You are talking such rubbish

I was interviewed By John-Paul Holden of The Big Issue this morning by phone. I am never keen on being interviewed. It is such an unnatural process. In a conversation, what you say is always being modified and adjusted in relation to what the other person says. It is so odd having someone simply ask you a series of questions and certainly strange to never hear the words, 'You are talking such rubbish.' Or maybe that's just me.

A couple of boxes of books arrived from Doodled Books today. I haven' opened them yet, but they are copies of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. I will try and remember to scan a few of them in before I send the doodled copies back to Claire.

I also received an email from James Fraser at Random House asking me if I'd be interested in illustrating the follow-up to Joe Rat by Mark Barrett - a book I illustrated at about this time last year under the effects of a hideous cold. And in principle I would. I have been on an extended sabbatical from the world of illustration, and I quite like the idea of getting back into it.

And I spoke to Ian Lamb at Bloomsbury about the Young Librarians Group event I'm doing on Friday.

What's happening?

So - what am I up to now I am back in sunny Cambridge?

Well - I am recovering from having a tooth out on Tuesday afternoon. I was still jet-lagged when I went to the dentist. The place was modern and high-tech, but that did not stop the dentist getting medieval on my jaw with something that was basically a small monkey-wrench. Lots of cracking and crunching ensued.

I heard from Tony Bradman whilst I was in Brazil and he sent me a proposal to have a look at. I had hoped to work with Tony on a historical fiction project for Usborne, but it fell through. Maybe this one will work out.

Claire Main from Doodled Books got in touch and said she was going to send me some copies of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship to doodle in and I came back to find a couple of copies of the Colombian edition of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror, published by Norma.

I am carrying on working my way through Helen Szirtes notes and queries on the manuscript of Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. Isabel Ford is now my editor at Bloomsbury, but Helen is working on the book as a freelancer. I am very happy as always to have her input.

And yesterday I got an email from John Pilger - yes, THAT John Pilger. He wrote to tell me that he liked Payne's Grey, my strip in the New Statesman. I don't get a lot of fan mail to be honest - but the quality!

Corpse fishing

I have just got back from a couple of days in Somerset and opened my inbox to find a message from Adrian Downie at Bloomsbury under the title 'corpse fishing'. It turns out to hold a link to an early version of a game we had talked about to go on the Tales of Terror from the Black Ship website. If you haven't seen Adrian's fantastic work on the Tales of Terror website follow the link on the left of the page and have a look.

The game made me laugh, though that maybe wasn't Adrian's intention. I have a fairly dark sense of humour, mind you. Anything with the instruction 'Hook the corpses, avoid the snails' was bound to set me off. I'll have to give some thought as to what we can put on this new site.

I also had an email from Madeleine Stevens at Bloomsbury showing me the paperback covers for Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror. Here are the inside covers:

Book of the month

I had a very exciting email from Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury yesterday telling me that Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror and Tales of Terror from the Black Ship are to be made Waterstone's Book of the Month for this coming October.

And I finally found out that Philip Reeve won the UKLA Children's Book Award. Congratulations to him for that. I don't know Philip and I haven't read Here Lies Arthur, the book of his that won, but I have read all his Mortal Engines books and they are brilliantly sustained pieces of fantasy fiction. He is a proper writer, full of great ideas.

Hadrian

I went to London today with my son, to go and see the excellent new Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum. We walked a long stretch of Hadrian's Wall last year and my son, like many 11 year-old boys (and their fathers), is fascinated by the Roman Empire.

I got back to see an email from Sarah Odedina from Bloomsbury saying how much she had enjoyed Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. That means I can now relax a little before starting on the inevitable changes that will we asked for and that will occur to me once I read it through again. And then it will be time to start on the next book. . .

So what is next? Well, I am about to start on a more conventional novel -rather than the portmanteau novels I have been doing lately. The book is provisionally entitled Ghosts and will have a similar Victorian Gothic setting.

More of that another time. . .

Still a bit tense

Philippa, my agent, phoned today to tell me how much she had enjoyed Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth. And it is always good to hear that!

I saw John Clark the day before yesterday and he asked me if I'd sent the book off yet and I said I had. He was puzzled by my lack of enthusiasm. Was that not a huge relief? he asked. And I said it was in a way, but until you hear something back it is always a bit tense.

The UKLA Children's Book Award - for which Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror was shortlisted - was supposed to be announced last weekend, but there is no news. I'm guessing I haven't won as Bloomsbury have not heard anything, but on a Google search I discovered instead that Uncle Monty has been longlisted for the Lincolnshire Young People's Book Award, which was a nice surprise, and is also on a list of suggested titles for Staffordshire's Young Teen Fiction Award.

Stop fiddling about

I finally sent Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth off to Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury today. It is always a nervous moment because the fact is you can always fiddle about a bit more - and a bit more - and a bit more. . .

But at some point you have to let it go.

I sent it to Sarah because Helen Szirtes, my editor on the two previous books, has left Bloomsbury to enter the perilous world of freelancing. I'm hoping she might edit Tunnel's Mouth on a freelance basis, but these things are out of my control.

I also sent the book to my agent, Philippa Milnes-Smith at LAW Ltd.

Now I just have to wait and see what they all think. . .

The Graveyard Book

Adrian Downie got in touch today from Bloomsbury to thank me for recommending Saki on these pages. He also brought up the subject of the website for Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. More of that another time.

He gave me a link to a site he'd just done for Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book - one version of which is illustrated by my old friend Chris Riddell. Another version is done by that longstanding Gaiman collaborator, Dave McKean.

Both are published by Bloomsbury this coming October

Proof

I got a bound proof copy of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship today from Susannah Nuckey at Bloomsbury. This is adorned with some of the great reviews we managed to garner for Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror and has David Robert's illustrations.

This is the first time I have seen David's finished pictures and he has done a fantastic job again - as you will see when you all rush out and buy the book in October!

Uncle Montague's Postcards of Terror

I had a nice surprise in the post this morning. Bloomsbury sent me sets of postcards with illustrations from Uncle Montagu'es Tales of Terror and with one showing the cover of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. I had no idea they were doing these. They are great.

The dotted line

My new Bloomsbury contracts arrived yesterday. It is always a satisfying moment, signing a new contract - not least because then actually receive some money.


For those not familiar with the arcane process of payment in publishing, the writer receives a wedge of money on signing the contract for a book, another wedge on delivery of the manuscript and another wedge on publication (and possibly another on publication of paperback if there is to be a hardback/paperback publication).


These payments are an advance from the publisher set against royalties on sales of the book. The better the book sells, the quicker your royalties will pay off that advance. The more generous the advance, the harder it is to pay it off.


But that is infinitely better than having a measly advance and still not selling. Royalties are pie in the sky - better to have a decent advance (unless you are J K Rowling - and then you get both anyway). Sales of a book are not a judgement on the quality of your book (or at least not always). Really bad books sell well and very, very good ones disappear without trace. It is a bit of a lottery.


In any case - a decent advance is a show of commitment from the publisher, and that means they are more likely to give your book a publicity budget. Anyone can promote authors who are already famous. It takes a bit more work to develop the careers of the rest of us. The work of the sales, marketing and publicity people is vital. There is a big difference between printing a book and publishing it. Anyone can print a book. I have to say Bloomsbury have been excellent publishers for me.


That said, a writer needs to justify an advance. It is always good to work off that advance - and that means helping to promote the books in any way that helps: doing author visits and talks, doing festivals, doing interviews. . .


And maybe running a blog.

Is Hellboy a Christian?

I went to the studio today, switching my working day around. Instead of writing in the morning, I went across town and did some painting. I got back to the landscapes I had been working on a few weeks back. I had deserted them in favour of some strip and illustration ideas I had been playing about with. The Peter Doig show had really inspired me - both to get back to painting and to be a bit more fearless.

I spoke to Helen at Bloomsbury and she said that David Roberts had been working on Tales of Terror from the Black Ship and we might see some roughs by the end of the week. I'm really intrigued to see what he has come up with.



We had some interesting debates in Art Club today. I was getting the children to copy some Mike Mignola drawings just to see what they could learn from such a controlled style. To my great surprise this prompted a lively discussion about whether Hellboy is a Christian or not.


No sooner had we moved on from that controversy when I was asked did I know the band called Queen. Yes I did, I said, wondering where we were going with this one. 'Were they from the 19th or the 20th Century?' That the question came from a Year 6 in SATs week is a little worrying.

But I do like the idea that Queen was a 19th Century band.

More proofs

Another glorious day in Cambridge, but I spent most of it indoors reading the proofs of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship to myself. This is my last chance to spot any errors or make any changes before I return them to Helen Szirtes at Bloomsbury tomorrow.


My son starts his SATs tests tomorrow. SATs are a curious phenomenon in England. The school spends months training the children to do the tests, which were intended as an assessment on the standard of teaching, and then take credit from the results. Perhaps they ought to pay the children for providing them with good PR. I would not mind if I thought that the tests and the endless preparation for them provided a format to reinforce learning, but I see little evidence of that.

If schools are going to be judged on the results of the tests, then of course they are going to train the children to do them. But SATs seem to have taken up nearly the entirety of Year 6. I struggle to think of any brand new information my son has taken on in the whole year. What History has he learned? What art has he done? Where is the creative writing? And when they are over, the children will do nothing new. It seems absolutely crazy to me.

Paperback terrors

Here is the paperback cover for Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror, due out in October, published by Bloomsbury. As always the illustration work is by David Roberts.

Morose Sendak

I went to Bloomsbury today have one last (ish) look at Tales of Terror from the Black Ship with my editor Helen Szirtes and to have a word with Adrian Downie about the website. The fine tuning of a book is exhausting, but it is so important. There is nothing worse than seeing something in print you wished you had phrased differently. It was good to see Adrian. He was so enthusiastic and imaginative in his work on the Uncle Montague site that I can't wait to see what he comes up with for the Black Ship.

I arrived early at Soho Square and Helen was in a meeting, so I had a chance to raid the bookshelves in reception. Bloomsbury reception would make a superb writing room: a big Georgian room with high ceilings and big windows, masses of bookshelves, the bookshops of Charing Cross Road round the corner, and the buzz of Soho on the doorstep.

Whilst I was waiting I pulled down a copy of When We Were Young, a book about childhood done for Unicef, compiled and illustrated by John Burningham and read a really nice piece by Maurice Sendak.

I never really got Sendak. Everyone kept saying how great he was, but I just couldn't see it. There was something about the way he drew that just didn't do it for me. Then I picked up a second hand copy of The Sign on Rosie's Door and I changed my mind entirely. It is so beautifully written. It is that very rare thing - a perfect book.

So I read what Sendak had to say with interest. There was a lot of sadness. The Holocaust looms large in his life and his work - he is tragically the last of the Sendaks. Some of his close friends apparently refer to him as Morose Sendak.

I particularly enjoyed the story about Judy Taylor, his English editor on Where the Wild Things Are, saving his life when he had a heart attack on a visit to the UK. I pointed out to Helen that this was the kind of level of commitment I am going to expect from her.

What am I doing?

Well, as usual, I am doing several things. . .

I am doing my usual weekly Payne's Grey strip for the New Statesman, which requires not only the time I spend doing the actual published version of the strip every week, but also time for writing the scripts and drawing the characters. What I have not been doing, is getting to my studio at all. My routine has been thrown out by writing projects and my son's Easter holidays.

I am sorting out the final edit on Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. Next week I will go into Bloomsbury's offices in Soho Square and work through any last remaining problems with my editor Helen Szirtes and then have a chat with Adrian Downie about the website.

I am also in the process of sorting out, via my agent Philippa Milnes-Smith, the next couple of Bloomsbury books, what they will be and when they will come out. I have started work on these already and I am very excited about them. More about the specifics at a later date.

I am also working on a couple of historical fiction ideas, one of which I will be writing a couple of chapters for. I don't want to say too much about this at the present time as it might not develop into anything. At the moment I have just written a short synopsis. Until there is a contract all books are hypothetical (and all work therefore unpaid I might add), but if it goes ahead I'll give more details.

I am also working on a top secret job that I cannot talk about at all and I am only mentioning to make myself sound more cool and exciting. It does exist though. The job, that is. Honest. Though it isn't really a job quite yet, it is more of a pitch. And it is top secret. So I will have to ask you to swallow this blog when you've read it.

The stern of the Black Ship

Bloomsbury sent me the cover proofs for both the hardback of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship and the paperback of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror, both of which come out in October this year.

This is the back cover of the Black Ship. As usual, the elegant illustration is by David Roberts.

Colonic irritation

I went to London yesterday for a dinner hosted by Bloomsbury at Kettners in Soho. It was Bond themed, so I wore my tux, but couldn't bring myself to wear a bow tie. I didn't look like James Bond; I looked like James Bond's weedy and slightly creepy uncle. So I changed into a flowery shirt and skull bootlace tie and ended up looking like a slightly camp hit man. And what could be more Bond than that?

After a quick wander round bookshops in Covent Garden and Charing Cross road I went to Kettners. I had a quick chat with Adrian Downie who did such a fantastic job of the Tales of Terror website (we talked martial arts and skateboarding injuries before being forcibly separated and sent to different tables) and met up with my editor Helen Szirtes. One of the questions I had at Harrow High School was 'Do you get any help when you write your books?' And of course writers get a lot of help: they get help (mostly uncredited) from editors.

I have been blessed with some really good editors on my books - Anne Clarke on my Hodder books comes to mind, as does Lisa Edwards on my Scholastic books - and I am very, very lucky to have Helen Szirtes looking after me at Bloomsbury. I have learnt a lot from editors, though clearly not so much that it stopped me giving a completely nonsensical definition for the function of a colon when talking to Helen before the meal.

It was like being back at school. I would know what the answer was in my head, but some weird answer would fall out of my mouth. It is probably a condition: stupidity maybe. What I meant to say, of course, was that a colon is used to indicate that what follows it is an explanation or elaboration of what proceeds it. That is, having introduced some topic in more general terms, you can use a colon and go on to explain that same topic in more specific terms.

And of course I'm not quoting this directly from the Penguin Guide to Punctuation. How sad would that be?

The storyteller

I was at Heffers Bookshop in the Grafton Centre in Cambridge today, invited there by the ever-enthusiastic and helpful Kate Johnson. Heffers are so fantastically supportive of children's authors and illustrators - and not simply of those who can guarantee a queue out of the door (and therefore require no support). Both branches of Heffers in Cambridge have been very good to me, and Suzanne Jones who has organised most of the events is a star.

I have to admit, though - I was a little concerned that we might not get an audience. But I needn't have. There was a nice little group of very friendly children with their equally friendly parents. It was great actually and everything you want from a children's department in a bookshop.

I made the decision that Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror were perhaps a little too terror-filled for the age of children, most of whom were under ten, so I read a bit from Billy Wizard and asked the children what their favourite books or types of books were. I put in a bid for The Cat in the Hat as one of mine. I may bang on about Dr Seuss and his genius at a later date.

I'd brought an edition of Saki short stories with me and read The Storyteller, which went down well. I need to devote a post to Saki at some point I think. He is brilliant. I sold a few Uncle Montagues and talked about Tales of Terror from the Black Ship - and a little about how I work and what I'm writing now.

When everyone had gone I signed a pile of books for the children at St John's College School who had missed out because we ran out of books on the day. Actually the warehouse ran out of books. Bloomsbury are reprinting a couple of thousand, which is great news. And I even got a box of chocolate biscuits from Kate for coming along.

Scary pictures

One of the questions I am often asked about Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror is 'Why didn't you illustrate them yourself?'

When I first wrote the book, I did give some thought to how I would illustrate it myself. I was not entirely happy with what I came up with though. I felt quite strongly that I would have to change the way I normally work for this book and I did not want to get bogged down in the visual side of things. I wanted to ensure the writing was as good as I could get it and I wanted to make sure it was published. Everything else was secondary.

All the time I was writing the Uncle Montague/Edgar sections, I had Edward Gorey at the back of my mind. I love Gorey. I love that dark humour that you get with him and Charles Addams. Gorey was very much the tone I wanted, in both the writing of the storytelling sections and in the look of the book.

Then my wife happened to buy a copy of Ten Sorry Tales by Mick Jackson. It was very nicely illustrated by someone who obviously knew and liked Gorey as much as I did, but who had still got his own distinctive style. That illustrator was David Roberts.

Then, when I first went to see Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury one very hot day in the summer of 2006, she handed me a copy of Ten Sorry Tales and told me that David was the illustrator she had in mind. Sarah seemed to have really understood what I was trying to do and it seemed stupid not to relax and go with the flow. It did seem like the perfect match.

And it turned out to be a very good decision. It left me free to concentrate on the stories and David did a brilliant job. He has been so enthusiastic and it shows in the work. He seems to have really enjoyed himself. Nice man too.

I had a quick email conversation with David today. He told me a very funny story about going to a school. As I mentioned in the last post - you can never tell how things are going to go. David thought the children were going to be 13 and 14 year-olds, but they were instead 6 and 7. In a scene straight out of Gorey, he said there were some frightened faces when they youngsters were presented with drawings like this one. . .