Ten-Minute Blog Break - 29th April

What does it take to get a book published? Is it simply a matter of persistence and luck? Can we writers/illustrators influence the process at all, or should we just get out of the way and let the gatekeepers decide?


These are the questions that the first of today's Blog Break selections had me pondering. Mike Brownlow's Ten Little Pirates has been a great success, yet it came very close to not happening at all. Mike's candid and fascinating article is the first of two great posts from Picture Book Den this week. The second comes from our Regional Adviser Natascha Biebow, who shows us Ten Really Cool Picture Book Openings.

Sam Zuppardi is pursuing a rather different project than children's books at the moment, illustrating the pieces for a board game called Stormy Weather. It looks like a lot of fun, and in an attempt to get you to stump up for the Kickstarter campaign, Sam has been posting his illustrations of various weather-controlling machines. Check out The Light Sharpener, The Thunderiser and The Solar Wind Tunnel.

I mentioned Patrons of Reading last week, and Jane McLoughlin has just become one! Her first duty for Kincorth Academy in Aberdeen has been to write the foreword for an anthology of pupils' work, and she shares those inspiring words on her blog.

The writing process blog tour is unstoppable. It cannot be stopped, I tell you, until it has consumed every creative person with a Blogger or Wordpress account! This week's poor unsuspecting innocents are Maureen Lynas, K.M. Lockwood and (making his Blog Break debut) James Nicol. Thankfully, someone had the good sense to tag Mark Jones, who tries his best to make the blog tour implode by writing his entire entry in the persona of a "crazy mutant shrub."

Nick.

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A SCBWI member since 2009, Nick Cross is a former Undiscovered Voices winner who currently writes children's short fiction for Stew Magazine.

Nick's life as an author is filled with ups and downs, so he made a graph of them! Ride The Roller Coaster of Writerly Emotion.