• This blog is available on Facebook, where I had a few comments about my going digital post, yesterday.

    Nikki, Saviour and Gerry all urged me to hold on to the vinyl because records are so evocative and works of art. But if I’ve not been bothered to listen to them for twenty years, there must be a reason. Anything that I really missed, I have a digital version of. Anything I’m curious to hear again I can find on Spotify, or some similar service.

    Do I really need to keep a hundredweight of unusable cardboard and vinyl in the attic? If I get rid of it, I make everything else rarer and so increase the value of other people’s collections. That’s a social service! It would take the pressure of the rafters in the attic and release a weight feel pressing down on my shoulders too.

    It’s the weight of the past. I’m a different person the the kid that spent all those hours in record shops looking for obscure albums to impress with. I don’t know who I was trying to impress. Anyway, it didn’t work!

    If I do get an album down to listen to again, it often disappoints. Like watching movies again or re-reading a book. I much prefer to keep the memories. The reality is often not as good as the memory.

    I feel really sad when I hear Radio 2 being played by my generation and even sadder when I realise they are enjoying it. I find radio 2 as embarrassing today as I did when I was eighteen. It’s for old codgers. I don’t want to hear Goodbye Blackberry Lane and Vienna played all day long. I want to know that there is something new and exciting out there.

    Admittedly, I find it harder to find new music that grabs me. If I don’t want to listen to Radio 2, I don’t want to listen to Radio 1 either. That would be generational tourism. Radio 6 is anal and blokey. I basically follow if you like this recommendations on Amazon and iTunes and see where the trail leads. That brought me to Karine Polwart, Emiliana Torrinni, Kate Havnevik and Catherine Feeney (I’m a sucker for the female voice!)

    I don’t want to live in the past. Vinyl is a ball and chain that stops you going forward. My generation laughed at those who clung on to shellac 78s – those funny old people who got stuck in the Doris Days forever playing Vera Lyn – but now my generation is stalling in the same way, stuck with the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Motown and Pop. It’s so easy to say, “I’m comfortable. I’m going to stay right here and let the world move on without me.” But I’m not ready to do that.

    “Life is like a hot air balloon. You have to chuck out the deadweight if you want to stay afloat.”

    Who said that? I just did!

  • I’ve just removed my Cds and rd radio player from my studio. I realised that I don’t use them anymore. I get everything on my mac though iTunes, BBC iPlayer and Spotify.

    I suppose this is quite a day, really. Anyone know what I do with all my old Cds? ( not to mention the Vinyl that has been in the attic for twenty years?) My old Cassette tapes are going to the dump. They are just unplayable now. If I try, I end up with lots of wow and flutter before the tape snarls up in the carriage system.

  • That tiny voice of self doubt began to niggle away at the back of my brain over the summer. I’d finished my last series and it was time to get on with the next. But – guh! I couldn’t settle to it. I prepared a brand new sketchbook to take away with me on holiday, with pages for characters and plots and series ideas. All the ideas I’d had up to that point in one convenient dollop.

    As soon as we got to our apartment and sat on the patio in the sun, a whole new idea buzzed into my head and consumed me for about three days. I turned my sketchbook upside down and began working on the new idea from the back of the book. Then I got in the holiday mood and said, “what the heck, let’s go for a swim.” I haven’t looked at that idea since I got back, but it’s there safely tucked away. I don’t know if it’s any good – I’ve got other fish to fry at the moment.

    The series Im working on is called Axel Storm – I won’t give the plot away yet. I’d been thinking about it for a few years when, in 2007, my flight was delayed at Bristol Airport while on my way to visit schools in Scotland. I got out my sketchbook and began to doodle, drawing on various ideas that were floating around at the time. This was the moment when they all fell into place and I saw the pattern. I have a wonderful page in my sketchbook that has a clear and simple mind map that lays out the whole eight book series.

    I remember the elation of it all coming together. It’s similar to falling in love. I’d want to spend all my time with my new love and talk about it to anyone who’d listen. I’d dream about it and wake up thinking about it.

    I came home, worked on a synopsis and sent it to my publishers who bought it without hesitation. I was a little surprised. I normally have to tune my proposals a little with my editors.

    So now, nearly two years later, I have to write the series. Harder, I have to recapture that spirit, that feeling that I had over two years ago. I’ve been in love with other characters in that time! Things move on in two years, I’ve learned a huge amount about writing series for a start, so that little voice nags, making unhelpful comments like, “Is this idea still any good?” or ” Wouldn’t you rather be doing another project?”

    As the American writer, Mary Heaton Vorse, said, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” I’ve long known and agreed with this sentiment.

    So I pulled myself together, sat down and got to work. The first job was to go right back to the beginning and remember what the original idea was all about, to get excited again about the hero and the world I was going to set him in. I spent a week stirring the pot, making notes, drawing sketches, working it all out, getting back to that starting point.

    Last week I felt comfortable enough with the series to concentrate on one of the books. It’s not a saga, each book should stand on it’s own. I began with the first title one my list, chiseling away at the method of introducing the stories in a way that didn’t seem formulaic, but that did the job of setting the scene for the first time reader.

    That was the breakthrough. A moment’s inspiration (the culmination of days of thinking and planning and trial and error!) opened up the whole series. I knew how it worked and where it was going. I also knew where this individual story was going. After an hour of plotting, I thought, “I don’t need to do this. I can just get on and write it,” and I did. By the end of the week, my first story’s first draft was written, I’d really got to know the hero and his voice and had captured the spirit of the series. I felt really quite pleased with myself – I even took the weekend off!

    I’m not surprised the story came out the way it did. After all, I’ve been working on this at the back of my head for years. There were moments in the last couple of months where the phrase,” Writer’s Block,” appeared, blurred in my peripheral vision, but I’ve fought it off. I imagine all I really needed was a holiday, to let me get a bit of distance from the previous project.

    I’m often asked what are my top tips for writers. I’m never quite sure what to say, as I still think of myself as an illustrator first and foremost. But if I had to give any advice it would be to fall deeply in love with your subject so that you can immunise yourself from moments of doubt – then apply the seat of your pants to your chair. There is no substitute for hard graft – if anyone tells you it’s easy to write a book, ask them if they’ve started work on their second book yet.