Railhead Updates

It seems like DAYS since I posted the lovely Railhead cover, so here you go:

Railhead: The Sequel

It's still six months until it will be published, but I'm very happy to announce that my next project will be RAILHEAD 2.  I introduce a big new world in the first book, and of course there wasn't really space to explore a lot of the background details, so I'm delighted that OUP are giving me a chance to revisit the Network Empire in a second book, continuing the stories of some of the characters, and introducing new ones.

(The October publication date is for the UK, by the way. I hope to have news of a US date soon.)

Railhead: The Motion Picture

I don't think I've mentioned here that the film rights to RAILHEAD were acquired last year by Warner Brothers. I believe the director currently associated with it is Doug Liman, who made Edge of Tomorrow, one of my favourite SF movies of recent years, so it's in very good hands. As anyone who's been waiting for a Mortal Engines adaptation will know, selling the rights is no guarantee that a movie will actually be made anytime soon, or even at all, but it's still better than not selling the rights, so fingers crossed...

That Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow

RAILHEAD in Bologna

A big thank you to everyone who Tweeted, blogged, or shared the RAILHEAD cover on Facebook. I know it seems a bit early to be making all this song and dance about it (the book won't be published till October), but it's important to let booksellers and reviewers know it's coming, as well as giving advance warning to readers. The OUP rights team are at the Children's Book fair in Bologna this week, where they'll working their socks off trying to sell the rights to publishers from other countries. Tom Gates author Liz Pichon spotted the big RAILHEAD banner on the OUP stand at the fair...

Also a banner for Pugs of the Frozen North, my latest project with Sarah McIntyre. (Check out Liz's amazing, hand-drawn Tom Gates dress!)

Sarah has written an interesting piece for her blog about foreign publication deals, and some of the tricks she uses as a picture book illustrator to make the books translatable. It's well worth reading.

I'm still waiting for the results of OUP's Twitter competition to select 'RAILHEAD Ambassadors'. McIntyre clearly thinks she's in with a chance, and has designed a special ambassadoring hat for herself (plus Ferrero Rocher pin).

Hmmm.

RAILHEAD Unveiled!

Here it is! The cover for my new novel RAILHEAD, created by Holly Fulbrook, Jo Cameron and the design team at OUP.

I'm very pleased with the the way it's turned out. Usually I like a nice picture on a book cover, but RAILHEAD is set on a dozen different planets, and features thieves and androids, exiles and emperors, insects and intelligent trains. That's a lot to sum up in a single image, so I think this approach makes much more sense.

'RAILHEAD' is a word which jumped out of the text at me while I was writing and demanded to be the title, so it's great to finally see it written in large, friendly letters on the cover. After four or five years of work, it's starting to feel like a Real Book.

HOW YOU CAN HELP...

If you have a Twitter account and you'd like to help spread the word about RAILHEAD,  all you need to do is:

1.Tweet an image of the cover and also change your avatar to the cover.

2. Tag your tweet #RAILHEAD

3. Tag @OUPChildrens

Everyone taking part will be in with a chance of becoming a 'Railhead Ambassador,' (!) and winning an invitation to an exclusive London event where I'll be giving the first public reading from the new book.

To download the cover on PC, right click the image and select 'Save Image As'.

On a Mac, hold 'ctrl' and click the image, and select 'Save Image As'.

RAILHEAD will be published in the UK in October 2015. 

Reeve & McIntyre 3: Pugs of the Frozen North

Just back from the Oxford University Press sales conference, where I was talking about Railhead, and also about the new Reeve and McIntyre book, which will be called...

Sarah McIntyre

It's an everyday story of two children and a team of sixty-son a race to the North Pole, and I think it's going to be pug-tastic. The basic idea was Sarah's, and we came up with the story together, as usual. Here's the back cover...

Sarah McIntyre

If you pop over to McIntyre's blog you can see some of the lovely interior artwork, which she's busy working on as we speak. The pugs will be arriving at a bookshop near you this September.

As for Railhead, the cover is still a SECRET, but I read a bit, and it seemed to go down well...

There's lots of other good stuff on the OUP list for this autumn. I particularly liked the look of SUPER HAPPY MAGIC FOREST, by Matty Long. It's a sort of picture-book fantasy quest parody, a full of elaborate, joke-packed pictures like this...

Matty Long

And I also found that Matty Long has drawn a Mortal Engines picture!

Matty Long

The Badness of Badgers

Sam has been really enjoying the latest book from John Dougherty.  I haven't read it yet myself, so I got him to write a few words about it. He says:

"This book is called Stinkbomb and Ketchup Face and the Badness of Badgers. It is about two kids called Stinkbomb and Ketchup Face who live on the island of Great Kerfuffle near the village of Loose Chippings. The island’s king is called King Toothbrush Weasel. The story is about what happens when Stinkbomb thinks badgers have stolen his £10 note. They get into lots of trouble involving sports cars, dustbins, and a frightened chicken.

I thought the book was really enjoyable to read. It had great pictures and the characters were very nicely thought up. My favourite character was Stinkbomb he was very witty and funny. The illustrations were really inspiring. The illustrator was David Tazzyman. I laughed like a kid who's just seen a grown man fall off his bicycle."

The Badness of Badgers is published by OUP, and a sequel, The Quest for the Magic Porcupine will be coming out in August.

Meanwhile, Sarah McIntyre were at the Cambridge Literary Festival this weekend. It turned into a bit of a trip down memory lane, as I found myself outside No. 5 Ainsworth Street, which was the first place I lived when I left home to go to college, and also met writer Helen Dennis, who went to the same Brighton schools as I did (St Lukes and Stanley Deason). Photos and a full report here, along with an excellent Easter Bonnet wheeze.

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! )

Seawigs in Bologna!

Sarah McIntyre and I were at the Bologna Children's Book fair earlier this week, doing our best to promote Oliver and the Seawigs, our forthcoming book with Oxford University Press.  Look, Publisher's Weekly noticed us:

(You can read the full article here. And here's a good article by Elaine McQuade, OUP's Head of Marketing and PR, about what goes on at Bologna and why it's so important for children's publishers.)

As usual, Sarah had already blogged extensively about our adventures by the time I got home, so here's a link to her account, which has loads more pictures of our 'flashy nautical attire', and here's a link to Part Two, which features the sharktastic new picture book she's been doing for Scholastic.

Seawigs on the drawing board, Goblins cross the pond

That Sarah McIntyre has just made a start on the illustrations for our joint project, Oliver and the Seawigs, which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2013.  And she's documenting the whole process over on her brilliant blog, so you know where to look if you want a sneak peek...

And thanks to Alex Hatcher for posting this Barnes & Noble link on my Facebook page.  Apparently if you're in the USA and can't wait to get your hands on a copy of Goblins, you can order one from them.    The cover image is mysteriously blank, but just so you know, it looks like this, and it's selling so fast over here that it might as well be called 50 Shades of Green...