Easter Sunday Revelations and Round-Ups


Isn't it wonderful to have the lovely Beverley Birch smiling on the front of our blogzine, beamed across from Notes From the Slush Pile? Notes... is our Guest Blog. If you're part of the SCBWI Blog Network and your posts are often of especial interest to published authors or illustrators (we label these PULSE) please do get in touch.




Saturday was a day of tall spiky things for me. At the top of one, being quite close to heaven,  I had a couple of revelations which I though I'd share with you this Easter Sunday.


Revelation the first:

Stories will NEVER fade in popularity because in the good ones you can experience amazing sensations, flying a Nimbus 2000, climbing Mount Doom or falling in love with Darcy with NONE of the effort. The only effort is in decoding the words on the page - which in the very best stories you can forget that that's what you're doing anyway.

Revelation the second:

It's a personal one. As much as I love fabric and sewing, if the Book Bound Retreat were a sewing weekend with a haberdashery from heaven I wouldn't be looking forward to it quite as much as I am. I would love a sewing weekend don't get me wrong, but a weekend of indulging constructively in mine and others' made up worlds is even more thrilling.


Quite close to heaven

So back to Beverley with whom I wholeheartedly agree…

'Story is still at the heart of it all'

Last week...
Did you LISTEN to the warm and enthusiastic Liz Cross, Head of Publishing at Oxford University Press Children's talking to Catherine Jacob in our first podcast - it's a treasure. We'll be asking another publisher next month.

What a delight to have Nicky on the blog break! Another delight was finding out about Jonathan Emmet's Virtual Authors - what's the Internet for if not for bringing people - authors and their readers, together easily - virtually?

On several forums I'd heard a lot about Keith Gray's workshop on strong beginnings in Edinburgh so it's wonderful to have such a good newsy write up from Susan Bain. Also SCBWI heroine and our new ARA with a special responsibility for events, Steph Macgregor ta-dah, introduced herself with the first of the Events monthly round-ups.

I loved the images our new illustration features contributor, Heather Chapman, chose for her post on medieval manuscripts - so interesting to see the comparison between modern and medieval picture books. And for a new, modern picture book, it's wonderful to celebrate with W&P team member Chitra Soundar on the publication of Balu's Basket.

Next week look out for…
Inspiration, a hotly discussed new phenomenon - 'Hybrid' publishing, news from the North West and a new featured illustrator.

Second and final round voting for the Crystal Kite has begun. Log in to your home page on scbwi.org and vote from there. Voting closes Wednesday 30th April.

Warm and chocolatey Easter greetings to you all!

Jan Carr

STOP PRESS: Aaaghh! Looked at wrong planner, not hybrid publishing until May - it's W&P surprise on Wednesday!


Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is all over the place, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta. You can contact her at editor@britishscbwi.org.

2 comments:

  1. We're away on a week's break and although I'll be doing a little writing and keeping an eye on much of my social media, one of the joys of being on holiday is having time to read. I always make a point of inlcuding one work by Dickens - the one that came up this time is "A Tale of Two Cities". So, I'm up here on sunny (yes!) Scotland and also in London and Paris.
    He is still the master of so much I try tot each my students. Lets' hop I can learn form him.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like you're having a lovely break, Gill!

    ReplyDelete

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