I’m now living in Amsterdam in the Netherlands where my wife has a new job.

I woke this morning up to find an enormous crane outside my office window.  I don’t think the pictures do it justice, although I’ve montaged them together to show the size of the thing. It looks like they are building some sort of roof terrace on top of the house opposite.

The best thing about my new office is that it has a hoist. The building was once a warehouse, so this was used to haul up goods. It looks like some sort of medieval torture device!

JM

This is the very last creative task associated with Space Race, which has turned out to be quite an intriguing journey all-in-all. I’ve certainly had to learn some new skills – I’ve recorded an album, designed and constructed a robot monkey, built a nine foot tall rocket (with help from my Dad), shot a music video and edited it, and all in the name of literature!

The website has been a great way to pull all of these different strands together, but more than anything, I hope the online content helps to make the book as fascinating as possible… and fun, too. My fave is Barry the robot’s music video.

Here’s a very short film of me recording the music, just to give a taste of what I’ve been doing!

The new website should go live in a couple of days, which is very exciting! I’ve tried to make it look as much like the book as possible. I’ll post a message here once it goes live.

Steve Friendship and his editor Jade of Large Scale Films have been busy editing together the 5 short web documentaries (AKA the webisodes) about me, my work and some background on The Great Space Race. These are up and running and are definitely worth a look CLICK HERE. I recommend webisode 5 for any fans of the illustration in the Guild Trilogy

I’ve also written and recorded a music album to go with the The Great Space Race, and have therefore had to learn the dark arts of sound engineering through a process of hit and miss. It’s been lots of  fun and I hope it will help build the background ‘world’ of Ace, the narrator in the book (he plays in a band). I’ve set up a MySpace page for the band, and uploaded 4 tracks. You can hear them HERE

Today, I have the last piece of work to finish off – a music video to go with one of the music tracks. This features the robot monkey called Barry, the hero of the story. I’ve recorded it, so now I just need to edit it. Here’s a pic from the video shoot I recorded last week:

My new writing shed is now up and running. Here’s a pic, so you can see where I work:

I’ve lined the insides to keep the thing warm, put a ceiling in, dug up the garden so I could run a power cable out to it… you get the idea. Despite all this, it’s been such a cold May here in the UK that my computer screen refuses to work first thing in the morning until I’ve warmed the place up. Took me a bit to figure that out.

The good news is I have almost completed the music for The Great Space Race. This has been such a wheeze to do, though it saps so much time! I need to write just one more tune, record some live drum tracks, then do the final mix.

I also need to put some whacking great guitar feedback overdubs on. Yeah! This means finding a remote location and turning up the volume to 10 (or is that 11?) so I can record the results. I can’t do this where I live because there would be complaints! I therefore need to speak nicely to my brother who lives in the countryside. I’d like to get it all finished by the middle of June ready for release. More news as and when… the album does however Rock with a capital R.

In the meantime, I’ve just finished editing the rocket build film.

I really hope you like it: CLICK HERE TO VIEW

March has been incredibly complicated – I really want to write it up properly, so a full blog post soon.

JM

I’ve been away in Mutters, Austria learning to ski! Yikes. My first time, and for the first few days it was pretty terrifying. Great fun, though, and a really beautiful location.

So two weeks away from my desk eating far too much food and trying not to injure myself, but now I’m back, and working hard on book 5.

I’ve lots of new ideas on the first 10,000 words and the general structure of the book, and have been editing and refining ahead of sending it to my literary agent next week for her thoughts.

So I’ve added lots, deleted lots, and generally done what one has to done to a first draft – been a little bit brutal and cruel. The first thing I did on my return was to cut out the waffle as much as I could. I’ve been sharpening the chapter endings, and strengthening the fear factor as well. It’s a big plot, though. Should be good.

The other news (via Walker Books marketing department) is that it looks like I shall be attending quite a few UK literary festivals over the coming summer to promote The Great Space Race. More information to follow when I get some dates.

I’ve also been writing tracks for the Space Race album – more loud guitars and harmonica. This doesn’t feel like work, but it is really, and it certainly breaks up the day from all that first draft editing.

I did quite a considerable amount of work on the plot for book 5 last summer, but the extraordinary amount of illustration required for The Great Space Race swamped me, so it all feels fresh, exciting and new.

So there’s a lot of ground work already done. I also have some notes from my literary agent, Clare, who has an exceptionally good eye for knowing what’s working and what’s not. I tend to listen hard to what Clare has to say, because she will be trying to sell the book shortly. Clare, I should point out, was the first person to believe in the Guild Trilogy and thought it was worth trying to get published. That’s why I care very much what she thinks.

One of Clare’s suggestions was to move the story into the first person (as in -  ‘I did this, I did that’), an idea I’d toyed with because I’d had such fun writing the Space Race that way. The Guild Trilogy is, of course, written in the third person (as in – ‘he did this, she did that’).

Writing in the first person gives the whole script a very different and somehow more immediate feel. Lots of authors use the third person because it allows you to see different points of view from the various different characters. With the first person, you get a single point of view, so are very much on one person’s journey.

With the renewed energies of 2010, I have launched forth. I have a plot structure through to the end (very important), and have written the first 10,000 words. This week I’ve been working through it, cutting, sharpening, editing to get those first 30 pages working as hard as possible. And those first 30 pages are some of the most important.

So what am I actually doing when I’m writing a first draft? I get asked this quite a bit, so perhaps it is time for… a list!

Here are some of my own tips on writing adventure novels for children. These are hard won, but I hasten to add there are many, many different ways to write a book, so this can no way be described as definitive.

1 ) The target is 50,000 words, because that is the length publishers like for children’s fiction. It is unrealistic to think 100,000 words will be rolling off the presses, unless I change my name to J. K. Mowlling.

2 ) Every paragraph must have a purpose. Anything unnecessary to the plot will probably be cut by editors later, so there’s not much point spending time writing it in the first place.

3 ) Something fundamental should change for the characters in each chapter to turn the story (a discovery, an event, a piece of information revealed). The more twists and turns the better. This drives the story forward. If nothing much has happened in a chapter, what’s the point of it being there. Is it stuffed full of exposition (see tip 9 below)?

4 ) For each chapter I ask: ‘What’s at stake here?’

5 ) For each chapter I also ask: ‘Where’s the jeopardy?’

6 ) I try to keep my chapters short. 1,500 words is more than enough. 5,000 words is far, far too long.

7 ) Nothing is sacred. Just because I especially like a chapter or an idea, I don’t get hung up on it. If it starts to get in the way of the developing story, I cut it out (but save it somewhere on my computer just in case!) then let the new material breathe and grow.

8 ) I know that not all my ideas will make it to the final draft. With this mindset from the start, it makes editing and cutting much less painful.

9 ) Exposition (in other words backstory, history lessons explaining plot, aimless pages about the character’s upbringing etc…) tend to stop the story dead. Exposition is the enemy. It needs to be fed in very, very slowly. In the trilogy, I tended to relegate exposition to sidebars, footnotes, appendices, foldouts, and illustration where possible. Anywhere but in the story… unless essential.

10) It’s a bit of cliqué now, but I like write the sort of book I would have enjoyed when I was young.

I’ve just finished making some short web documentaries, or ‘webisodes’, with director Steve Friendship about how I work as an illustrator and writer .

The idea is that each of these 5 films will be about 5 minutes long. They will be focusing on different aspects of my work, and how I take an idea from a scribbled note to a finished book. These will hopefully show you and everyone else a little bit more about me and my life as a working novelist and illustrator.

So my tiny flat, (or apartment… call it what you will!) became a studio for the day, with lights, cameras and tripods fighting for space. It was quite a squeeze.

It took a good hour to set everything up, then we worked through the running order trying to establish how we should go about shooting each of the webisodes. It quickly became a very busy morning of takes and re-takes with regular breaks for cups of tea.

In the afternoon we took a taxi to Walker Books (my UK publishers), where we were able to film my editors and the art director talking my books, as well as some getting some shots of the publicity department who are just beginning to get ready for launch Space Race next August.

It was the first time everyone has seen the recently completed Space Race in proof form, so a great moment to capture on film. (The book looks good! Everyone seems very happy with it! Phew!)

Then back to my flat to shoot the last 2 films, finishing at about 8pm in the evening. A long day, but I hope we have some good results.

I plan to upload the films to YouTube once Steve has edited them down. This may take a few weeks, but I will let you know once they are available. I’ll post them here on my blog as well, of course.

Many thanks to Steve who worked so hard and for all the Walker Books team who agreed to help.

Today I finished the last illustration for The Great Space Race.

There will be changes, no doubt, and fine adjustments, but every page exists and – dare I say it – every gap now has an illustration in it. Breathe out slowly… and relax.

What a crazy year 2009 turned out to be – I remember thinking it would be relatively easy to create the artwork for Space Race after the trickiness of the Guild Trilogy. Two months’ work, I thought to myself. Simple! I had always rated the airship illustration for Operation Storm City as the benchmark of torment in my career as an illustrator (all those cables and frames in perspective!), but The Great Space Race beat it by a country mile. Several country miles with a few country kilometers lumped in, for good measure.

All those 5.30am starts have produced a satisfying result, I believe… I hope… I pray! The book now begins to slip away from me and begin its own journey – first of all to the final edit, then to the printers, and finally to the bookshops in August. My creative involvement is almost at an end. Sending that final piece of artwork is certainly a moment of divergence, if not outright departure. A parting of the ways. New horizons beckon and new stories are waiting to be told (in a big heap of scribbled notes beside my keyboard).

After such an intensive slog, there is an upside, and this is it. Days like today. An undeniable happy-making moment. It is like the silence after turning off VERY LOUD MUSIC. My desk, so long a battleground of to-do lists, script edits and tricky problems to solve is now unusually clear. I keep looking over it thinking there must be something to do. There isn’t.

But back to loud music. I wasn’t entirely idle over the Christmas break, and managed to record several tracks for an album I’m putting together for The Great Space Race. It’s going to be called ‘Monkey•Robot•Cowboy•Hero’ (artwork above).

Why? Well the narrator of The Great Space Race is a character called Ace. He is in a band with his best friend Jake, so I thought it would be great if readers of the book can hear Jake and Ace’s music. Why not?

The plan is to post these tracks on web as extra background material for the book. I have therefore been playing lots of very loud guitar, which is a wonderful antedote to all that quiet illustrating of the last few months. Jimi Hendrix eat your heart out. I’ll post a link here as soon as it is mixed down and sounding good.

Oh… and I managed to have a long overdue haircut, just in time for the really cold weather.

I’ve had a request for more boat footage of my Walker Tideway 12. This time I’m sailing single-handed rather than motoring (see earlier post), once again in beautiful Salcombe, Devon, England.

I’d reefed the sail, and was trying to operate the tiller, main sheet and the camera, all without capsizing. This is why it’s all a bit shaky. The spring tides can be tricky through this spot and will happily drag you into the moored yachts, but by the looks of things it was high water.

I’m really keen to sail up the River Thames next year. It would make a luscious voyage through the heart of England. I just need to find 2 weeks to do it (I’m not sure I have 2 weeks spare, so this could torpedo the idea, alas… alack… grumble…).

She’s such a great boat. All varnished mahogany and teak with the wonderful patina of age. It’s a bit like sailing along in a rather beautiful piece of furniture. Last year a chap ran up to me on the beach and offered to buy her there and then. I sent him away disappointed, but he seemed intent of finding one. I hope he was successful.

Fans of Operation Typhoon Shore might notice the similarity between my boat and Powder Monkey. Hmmmhh…!