Deadline done!

Relief and achey shoulders

Tomorrow the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the largest children’s book trade fair, begins! Many people from the kids book world will be venturing out for work and inspiration and good times, and hopefully only a little bit of weeping in the Piazza Maggiore!

I am festering in London this week, revelling in Bologna Fair FOMO and the fact that I managed to make two of my deadlines in the last month, and am feeling very relieved.

Last week I finished (bar a few tweaks) the artwork for the third and final book in the Boss of the Underworld trilogy - PHEW!!! I thought I would post a couple of sections from the book that didn’t make it in, but I thought had some nice bits to them.

At one stage during the writing, I had a gorgon character I was keen to include. She was a holdover from the first book, where she was called Redusa (like Medusa - weak!) and the idea was that she was a gorgon and a social space invader and it was awkward that you couldn’t make eye contact with her. That never worked, but in this book she came back, now called Morgan (slightly less weak!¡¿) and I tried a section with her and some rocks.

I couldn’t give this whole bit an arc to make it work, so then Morgan lost her gorgon status and was became a general untrustworthy baddie. In this bit, Shirley and George have just encountered Morgan with her finger in a hole…

I think the solution to this problem was that this cap-wearing character had hands that could freeze water into ice, solving the issue… but not very convincingly. Anyway, Horton Hatches the Egg/Dutch finger-in-dike-boy fans might recognise the general vibe of this one!

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Hoping those going to Bologna this week have a wonderful time. I’m going to turn to all the bits of boring admin that have been piling up behind my deadline, much like water piling up behind the dike that the boy was plugging with his finger 😌

Arrivederci amiche!