Ten-Minute Blog Break - 9th June

We have a new logo! I'd like to thank May's featured illustrator Melany Pietersen and her studio Happy Artworks for their excellent work, and I'm delighted that we can showcase it every week, right here on Words & Pictures.

It was a big thrill for me to win my first award as a published writer this week, and I'm glad to see that even those who have a few prizes under their belt still get excited. Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve's Oliver and the Seawigs won the Lancashire Fantastic Book Award, prompting the co-authors to write some fantastic letters back to the kids who voted for them. I hope they didn't have to write one to all 120 of the schools who participated!

Chitra Soundar has dogs in her head. Or are they characters from stories that she can't find the time to write? Or are they stories about dogs? I'm so confused.

Jane McLoughlin's second novel The Crowham Martyrs is finally incoming after what seems like a long wait. Writing a guest post for Serendipity Reviews, she tells us all about the spooky stuff that inspired her ghost story.

I enjoyed David Thorpe's post for Awfully Big Blog Adventure, which begins as a straightforward report on the YA climate fiction panel he joined at the Hay Festival, then quickly shifts into farce when the media get involved in reporting the story.

Sarah Towle certainly deserves to reach the Kickstarter target for her latest project, because she seems to have planned the whole thing like a military campaign! If you're thinking of crowdfunding, I'd recommend you read her latest blog post and take notes.

On Facebook, I described K.M. Lockwood's latest post as "Blog-Break-Bait". But how could I resist including a blog post heavily "inspired" by my Notes from the Slushpile article, yet with its own excellent suggestions for ways to jolt yourself out of your comfort zone? Plus, she called it A Complete Steal :-)

Nick.

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Nick Cross is an Undiscovered Voices winner and has recently received the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award, for his short story The Last Typewriter.

Click here to read Nick's debut blog post for Notes from the Slushpile. His latest children's short story Hacking History can be found in issue 8 of Stew Magazine.