Better Get Ready For The CAKES IN SPACE!

Sorry for the long blog silence - I was away all last week, mainly in West Sussex and Hampshire, where sarah, Sam and I caught up with some old friends and also visited the Weald and Downland Open-Air Museum and the HMS Victory and Mary Rose at Portsmouth - both well worth a trip.


Now I have a few days at home before I head off to the Edinburgh International Book Festival to join Sarah McIntyre for the launch of our second book together...

Cakes in Space is the story of Astra, who is travelling to her new home on a far-off planet. Everyone on her spaceship has been put into cryogenic sleep for the 199 years it will take to get there, but half way through the journey Astra wakes up to discover that all sorts of things are going wrong, and that she's the only one awake to put them right. There are robots...

All illustrations by Sarah McIntyre

...aliens...

and, of course, CAKES - scary futuristic ones with fangs and bad attitudes...

It was partly inspired by wanting to see how Sarah M would handle all the tech (she's very good at drawing vehicles and machines), partly by some cute alien doodles she once did, and partly by that idea of being the only person awake, moving around the house (or spaceship) while everyone else is still asleep - which is a big deal when you're small, I think. Hopefully it will appeal to people who like SPACE or CAKES, which is basically everyone, right? And it should be starting to appear in bookshops ANY DAY NOW...

We had a test run of our new Cakes in Space show at Nine Worlds last week - thanks to everyone who came, and bought copies of the books afterwards.  In Edinburgh we'll be appearing on Friday 22nd August as part of the schools programme, and then doing a public performance on Saturday morning - so if you're anywhere near Charlotte Square please come and see us! Booking details here.

And if you're not, we'll be doing a London launch at Daunt Books in Marylebone on September 13th...

...and appearing at Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival on September 20th, and the Manx LitFest on the Isle of Man on the 26th/27th September (the schedule is still to be confirmed, I think).

Photo: Michael Thorne

And speaking of Budleigh Salterton, there's a campaign in progress to save the public library there. Sarah McIntyre and I were meant to be recording a video message about it while we were at Nine Worlds in our space gear, but we were so nervous about our event that we FORGOT. But Sarah appears here, along with lots of other famous faces.




CAKES IN SPACE is published by OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS and available from good bookshops for just 8.99 of your Earth Pounds.

Seawigs in Edinburgh

Sarah McIntyre and I will be doing a whole bunch of events this autumn to promote our new book Oliver and the Seawigs...

 Tickets have just gone on sale for our first show, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. It's an appropriate venue, because that's where I first met Sarah, back in 2009, little suspecting that we would end up working together.  Edinburgh is a great festival, and there will be loads of other writers and illustrators to see there as well as us, so check out the full programme. (But we'll be THE BEST, of course! )

Forthcoming Appearances in Torquay & Edinburgh

I'll be at Torquay Library on 5th July, talking about my books in an event scheduled to tie-in with the opening of a Science Fiction exhibition at Torbay Museum...  Which I guess means I'll be focusing on Larklight, Mortal Engines and the Fever Crumb books, though I expect Goblins will also get a mention.

And on 12th August I'll be doing two events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival: a talk focusing mainly on Goblins, and a panel event about tackling 'writer's block'.  Tickets for the festival go on sale on 29th June.