Madonna and Cat

On An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, author Michelle Lovric has posted a fascinating look at why so many medieval and Renaissance portraits of the Virgin Mary include a cat. Well worth a look, art lovers (and cat lovers), and make sure you read the comments, too.

Michelle will be discussing ways to write about Venice with Katie Hickman at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 21st.

Cabinets of Wonder

In which I visit a most magical bus.

Last Saturday I wandered around the grounds of Traquair House, soaking up the magical atmosphere of Traquair Fair, sipping tea in a yurt and visiting a Cabinet of Wonders inside a Tardis-like van. This was the very odd and enigmatic Kabinett Fatalia, the creation of two German artists from Dresden, who tour their Kabinett-on-wheels around various festivals in the UK and Europe. You step into the back of the van/Kabinett and enter a world that has nothing to do with transport in the usual sense, unless your destination is a slightly off-kilter hall of mirrors/freak show. The video below, of Fatalia’s 2007 Kabinett, will give you a sense of its strange perceptions.

A Cabinet of Wonders, or Curiosities, has roots in the Renaissance. The kings and princes of the great houses of Europe made it their business to collect a wide and eccentric range of objects for their cabinets, special chambers that housed their collections. Certain kings are well known for their collections of what the Germans translated as Wunderkammers or Kunstkammers (Art Cabinets). My favourite is the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, Rudolf II - here’s something about his collection.

The digital world has made it possible for people to create all sorts of online collections of objects and oddities. I particularly like this site, as well as Fed by Birds and Curious Expeditions.

Dunure Castle and Labyrinth

A hidden gem on the Ayrshire coast.

Way back when, there was a sunny day (May? June?) and we went to one of my favourite places on the west coast of Scotland, Culzean Castle (pronounced cull-ayn). The bluebells were very late this year and there were a few still hanging on in the wooded walkways.
I’d heard about a labyrinth nearby and we set off to find it in the late afternoon. You have to take the lovely coastal road north from Culzean and watch that you don’t shoot past the left turn down to Dunure.

Sea, rocks, castle ruins and blue sky. Twisting and turning around the labyrinth’s path all on our own.

Bliss.

Robin Hood

Why you should sit through the final credits.

Ridley Scott’s new take on Robin Hood got me off the couch and into the movie theatre last night. It kept me entertained and at times mesmerised by the number of flying arrows, the amount of pitch poured down castle walls and the rocking boat scenes on an English Channel that looked like a hurricane was blowing through.

All well and good. It did what it promised to do, and pretty well.

It was when the film was over that I really sat up and took notice. The final credits are shown over the background of an absolutely steaming animation sequence by Gianluigi Toccafondo. As The Arts Desk blog put it, the “luminescent five-minute Rotoscope animated version of the myth is an impressionistic, utterly original blender-mix of Chagall, Bacon and Munch.” I completely agree.

I love, love, love Toccafondo’s work. Have a look at it here and see if you agree.

Climbing the Mountain

And reaching the sky.

Recently I added this photo to my Powerpoint presentation for school groups. It’s a mountain of Blackhope Enigma drafts, intermingled with comments from my agent. The oldest draft is on the bottom and the most recent at the top. Actually, this photo doesn’t even include the later revised versions I did after my editors commented on it. The pile is even higher now, and I look at it from time to time in awe.

Writing the book took all the guts I could muster. I never had the feeling I should give up on it, though I certainly had my dark moments from time to time. I really felt I HAD to write this book, even though I had never attempted such a thing before. Besides, I was already used to persevering in my illustration career. It took years of marketing my work to New York publishers, and reworking my portfolio, before I was taken on to illustrate my first children’s book way back when (a chapter book for the lovely folks at Knopf, by the way!)

If I had needed to be inspired 24/7, I would never have finished The Blackhope Enigma. I just had to show up at the desk and focus. Some days it worked better than others (some days it didn’t work at all), but I just kept going.

I’ve read some excellent essays by other children’s and YA authors about sticking to the job. I particularly like this one by Cassandra Clare, author of The Mortal Instruments
and Infernal Devices fantasy books.

There is nothing like the feeling of holding your printed book in your hands. But it is almost as boggling to look at the pile of drafts or the folders of mind maps, flow charts and outlines - and recognize that you worked your way, the best you could, through plot problems, unconvincing dialogue, faults of logic and a whole host of typos.

Thinking on this idea of climbing a mountain, I remember my first big climb up Ben More on the isle of Mull. I was with a group of very experienced walkers and had done pretty well in keeping up with them. As we neared the top, it became clear that we would have a steep scramble over boulders. I watched a woman being hoisted up a huge rock and knew I couldn’t do that. I panicked. I wanted to stop and go back - but, as the others told me, I’d come too far to turn back. One of them gave me the best advice: find a different way through the boulders, and then keep your eyes on the path directly in front of you. Don’t look forwards or backwards - keep your eyes on the path before you and go step by step.

I did it. Twenty minutes later, I was drinking tea at the summit. It hadn’t been easy, but it had not been the nightmare I imagined. I looked back down the mountain and thought, I came from there. Not unlike looking at a very significant pile of papers on my desk.

What I’m Working On Now #4

A new odyssey.

The sun is out. The 48 hour squall that passed over us, dropping snow, sleet and rain has moved out. Back to spring dreams.

I am ensconced in the Next Book and feeling how far I have come since I started writing The Blackhope Enigma. The learning curve was very steep but the rewards immense. Now it’s on to a new project and I’m going into it with the same attitude I had before: have a go, write from the heart, get it down on paper, be open to improvements, polish it till it’s as perfect as can be.

I have learned an incredible amount about writing over the past few years. Alongside my practice, I read a lot about what’s happening in the publishing industry, what other authors are up to and what their writing tips are.

Last week the Bologna Children’s Book Fair took place in Italy, and though I couldn’t go this year, I followed people’s tweets about it and read their blog reports this week. I am really impressed by the time people took to write up their notes, especially Beth Peck, whose blog has some fascinating nuggets of info from publishing industry afficionados. This quote from Richard Peck’s talk made me laugh out loud (ruefully):


If you see an adverb, shoot it.

I used to have to “shoot” my adverbs with the big bad Delete button, but now I can spot them looming at twenty paces and body swerve them. Another step on the learning curve…

More personal views of the Bologna Book Fair come from author Ally Carter
and illustrator John Shelley. Mary Hoffman (aka Book Maven) wrote reports for all three days she was at Bologna. All these blogs (and the tweets I followed) gave me a pretty good flavour of the Fair.

So, suitably fired up by the overall feeling that this year was buoyant, I head back to my draft manuscript and cross over into the imaginary world of the Next Book.

Ideas Within Ideas Within Ideas…

Why my writing is a bit like a nesting Matryoshka doll.

I had a very funny ‘Aha!’ moment when I found the doll, because when I tell people about the stories I write, I often describe my plots as being like Matryoshka dolls. Just like my paintings, which I often build up with layers of pigment, I like to write stories within stories. The Blackhope Enigma is all about layered paint and stories hidden inside other stories. I am busy working on my next novel (with a top secret title) and it’s shaping up to be another nest of interlocked stories. I just can’t help myself! I like to write what I would want to read myself - and that means secrets, twists and things not quite turning out the way you thought they would!

So I find myself with a new two-inch tall ‘writing talisman’, or lucky charm. The little Matryoshka doll, with her half-smile and otherworldly half-eyes, is a powerful reminder to me of where I am going with my stories - and where I have come from. A few years ago I would never have imagined writing a novel, and yet here I am with my creative life transformed and a new moniker: author-illustrator.

Illuminating Hadrian’s Wall

Photo by Teresa Flavin

There was something primal about sitting with other spectators, watching the sky and the spine of hills in the east. Luckily, there was no piped-in soundtrack, or laid-on entertainment other than the stunning landscape and gatherings of people all watching together. When the first pinprick of light appeared, the atmosphere was thrilling. It can’t replicate the feeling of being there, but the pictures and video here might give you an inkling of what it was like.

This week’s adventure…

..being a tour guide around some Glasgow studios (and a cemetery).

I’d like to think I don’t get complacent, but I do. I forget the wonders in my own back yard - in this case, Glasgow. That thing about tourists seeing more of a place than the locals do is true. I guess I am kind of a local in Glasgow now, and it has taken a group of students from my old art school, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, to make me realize I have missed a few of this town’s gems lately.

The MassArt crew gave me a mandate to arrange some visits with Glasgow designers, animators and illustrators - and I have to say, it was a great exercise. It pried me out of my comfort zone (the studio) and, as is usually the case when you depart the comfort zone, I had some eye-opening experiences and met some fantastic people.

It was excellent to visit Glasgow School of Art, check out what the Visual Communication students are up to (which involves some truly amazing multimedia work) and, for the first time ever, tour around the Mackintosh Building. Next we visited the Necropolis, Glasgow’s famous hilltop cemetery. It’s an atmospheric, strange place with fabulous views all around Glasgow.

The next day we visited the very entertaining animation company Once Were Farmers, who spared us time for a show-and-tell of their work even though they were working toward a huge deadline. Freight Design, a graphic design consultancy, let us traipse through their studio too, and look at their classy publishing projects.

The highlight was sitting around a big table that evening with Tom Green from Dangerous Ink magazine, comic artist Vincent Deighan, aka Frank Quitely, comic colorist Jamie Grant and comic artists Nulsh and Rob, looking at stunning original art and magazines.

I am still feeling inspired by all this, as I get back to my own work feeling refreshed and a bit more connected into Glasgow’s creative scene.

Granny O’Grimm

“Ireland’s Bitterest Granny” is up for an Academy Award.

I was browsing through this year’s nominations for Best Animated Short Film and came across Brown Bag Films‘ Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty. Two Irish animation studios have work nominated in the Animation categories this year, which is pretty good - the other is for hand-drawn feature film The Secret of Kells.

I liked all the Short Film nominations, but Grannie O’Grimm’s retelling of Sleeping Beauty is a cracker! For more of Granny, visit her website. The Academy Award ceremony is on March 7.