The Black Angel Rides Again

A few years ago I wrote a piece about Roger Christian's legendary short film The Black Angel.  The film has been 'lost' for most of the thirty-four years since its release, but - good news !- there is now a restored print. It premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival in the US recently, and will be screened as part of the Glasgow Film Festival on 27th February. I can't make it, unfortunately, but it looks as if there are plans to release it via Netflix and ITunes next year (so I have a whole year in which to find out how Netflix works).

Here's a more detailed article about The Black Angel from Ars Technica.

Forthcoming Events and Girls Heart Books

Nearly a month without social media, who'd have thought it possible?

Actually I cheat a bit, because I look at Facebook sometimes, and I'm still posting Instagrams. I mostly post Dartmoor landscapes on Instagram, which tend to pick up six or seven likes if I'm lucky, but my most popular Instagram ever, with a hipstertastic 13 likes, was this view of part of my bookcase... (?)

Anyway, I've been glad of the extra time that's been freed up by abandoning Twitter, because I seem to be working on five different books at the moment; I'm writing the third Reeve & McIntyre adventure and another thing, checking through proofreader's comments on the third Goblins book, Goblin Quest (to be published this spring), illustrating Kjartan Poskitt's new book for Faber and Faber (more on that soon), and looking through the layouts for Reeve & McIntyre 2, Cakes in Space - it's always great to see Sarah's illustrations start to come together, and you can see a sneak peek of some of them on her blog.

Photo: That Sarah McIntyre

What I should be doing, of course, is practising the Sea Monkeys song on my ukelele, because Sarah McIntyre and I will be back on the road again very soon. We're appearing on 4th February at the 'Joy of Reading' day at the University of Hertfordshire, where we'll be talking to children from local schools. Then on 16th February we'll be playing the Royal Festival Hall in London, as part of the Imagine Festival - we'll be in the Clore Ballroom at 3pm, and available for signing etc afterwards.  There will be lots of other authors and illustrators appearing throughout the week, too, so if you're in London do check out the Imagine section on the Royal Festival Hall website.


Also, I've been asked to do some guest posts for Girls Heart Books, and you can see the first of them here...

There's A Shark In The Bath!

Another new year, another new look... I'm not supposed to be on the internet at the moment, but I've just popped back in a silly hat to celebrate the launch of Sarah McIntyre's new picture book, There's A Shark In The Bath, published by Scholastic.

It may be a bit young for most readers of this blog, but if you have small friends and relations, I think There's a Shark in the Bath will go down well. Sarah has done lots of picture books before, but this is the first time she's written her own story as well as drawing the pictures.

As you'd expect, it's fast, funny and very well told, and (although I obviously wouldn't tell her this for fear of making her big-headed) the pictures are wonderful.  There's lots more about it over on her blog, including this article on how to make your own Shark book.

The shark hat suits Sarah rather better...

(Oi, McIntyre, that's enough sharks, get back to illustrating our books!)