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You can now spend two quid and get You Can't Eat a Princess! and You Can't Scare a Princess! as eBooks!



And they're not just pages on a screen, you can turn the whole stories into Gilbert & Sullivan style musicals!



When I was at the Reeves this weekend, 10-year-old Sam and I had a blast mucking around with the stories on Philip's iPad. This is my favourite feature of the eBooks, you can record stuff:



This is brilliant because you can record and save the story in more than one language, have different people reading it aloud, or if you're Sam and me, get busy sabotaging it, then making up stupid songs. Hurrah! This is a very UNOFFICIAL VIDEO.



I totally need to get an iPad. If you have one, head on over to the MeBooks website, download the free app, watch the intro video to see how things work, then get busy playing with the stories!



Thanks for your great work on these: Gillian Rogerson with the script, Sarah Daykin for the audio recording, and the MeBooks people for developing it! You can follow MeBooks on Twitter: @Me_Books.

A couple things: here's a new interview on Bookengine with the fab writer of our books You Can't Scare a Princess! and You Can't Eat a Princess! Gillian Rogerson!



And a couple birthday doodles, one for the legendary, high-jumping, web-throwing Steve Cole.



And the other for the exaltedly elevated and profoundly hirsute Philip Ardagh. (Just like Gillian, Ardagh is well known for his extreme modesty and he keeps very quiet about his birthdays. ...Ha ha, not: the Facebook reminders have been rolling in for at least a week.)



Oh, and since we're going for black and white here, this just made me smile:

Wow, can I just say that Leeds Thought Bubble must be one of the best-run festivals on the planet? Such a friendly, buzzing atmosphere, such helpful organisers and logistics team, enthusiastic visitors, an impressive guest list, and tables and tables of AMAZING COMICS!



But of course, the costumes are always the most fun things to blog. Don't these people look fabulous?



I was very impressed to turn around from book sales to see Marie Antoinette designing a pirate at one of our activity tables.



My writer for You Can't Scare a Princess!, Gillian Rogerson, lives in Leeds, so it was a great chance to meet up with her and run our Pirate Cove drop-in workshop. We weren't actively teaching, but we had lots of pirate sheets and supplies spread out on three big tables with chairs, so anyone of any age could have a sit down and draw pirates or comics or whatever they felt like. If you've ever spent all day walking around a comics fair, you'll know that sometimes you just want to sit down. And you've been seeing all this creative stuff around you, so it's very tempting to pick up pencils and get doodling. You can read Gillian's blog post about the festival here and here's our blog report from last year, when we ran the alien-themed Space Station.



Here's 8-year-old Aeryn, winner of our Best Pirate Competition. Congratulations, Aeryn! I've seldom seen someone her age so focused, she spent well over an hour putting together this colourful pirate princess.



The competition spanned both days of the festival. Here you can see Gillian and her daughter Eve at home, where we came up with a first-day shortlist.



If you missed the festival, or want to draw more pirates, you can download and print out the activity sheets, free, from my website here. (I have activity sheets for all the books I've done, so feel free to have a browse. If you're giving someone any of my books for Christmas, you can include the sheets to give them something fun to do on Christmas and Boxing Day.)




Here's a father-daughter team who did just that! They arrived at the festival with their pirates already printed out and beautifully watercoloured. So cool!!



And, of course, not only were Gillian and I running the Pirate Cove, but I had a book launching, along with the 54-creator-strong team who created the Nelson graphic novel! (You'll have seen A LOT about Nelson in my previous blog posts, and there are still two more London events for Nelson Week, tonight and tomorrow night.) Here's the stall of our publisher, Blank Slate Books, with our fab publicist Martin Steenton and Panel Borders comics journalist Alex Fitch.

Yummy Pancakes! Before Gillian Rogerson caught the train back up to Leeds after our fabulous You Can't Scare a Princess! launch (pics here), I met her for a celebratory breakfast. It also just happened to be her birthday, a great reason to keep the party going! Our friend Philip Reeve (who'd taken part in the Pirate Draw-Off) was catching his train back to Dartmoor that day, and he came along for pancakes and took this photo of the two of us:



I'd been curious for awhile about the renovated hotel space inside the hugely ornate St Pancras rail station, so this was a perfect excuse to run around and look at things. We had breakfast in whats called The Booking Office. (You might recognise the building's exterior as King's Cross in the Harry Potter films.)



Gillian and I don't get to do a lot of events together, but you can catch us together for a whole two days up in Leeds on 19 & 20 November at Thought Bubble comics festival. We'll be running a jolly pirate themed family fun table, where you can design pirates, create amazing treasure maps and more (and buy our books and get us to sign them, if you like!). I'll also be doing a short talk at the Leeds Graphic Novel Award ceremony, where Vern and Lettuce has been shortlisted for the award, on Fri, 18 Nov, 1:30pm at Leeds Central Library. And I'll be speaking on a panel about the Nelson anthology a bunch of top British creators and I are launching with Blank Slate, from 11-11:45 on the Saturday at Thought Bubble.

Thought Bubble is one of the biggest events of the comics year, and great for everyone who loves storytelling generally; do come along if you can!



I'm also appearing this weekend up in Scotland at the Wigtown Book Festival this Saturday (Pirates! At 2:30pm!), talking afterward at the local library about comics making, then doing a day of school events on the Monday with Shoo Rayner.



After the party, I was able to have a closer look at the picture Alex Milway drew for me, featuring Gillian and my Captain Waffle and Alex's fearsome Mousebeard from The Mousehunter books. Alex is a good friend of our Fleece Station studio and I was definitely thinking of him when Captain Waffle in You Can't Scare a Princess! just happened to have a mouse permanently tucked into his beard or hat. Thanks, Alex!




A few more shots of St Pancras... look, there be dragons!

Last night my new piratey picture book with Gillian Rogerson, You Can't Scare a Princess! officially set sail from The Princess of Shoreditch in London's east end. ARRRRR!



Not only was it our book launch party, but it was also International Talk Like a Pirate Day!



And here's the fabulous Scholastic Princess and Pirate Team that makes all things happen! From the left, that's publicists Catherine Alport, Alex Richardson, me, finance wizard Alyx Price, Gillian, editor Fiz Osborne, our editor Ellie Parkin and designer Zoe Waring. Thanks for all your hard work everyone! They really pulled out all the stops for this party, Gillian and I were totally gobsmacked.




Scholastic's Publishing Director Lisa Edwards gave a great speech and surprised us by telling us that the first book, You Can't Eat a Princess! has sold over 30,000 copies in the UK, and even though the new book just came out three weeks ago, it's already sold over 10,000 copies! And lots of people have been downloading the free pirate activity sheets off my website, I hope I'll get to see some of the pirates and treasure maps people have been creating!



Then my fab friends Philip Reeve, Gary Northfield and I kicked off our swashbuckling Pirate Draw-Off!



Gillian gave us a pirate category, and we had three minutes to see what kind of high-speed drawing we could bash out. Here's Gary's entry for 'Zombie Pirate'.



Gary, Philip and I did a few rounds, then other illustrators in the room swung into action! Here are all our shipmates who wielded deadly pens. From the left, Philip, me, my studio mate Ellen Lindner, DFC colleague Woodrow Phoenix, cartoonist and fellow Society of Authors member Ros Asquith, David O'Connell, Alexis Deacon, Gary and Alex Milway.



Here's Philip's Zombie Pirate...



...Ros's 'Pirate Dinosaur'...



...and Alexis drew a Pirate Dinosaur, too!



Woodrow's getting started here on his 'Hairiest Pirate'.



Scholastic provided lots of props, including princess tiaras and pirate hats, but some people brought bits and bobs of their own costumes. Thanks very much to writer Geraldine McCaughrean for lending me her fabulous Captain Hook hat! It's from the events she does for her official sequel to Peter Pan,

Hurrah! I finally met Gillian Rogerson, writer of our book You Can't Eat a Princess!



And here's Gillian at Thought Bubble, with a fab editor from Scholastic named Ellie Parkin (whom I first met at the Edinburgh Book Festival, when she took Stuart and me for tea with illustrator Alex T. Smith). This was both Gillian and Ellie's first visit to a comics festival, and I think they were well impressed with all the costumes and mad energy.


Ellie Parkin and Gillian Rogerson

Gillian picked me up from Leeds rail station and took me home, where we spent the evening making little felt aliens! Gillian had already sewn up the bodies, and we had a great time adding faces.



We sold a lot of them at the festival, but I made sure I brought a couple home.




Here's our fab DFC reviewer for the Forbidden Planet International blog, Molly Bruton. She's sort of our DFC mascot, but this was the first time I got to meet her. Yay!


Molly Bruton with one of our aliens

And I also got to meet comics creator Rick Eades... and look what he brought me! (I think I startled Gillian with my fan-girl moment.)


Rick Eades with a tiny sousaphone-carrying Vern!

Rick also made a miniature Queen Mum for the co-writer/co-illustrator of a picture book I'm working on, David O'Connell. Dave's take on the Queen Mum is so fabulous.


David O'Connell's Queen Mum, sculpted by Rick Eades

Children's book writer meets her first cosplayer:



Gillian, Ellie and I worked an activity area of four tables, where anyone could sit down, design an alien, make a space comics, decorate a space ship or basically muck about drawing. We had a great mix of ages jump in and make things, which was good fun.


Poster drawn by Sarah and coloured by Gillian



I was dead chuffed to get an amazing Vern and Lettuce go to Leicester comic adventure from the wonderful Selina Lock, which I'll post very soon with the launch of Vern and Lettuce online magazine, The Pickle. (Please do jump in if you'd like to contribute something!)


Selina Lock with her Vern and Lettuce strip for The Pickle

We were bustling so much to keep the Space Station tables going that I only had about ten minutes to rush madly about saying hello to people, which meant I so

What a fabulous surprise! Look what arrived today in the post from the writer of You Can't Eat a Princess!, Gillian Rogerson! Aliens! Handmade aliens! And chocolate! (That's in case they got held up in the post, so they wouldn't starve. As everyone knows, aliens LOVE chocolate.)



Next weekend is a very big deal because I get to meet Gillian FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! Everyone thinks we worked very closely together, but actually, Gillian's based up in Leeds and I've only ever spoken to her over the phone, and I've just worked with the Scholastic editor and designer on the book. But that doesn't mean I haven't been insanely curious about her! Gillian has the most lovely voice on the phone. She sounds like a very kind person, I know from a couple story manuscripts of hers that she has a wicked sense of humour, and she already feels like a friend. But meeting her will be amazing, I'm sure. And if you're in Leeds, you can be there, too!



Here's our first event together:

Thought Bubble Alien Attack!
From outer space, writer Gillian Rogerson and illustrator Sarah McIntyre will collide for the very first time at the Thought Bubble comics convention in Leeds on Saturday, 20 November. Creators of You Can't Eat a Princess!, a story about alien abduction and chocolate cake, Gillian Rogerson gets set to visit her first comics convention ever, right in her hometown of Leeds, while Sarah McIntyre will be arriving with fresh copies of her new comic book Vern and Lettuce. Kids of all ages (and that means you, too, grown-ups!) will be welcome to orbit with them at their space station, designing aliens and creating space comics. A perfect and very rare chance to get You Can't Eat a Princess! signed by both creators!

Visit the You Can't Eat a Princess! page for free downloadable activity sheets and space party ideas. And take part in Sarah McIntyre's latest project, designing your own page for a 'Vern and Lettuce' online magazine!
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