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.

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