Posted by Barry on Mar 29, 2008 in
Children's Books Because I am by nature a right lazy git, over the years I’ve learned that the only way I can make progress with a project is by setting myself targets. I might say I want to get a thousand words done one day, or I might tell myself I have a week to write three chapters. Sometimes the goal setting works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but I still like to aim for some set figure when I sit down to write.
Today, however, I discovered a new incentive. An incentive in the form of my five year old son.
Quite often when I’m writing something I think he might enjoy (my Beastly! books, for example) we’ll read them together as a bedtime story, getting through one or two chapters a night. Tonight, because I thought it might be useful to see his reaction to them, I read him the first two chapters of THE SHiM.
Two things happened. Firstly, I realised the first chapter needs livening up. He said he enjoyed it, but it almost bored me to tears. It’s not a big problem, though, and I’ll go back and fix it in the rewrite.
More importantly, though, he loved the second chapter. He began to really get into the story, and was getting quite excited by the whole thing, right up to the cliffhanger ending. At that point he told me he can hardly wait until tomorrow night, when we read chapter three.
Chapter three isn’t written yet.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him, and so now I’m going to have to sit down and write the third chapter, so that we’ll have it ready for our bedtime story. Of course, it then becomes a vicious circle. If we read chapter three tomorrow night, we’ll want to read chapter four on Monday, meaning I’ll have to get it written before then. By Thursday we’ll be onto chapter six. By the start of next week we’ll have finished reading the book - the book which, I don’t need to remind you, is currently around nine chapters short of being complete.
As incentives go, I think you’ll agree it’s a pretty big one!
Tags: The SHiM
Posted by Barry on Mar 21, 2008 in
Children's Books While browsing the comic section of my local supermarket, trying to give the impression I was choosing a high-brow broadsheet newspaper, I spotted that the current issue of Toxic comic came with a rather excellent free gift - an Astrosaurs book.
Now, I’m not a HUGE fan of the Astrosaurs series, but the books make a pretty enjoyable read, so it all seemed like a bit of a bargain. The actual book which came free seems to be a special edition, with only six chapters, but a free book’s a free book, so I can’t complain.
As I looked through the mag I got a big surprise. There, somewhere around page 10 or so was ….
A rather nifty full page ad for the Beastly! series. How cool is that? If anyone else spots any ads for the series, I’d love to hear about them!
Tags: Beastly!
Posted by Barry on Mar 20, 2008 in
Personal BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Filipinos warned on crucifixions
Health officials in the Philippines have issued a warning to people taking part in Easter crucifixion rituals.
They have urged them to get tetanus vaccinations before they flagellate themselves and are nailed to crosses, and to practise good hygiene.
How mad is that?! Now, I’m all in favour of everyone having their own beliefs, but beating yourself with a whip then nailing yourself to a cross?! I’ll stick to celebrating easter by stuffing my face with chocolate eggs, thanks.
I can just imagine some of these people on the morning of the event though. Dragging their crosses up to the hill, grumbling all the way about “bloody Health & Safety sticking their noses in”.
We live in a mad, mad world.
Posted by Barry on Mar 18, 2008 in
Children's Books While browing in the book section of my local WH Smith today, a very familiar cover caught my eye …
For some reason it hadn’t even occured to me that I’d find the 2HEADS books I did for Egmont in my local shop. The first of my two installments - Tiger Terror - is on the left there. My second - Spider Swat - comes out in early August, so I expect to get my copies towards the end of June.
It was strange seeing my book there. Even though the series is written under an assumed name, it was still weird thinking that something I wrote was sitting there on sale. And in the bestselling section, no less!
Now I’m looking forward to the day I see one of my own books there, with my own name on the front. Hopefully that’ll be sooner rather than later …
Posted by Barry on Mar 17, 2008 in
Children's Books For possibly the first time ever, I’m able to say that I’ve inspired fellow author, Tommy Donbavand, to do something, rather than the other way round.
Following on from my putting the first couple of chapters of Kentucky Fried Fairy on the blog, Tommy has followed suit and put two chapters of his first ever children’s novel - Soppy Susans From Space - on his own site.
Now, as Tommy is set to be the next big thing in Children’s fiction, you really should pop along to his site now and grab the download, so you can see where it all began!
Posted by Barry on Mar 16, 2008 in
Personal On a completely unrelated, non-writing topic, 2008 is looking like a great year for movies. Indiana Jones and Iron Man are looking very promising, but for me there’s one movie which will (I hope) stand head and shoulders above the others.
Literally.
The Incredible Hulk!
Okay, so I’m a geek, I admit it. Roll on June 13th when the movie is released, though. It’s going to be smashing.
See what I did there? SMASHing. The Hulk. Smash.
Ah, forget it.
Just found the trailer for the movie. I’m almost crying with excitement. Click here to watch it on the official site!
Posted by Barry on Mar 16, 2008 in
Children's Books As mentioned last week, I’ve been rewriting JOHNNY B. WEEYERD AND THE COSMIC ANNIHILATOR, the first children’s novel I wrote. The fact I had to rewrite it was largely down to one thing: poor preparation.
Allow me to explain . . .
When I started writing JBW it was going to be a comedy sci-fi for the 7-9 age group. I kept that in the back of my mind as I was writing, but otherwise I essentially did no planning whatsoever on the story or characters.
Big mistake.
Because I didn’t even have the vaguest of plans to work to, the story strayed off the path I had intended it to take. The subject matter became more complex, and became unsuitable for the 7-9 age group, and by the time I was finished I was left with a novel for 9-11 year olds.
Which would have been fine, but it was still the length of a novel for 7-9 year olds. Basically, it was of no use to either age group, and - being too lazy to do a rewrite at the time - I moved onto something else and forgot all about it.
Now my agent has read the manuscript and shown interest, I’ve blown the dust off it and added seven or eight thousand words, but if I’d done some proper planning in the first place, I would have saved myself all that work. Anyway, it’s finished now, so I’ll send it off to her tomorrow and she’ll hopefully think it’s worth sending out!
Posted by Barry on Mar 12, 2008 in
Writing Samples While sifting through some old files, I came across this blast from the past. Written immediately after Johnny B. Weeyerd, KENTUCKY FRIED FAIRY was my attempt at comedy fantasy for children.
Although I had a great time writing the manuscript, I didn’t do a single bit of planning before starting it, and so it goes round the houses a few times before reaching any kind of conclusion. Still, aside from being about 20,000 words too long, I think it’s pretty good, so I’m making the first couple of chapters available here.
You’ll need Adobe Reader to view the file. I’d love to hear your comments, good, bad or indifferent!
Kentucky Fried Fairy (opens in new window)
Posted by Barry on Mar 12, 2008 in
Children's Books This week I have been working on a rewrite of my first attempt at a kids’ book. JOHNNY B. WEEYERD AND THE COSMIC ANNIHILATOR was written just over a year ago, whereupon I printed it off, stuffed it in a drawer, and never looked at it again.
Recently, my agent read the manuscript and thought it would be worth sending out to publishers, and so who am I to argue? Particularly as my agent is a woman, and it never pays to argue with a woman.
Anyway, before it goes out we decided it needed lengthened a bit. The original draft was a mere 23,000 words. This would make it long for a 7-9 year old book, and short for a 9-12, and that would likely put most publishers off. As a result I’m adding another subplot - involving the Prime Minister of Great Britain - and some other bits and bobs which should take the draft over 30,000 words or so. It’s still not long, but as the book is a fast-paced, comedy sci-fi, I think it’s probably long enough.
Since I’ve been busy with that, I haven’t had any time to read the books I picked up for World Book Day last week. My five-year-old picked a Captain Underpants book, and I took ODD AND THE FROST GIANTS by Neil Gaiman, and CHERUB: DARK SUN by Robert Muchamore.
I’m a bit of a fan of Gaiman through his SANDMAN comics, so I’m looking forward to reading OatFG. I haven’t got any knowledge or experience of the Cherub series, but as the book was only a quid, it seemed as good a time as any to start.
Also, this week, my girlfriend and I have been looking into moving to the Republic of Ireland. More on that soon . . .
Posted by Barry on Mar 8, 2008 in
Children's Books Amazon.co.uk now has Spider Swat
available to pre-order. Spider Swat is the second book I wrote in the Beastly! series for Egmont. Of the two books I wrote, this is definitely my fave. If you want to pick up a copy, either click this link or the picture on the right.
