• It’s always the same after I’ve done a major splurge of School and Library visiting. I get back home with the best intentions of getting on with some writing or illustrating. But I seem to spend two or three days being unable to do anything creative.

    There is all the business to sort out – the schedules to be revised and all those little internet things nagging away – the blog up dates, the website tweaks. I don’t know how a day goes by so quickly without seeming to have done anything.

    I suppose I have fixed the light in the kitchen that was driving my wife mad. And I picked up my Mum from the dentist and went to the bank and stuff. And I recorded a new Drawing School Video which is uploading at the moment. And I’ve sent a few emails and answered questions from Yellow Group in Year Two from Peel Common Infants and now it’s suppertime. Hey ho!

  • I’ve been published by Orchard Books for quite some time now. Every six months my royalty statement arrives with more paper added and I have worried about the envelopes once or twice, as they often split open.

    I was surprised to get a corrugated parcel from Hachette yesterday. I assumed it must be a book, but couldn’t imagine which it might be. I was very surprised to find my Royalty statement inside! Fresh of the printer, not crumpled in the post as usual.

    I stopped to have a count up. Including the titles I illustrated for Rose Impey, I now have 67 titles published by Orchard and I’m working on another eight book series right now. That has to be some kind of achievement, if only to show that we have managed to get along together over the years, through moves and aquisitons and mergers and changes of personnel – I’m not sure anyone is still there from the beginning – except Marlene, the Boss. Here’s looking to the next 67 titles – some of which may well be electronic and never see a pice of paper at all. These are interesting times.

    Of course the real surprise is the size of the cheque! If you fancy being a children’s author, don’t give up the day job. If yo add up the hours, I’m don’t suppose most children’s authors are getting much more than the minimum wage. The Society of Authors did a survey a little while back and this was proved to be true.

  • A new video for you. How to draw a dragon – this was hard to fit into ten minutes and is probably quite hard to do, but I’ve noticed I get a lot of hits on my website from people looking to know how to draw dragons – so here you are. Enjoy. If you like it, please rate it with the stars on the top left hand corner. why not subscribe to my YouTube channel? It helps me with my ratings if you do.