BarryHutchison.com

Mr Mumbles' hat, Oz style

I’ve just realised that today is the 1st of June, which means today is the day Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles is published in Australia and New Zealand.

Now, I’ve never been to Australia or New Zealand, but I’d love to visit both. So, if you live in either country, please pop out and buy a copy (or several copies, if you want) so that the book is a massive success and I get to come over and do a tour.

The book should be available in most bookshops, but if you’re struggling to find it then take a look at the HarperCollins Australia site, which gives more details on where you can buy it in Australia. If you’re in New Zealand, you can find out the same information on HarperCollins New Zealand.

The German cover for book 2 has now been revealed. They’ve gone for a title change, calling the book “Caddie’s Game” as opposed to “Raggy Maggie”, which is the name of the book in the UK. The new title makes perfect sense, once you know the story, and I think the cover looks fantastic. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been home from the Spill the Ink tour for almost four days now. Those four days, like the tour itself, have gone by in a whoosh, and I’m still getting to grips with getting back to reality.

The tour itself was fantastic fun. Along with Sorrel Anderson (author of The Clumsies) and Kate Maryon (author of Shine), I visited 8 cities in 5 days, travelling hundreds of miles and speaking to just as many kids. It was tiring, but the number of nice people I met made up for it. As did the fancy hotels and the free food and drink.

Signing books in Liverpool. Ran out of stock!

The events themselves were very varied, covering well off and less well off areas, big groups and small. The more I did, the more I found myself enjoying them, and I was really just hitting my stride when the tour came to an end in Scotland. Still, it was very nice to get home to the family, although I’m already getting ready for my next mini-tour – in Orkney, this time – later in June.

One of the nicest surprises of the tour was when Tom Roberts – someone I got to know via Twitter – turned up at the Birmingham event. It was great to finally be able to meet him in person, and I was dead chuffed when he presented me with this…

Raggy Maggie's VERY cross...

It’s my very first piece of fan art, depicting Caddie and Raggy Maggie, the terrifying terrible twosome who plague Kyle in the second Invisible Fiends book. I absolutely love it, and will be framing it and putting it up on the wall.

Must go catch up with work now, but will be back later with more tour-related tales.

Next week, I’ll be setting off on an 8 city UK tour, with fellow HarperCollins authors, Kate Maryon and Sorrel Anderson. Don’t believe me? Check out the poster below.

See? Told you.

As well as the lovely posters, the good people at HarperCollins Children’s Books have set up a blog, where everyone on the tour – and I mean everyone – will be posting updates, letting the world know how it’s all going. You can follow the action at SpilltheInkBooks.com, as well as here on BarryHutchison.com and on my Twitter feed.

Hoping to put up a new video blog tonight, but it’s taking forever to upload to YouTube and it has failed the last three times. If it doesn’t go this time I’m calling it a night before I smash something valuable with something very heavy.

Just back from three hectic days at the Turriff Book Festival, where I was running six (count ‘em, six) events. The events took place in schools and in the excellent Turriff Library, and I had great fun speaking to the kids, meeting the festival organisers, and scoffing cake.

It’s always nice to meet people who are as passionate about children’s books as I am, and Marion and the other organisers of the festival were definitely that. All involved genuinely care about getting kids reading, and long may they continue to receive the funding to do what they do.

While at the festival, I met Alexander Gordon Smith, author of – among other things – the Furnace series. We didn’t get much time to chat, but from the few minutes we had to chat it was clear we have a lot in common, including our love of writing, our fondness of skipping off work to play the PlayStation, and our tendency to carry large, stuffed animals with us at all times…

Back row (L to R) Barry, Gordon. Front row (L to R) A giraffe and a horse

Before I left, we managed to get a photo taken to mark the historic meeting.

First up, HAPPY STAR WARS DAY! May the Fourth be with you all.

Now…

Two days ago – Sunday 2nd May – was the 8th birthday of my son, Kyle. Like me, Kyle’s a bit of a video games fan, and he decided he wanted a birthday cake in the shape of Sackboy, the main character in the PS3 game, Little Big Planet.

Unfortunately, you can’t just pop out and buy a cake shaped like Sackboy, largely because pretty much nobody has the first clue who or what Sackboy is – or, at least, nobody apart from the people who own Little Big Planet. As a result, Sackboy cakes do not exist.

Now, being naturally lazy, I’d have just gone to Tesco and had a picture of Sackboy printed on icing and slapped on a Madeira cake. Bosh, job done.

But Kyle’s mum, Fiona, had other ideas. Somehow, in between looking after Kyle (then 7 years old), Mia (8 months) and me (32), she found time to whip up this…

The world bit at the bottom was a bit of an afterthought, but doesn’t the cake look fantastic? What’s more, he looks fantastic despite the fact I accidentally took a big chunk out of his arm, and Fiona had to patch him up with a dusting of cocoa powder. Whoops!

I almost felt bad sliding the sharp, steel blade of the knife into the poor little blighter’s smiling, unsuspecting face, but man, it was worth it. That was one tasty face.

In other news, I made a return visit to Banavie Primary School today to speak to the kids and sign a lot of books. One girl there had read Mr Mumbles several times, and tells me it’s her favourite book in the world.

Eat that every other author ever!

Just a quick post tonight to belatedly announce the winner of the signed copy of Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles. I was supposed to randomly select the winner on Tuesday, but … um … I forgot.

Anyway, I now have randomly drawn a winner, using the age-old names in a hat technique, and the winner is Joanne B.

Thanks to all those who commented and took part in the competition. I’ll be running more giveaways soon, so maybe your luck will be better next time.

Right, it’s been a looooong day. Off to put my feet up. Next week I’ll be beginning a month crammed full of events, workshops and a tour, but more details of that in the next post.

As mentioned yesterday, I miscounted where we were in the countdown to blog post 250, so I said I was going to stick another post in so the countdown didn’t actually land us on post 249. I had planned just to chuck out any old rubbish about how I’d spent my Sunday (eating ice lollies and playing Frisbee, if you must know), but then I found something much, much more worthwhile to tell you about.

Jonny Duddle, the artists behind the Invisible Fiends covers, has recently started a blog of his own. One of his first posts is about the development of the Invisible Fiends ‘look’, and it includes some sneaky peeks at his first few attempts at the cover design.

It’s interesting stuff, and you’ll be able to see some more of Jonny’s fantastic artwork on the site, so don’t waste your time hanging about here reading about wasps an’ that – go check it out.

Jonny Duddle’s Mr Mumbles post.

Caddie watched us, unblinking. She lurked in the shadows, half concealed. I was just able to make out Raggy Maggie’s porcelain head poking out of a pocket on the front of her dress. From here it almost looked like the doll was smiling.

She took a sudden step closer. The shadows fell away and I realised her white dress was stained all over with streaks of blood.

Invisible Fiends: Raggy Maggie – published 5th August 2010. Click the cover to pre-order it now!