Ten-Minute Blog Break - 24th February

It's interesting to question how much responsibility writers and illustrators have towards our audience. Is our work simply about expressing ourselves, or is it about reflecting our world or maybe something more?

To explore that question, we kick off this week with a fascinating post from Sara Grant at The Edge. Sara's achieved success with her two dystopian YA novels, but now she's turning her back on the genre, and not for the reasons you might think!

At her Story Snug HQ this week, Catherine Friess is interviewing writer/illustrator Kate Leake about her creative process. Kate's brilliantly-named picture book Don’t Chew the Royal Shoe! sounds like a lot of fun.

Never one to just say if she can do as well, Sarah McIntyre has expanded her complaints about the treatment of illustrators into a full-blown campaign! #PicturesMeanBusiness has been gathering a ton of Twitter mentions and is helping to raise the profile of professional illustrators. Read Sarah's blog post all about what the campaign is trying to achieve.

It's always terrific to see Scoobies supporting each other, and Heather Kilgour managed to attract quite a few people to the end-of-course show for her children's book illustration MA. Blogging at Big Little Tales, Heather shares her experience and lots of photos of her beautiful artwork.

We haven't checked in with Larisa Villar Hauser for a few weeks, but it's OK, because she's in the self-publishing game for the long haul. But, asks Larisa, can a self-proclaimed hare adapt to the tortoise-like pace of writing, publishing and selling a book?

Finally, do you have a Bad Shouty Brain (or BSB for short)? I know I have, and Kathy Evans suffers from this unwelcome condition as well. Does anyone have a brain silencer they could lend us?

Nick.

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A SCBWI member since 2009, Nick Cross is an Undiscovered Voices winner who writes children's short fiction for Stew Magazine. Issue 7 out now!

On his blog, Nick discusses the controversial genesis of his latest Stew Magazine story and considers The Rewards of Risk.