For those who’ve been emailing to ask, here are the titles of the first four Scream Street books. They’ll be published by Walker Books in October 2008.
Scream Street 1: Fang of the Vampire
Scream Street 2: Blood of the Witch
Scream Street 3: Heart of the Mummy
Scream Street 4: Flesh of the Zombie
I hope you’re looking [...]

Well, the new draft of SS4 is in, and a tricky little monkey it’s been to complete, this one (as you’ll know if you’ve read some of my recent posts).  Lots of cutting and pasting to get the order of plots and sub-plots exactly right and to help keep the action flowing at a steady [...]

One of the things I’m able to do with this site is keep an eye on the search phrases people use in order to find my little corner of cyberspace. Here’s the latest list:
the author for too ghoul for school
guidelines literary agents
tommy donbavand
scream street tommy
children’s author blog
vampire literary agent
courier or times new roman william [...]

Top US agent, Nathan Bransford, has blogged about an issue I know a lot of writers are confused about - whether to telephone an agent and talk to them or not.
If you have done any research on the publishing business (and, if you want to be a writer, you’d better be doing just that), you [...]

I’ll be adding a Frequently Asked Questions page to this site over the next few days, containing answers to some of the, er… questions I’m most frequently asked. It might be slow going, however, as I do have quite a lot of real writing to do.
I thought it might be fun to [...]

In response to fellow children’s author, Barry Hutchison, posting a few chapters from his excellent Kentucky Fried Fairy manuscript a few days ago - I’m doing the same.
Attached is an excerpt from my first children’s novel, Soppy Susans From Space. Now, I wrote this novel before I knew how to write a novel - [...]

The rewrite of SS4 continues unabated.  It’s proving to be quite a tough one, this.
Without giving too much away, I need my main characters to be in one location and collect an item from another.  In the original draft, they went to collect the item first, but that delayed their arrival at the main scene.  [...]

Sometimes you have to take them with your writing.
I’m busy with the second draft of SS4 and, sadly, it’s just not working. I’ve reorganised a lot since the first draft; moved scenes around, deleted gags to make room for plot and character development, etc. But, it’s still a no-go. No matter how [...]

My son, Arran, arrived home from school today proudly wearing a sticker for ‘excellent writing’ (so, he’s got himself a writing award before I have, eh…?)
I asked what his piece was about, and he explained that he’d written the story of Easter, including the Last Supper, Garden of Gethsemane, etc. I commented that it [...]

Fellow children’s author and all-round top bloke, Barry Hutchison, has kindly posted the first two chapters from one of his children’s fantasy novels on his site.
Kentucky Fried Fairy is a comic romp of epic proportions and, if you’re interested in writing fantasy, inventing stories for children - or you just want a damn good laugh [...]