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Whenever my Cakes in Space co-author Philip Reeve lands his spaceship in London to do an event, we tend to pack in a few more events to make the most of his visit. This week was a busy one! On Wednesday night, we managed to catch a party for The Bookseller magazine at Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross. Then we were off on a train bright and early to visit the Bishop's Stortford Festival of Literature. (Here's a warm-up picture I drew on their flip chart, to add to the prep school library's picture collection.)



Visits are always far better when the kids are prepared. Our first event was in front of hundreds of kids and they'd all read BOTH Oliver and the Seawigs and Cakes in Space! Here's a great drawing of killer cakes by one of the girls in the after-lunch book club meeting:




Dropping in to see the book club between our two big stage events was fun; they sat around us and told us what they liked best about the books and we got to sit and soak it up and eat star-themed cupcakes. Nice!



Here are some of the kids at the end of our second stage event, holding aloft the sea monkeys who joined in so vigourously with the chorus of our Sea Monkey sea shanty.



Huge thanks to the team who made it all happen! We hope lots of kids (and maybe some adults, too!) went away inspired to write and draw stories. From the left, here's fabulous stage technician Martin, festival oganiser Rosie Pike, Lynn Bailey (bookseller from the excellent Norfolk Children's Book Centre) and poet Stewart Henderson, who was also doing events with the kids that day at Bishop's Stortford College prep school. I got to wear my brand-new space dress, created by tailor Esther Marfo.



After signing loads of books, we hustled off to the train and rushed down to London to the Society of Authors headquarters, near Gloucester Road tube station. (Note background nosepicker.)



I'd been wearing the blue hair all day, so I switched over to a headscarf in an attempt at a slightly more grown-up look. Or something like that. (Here's a picture by our event technician, Niall Slater)



Writer, illustrator and illustrious YouTuber Shoo Rayner chaired our session and gave us a great intro and helped with question time. I didn't have any photos from the session so I've raided Twitter:



Philip and I talked about how we got started collaborating on our books with Oxford University Press, and we also talked about working relationships we've had with other people we've made books with. We also talked about writers and illustrators being co-authors, something I wrote about in an article for the Awfully Big Blog Adventure. We even had librarian Joy Court in the audience, who was so wonderfully instrumental recently in changing the Carnegie listings to include the illustrator when the books are illustrated. (Here was my blog post about it, which got constantly edited as the situation changed.) Right at the end of the event, we gave the audience a first-ever public reading of our story The Dartmoor Pegasus.



Big thanks to Jo McCrum and the Children's Writers & Illustrators Group for hosting our talk! It was fun bringing Oliver and the Seawigs to the place where the title and central story idea sprang out of (the acronym CWIG). If you've written or illustrated some books, I definitely recommend joining the Society of Authors; they're our best advocates when it comes to politics, complicated contracts, otherwise-unknown sources of money, and tricky legal things I can barely get my head around. Plus, they do events like this one! You can follow them on Twitter at @Soc_of_Authors.



Thanks to Shoo for being lots of fun and chairing, we had a good laugh with him afterward over dinner. He hosts a YouTube drawing channel, where you can learn how to draw almost more things than you can imagine: check out the Shoo Rayner Drawing channel.

Recently I've been to several state-of-the-industry publishing talks, and they've all focused almost exclusively on eBooks and digital storytelling. At one talk, the speakers were saying it costs something like £50,000 to make a decent app. And during the coffee break, I kept hearing people glumly saying that it was all right for some publishers, but they just couldn't stump up that sort of money, and that they suspected no one will make any money from apps for awhile. I've talked with a lot of sorrowful writers who said they used to be able just to write good stories and make money, and they're feeling left behind. Basically, lots of people who are good at making stories are getting depressed because they can't see a way into this whole new world of books-that-aren't-books because they either don't have a vast amount of digital skills or their publishers aren't willing to invest much money in them. ...But what if eBooks and apps aren't the ONLY way forward? What ELSE might be happening? Does the book have a future only in eBooks or does it have many futures? And what might these be? Are there ways we can branch out into new territories? Let's think creatively, pool our experiences and discuss!

The Society of Authors CWIG committee asked me to come up with another event, and this is a follow up from the Futures for Comics brainstorming I've been doing online (see idea No1, idea No2 and idea No3). But this panel discussion/audience conversation will cover all sorts of different kinds of storytelling for children, not just comics.

These SoA events always sell out, so book this one super-quick!



With Nana Li, Jamie Smart, Gary Northfield and Alex Milway; chaired by Sarah McIntyre

Everyone's talking about eBooks, but what other exciting things are happening in publishing for children: in print, digital media and beyond? What could we make happen? Might books have not just one future but many futures? Join us in looking forward toward new possibilities in storytelling and marketing our work. Bring your ideas!

TUESDAY, 13 NOVEMBER, 6.15 - 7.45pm at the Society of Authors, 84 Drayton Gardens, London SW10 9SB (Nearest tube stations: Gloucester Road, South Kensington) More details on the Society of Authors website.

Some of the authors may bring a few copies of their books to sell on the night, so bring some money if you're keen to get something signed.

Tickets are £10 members, £15 guests (including VAT and refreshments).
To reserve a place, please email Neha Matkar. Cheques should be made payable to the Society of Authors and posted to 84 Drayton Gardens, London, SW10 9SB. Please ensure that you write the event ID 408 on the reverse of the cheque. Alternatively you can telephone 0207 373 6642 to pay by debit/credit card.

And here's our discussion team! (Mentally slot your photo in with these, since we want your ideas, too).


Sarah McIntyre, Gary Northfield, Nana Li, Jamie Smart, Alex Milway

Gary Northfield Both Gary and Jamie Smart played a big part in the media discussion (BBC1, Al Jazeera, The Sun) following The Dandy comic's switch to digital format. With a printmaking background and a long history of small press and self publishing work, Gary's comics have appeared regularly in The Beano, The Dandy, National Geographic Kids Magazine and the Horrible Histories magazine. His book Derek the Sheep featured in Booktrust's Booked Up reading scheme and he writes and draws a weekly strip in The Phoenix comic called Gary's Garden. His latest graphic novel for children, TEENYTINYSAURS, launches with Walker Books this spring.



Jamie Smart: Jamie has spread his talents over many different areas in publishing, including editing and creating self-published books, publishing regular web comics, designing t-shirts, and creating a powerful online presence on Twitter and with insightful blog articles. He writes and draws a regular comics strip for The Phoenix comic called Bunny vs Monkey, and gave The Dandy a fresh look with his vibrant covers and new take on Desperate Dan. His books with Scholastic UK include Find Chaffy and Find Chaffy Now, and for the BBC, Doctor Who: Where's the Doctor?.



Nana Li: Nana works as Illustrator at Moshi Monsters, an online world of adoptable pet monsters aimed at children ages 6-12, with 65 million registered users in 150 territories worldwide. Moshi Monsters also markets related Moshi Monsters magazine, toys, a video game, a music album, books, trading cards and even pasta. Nana is a grand prize winner of Tokyopop's Rising Stars of Manga UK & Ireland and her Manga Shakespeare adaptation of Twelfth Night was nominated for the Sheffield Children's Book Award. She has also contributed to Telling Tales, a fairytale anthology organised by Cambridge-based Sweatdrop Studios.



Alex Milway: Alex is known in the children's book world for thinking creatively about marketing, leading him to found and organise the Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival. He experiments with digital apps, online readers and creating digital soundtracks, as well as leading talks and workshops around the country. Alex likes to mix different formats in his books, which include the Mythical 9th Division series, published by Walker Books, and the Mousehunter trilogy, with Faber & Faber.



Sarah McIntyre: On the committee of the Children's Writers & Illustrators Group, Sarah led a seminar at its recent conference about find inspiration for her work by blogging and engaging with social media. She owes much of the inspiration for her work to indie comics publishing, keeps an active blog and is a frequent sight at book festivals around the country. Her books include You Can't Scare a Princess! with Scholastic UK, Morris the Mankiest Monster and Vern and Lettuce with David Fickling Books and she's currently working on four books with Philip Reeve and Oxford University Press. Her Scholastic picture book, Superkid, with Clare Freedman, launches this spring.

Children's book writer and illustrator conferences are excellent ways of getting to find some of your favourite creators and try on their specs. Can you guess whose specs these are? All shall be revealed...



So a bunch of us from the Society of Authors committee, the children's book part, put on a conference this weekend. Actually, I didn't do much more than go to meetings, show up, help move around some chairs, show people to reception to pick up their room keys, and do a couple talks. I'm not very good at conference planning, it involves way too many logistics and remembering things. But I did draw this little logo image for it:



(You might notice a parallel between the group name, CWIG, and the book I'm working on with Philip Reeve, Oliver and the Seawigs. Yes, the idea for the Seawigs came from a conversation I had with Philip after a CWIG meeting, and I was saying how much I hate acronyms and am always trying to turn them into words. These monkeys will make an appearance, too.)

I ended up doing a lot of drawing during the conference, in the name of taking notes. And when I gave a talk about blogging and social networking, I mentioned that one thing that gets a bit boring to see on the Internet is conference photos showing people standing in rows, or people sitting at tables in conference rooms. So I tried to come up with some alternatives. Here's a CWIG committee meeting we had before everyone else arrived (Enid Stephenson and Nicola Davies are also on the team but just weren't in the room then).



If I have to blog a summary of each session, I'll end up spending two days doing this, so I'll mainly just post images, and give links if anyone else has written up the talks. Here's a rather boring photo of people sitting at a table for the panel on Writers' Websites...



But here's what was ACTUALLY going on, as soon as the camera was put away. (Cameras always lie.)



Oh, and what do you know! Hot Key Books' Sarah Benton has blogged loads of things that were said at the panel and given speaker links, so you can hop over to her blog to read about it. And Katherine Woodfine from Booktrust has blogged it here!

The CWIG conference pulled in some of Britain's best writers, it was awesome. Here's the legendary Geraldine McCaughrean with her god-daughter Teresa Heapy, who was also at the conference as a writer.



And Geraldine spoke on a panel, 'Sequels and Prequels', with Patrick Ness, Charlie Higson and the Guardian's Julia Eccleshare. (My dad will read this and he may not know that song, so, Dad, here's a video of the song reference.)




Patrick Ness and Charlie Higson:


I chaired a panel called 'Glittering Prizes and Literary Festivals' with this fabulous gang: Bath Kid Lit Festival's John McLay, Book It! Cheltenham Festival's Jane Churchill, Observer Associate Editor Robert McCrum and the Southbank Centre's Tamsin Ace, who helps run the Imagine Children's Festival. (Thanks to the wonderful Fiona Dunbar for taking the photo!)



I didn't manage to chair the panel and draw at the same time, but I could see writer and illustrator Shoo Rayner (of Shoo Rayner's Drawing School video fame) doodling me from the front row. Hooray! He didn't let me look until the next day, but I think the sketches are super-fab.


Portrait sketches by Shoo Rayner

I don't know if he made any videos during the weekend, but he brought his recording equipment, just in case. Here he is with his camera and his microphone Fluffy Thing.



We had most of our events in the big main lecture hall at appropriately-named Reading University (sadly, pronounced 'Redding'), in the Henley Business School, but we had two sessions where we could break off and chose to go to a range of smaller events. I'm a fan of the sparky Vivian French, so I went to her talk with Meredith Hooper and Nicola Davies, about researching material on the Internet, and about why it's still valuable for kids to have actual, finite books for doing their research.




Some publishers sent sample copies of new books for us to give out as delegates arrived, and I was pleased as punch to see a teaser pack for my fab friend David O'Connell's upcoming book he's written and illustrated, Monster and Chips. Dave's published loads of indie comics and books, but this is his first book with a larger publisher, Harper Collins, and I don't normally say someone's going to be The Next Big Thing, but with Dave, he totally is The Next Big Thing. Monster and Chips launches on 28 Feb of next year. Oo, I outed Dave on Twitter with these photos and now he's gone and made an explanatory blog post. Hurrah! (Here's a story we did together called Airship, he's the editor of ink+PAPER, the comics magazine to which I recently contributed, and he was one of our comic artists who took part in events at this summer's Pop Up Festival.)



Oo, and look who I saw when I was doing the Meeting and Greeting thing! It's Patrice Aggs, with a copy of The Phoenix comic, with her new strip launching its first episode! Go subscribe to The Phoenix weekly comic magazine, it's FABULOUS. And don't miss Zara's Crown, created by Patrice and her son, John Aggs.



One of the highlights of the festival was a talk by beloved British writer Allan Ahlberg. Even if you don't know anything about children's books, you'll probably have seen or read at least one of his stories, including Each Peach Pear Plum, Peepo! and The Jolly Postman. In America, I grew up reading and loving Burglar Bill and Mr Tick the Teacher.



I didn't manage to write down the names of some of the books he read from, but I got a good look after the talk:



Allan also brought several teddy bears, including Mr Tum:



...whom I kidnapped when everyone else was getting their books signed:



Here's some of the CWIG committee with Mr Tum: Bali Rai, me, our fabulous CWIG chair Helena Pielechaty and Nicola Smee.



We also had a great talk by writer-illustrator friends Jane Ray and Ros Asquith:



I loved seeing some of their early work, including Ros's drawings for 'Magazine for Horses, written by horses... (including Horsoscopes and 'Stallion of the Month'), and this bear by Jane:



Here's Ros with a doodling Ted Dewan.



And Jane at lunch with Eleanor Updale and Kevin Crossley-Holland:



Here are my notes from Kevin's talk:



And we also had a talk by Joe Godwin, Director of BBC Children's TV. I'd drawn so many panel speakers by that time, and I was sitting pretty far back, so I drew a squid instead.



Most of the deletes were human, but we had one small furry canine companion named Lola, who's very clever and can sniff out changes in blood sugar levels.



One more panel, here's Terence Blacker, library campaigner Alan Gibbons, Random House Children's Books MD Philippa Dickinson and Foyles CEO Sam Husain.



And my doodle notes:



Terence is a talented musician and played for us with his music partner Derek Hewlitson at an evening event called Taboo Be Do, which flew very close to the wire and upset some people. It was a walk through the history of songs which just can't be sung anymore, and some people thought it would have been more acceptable if it had been a more academic setting with discussion afterward. And it would have been a bit more academic if we'd held it in the lecture theatre, like we'd originally planned to do. But everyone had been in the theatre all day and were very happy in the bar area with their drinks, so the change of venue gave the event more of a cabaret feel. (No one knew if that would be a good idea, but it was all done with the best of intentions.)



I wasn't quite sure what I thought about all that (and I was way at the back, mucking about drawing pictures with Shoo Rayner).



But Terence joined us later in the bar and played The City of New Orleans for me when I asked, and he and John Dougherty had a great session on their guitars, with a bunch of us singing along. Actually, John brought his guitar to the bar both nights. Here he is, the night before:



I am quite a bad singer, but that didn't stop me from wailing away with the most excellent Sally Nicholls.



It was great seeing some comics people there: Patrice Aggs, Ros Asquith, Ted Dewan, Steve Skidmore, and here's
http://taves.co.uk/Octavia Raitt, whom I met for the first time at Thought Bubble comics festival, at a table with Kristyna Baczynski. She'd heard about the conference through my blog (or Facebook?) and her mum had signed her up for it as a birthday present. How awesome is that? (Thanks, Octavia's mum!)



And a few more photos... Oh, look, it's Malorie Blackman! (And she's as surprised as I am!) John Aggs is just starting to create the artwork for a graphic novel version of her Noughts and Crosses and I CAN'T WAIT to see it.



Steve Skidmore (of The Two Steves) with the Society of Authors' Jo McCrum:



Jo with Nicholas Allan (of The Queen's Knickers):



Jo Cotterill with bookmarks for her group blog Girls Heart Books.



Here's Clare Whitstone! Clare's one of my two editors at Oxford University Press, working on Oliver and the Seawigs.



An Vrombaut and Karen Ball



A big thanks to all the people who made this weekend happen! Enid, Jo, Helena, the CWIG committee (including Michaela Morgan whom I hadn't yet linked), the speakers, Reading University staff, Marilyn Brocklehurst from Norfolk Children's Book Centre and her book shop team, and Jessica Atkinson and Anna Ganley from the Society of Authors, who tweeted the whole conference from @Soc_of_Authors. If you go onto the conference hash tag, #CWIGConf2012, you'll most likely seeing more blog links pop up. And a big thanks to tech guy Mark Taylor, who had some technical hitches to deal with but handled them swiftly and gracefully. It was a big relief having him around.



Hey, another blog post just up! Read an account of the weekend by CWIG Chair Helena Pielichaty here.

Oh, did you guess whose specs I was wearing at the beginning of the blog post? Well, they belong to the fabulous Ted Dewan, whose work you may remember from The DFC comic magazine and whose Bing Bunny is about to come to television screens near you. Keep an eye on this guy!



If you're a published writer or illustrator, do considering joining the Society of Authors. It's the closest thing we have to a union, looks out for and campaigns for issues that affect us, helps out with contracts, and puts on fab events! Membership costs £95 per year, or £68 if you are under 35. Find out more on the Society of Authors website.


Society of Authors door photo by Karen Ball, on her blog here

When the Society of Authors asked me to organise an event and let me choose Science Fiction as the theme (my last theme was comics), I had such fun pulling together this fabulous group of writers for our Worlds of Tomorrow panel. It's the first time the Society of Authors has hosted an SF event and they were very excited! And other bloggers have beat me to the write-up: check out fab blogs by writers Jeff Norton, here, and Jonathan Green, here, and if you're on Facebook, Candy Gourlay has posted a bunch of photos (many of which I have nicked for this post). To be honest, I was so caught up in hosting the event that it's all a bit of a blur now and I've forgotten most of what we said, but these bloggers took good notes.



So last Tuesday, I zipped up my space boots and joined the panel in front of a big crowd at Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road. Oo, I was not the only one in interesting footwear! Who could these belong to?


Photos by Candy Gourlay


...Yes, Queen of curious gadgetry and small press Kim Lakin-Smith and this year's Costa Award winner, post-apocalyptic-western writer Moira Young! Kim and Moira both have fascinating histories if you look around the Internet; here's Moira on BBC News, talking about her beginnings in comedy, tap dancing and opera, and how breaking both wrists turned her into a writer.


Photo by Candy Gourlay

Thanks to Philip Reeve for being a fabulous event host! Here you can see him lobbing good questions at the panel.


Photo by Candy Gourlay

And here I am with good chum Steve Cole, who's written a zillion books, taught me lots about doing events, and really understands how kids' minds work. (He's wearing the Jamie Smart t-shirt I gave him for his 40th birthday.)


Photo by Candy Gourlay

And some of our lovely books! It made me laugh, thinking that I could be part of an SF panel because I have a book about a princess going into space. And we pretty much stuck to talking about books for young adults, or 'Ya' books, as Philip called them. But I was chuffed to have someone come up to me later and say that she'd been hoping we'd also talk about SF in picture books, so perhaps that is a good subject for another event.



Jared Shurin and his partner Anne Perry run The Kitschies awards, and Jared was able t

I've never tweeted a whole talk before, but last night I got my twitter finger out and had a go at it: School Visits for Beginners, at the Society of Authors, part of a series of talks run by its Children's Writers & Illustrators Group.



I thought the talk would be a good things to share because a lot of my friends who have just started making books don't realise that sometimes you can actually earn more doing events than you can by getting the book published. Getting a book published doesn't usually give you enough money to live on, and write more books, so events are important.

Of course, that's aside from the fact that visiting writers and illustrators get kids WAY more interested in reading books, when they discover they don't come out of machines at the press of a button, but are actually written by people. (Oh wait, Miss, does that mean I can write a book, too? Why, yes it does...) Helena Pielichaty said that only 10% of schools invite writers and illustrators to visit, so there's loads of room for growth.

The room was full, and here's our lovely panel: CWIG organiser Helena Pielichaty, Dianne Hofmeyr and fellow CWIG committee member Bali Rai. Oh, and just for a bit of location context: some lovely cherry blossoms outside the Society of Authors headquarters in Kensington, and the painting of someone beardy who is not Philip Ardagh but might as well be.



Now there's a record of a great deal of the things said at the meeting over on the #CWIG hashtag on Twitter. (You don't need to use Twitter just to have a look.) And people are still adding their thoughts and tips for school visits on the #SchoolVisits hashtag. Go have a peek!

Most importantly, we REALLY NEED 40 more people to book for the CWIG Conference by 10 April! I know it's not cheap, and I saw on the list that most of the people who are coming are pretty big names in children's books. But that means if you CAN stump up the money, you'll be hanging out with the best in the business, and if you're serious about a career in making children's books, the networking and learning potential is enormous. Go book now, don't delay!



Twitter's very ephemeral; our tweets will drift down the list until they disappear. So here are a few from last night to give you a taster of what was going on. It was great seeing how many people jumped in, who weren't able to be physically present at the meeting, we had quite a good Twitter following! And some writers and illustrators were able to add their two bits:



I couldn't help laughing at the cheeky ones from Philip Ardagh; almost every time I'd tweet, he'd come back with something:



And some more from the night! (When I tweeted, I used @balirai, @helenapielichat, etc, to report who was talking.) Helena has written an article on the Society of Authors blog about school visits, which you can read here. Lots of useful

Hey, I did a little logo thingie awhile back for the Society of Authors. It has monkeys in it.



But what it means is that there's a VERY EXCITING CONFERENCE coming up! If you work in children's books, want to brush shoulders with a lot of other people who do it for a living, get tips from people in the know, and listen to inspiring talks, book your tickets for the weekend of 14-16 Sept for this year's Conference of the Children's Writers & Illustrators Group. And here are just some of the fabulous people you'll get to hang out with! (How many can you name?)



So here we go, here are the main speakers: Allan Ahlberg, Ros Asquith, Parul Bavishi (Tamarind), Terence Blacker (The Independent), Marilyn Brocklehurst (Norfolk Children's Book Centre), Gillian Cross, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Nicola Davies, John Dougherty, Philippa Dickinson (Random House), Julia Eccleshare (The Guardian), Megan Farr, Vivian French, Alan Gibbons, Joe Goodwin (BBC Children's Controller), Charlie Higson, Meredith Hooper, Sam Husain (Foyles), Catherine Johnson, Sophie Lording (Hay Festival), Michaela Morgan, Geraldine McCaughrean, Gillian McClure, Sarah McIntyre, Robert McCrum (The Observer), John McLay (Bath Festival), Patrick Ness, Kate Paice (A&C Black), Helena Pielichaty, John Pilkington, Susan Price, Bali Rai, Jane Ray, Celia Rees, Rachel Rooney, Nicola Smee, Nicola Solomon and live music by Something Happene.

And then there will be chances to pick some of these parallel sessions! You can see the schedule here.

WIKI vs Non Fiction: The Final Showdown? - Viv French and Meredith Hooper discuss with Nicola Davies why knowledge needs a narrative packing and why search engines ultimately don't cut the mustard.

Midlist Crisis - Your editor is supportive and your agent is reassuring. You blog for Britain and Tweet for Thailand yet your backlist is going out of print faster than you can say 'ISBN' and finding one of your titles in a bookshop is a minor miracle. Income is risible. Come and share your woes with Helena Pielichaty and help think up some solutions.

Teenagers - They Really Aren't From Another Planet - Bali Rai can teach you how to connect with your readers covering KS3, reluctant readers, the classic and contemporary books to inspire classes, and what he has learnt from being teen patron for Booktrust.

*THIS ONE'S ME!* >>> Sarah McIntyre's Love Affair with the Internet How do you turn blogging and social media away from being a time consuming chore into something exciting that inspires your own work? Writer and illustrator Sarah McIntyre will take you on a fun tour of her own web-based adventures and share tips on using the web to reach the wider world, build warm, real-life community and, of course, sell books.

The Art of the Soluble: doing research - How do I ferret out what I need to know? Help! I want to write this story, but I don't know anything about the background/foreground/period/country (well, anything, really). How can I avoid making a fool of myself? John Pilkington and Gillian Cross discuss the many different wa

Hey, guess what, it's time for COMICS PEOPLE TO STORM THE SOCIETY OF AUTHORS!!! And you authors and illustrators, STORM THE COMICS WORLD! Oh, YES.



There have always been people in comics who've been part of the Society of Authors;
Patrice Aggs and Ros Asquith, just to name two, have been members for ages. But there's a real disconnect between British writers and British comic creators that's just begging to be bridged so more creativity can flourish. A few months ago, I went to a SoA event about poetry, where people were saying how hard it is to get poetry published and to get young people reading it, and I suggested they approach manga artists about collaboration, since I thought the pace of certain poems and manga layouts might complement each other. The poets were suddenly electrified and immediately wanted to know more about manga and the comics scene, and how they might be able to connect. So since I'd just joined the CWIG committee, the children's book branch of the SoA, I said I'd organise a comics event, hopefully the first of many comics events hosted by the SoA. And I asked Paul Gravett, head of Comica Festival and generally the person who knows most about comics, if he'd help out, so we're making it a joint SoA and Comica evening.

I hope you can come along! Here are the details:

Thinking Outside the Box: new publishing opportunities in comics and graphic novels aimed at children and young adults

London: Tuesday 13 September 2011: Doors open 6.15 for 6.30 start, tickets £10



HOSTS

Paul Gravett is a London-based freelance journalist, curator, lecturer, writer and broadcaster, who has worked in comics publishing and promotion since 1981. Be sure to keep an eye on all the latest Comica Festival events.

Sarah McIntyre is a member of the Society of Authors and writes and illustrates comics and children's books, including Vern and Lettuce, Morris the Mankiest Monster, You Can't Eat a Princess! and When Titus Took the Train. She's currently launching You Can't Scare a Princess! and blogs almost every day.

GUEST SPEAKERS

Lizzie Spratt is a commissioning editor of children’s books and graphic novels at Walker Books. She left Bloomsbury in 2008 to help Walker develop a list of graphic novels and has gone on to publish a range of titles for all ages, including adaptations of Anthony Horowitz’s multi-selling Alex Rider spy novels, Joann Sfar’s version of The Little Prince translated by Sarah Ardizzone, stories from British cartoonist Andi Watson, as well as noir fantasy Salem Brownstone: All Along the Watchtowers by John Harris Dunning and Nikhil Singh, which was nominated for the 2011 Kate Greenaway Medal.

Ben Sharpe is commissioning editor of The Phoenix Comic, a weekly 32-page, full colour comic magazine, set to rise early in 2012, with offices based in Oxford. He led The DFC weeky comic magazine as commissioning editor until recession and the parent company pulled the plug, but the vision has never died, and support by an anonymous investor means the new-and-improved project h

On Saturday I was the tea lady and ran around buying biscuits for the one-day conference of CWIG, the children's book division of the Society of Authors. I'm sure lots of the writers will give amazing descriptions of the talks, which were excellent, but I got a bit obsessed with the capitals on the columns down the nave at the venue, a church called St James the Less. I also rather like the name, it's kind of funny to think about a lesser James walking around, slightly shame-faced. This capital was different than all the rest and had a leaf design that also looked a bit like crouching panthers.





I also did some doodles of the speakers. Here are The Two Steves, Steves Barlow and Skidmore, who have been running around the country for years doing events and had lots of helpful tips, such as how not to get on the bad side of the school dinner ladies.





Tony Bradman, Steve Barlow, Steve Skidmore



Here's a quick poster I made for the front door:


Photo nicked off Karen Ball's blog

We had an inspiring and very funny talk by Frank Cottrell Boyce:





Here's Eleanor Updale, who chaired the first panel:




Eleanor Updale, Helena Pielichaty



Here's Helena Pielichaty and me, she's also a newbie on the CWIG committee.



I forgot to take a photo of the noticeboard I drew, but I just nicked it off Karen Ball's blog entry about the day. (Do read it if you'd like a more writerly impression of the day.)

Karen Ball stood up to say that if you're interested in writing for children and want to join the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, you can submit work to the third Undiscovered Voices anthology>. I remember that several people in the first two had some good success following their inclusion, including getting good agents and book deals. Details here.

There was some good SCBWI representation, including Sue Eves, Miriam Halahmy and Anne-Marie Perks.

Sue Eves & Mi