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Thursday, October 05, 2006

Award Winner in Paperback


I am pleased to announce that "The Night Walker"
which won the Ruth Schwartz award for author Richard Thompson and myself, has just been released in paperback. The publisher, Fitzhenry and Whiteside, did a great job. The interior of the book looks exactly the same as the hardback, and the cover has the embossed stars and a very tasty matt finish. The cover, designed by Wycliff Smith, is still one of my favorites.

Pauline Baynes


My dear friend Pauline Baynes, the illustrator of Narnia and the works of J R R Tolkien has a lovely new book out called "Questionable Creatures". "Jousting with Jesters" is dedicated to Pauline as I grew up looking at her work and copying it as a young sprog.

I lived in a Pub in Appledore, Kent in the U K , and spent many a rainy day drawing and copying the works of artists whose illustrations I admired. Basically it went, "I wish I could draw like that, how do they do that ? " I sat in the tiny boiler room, my wee desk crammed into a corner, scribbling away very happily. A window overloooked the green of the council housing estate, and I loved the patterns the rain made on the widow and how it distorted the view of the houses and the green. To this day I love working when it's raining, it brings back that feeling I had as a youngster, setting out on imaginative voyages, sometimes on my own and other times through the works of other visual artists. Pauline was one of my travelling companions, and I'm very happy to have met her and proud to have her name in my new book, and to recieve a positive review from her as well.

"Questionable Creatures" is published by Eerdmans in the U S and Frances Lincoln in the U K. Do look for it.