Mortal Engines on Kindle!

Following the news that Mortal Engines, Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain are now available as e-books, I can announce that the Kindle versions are now available from Amazon.  Here's a link to them on Amazon.co.uk.  For U.S. readers who want to download it from Amazon.com I should point out that, like the e-books, these are the UK editions - but that just means they have quaint ol' English style spellings and Grike is called Shrike; they're otherwise pretty much identical to the U.S editions, which will be released in paper and electronic formats sometime next year.

Well it won't be in colour, obviously,
 but this makes a better illustration...

Oddly enough, the Philip Reeve Kindle page on Amazon.com features the Larklight books, the Mortal Engines books, Fever Crumb and...  China's Guilin, Guangxi and Beyond by Simon Forster.  I have no idea why.  But it's a good enough excuse to link to Sarah McIntyre's travel comic of her recent trip to China.

My Toby Frost Interview, and a Gnomadic Librarian

My other blog, The Solitary Bee, has stirred from its near-permanent hibernation to host a conversation between myself and Toby Frost, author of the Space Captain Smith books, which combine interstellar high adventure with Very Silly Jokes.  Read more HERE...

Also, although I never, never, never Google my own name or read reviews, I just accidentally discovered that New Zealand blogger The Gnomadic Librarian is promising to do a short series of posts about the Mortal Engines books.  She seems to like them so far, touch wood...

News of the WOME*

*or 'World Of Mortal Engines'

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you may already know this, but e-book versions of the first four Mortal Engines books are now available, at least in the UK (U.S editions and a Kindle version are still being prepared).  Here's a link to them on the Waterstones website.

U.S actor and friend of the WOME Jeffrey Lamar has sent me a link to his page on Audiobook Creation Exchange, where he reads the opening of Mortal Engines as one of his sample pieces.  I hate listening to my own stuff, but I enjoyed Jeffrey's dramatic take on it, and I think his American accent rather suits it.   If you're an author or publisher looking for someone to voice an audiobook, take note!

It's good to see that Julia Zhuvleva's superb Mortal Engines animation has now had over 1000 views on YouTube - partly, I think, because my recent post about it was picked up by my favourite SF/Fantasy/horror/comics/RPG blog HeroPress.  HeroPress has since died and regenerated Dr Who style as I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters.  Long may it thrive in its new incarnation.

Mortal Engines Moves!

Thanks to Alex Wilkinson for alerting me to this treasure from YouTube: an animated version of the opening sequence of Mortal Engines.  It's all the work of Julia Zhuravleva who is currently studying at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (aka VGIK).  I hesitate to call it 'fan art', but I must stress that this was done as a personal project for part of her course: it has no commercial element, and is nothing to do with the long-rumoured Mortal Engines movie...  but until there is an official Mortal Engines movie, this will do very nicely.  I was startled to see that it's Julia's first attempt at animation. The characters' gestures and Tom's facial expressions are beautifully observed, and the story unfolds clearly and simply without a single line of dialogue.  It will leave you wishing there was more!  (It's worth watching full screen, or at least on YouTube, where it's slightly bigger).

Julia's Deviantart portfolio contains several 'explications': storyboard-like sequences which illustrate some of the key scenes in the book and give a tantalising idea of what a straight adaptation of the story would look like.  It's all done in a very clean and uncluttered style that's miles away from my own,  yet somehow these simple, straightforward images come uncannily close to what I imagined.  Julia must know the book like the back of her hand.  She has Valentine and Miss Fang to a 'T', and although hypothetical-movie-Hester isn't as ugly as book-Hester (nobody would want to watch it if she was) there is something right about her just the same.  Meanwhile, the scenes of Shrike wading through the sunken town, the balloon leaving Airhaven, the pirates fleeing Tunbridge Wheels, and Tom looking down on Batmunkh Gompa are just how I saw them while I was writing.  All right, so Chrysler Peavey's monkey seems to have turned into a cat, but who cares?  Part of the pleasure of  encountering other people's images of the book is they give me a chance to see it through new eyes.   These make me feel as if I've just discovered the world of Mortal Engines all over again...

Ahhhh!

Eeeek!

Wooooohooo!


All images and video © Julia Zhuravleva

Mortal Engines Drawings

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It's always nice to learn that one of my books has inspired somebody to draw or make something of their own, so I'm planning to post some Mortal Engines inspired work here over the next few days.  To begin with, here are some drawings which arrived from Oisín Hennessy last week.  They look a bit like conceptual drawings for a movie. I was particularly taken with the detailed imaginings of MEDUSA and ODIN and their respective control panels.

All images © Oisín Hennessy

Gollarks at MCS, Luncheon at the Jam Factory

It's been a funny old week, so this is a rather late account of my adventures in Oxford on Monday, where I'd been invited to take part in Magdalen College School's annual Literary Festival.

Here is an Eager Throng clutching its tickets and waiting for the event to begin...

...and here is Alex, who introduced me in splendid style.  I read a bit from Mortal Engines and Scrivener's Moon,   talked about where the ideas came from, and then tried out reading something which I'd written on the train up that very morning, and which I hope will turn out to be the opening pages of a new book - more on this in future blogs.

And this is me, doodling a Traction City before the audience arrived.  I've started doing more drawings in my events lately, but most of them tend to be done at high speed and a bit sketchy, so I took some advice from top illustratrix Sarah McIntyre and knocked out something a bit more finished first so that if the school wanted to keep it I wouldn't be too ashamed to think of it hanging on their library wall.

There were lots of books to sign afterwards, and about half way through someone asked me if I'd draw a Gollark in their copy of Mortal Engines. (If you don't know what a Gollark is you need to read some of Kjartan Poskitt's cracking Murderous Maths books: lots of my audience at MCS had, and good for them.)  Anyway, that opened a veritable floodgate of Gollarks, and the book collectors of the future are going to be very perplexed as to why so many copies of Mortal Engines and Scrivener's Moon have portraits of chaps like this one on the title page...

It was a great event, and at a lovely venue, so many thanks to librarian Deborah Gordon and all the MCS staff who helped to organise it and made me feel so welcome.  Afterwards, I met my friends George and Jen for Thai curry (which seemed appropriate, as Oxford was about as hot as Bangkok on Monday evening).  Then on Tuesday Sarah McIntyre herself arrived, along with her Scottish Auntie, and we went for lunch at the Jam Factory.  Despite its name, there was no actual jam to be found there, but the food was very nice and any lingering disappointment at this lack of fruity preserves was more than made up for by the arrival of our favourite writer, Geraldine McCaughrean.  Geraldine was telling us about a five hour (!) storytelling event which she'll be doing at the Pop-Up Festival in London's Coram Fields this coming Sunday: the programme is full of things I'd like to see (there are Moomins!) so if you're in the Great Metrop. this weekend it should be well worth a look.

Meanwhile, here's a picture of me with two of my favourite people in the Whole Wide World.  Hooray for Oxford!