Featured post

PAM ROYDS 1924 - 2016

Pam Royds on Grasmere , 1971 with Sally Christie, children’s author and daughter of Philippa Pearce. I was just twenty two when I fir...

About Me

My photo
United Kingdom
My blog is about writing and illustrating children's books which I have been doing since 1974. www.gillianmcclure.com has all my books. I also have another blog: www.paulcoltman.blogspot.com where I publish my father's poems.

Sunday 30 October 2011

THE SEA IS BIG AND ANGRY

'The sea is big and angry. It's taking away my things.'  From Zoë’s Boat.

For weeks I've been painting that sea. I thought it would get easier and I'd get the hang of it. But I never got the hang of it - right up until the final spread it kept changing. And now it's all done. The illustrations for Zoë’s Boat are complete leaving that washed-up feeling one always has at the end of a project.

Sunday 16 October 2011

WATERSTONES SIGNINGS

I’ve been doing quite a few Saturday signings in Waterstones stores recently and I'm still learning the ropes. Unless you’re an author with celebrity status, these sessions amount to hand selling over a period of 4- 6 hours. Independent bookshops seem less keen on this active type of signing session – maybe because their floor space is smaller than that of most Waterstones shops and the author is rubbing shoulders with the bookseller, or maybe because they don’t want loyal customers upset by over zealous or inept selling. You tread a fine line between being intrusive and a nuisance and being unobtrusive and going unnoticed. With the gentlest of nudges and some eye catching artwork you have to be able to point a customer towards a book they weren’t originally looking for and convince them that it was just what they were looking for.
    Six hours sounds an awfully long time but I find it passes quickly and there’s plenty to observe and learn about a bookshop when not actually signing. There’s an ebb and flow rhythm to the day; a flurry of customers entering the shop with all the book sellers at the tills, then a lull when books are replaced on shelves, stickers taken off past offers and time for a chat.
   You have to bring something to eat discreetly in one of these lulls or you won't survive the day and as for the toilet - it's usually somewhere very inaccessible in the back area of the shop, up winding staircases, past  store rooms and boxes that send a chill down an author’s spine: returns, on-going returns, confirmed returns.
   I usually sell 30 copies in a day but occasionally events beyond my control upset this. On the Saturday of the great October heat wave I sold only half that number of books. Children just didn’t come into the shop and I spent most of the day shivering under a very efficient air conditioning vent, looking out at the wonderful heat wave and all the three and four year olds tripping past on their way, no doubt, to the paddling pool in the park.

Sunday 2 October 2011

TEXT FRAMES

Zoë’s Boat has been designed as a read aloud picture book for very young children in graphic novel style. Now, the coloured artwork is nearly complete, I have handed over to typographic designer, Lisa Kirkham, to ponder the style of the text frames – should there be a frame with an outline, just a faded rectangle or  simply text on image? I think I prefer the faded rectangle used here as it integrates enough with the picture frames and stylized trees and water yet isn’t over emphatic.