The descent of man

I went to a party at Heffers bookshop in Trinity Street here in Cambridge this evening. It was in honour of Suzanne Jones who is leaving Heffers after having - amazingly - worked there since 1974. It was really well attended and that is a testiment to the affection and respect there is for Suzanne locally. She will be sorely missed by readers and writers alike. And I mean really missed, like the friend she is.

Suzanne talked about her life at Heffers and it was a story of the changing nature of bookselling as much as anything else and was a testiment to the fact that the Trinity Street shop has acted as a kind of unofficial club for local writers.

The manager at Heffers made a really good speech pointing out that one of the best selling books of 1974 was Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, and that the bestseller list at the moment contains My Booky Wook by Russell Brand - or as he amusingly put , The Descent of Man.

And speaking of Hellboy

My daily routine has been shaken to the foundations by my son starting secondary school. Having been able to walk him round to a school that was a few hundred yards away we now have to cycle across Cambridge in what has been a week of foul weather. I am taking him and one of his school friends for a while until they are more confident.

So instead of starting the day with a cup of coffee at home I now cycle to my studio and grab a coffee in a local cafe before sitting down at my laptop. I am trying to break the back of my new book before I go to Rio at the end of the month. To do that I would ideally like to be writing 10,000 words a week (or more). So far I am reasonably on target.

The new book is called Ghosts, but that title is going to change I feel. It is a Victorian-set Gothic chiller. It has - I hope - elements of The Fall of the House of Usher and Jane Eyre: a creepy house full of dark secrets, strange noises in the night, a brooding host. I'm certainly enjoying writing it. I just hope the same goes for reading it. It should escape from the crypt at the beginning of 2010.

And speaking of the weird and creepy, I was talking about going to see Hellboy 2 a few posts back and I've mentioned the Hellboy comics before. I am a big, big fan of Mike Mignola. His drawings are superb and the way he uses a page is a masterclass in narrative illustration. So when I picked up a copy of B.P.R.D some years ago, I bought it for Mike Mignola's cover design alone. Imagine my disappointment when I then discovered the inside drawings were not by him at all, but by somebody I'd never heard of called, Guy Davis.

But the thing is, once I got used to the idea that Guy Davis wasn't Mike Mignola, and certainly wasn't trying to be, I began to realise that he was actually pretty good himself. He is one of those amazing graphic artists who appear to be able to draw anything. His work is stylised of course, but with a softer edge to it than Mignola's and so he is able to carry a story in a more conventional, almost filmic, way. Look at his website and see just how much work is going into these books.

The amazing this is, both Mignola and Davis are inked by Dave Stewart (whom I'm assuming is not the bearded half of Eurythmics). His inking of Mignola is all about restraint and mainly flat colour. His inking of Davis shows his ability with a larger palette and a wonderful use of texture and subtle modelling. He uses light sources incredibly well.

Inkers are an underappreciated quantity here in the UK - which is why so many British graphic novels look like. . .Well, they don't look very good.

And speaking of Ray Bradbury

I went into the studio today for the first time in ages. John Clark was at his desk putting in a bit of work on his website before going to work. When it is up and going I'll put a link.

I had my laptop with me today and experimented with the notion of writing at the studio instead of at home in my office. It felt a bit weird - and a bit uncomfortable given the ridiculous chair I sit on there - but I got a lot done and that's the main thing.

And speaking of Ray Bradbury as I was the other day, I thought I would mention Dave McKean's illustrated version of Bradbury's The Homecoming. It's a lovely little book, hardback with a dust jacket and is another of those Bradbury stories with a child protagonist. Not a children's book, but something that an older child would find fascinating I think.

The illustrations are in McKean's drawn style in the Coraline mould, rather than his photo-montage and collage work. Great stuff.

Drawing the line

Judith Weik showed me the Spanish edition of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror on Saturday. It is a Colombian publisher's edition for South America. It is called My Uncle's Tales of Terror for some reason though. Judith was sent a copy because they had asked permission to reproduce the author photo she had taken of me. I haven't received a copy myself yet.

Another box of the UK edition of Uncle Montague arrived from Doodled Books. I have to find some spare time to sit down and number, date, sign, line and doodle however many copies there are and then send them back for them to sell online.

And speaking of my old friend Dave Simonds, he sent me a great present. It is one of the great Comics Journal Library series of books published by Fantagraphic Books. I already have the ones on Jack Kirby and Robert Crumb - this one is titled 'Drawing the Line' and features Jules Feiffer, David Levine, Edward Sorel and Ralph Steadman.

All of these artists have been an inspiration to me as an illustrator - not in any specific stylistic way, but in terms of the seriousness with which illustration and cartooning can and should be approached providing the artist has the intelligence and wit and skill to warrant it.

Feiffer is perhaps the one who has most influenced me. He had a strip in the Observer magazine when I was teenager - called simply Feiffer. It was brilliant: sharp, witty, clever - all the things I wanted to be but certainly was not. It became a model for the kind of strip I would love to do and has certainly haunted all my work in that field. He writes really well and he draws with such economy and seeming spontaneity. He is quite simply brilliant and anyone who disagrees is just plain wrong.

David Levine can be a bit stiff and formulaic for some, but he obeys the first rule of caricature - his drawings actually look like the person he's drawing. He absolutely nails a likeness. Time and time again. And just take a look at any UK newspaper to see how rare that talent is. He is a marvel.

Sorel is another master of the caricature. How he draws so loosely and still gets to draw such accurate likenesses I really don't know. It is like watching a concert pianist playing a particularly busy piece of Beethoven. It's a kind of magic, as Freddy Mercury so wisely put it.

Steadman was big when I was at the end of my time at college, doing those big coffee table books on Freud and Leonardo and so on - it seemed to mirror the punk aesthetic that was fashionable at the time. He is loose like Sorel, but I much prefer the latter. Where I was once impressed by all the expressionist scratching and splattering, now it just seems like theatrical bluster to me now. He still knocks spots off most other British illustrators having said that, young or old.

Enormously alone

I spent most of yesterday on the touchline watching my son playing in a football tournament. His team came fifth. Or second last, depending on how you look at it. Today I delivered the amended version of tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth to Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury. That will be it now until we move to the final fine-tuning stage.

And I finally got to speak to Merche. She called from Rio to make contact and ask if I could get Bloomsbury to send her some copies of the new books - the hardback of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship, and the paperback of Uncle Montague. She is also going to make contact with Adriana Sardinha from Rocco and liaise with her about a possible bookshop event to promote the Portuguese edition of Uncle Montague. I'm really looking forward to it.

I bought a compilation of Ray Bradbury stories when we were in London. The dismally dull cover hides work of genius. There is no other writer quite like him. He tells stories that are more like modern folk tales than sci-fi. He is like Kafka: a genre in himself. If you have never read Bradbury, go and buy something - though he is shockingly underpublished for someone who is so often mentioned as a major inspiration. He is a writer's writer.

But don't let that put you off.

There are some great stories in here. The Fog Horn is fantastic. And there are a couple with children as the main protagonists - the creepy Fever Dream, and the wonderful Hail and Farewell about a boy who does not grow up - that I may try out on my son and see what he makes of them. He just writes so well. I love this line from The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse:

Garvey and his wife had lived enormously alone for twenty years.

Mortal engines

I had an email from Merche Clark last Thursday. Merche is John Clark's sister and I will be staying with her when I go to Rio. In fact it was she who set that whole trip in motion. My attempts to email her always end with the message bounced straight back. I had to reply using John as a go-between.

I saw John and Judith on Saturday night. It was Judith's birthday the other day, close to mine, and she invited us over to celebratewith mutual friends. The conversation was very middle-class and middle aged, with much moaning about house prices, the economy, the state of education etc etc.

John thanked me for recommending Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines books. He and his son had really enjoyed them. They are wonderful books and I heartily recommend them to anyone reading this blog. They are brilliantly realised fantasy books, packed full of great scenes and vividly drawn characters. I doubted that Reeve would be able to sustain the level of intensity over the course of the series, but he really does. He knows that world inside out and he really cares about his characters. John rightly said they deserved to be filmed.

What great movies they'd make in the right hands.

Like fish and chips. . .

I was once in newspapers.

I saw Chris Riddell today as he passed through Cambridge on his way from the Observer to Norfolk. We sat in an almost deserted bar and talked about all kinds of stuff. Chris is always so enthusiastic about everything and so encouraging.

I have known Chris for many years - he was best man at my wedding. Our paths first crossed when I stood in for him as an illustrator at The Economist in London when he was on holiday in 1990. When he came back, the art editor, Penny Garret (whom I'd worked with previously at The Listener and the Telegraph) decided the paper could do with another illustrator and so I was taken on, sitting between Chris and Dave Simonds every Wednesday for the next six years.

Chris and I also worked together at the Independent on Sunday where I wrote a strip he illustrated called Bestiary and I took over his political cartoon spot briefly (Chris also did the Monday cartoon while Michael Heath did the rest of the week), before following him to The Observer under Andrew Jaspen. I did another strip there - called Babel - and did a caricature for their profile spot, while Chris did the political cartoon. I did not last very long. Chris is still there.

Chris left the Economist some time after I did; Dave is still there, doing sterling work (as well as doing the New Statesman political cartoon and stuff for various British newspapers. I left to take a job on The Independent under Andrew Marr's editorship. I did illustrations throughout the paper, often on the front page, and eventually did a daily strip called 7.30 for 8.00 as well as the daily political cartoon spot. When Andrew Marr left, I was made an offer it was all too easy to refuse and left the heady world of daily newspapers for good.

It was Chris who suggested I should write a children's book, and Chris who took the manuscript to Annie Eaton at what was then Transworld. My (published) writing career took off from that point.

Chris drew this brilliant birthday card for me. . .