Every year, thousands of comics fans gather in San Diego to celebrate the sub-culture (turned pop-culture) of comics. And I’m using “comics” in the American, graphic novel sense of the word, not the more childish comic strip way that’s used in Britain by The Beano. People fly from all around the world to attend the […]
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” That’s what we’re told. And yet, what do people actually do? Of course they do. We’re visual thinkers and take cues from book jackets to guide our decision making. Books are actually a lot like fashion (or a fashion accessory); readers have to want to be seen reading […]
This week I’ll be heading up to sunny Sheffield for the annual Children’s Media Conference. It’s Europe’s big confab for all things related to media for young people. When I first attended, the CMC was mostly TV focused. It’s grown in scope and ambition as the media landscape has evolved and fragmented, and now covers […]
After 29 years, I finally returned to the magical mountain town of Banff, Alberta, Canada. If you’ve never visited, Banff is probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to. I first went as a boy, en route home from Expo 86, and blogged about it for the awesome Canadian literature blog 49th Shelf. It […]
This week I’m heading to Banff, Alberta for the World Media Festival. I’m wearing my TV hat (not my cowboy hat) this week, meeting with producers and broadcasters on the Awesome slate of drama projects we’ve been cooking up. It’s a different process to writing books, but not that different. It’s still about story, character, […]
I played my first Hay Festival this week! If you don’t know, Hay is like the Glastonbury for books…or the ComicCon for literature. It’s a huge festival in a tiny town. The organizers (who must be super organised) set up a tent city in a field, complete with bookshops, bars, restaurants, a swishy green-room, and […]
This week I’ve been back in Canada, in the Toronto area, launching all four MetaWars books! It was great to be back, see old friends and make new ones. I thought I’d share a few highlights…. Flying over, I was starting to wish I’d packed my toque (that’s Canadian for winter hat)… The weather in […]
This week, while on book tour in Canada, I guest blogged on the fantastic website 49th Shelf, a site that celebrates Canadian literature. In the spirit of giving them the web traffic they deserve, please click here for my piece on mining memories to create new fiction. I hope you enjoy…and maybe while you’re on […]
I write fiction about the future, but that doesn’t mean the future I invent is fictitious. And while I can’t study the future the way historical novelists can study the past, I can, and do, extrapolate today’s trends into future possibilities. And I say possibilities, because it’s my hope that in some small part, my books […]
Yesterday at the London Book Fair, I participated in a panel hosted by publisher Lisa Edwards about boys and men reading. If you know me well, you know this is a subject I’m passionate about. I was a reluctant reader as a boy, and getting (and keeping) boys reading guides my writing. My goal is to […]
