Tag Archives: children’s publishing

My New Book Project – Generation Moon

Artemis 1 was due to launch as I am writing this, having been delayed many times. It is now due to go in two days time – Wednesday, Nov. 16.

Returning to the moon has brought back memories of the excitement I felt as a kid, as The Apollo missions headed out towards the Moon. Apollo 8 was my most favourite mission – It was so bold, so new, so intrepid and all wrapped up with the magic of Christmas.

My generation of Moonies were really let down with the ending of Apollo. But soon, it seems, there really will be humans established on the moon – the future we imagined was ours when we were kids.

So I am now writing a middle-grade, adventure trilogy called GENERATION MOON to inspire the new generation of kids who, one day – quite soon, will populate the Moon and will maybe go even further, to Mars and beyond.

I feel there is a need to get on with this project – time is of the essence and regular publishing schedules are too slow. So, I will be-self publishing over the next year to 18 months, launching the project as limited signed editions on Kickstarter soon.

Sign up to my YouTube Channel when I will be regularly posting news, hints and tips about the whole self-publishing process, writing – editing – illustrating – launching – publishing and, most importantly – marketing.

As well as inspiring a new generation of moonies and astronauts, I hope to help other along with their self-publishing projects.

Stay tuned!

Political Correctness or Wokeness in Children’s Books?

Times and attitudes change.I was brought up a child of empire and was imbued with attitudes and beliefs by parents, family, school, society and friends.

We have come a long way in a very short time. I found theses two little dummy books that I made to experiment with a character that I called clumsy clot – a commonly used epithet when I was growing up.

Clumsy Clot was a name I used and never thought about until my editor explained why publishers would not be likely to leap at the chance of using the character. Was it censorship, my first brush with political correctness or an awakening to a more empathic view of the use of language?

Nearly Finished Artwork for Walker- The boy who can talk to dogs


In this video I do a lot of drawing and painting and talking about artwork and making children’s books as I create the final artwork for the image I prepared as a rough in the previous video 

My Editor, Janet, loved the sketches I sent her and now it is a race against time to finish the artwork for the print deadline. I need to paint at least eight images a day, preferably more. It doesn’t help that Mrs Rayner is going away for a week and I have to spend a day in London and we have builders in, who I have to lease with, and cook supper for my aged Mother and go shopping for her and me and my son… but I will get there in time, even if I have to work late in the evenings. It’s part of the “Glamour” of being an illustrator.

Actually, that sounds like the title of a video blog!

It is all painted greyscale as It is going to be a back and white book.The colour I use is:
Neutral Tint Half Pan Watercolour Paint
http://amzn.to/2ymFRJI in the UK
http://amzn.to/2Cbk5f5 in the USA
http://amzn.to/2E5E3t4 in Canada

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