Last week at the annual Children’s Media Conference I had the privilege and the pleasure to attend Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman’s Creative Keynote address. If you don’t know Malorie Blackman’s work (if not, why not!?), she’s the author of 60 books, and most notably the Noughts & Crosses saga, about an alternative world where the black Crosses are the […]
I must admit, I feel a bit like George McFly today at the end of ‘Back to the Future’… It’s one of my favourite films, and you probably recall the sequence when Marty awakes to find his home life so much better than how he left it. The town bully, Biff, is now buffing his […]
With just over one month to go until OCD-suffering twelve-year-old Adam Meltzer climbs out of his grave in ‘Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie’, I’m delighted to share that the book is part of a goodreads giveaway! Enter now for your chance to win one of 5 copies (UK only)! Goodreads Book Giveaway Memoirs of a Neurotic […]
If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I not only love the Pixar films, I also love the Pixar creative process. A couple of years back, I was fortunate enough to meet the creative development team from Pixar, and it changed my approach to creativity forever. Now, there’s been numerous pieces about Pixar in the press […]
This weekend I went back to Canada. Well, not exactly…but almost. My university, Queen’s University at Kingston, based in Ontario, Canada owns a castle in the UK (I know!) and in anticipation of Canada Day, they hosted a very special Castle Canada Day on Saturday. If you don’t know, Canada Day (July 1st) is a […]
(note: this post first appeared here on the FutureBook.net site. I’ve updated it and am reposting it here for followers of this blog) A couple of weeks ago on my blog, I shared that I was going to post the entire first MetaWars book, in serial format, onto wattpad. If you don’t know wattpad (and […]
I’m thrilled to share I’ve now entered the future of storytelling and have joined wattpad! And to get started, MetaWars 1.0: Fight For The Future is now live on wattpad! Now, if you don’t know wattpad, it’s like a global camp fire for storytelling. It’s been referred to as the youtube of writing. I think that’s […]
On the 10th of June, I’ve been invited to join the Children’s Book Circle discussion on “Should Authors Be Marketers?” at the Discover Children’s Story Centre in Stratford. I’ll be sharing the podium (though not clear if there will be a podium or not) with uber-agent Julia Chuchill (AM Heath)… …and talented author (and former […]
When I write, I write to music. Mostly film scores. Of course, I’ve got my stalwart favourites like John Williams, James Horner, and John Barry, and a new(er) breed of film composers like Hans Zimmer, Patrick Doyle, and Alexandre Desplat, but my favourite composer working today has got to be Michael Giacchino. He’s not a household […]
I can still remember the day that I decided to work in entertainment. It was late May, 1989 and I was twelve years old. I was playing a small part in my local theatre group’s big end of term show and we were doing final rehearsals in (what seemed like a really) big theatre. On […]
