you might be able to get from us if you come to our events.



EVENTS: These events include Sat, 30 August at The Big Feastival in Oxfordshire; we may be able to provide you with some at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal on the 18th & 19th of Oct; our event on Tues, 28 Oct at Oxford's Story Museum (details here); we'll be running a whole Jampires Comics Jamtastic activity area at the awesome Thought Bubble comics festival in Leeds on 15 & 16 Nov.



You'll be hearing more from us about JAMPIRES, our hymn to jam - only a few more weeks until it comes out! - and in the meantime, spread the word (spread it thickly!), so no one misses out on this jammy treat. You can follow us on Twitter at @davidoconnell and @jabberworks, hash tag #JAMPIRES! Here's Dave's blog post about it!


Photo by David Warren

Two things! First: my lovely new SHOES arrived! They're supposed to look very jammy, for the launch this autumn of JAMPIRES, with my fab friend David O'Connell. But I had to show them off a bit early because they're so lovely. I'd also better not click them together too much, Dorothy-style, as the glitter seems slightly unstable and my carpet is already a bit more glam that it was this morning.



Second thing: Dave has taken up the next episode of My Writing Process Blog Tour. Here a picture he drew of himself busily working away, go check out the article he's written!