• I had a lovely day with St Francis Primary School yesterday, who were back from half term. The children were all dressed up as book characters and very excited! The teachers dressed up too. There were three Where’s Wallys and I couldn’t find one of them!

    In the afternoon I worked with ten boys to plot out a story for the Reception class with the theme of Pirates. I think we did really well in the time, coming up with a first draft of a story called Candy Island, where the buried treasure turned out to be chocolate money and the palm trees grew packets of Haribo sweets! Well done lads. I look forward to seeing a finished (edited) version. (Editing is the bit they don’t like!)

    Good luck with the rest of the week and keep up the good work.

  • This is more a watch and see how I do it sort of video that a step by step lesson.

    Drawing people is hard. To get better you need to draw from life, observe how things work and it helps if you look at a skeleton and see how that moves. I think I mentally draw a skeleton and then put flesh on it and then put clothes on top.

  • My Olympia production schedule stares down at me from my pin board. There’s so much to do and yet things are progressing on time, so far. Next month I am hardly at home. I’m visiting schools and libraries all over the place, so I think the schedule will drift for a while, but I’m confident I can bring it back in line again.

    As you can see the covers are all designed now and we are very happy with them. This week I finished the inside artwork for the first book, Run like the Wind, and sent them off to my publishers.

    I’ve just now finished the first draft of the first draft of the fourth book, Throw for Gold. I’ll let it cook a bit and see how it is. I’m sure it will need some editing before I send it to my editor, even though I edit madly while I’m writing.

    It turned out well from the short synopsis and the fairly detailed plan I had for the story. Half way through I decided to change a major scene and introduced a wonderful new character, Nestor, who cooks for the elite Athletes in Olympia. He’s a bit of a Jamie Oliver really. He can’t understand why everyone is so obsessed about sport when there is so much wonderful food in the world to be cooked and eaten.

    I’m always amazed how characters appear out of nowhere and muscle in on a story. Nestor has really made the story much more interesting and added a new element of humour too.

    Now – back to pencil sketch corrections for “Wrestle to Victory.”