2013

No, don’t worry – I’m not going to go all old-year-review on you. Neither am I making any impulsive public new year’s resolutions (it’s far too late for that, thank the gods). However, it can’t hurt to hold a little round-up of my year ahead, as optimistically projected from the dubious vantage point of mid January. What could possibly go wrong? Ooh, I do love a good hostage to fortune!

As mentioned in my last post, the sequel to Dan and the Dead will be published in June. Pretty excited about that. There remain the chapter heading illustrations to do, mostly involving random French Goths. Lots more about this later. Also out at around the same time will be the US edition of Haunters, which is definitely something to be excited about. I still haven’t heard officially about the cover art for that, but I do know that it will be very different to the UK edition, so I’m very much looking forward to comparing. Especially as the UK cover recently received a huge vote of approval. Other co-editions are in the pipeline too, some perhaps for this year.

In picture book mode, Too Many Tickles will be published in the Autumn (Macmillan), with illustrations by Penny Dann. I don’t have any other picture books in the works after this one. Not yet sure if this will be my last for a while, but I haven’t had much picture book shaped inspiration for ages (Too Many Tickles was written at least three years ago), so maybe.

As for new work, I have a half-finished full-length novel to wrestle with, though I’m being pretty cagey about it for now. Also, there’s something rather exciting brewing, but I’m definitely keeping that close to my chest. If it comes off though, get ready for some very colourful posts later in the year.

So, all in all, 2013 holds a lot of promise for me. I hope it’s going to be good for you too.