BarryHutchison.com

Like most authors, I find March to be a very busy month – the first couple of weeks especially.

Last week I visited three primary schools around Aberdeen – Glashieburn Primary, Forehill Primary and Hatton Primary – to help them celebrate World Book Day. It was great to meet all the kids, and to see how enthusiastic so many of them were about writing stories. A hefty great whack of them also bought copies of Mr Mumbles for me to sign, which was nice.

This week I have more events – one at a Chatterbooks group in Strathblane, outside Glasgow, and I’ll also be appearing on Thursday at the Aye Write! book festival in Glasgow. After that, on Monday of next week, I zoom off for another event right at the very North of Scotland in Thurso, before coming home to prepare for some more appearances all over the country throughout April, May and June.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. Running events and workshops are quickly becoming one of my favourite bits about this job, but it’s proving more difficult than I thought to squeeze writing time in, too. Good job I got off to such a good head-start with the Invisible Fiends series, or I’d be well behind schedule by now.

Anyway, none of this is any excuse for not updating the blog ages ago. A thousand apologies, and you have my word it won’t happen again.

Very often.

Meanwhile, in other news, over at Tall Tales and Short Stories, Tracy has been giving Mr Mumbles a fantastic write-up. Click here and see it for yourself.

Just getting organised for my two days of launch events, but just realised I’d forgotten to let everyone know that you could win one of fifty copies of Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles just by being my friend on Bebo.

All you have to do is zoom over to Bebo.com/invisible_fiends and add me as a friend. At the end of February, all my friends will be entered into a draw to win one of the free copies. Simple as that!

Right, must dash.

First up, two outstanding reviews of Mr Mumbles have appeared online. You can view them here and here. I haven’t stopped smiling since I read them.

This coming week is going to be a biggie. Tomorrow I hop on a train to Glasgow, ready for two events I’m running in schools on Tuesday. Once those are done, I zip over to Edinburgh, meet up with my editor from HarperCollins – who I haven’t met in person yet – then head to the hotel so I can prepare for another two events on Wednesday.

These will be the first ‘official’ events for Invisible Fiends, so I’ll be talking about how the series came about, reading an extract, and maybe even dropping some hints about what the future has in store for the characters in the story. I’ll also be talking about how I became a writer, and my favourite subject of all – fear!

It should be fun, and I’ll do my best to update the blog and my Bebo page with photos and videos from the events.

It’s a new video blog. Will wonders never cease?!

Rushing about like a lunatic today, preparing for Santa’s arrival tonight, so not much time to write anything. However, let me direct you to a poem I published today on Trapped By Monsters. It should get you in a suitably festive mood.

If you’re a monster, that is.

Read the poem here.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

So yeah, the reason I’ve been a bit remiss in my blog posting duties over the past few days is that I’ve been focused on getting the official website for Invisible Fiends up and running.

Over at InvisibleFiends.com you can now read an exclusive extract from book one, watch the teaser trailer, find out more about the series, and customise your computer desktop with Mr Mumbles’ big ugly face.

Scoot on over to the site and check it out, then feel free to pop back here and leave a comment. I’d love to hear what you think of the new site – and I’d love even more to hear any suggestions you may have on how to improve it.

And yet again I forgot to write a blog post yesterday. I put it down to the time of year, really. What with all the school carol concerts, pressie buying, wrapping, Christmas card writing – not to mention all the actual work I’ve been doing – my sieve-like brain just can’t keep hold of everything. Poor thing.

Anyway, let’s not dwell too much on my inability to carry out simple tasks. In fact, let us never speak of it again.

Instead, I’d like to direct you to a favourite blog of mine. It’s The Young Scottish Book Trust Blog, but don’t let the name fool you – you don’t have to be young or Scottish to appreciate the content. The Scottish Book Trust does brilliant work promoting books and literacy up here in Scotland, and their whole site is well worth a look. For obvious reasons, though, the bit focusing on children’s books is my favourite part.

The blog doesn’t get updated all that frequently (a bit like this one, really) but when it does the quality of the posts make up for the lack of quantity (not much like this one at all). If you have any interest in children’s literature, then the blog is definitely worth adding to your favourites.

Come back tomorrow when I will definitely be making a post – and sharing some exciting news.

I’m delighted to be able to reveal the front cover of the German edition of Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles. Published in February by Gulliver, an imprint of Beltz & Gelberg, the book is going to look like this…

Nice, eh? It takes its inspiration from the UK edition and gives it a twist. I think I still prefer the original cover, but that could be because I love the work of the artist, Jonny Duddle. This one ramps up the realism in the artwork, which may be because it’s being targeted at an older age group in Germany. Whichever you prefer, I’m sure you’ll agree that both covers look fab.

As a special treat for any German speakers reading the blog, if you scoot along to this page you can see the listing on the Beltz & Gelberg site. Scroll down to the bottom and you can click through to read an extract from the book – in German, of course.

For those of you who don’t speak German (me included), have no fear – an English extract will be coming along sooner than you think…

It’s December 16th, which means I’m over half way through my 31 day blogging challenge. So far it has been easy to get something up here every day, but the real difficulties are going to start cropping up towards the end of the month, since that’s where all the action is.

It’s hard to believe there are only 9 days left until Christmas. I’ve been working flat out on a website today (to be revealed next week, all being well) so haven’t had a chance to get a proper blog posting organised. Come back tomorrow, though, when I’ll be talking about some of the fantastic presents that Santa never quite got around to bringing me back when I was but a boy.

Rather than completely waste this blog post, though, I’ll use it to remind you that the Invisible Fiends Group on Facebook is always on the lookout for new members. If you haven’t joined, scoot on over now and sign up.

Go on, then. I’m waiting.

There was probably a time, many years ago, when the people behind Amazon cared about books. Maybe they were passionate about reading, champions of the written word on a mission to spread books to every corner of the globe.

If that was indeed the case, it’s safe to say their mission has long-since been forgotten, in favour of making as much money as humanly possible.

Now, I’m not saying making money is a bad thing by any means, and anyone who helps get books into the hands of readers – Amazon included – are to be praised as loudly and as often as possible. All I’m saying is when I go to Amazon I don’t get that feeling that I’m at a site run by proper hardcore book lovers. It has become just a big online superstore which happens to have books as one of its many (and ever-increasing) product lines.

When I go to the website of my favourite online bookseller, though, it’s a different story. The site is LoveReading4Kids and it has been created by people who clearly do indeed love reading.

As soon as you go to the site you’re greeted by this message:

Reading is fundamental to the development of children and countless research shows the links between good reading skills from an early age and future success in life. However, finding books children want to read or authors that excite them, can be difficult; the choice is daunting and guidance rather thin on the ground.

So, Lovereading4kids has been created to be the ultimate children’s online independent bookstore. It has been created using the experience we have as parents and book lovers, who want our children to read great books.

Now, isn’t that much nicer than “Here are some recommendations for you”, followed by a huge list of products you might be tempted to chuck some of your hard-earned money at?

Take a look at the About Us page, and tell me that one page alone isn’t enough to make you fall in love with the site. The people behind the site (displayed for us all to admire and appreciate on that page) have brought that small indie bookshop ethos to the internet, providing a service far beyond anything Amazon can.

With over 5,000 opening extracts to look through, you almost feel like your casually browsing the shelves of a bookshop. And you can also be safe in the knowledge that any book listed as a featured title has been read and enjoyed by at least one of the team. Unlike on other sites where the featured books are whatever they happen to want to get sold, at LoveReading4Kids the quality of the book is everything, and a recommendation on there is a vouch for a book’s quality.

As if all this isn’t enough of a reason to do all your online book shopping there, LoveReading4Kids also guarantees at least 25% off the RRP of the books they sell, so bargain-spotters should be happy, too.

So go on – don’t hang around here. Get over to LoveReading4Kids.co.uk and see what they’re recommending this week.