Wednesday 19 November 2008

A visit to Walker Books

I was fortunate enough to be invited to have lunch(Burritos) at Walker Books and discuss their forthcoming Graphic Novel and Manga line with Fiona MacDonald and a colleague (whose name escapes me at the moment).

The meal was excellent as I am a Burrito fan (picked that habit up from watching too much Invader Zim - but that is another tale altogether). What really made me excited was the books that they hav lined up for release starting next year. The first book we looked at was Skim a graphic novel written and drawn by Canadian cousins Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. This book has been nominated for a number of literary awards in the USA and Canada and has just been nominated for the Canadian Governor-General's Award which has sparked some controversy, for more details on that click here and here.

The other titles lined up for release include Glister by Andi Watson, Vermonia - a manga series by Studio YoYo. Vermonia will also contain hidden clues within the illustrations to enable readers to take part in an online game. Raven's Gate by Anthony Horowitz is also undergoing the Graphic Novel treatment, Salem Brownstone: All along the Watchtowers a gothic graphic novel by John Dunning and Nikhil Singh and finally (for now anyway) The Legend of Robin Hood.

For more details on Walker Books Graphic Novels click this link

Tuesday 4 November 2008

November is NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. (taken from http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano)

This writing project is a good way of encouraging young writers to attempt to write a novel.

Find out more here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/