Tag: Children’s Books

CROSS BONES 3 – Out Now!

Dead Living Men Tell No 3 Tales!

Avast, ye landlubbers and scallywaggers — a new book has made landfall! It’s Cross Bones 3: The Hottest Dogs, the third (and final?) book in the series of punny pirate adventures illustrated by Chris Kennett and written by ME.

Cross Bones 3 was a joy to write; it might actually have been the easiest time I’ve had writing a book since The Vampire Knife, way back in 2015. Part of that ease came from the many clues and narrative titbits that Chris and I have been setting up across the previous two volumes — the story was always building to a grand, catty conclusion, and so when the moment came the end of the story was ready to come gushing out. I think swapping the oceans and rivers of the first two books for a huge, windswept desert also helped, as the brand new location brought with it an opportunity for brand new jokes. I’m still amused by the sequence early on where Ed wastes all the fluids aboard on a water-themed feast, which immediately leads into another amusing sequence where the thirsty dogs hallucinate in the heat. It’s just as silly as ever, but with a nice new (Danger)lick of paint.

It was also convenient that I visited Morocco in the middle of 2022, just before I wrote the book, so images of gigantic sand dunes and towering desert fortresses were fresh in my mind. I really love North Africa (I already visited Egypt way back in 2010) so it was exciting to write a book inspired by that wild part of the world.

Cross Bones 3 wraps up the big mystery we began back in book one, with the dogs finally reckoning with the true identity of their secretive Spymaster — but is this really the end for our hairy heroes? The answer is… probably yes. I wouldn’t have minded opening up a new can of worms and writing a fourth adventure, but these chunky books are already competing for space in a very crowded genre, and from a marketing perspective it might be best to commit to a trilogy rather than outstaying our welcome. But, who knows! If we do get offered a fourth book I’m sure Chris and I will be able to chase down our tails a great new idea. The series has also just launched in Italy and Spain, with Denmark on the way, so we’re incredibly excited that readers from around the world will soon be voyaging off with our daring dogs.

What I can confirm is that this definitely won’t be the last time you hear from me and Chris, as our next project together is already underway. The full announcement won’t be for a while, but if you’re a fan of our particular mix of ridiculous stories and even ridiculous-er cartoons, rest assured that we’ll have some more wild books for you (somewhat) soon!

That’s all for now. I’m so proud of this series, and I’m so glad we got to create this conclusion. I hope you like it!

Family Road Trip Games – Out Now!

My non-fiction debut!

I’ll be first to admit I have a really weird job. Every night I sit at my desk and play around with story ideas, throwing in vampires and pirates and ghosts and ghouls and seeing what sticks. The goal is to find an idea that excites me enough to write it all the way through to the end — and hopefully excite a publishing team as well.

Normally I write spooky fairy tales, or grand pirate adventures: high-stakes narrative fictions that aim to get kids hooked on reading. But early on in 2022, probably while pining for the travel opportunities I’d missed during the pandemic years, I decided to do something completely different.

“I know a lot of travel games,” I thought to myself. “And I know a lot of great trivia questions too. What if I wrote them all down?”

So I did. It was exciting. When I finally sent it away, the publishing team at Hardie Grant Explore got excited by it too. And now it’s a book!

As mentioned in the Insta post above, I really like games. My favourite social occasions are the ones spent shuffling cards or deducing hidden identities; if you ever ask me who my personal heroes are, I’ll enthusiastically tell you about a German man named Reiner Knizia who has designed over 700 games, including what I believe are some of the greatest games of all time. (The Quest for El Dorado is my #1 — but let’s not get distracted.)

I love games so much that I never want to be caught without one, which is how I came to know so many travel games: more than 60 of them, in fact! My definition of a travel game is one that requires no components whatsoever: all you need are the rules in your head, so you can start playing them whenever and wherever you like. Bored in the backseat of a car? Feeling weary on the last leg of a long hike? Searching for an activity at home that doesn’t involve screen time? Look no further than a travel game!

I’m also so, so proud of the trivia section at the back of the book. My favourite sort of quiz question is one where the answer is surely somewhere in my head, and so the challenge is to sort through and find it — like, which three countries begin with the letter V? Family Road Trip Games contains over 200 questions just like that, designed to be savoured and mulled over by a group on the move. Keep an eye on my Instagram if you want to sample some more questions for free, as I’ll be posting some more of them there soon.

Anyway: this book is on sale NOW! Buy a copy for your glove box to add some spice to your next road trip, and then come back here and let me know which game you liked best. I also think it’s a pretty nifty gift book, as getting bored in transit is a fairly universal experience — so please feel free to buy a copy for your friends and family as well!

And that’s all for now. Happy reading, and bon voyage!

CROSS BONES 2 – Out Now!

A skullduggerous sequel.

Ahoy there, mateys! Keep a sharp lookout today, for a brand new book is ready to launch: Cross Bones 2: The Dog With Two Tails!

The Cross Bones series is a celebration of classic adventure fiction, and this second volume delves into the “jungle” subgenre, trading the high-seas high jinks of the first book for a treacherous river cruise. On this quest our intrepid dogs will explore torchlit temples, clash with big jungle cats, and even compete in a horse race commentated by frogs. You know — those three classic tropes!

Canine cartoonist Chris Kennel Kennett is also back on board, and if you thought his work on book one was good, then strap yourself in — you ain’t seen nothing yet! Chris truly went above and beyond on this second volume, filling the pages with thrills, spills, and so many rabbits. I’m not sure how many rabbits it was reasonable for me to ask Chris to draw, but I definitely must have got my numbers mixed up at some point.

I’m so proud of this silly sequel, and especially the ways it tips its fedora to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is my favourite sequel (or prequel) of all time. If you enjoyed book one then I genuinely think you’ll love this one too — and if you haven’t read book one yet, you’re in for a treat, because now you can read these two adventures back to back! Wow-ee — you sir are luckier than 128 rabbits’ feet!

I’m also very happy to confirm that Cross Bones 3 is in full production: the words have already been written, and Chris will be starting the drawings very soon. There’s a clue to the plot at the end of book two, but I’m afraid I’ll have to desert you here before I give away too many details. We’ll be hoping to launch the third adventure in March 2024, so you’ve got plenty of time to catch up on books one and two — hooray!

And that’s all she wrote. May your sails be trimmed and your butts be scuttled. I’ll see you again in August!

CROSS BONES 1 – Out Now!

WOOF!

This update is all in the headline. My new series launches in Australia TODAY, so if you’re interested in buying 219 pages of fully-illustrated junior fiction, featuring pirates and ships and icebergs and piranhas and a creepy wolverine and a secret spy and SO MANY JOKES, then you can go and do that RIGHT NOW!

Cross Bones has been a joy to work on from start to finish, and I’m so proud of the book that Chris and I are sending out into the world. And, if you want to hear some crazy stories about how we created this crazy book, a crazy man named Ken Williams asked us a bunch of questions about it for his podcast, Reading With a Chance of Tacos! You can search for it wherever you listen to podcasts, or just click that link to go straight there.

And that’s the post! Go grab yourself a copy of this beautiful, funny book, then come back and tell me what you think. (Hurry! I’ll be waiting.)

YARRRR!

Coming Soon: CROSS BONES!

Arrrrr!

I wrote a new book! Heck, I wrote a new series! It’s coming out soon! You can pre-order it now! There aren’t enough exclamation marks in the world to sum up how exciting this is!

Phew. Okay. Let’s take a breath and tackle this as logically as we can. Let’s answer five questions together, one at a time, so that everyone is up to speed:

1. What’s your new book called?

Great question! My new series is called Cross Bones, and the first book in the series is called A Dog’s Breakfast. Hooray!

2. What’s your new series about?

Great question! Cross Bones is a series about five dodgy, doggy pirates, who also happen to be very best friends: Magnus Thunderump (the captain), Daisy Dangerlick (the first mate), Eduardo Muttonchop (the cook), Spot (the cabin boy), and the mysterious Rover Goodpup (the Spymaster). The sea dogs are setting sail on a new adventure in the hope of un-burying some buried treasure — but first they’ll have to survive all the terrible dangers the ocean can throw at them, like a pirate octopus, and a pirate beaver, and an entire sea filled with nasty, gnashing teeth. (Also, just between you and me, that Rover Goodpup seems a bit suspicious. I wonder if we’ll find out why?)

Don’t be too scared, though — for the most part, Cross Bones is a silly pirate caper, filled with jokes and misadventures. It was heaps of fun to write, and I hope it’ll be heaps of fun to read as well.

3. Who drew the pictures?

Great question! Incredibly, the pictures in this book are drawn by Chris Kennett (@crikeyboy), who is one of the most brilliant kid-lit illustrators working in Australia today. Chris has illustrated every single page of this new series, and through his talent and hard work, every character and scene looks even better than I imagined it. Actually, if I’m completely honest, Chris is almost too good to work with, because now I feel bad about making him draw “100 sea monsters” or “1,000 pirate ships” or whatever crazy thing I think of for the sea dogs to do next. (I’m a bit worried I might make him sprain his wrist.)

But really, look at that cover. How lucky am I to work with an artist who can draw a cover like that? (Oops, that’s an extra question — just ignore that one!)

4. Who is your favourite pirate?

Great question! From real life, I always loved the story of Edward Teach (Blackbeard) swinging into battle with fire and smoke pouring out from under his hat. From movies, I loved the swagger of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. But my favourite, favourite pirates are the heroic trio from the Griffin Pirate Stories, a series of school readers written by Sheila K. McCullagh in the 1970s. Roderick the Red, Gregory the Green, and Ben the Blue are the pirates who made me love pirates, and I have the fondest memories of the adventures they shared together: meeting griffins, finding magic candles, and always hunting for even more rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. It is such a delight to me that now, more than 20 years after I read those books, I get to write my very own pirate story too.

5. This all sounds too good to be true! When can I buy your new book?

Great question! The very first Cross Bones book (A Dog’s Breakfast) launches on July 20, 2022 — but you can pre-order that book right now! Click on this link to head to the Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing website, which has a great big list of retailers who’ll help get you the book as soon as possible. Alternatively, swing past your local bookshop and ask them to order the book for you instead!

Pre-ordering this book is an especially good idea because the first print run will feature the special edition die-cut porthole cover! I have absolutely no idea how many of these covers are going to be printed, but pre-ordering the book is the best way to guarantee you end up with one in your mangy paws. Have you ever tried to look at something while reading the first page of a book but had your line of sight blocked by a pesky solid cover? That won’t be a problem with this bad boy, believe me!

That’s it! That’s all the news! But it turns out there are still some exclamation marks left! Thanks for reading, friend — take some of these remaining marks with you, and have a great day!!!!!

The Witching Hours in the USA

Helpful tips for far away readers.

Howdy, United States readers! This is a message for you and you only. If you’re not from the US, look away now!

As you may know, my first book (The Vampire Knife) was released in the US in September 2018. Unfortunately for any readers who enjoyed book one, the rest of the Witching Hours series has had a much trickier time reaching the States. I don’t have any control over how my books are sold overseas, but here is the best info I have for tracking the rest of the series down!

Firstly: as of Fall 2020, a publishing house called Trafalgar Square has signed on to distribute book two (The Troll Heart) in the US. Hooray! Their email address is <orders@ipgbook.com> and the phone number for their customer service team is (800) 888-4741. If you pass that information on to your local bookshop or library, then hopefully they’ll be able to source you a fresh new copy of my terrifying second tale.

Secondly: if you Google with tenacity, and if you don’t mind paying for shipping, there are a number of Australian bookshops that will happily send you some of my books in the post. Book three (The Genie Rings) is quite hard to find anywhere, but Abbey’s currently has books 1-4 in stock, and Boomerang Books always seems to have a good range. I can’t maintain a live list of which stores have my books and which stores don’t, but for now, all of my books are still in circulation if you search hard enough!

[EDIT: Thirdly: a very kind reader has emailed me to let me know that eBooks can also be accessed in the States! Books 1-3 are all available on Google Play. Thanks a bunch, MacKenzie!]

I hope this information helps you track down some more of my scary stories. Good luck, and happy witching!

An Update on Book Six

Gigantic news?

Hello! How are you? Quite a year we’re having, isn’t it?

I often forget that I have a website, and as a result of this, I also forget to share helpful information. But I remembered my website tonight, and so here is some information you might be looking for: the sixth (and final!) Anna and Max book, titled The Giant Key, is scheduled for release in Australia on February 1, 2021. It would have been released earlier, but things got a bit weird this year, and we really don’t need any monstrous fairies making things even weirder.

But next year… well, in 2021, Anna and Max’s lives are going to get very weird indeed. I wish I could tell you about the hidden study, or the bone doll, or the thing that happens when Anna steps into the lake. But I can’t. It’s top secret. You’ll just have to be patient.

The Giant Key is coming. I hope it will be worth the wait.

Happy witching!

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Witch No. 16: Smelly Chantelly

“I smell a whiff of what I need to make my broomstick fly at speed…”

Smelly Chantelly isn’t the most famous of witchy books. My dad bought it for me at my kindergarten book fair, way back in 1996; even then, I was intrigued (and frightened) by the witch on the cover. However, more than twenty years later, Smelly Chantelly remains one of the weirdest picture books I have ever read. The illustrations are hideous. The main character is a slob.

And, to avoid burying the lead any longer: the book literally stinks. Smelly Chantelly is a scratch-and-sniff adventure, and Smelly’s foraged ingredients are pungently apparent on every page.

Smelly cover

The plot of the story goes thus. On the night before the witches’ fancy-dress ball, Smelly’s broomstick runs out of power, sending her tumbling through the roof of an old barn. As she makes her way home on foot, Smelly must find all of the ingredients required to brew a broomstick-restoring spell. (She’d also quite like to win the prize for Best-Dressed Witch, but that’s a secondary concern to getting her broom back in the air.) The child reader is implicitly invited to quest along with her, trying to identify which ingredient Smelly will add to her belt next.

It’s quite fun, really. All of the ingredients Smelly needs can be scratched and sniffed, and if you don’t spot the ingredient straight away, you can try scratching anywhere on the page. My copy from kindergarten has optimistic scratch marks on just about everything.

The only problem is that some of the ingredients smell truly, genuinely awful.

Smelly potion

On the fourth page of the book, the reader is told that Smelly’s breath reeks of mildew; the reader is invited to scratch and sniff. Later, Smelly trades her cat for a clove of garlic; the reader is again invited to scratch and sniff. At the end of the book, Smelly realises that the final ingredient she needs is her own smelly sock; the reader is again invited to scratch and sniff. All of these invitations should absolutely be turned down.

My biggest regret about Smelly Chantelly is that my favourite smell in the book (the bubblegum) was immediately preceded by my least favourite smell (the garlic). The bubblegum smelled great, but the order of scratching meant that the bubblegum very quickly became contaminated with the awful stink that came before. I don’t know who edited that aspect of the book, but my five-year-old self would like to give them a very stern talking to.

Smelly garlic

And yet I still have really fond memories of Smelly Chantelly. Unpleasant as it could be, the concept of a stench-filled picture book remains delightfully transgressive, and the nightmarish proportions of the character designs further elevate that weirdness. (Smelly’s nose really has to be seen to be believed.) Furthermore, it’s a book from Melbourne, so chalk up another Australian witch in the records!

For the sake of completion, I’m going to finish this report by scratching the garlic again, which I haven’t done in approximately twenty years. I don’t want to do it. I’m really, really hoping the scent has faded.

Nope. Still there. Still terrible. Huge regrets.

Smelly nose

Final Musings

— What? You’re saying it’s been two and a half years since my last witch post? Stop yanking my chain. I’m quite certain that this website is regularly maintained and updated.

— A begrudging thanks to author Joan Van Loon and illustrator Chantal Stewart for the fun times spent reading this book, but no thanks to them at all for the times spent frantically scrubbing my garlic-stained fingertips before bed.

— This is a tenuous connection, but The Witching Hours 6 is Anna and Max’s smelliest adventure of all. I’m sorry that book six hasn’t been released yet, but the way this year is flying by, I’m sure it’ll be out before we know it!

Happy witching!

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The Mermaid Wreck – Out Now!

A horrific homecoming.

One night last year, in the very early hours of the morning, I took a short break from writing my fourth book. I got up from my desk and walked into the bathroom, and was immediately startled by a very large huntsman spider clinging to the wall.

Despite their fearsome size, huntsman spiders are not venomous, and so I decided to carry the spider outside using my hands. After taking a deep breath, I grabbed the spider off the wall and trapped it between my palms, wincing as it scuttled around against my skin. Its legs were as thick as toothpicks.

But there’s another fact about huntsman spiders that I didn’t know at the time. While it’s true that they’re not venomous, their fangs never stop growing, and so the largest huntsman spiders have very big fangs indeed. And so, when this particular spider sunk its gigantic fangs into my flesh, it really, really hurt. I tried not to cry out as I ran to the back door, turning the handle with my elbows, throwing the spider into the darkness as far as I possibly could.

When I looked down at my hand, there was blood dripping down my finger.

I thought I’d open this post with my awful spider story to help communicate what a tricky novel book four was to write. There were some chapters that whizzed along in an adrenaline-fuelled blur, with all the confidence of a brave man scooping a huntsman off a wall; and then there were other chapters that felt like colossal mistakes, like a very foolish man realising he’s just picked up a massive, hairy, long-fanged spider. I hit so many dead ends that I sometimes wondered how Anna and Max could possibly escape the book in one piece; some nights would fly past without a single word being added to the story, the children forced to keep facing the same deadly peril.

But I finished. The bad times ended in an instant, and suddenly I had a new book: a story so dark, so spooky, that it was almost certainly Anna and Max’s most terrifying adventure yet. I had vanquished the spider. The Mermaid Wreck was ready to enter the world.

The Mermaid Wreck is the first of my books to take place in my home country, Australia, and now that it’s been published, I honestly could not be prouder of it. Throughout the writing process, I was determined to prove that an Australia beach could be scary enough to match the fairy-tale otherness featured in the series thus far: that it could be as creepy as a Transylvanian wood, or as desolate as an Iranian desert. At the same time, setting the novel by the seaside gave me the opportunity to probe some fears I hadn’t been able to use in the series before. Despite being Australian, I’ve never much liked the beach; I therefore took great pleasure in writing scenes featuring sharks and shipwrecks, churning waters and hidden rip-tides, revelling in all the things people fear when they step into the sea.

And there’s also a mermaid. I don’t want to say too much about her, for fear of spoiling the book for anyone who hasn’t read it, but I can confidently say that Sylvie is my favourite fairy so far. Writing her scenes was always a pleasure, and I truly hope we’ll see her toothy smile again before the series is through.

And that’s all I have to say on the matter. The Mermaid Wreck is the fourth book in The Witching Hours series, and it’s available in Australian bookshops right now. If you’re a young reader who thinks they might be brave enough to read it, then I wish you the very best of luck – and in the scariest of moments, when it feels like a spider might be caught between your fingers, I hope you’ll have the courage to see it through.

Happy witching!

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(PS: If you’ve already read book four, then please be advised that book five isn’t too far away – it’s already been written, and should be arriving in Australian bookshops in October. Come back then to hear more about Anna and Max’s next adventure, high in the mountains of China!)

Witch No. 14: Daisy O’Grady

“Does she wear a long black dress? Guess!”

As an Australian writer fascinated by all things witchy, I’m always on the lookout for witches with a distinctly Australian flair. Unfortunately, throughout my reading life so far, such witches have been virtually non-existent – with one notable exception. Daisy O’Grady is a terrifying Australian sorceress, her face gaunt, her hair wild, with a literal skeleton tucked away in her closet. She wears a macabre fox stole around her neck, and proudly mixes potions containing rats’ tails, toe-nails and dead lizards’ scales.

Oh – and she also happens to be the main character in a picture book for children.

DSC01225

Guess What? is a 1988 picture book written by Mem Fox and illustrated by Vivienne Goodman. It’s a book that sets you up to feel uneasy from the very beginning, establishing a fleeting sense of distance (“Far away from here lives a crazy lady called Daisy O’Grady”) before slowly drawing the reader closer to its mysterious protagonist. Each of the simple, sinister questions asked by Fox (“Is she tall?” “Is she thin?”) gives a further clue to Daisy O’Grady’s identity, building and building until the conclusion of the story seems terrifyingly, unsettlingly inevitable. You hope that Daisy won’t be a witch. You hope there’s going to be a twist. You hope the book won’t give you nightmares.

And, well, there is a twist – but I’m certainly not going to ruin that here!

DSC01226

Fox’s prose is a masterclass in creating a sense of looming dread, but it’s Vivienne Goodman’s illustrations that give the book its distinctly Australian flavour. Through a series of vivid, almost photorealistic pictures, Goodman provides a detailed insight into Daisy O’Grady’s world, documenting everything from her modest scrubland shack (complete with corrugated iron roof and brick outhouse) to the native animals that live both inside and outside her abode. Every illustration is cluttered with incredible, recognisable detail: The Weekend Australian lying crumpled on the floor; a reconciliation badge pinned to Daisy’s black hat; an ordinary tin of Keen’s Mustard sitting beside a jar of blowfly eyes. It’s a perfect snapshot of Australian farm life, filtered through a weird, witchy gauze. I’ve spoken earlier in this blog about my love for witch products in The Jolly Postman, and Goodman’s own creations – “Lifeless Lizards Scale Powder,” “Heinz Big Red Blood Sauce” – form a lovely complement to that text.

DSC01228

I’ve always thought of Guess What? as being an edgy, enthralling picture book, and so I was recently fascinated (if not surprised) to learn that, in American libraries, the book was the 66th most challenged book of the 1990s. According to one library website I found, the book was most likely challenged because of its “age-appropriateness and offensive language” – and while age-appropriateness is too subjective to easily refute, I am truly baffled by the second accusation. Does the charge relate to Daisy O’Grady’s wicked collection of 1970s pin badges, which includes buttons that say Sex Pistols and ABBA is Dead? Possibly – but it’s hard to shake the feeling that certain parents were looking for any excuse to object to the book once they found out there was a witch lurking inside.

But don’t let those “offensive” badges put you off – Guess What? is a magnificent picture book, perfectly designed to spook a child even as it delights them. The world needs more witches like Daisy O’Grady: cursing, cackling and cranky while remaining entirely, wonderfully Australian.

Final Musings

— I first had Guess What? read to me when I was one year old. I know this because my copy of the book is signed to me by Mem Fox, with an inscription dated 1992. My witch lit credentials are super legit.

— Mem Fox is notable for having written many, many famous picture books, but my other favourite book of hers is Possum Magic, from 1983. There isn’t a lot of magic in Australian literature, but with these two picture books Fox sets out a vision of a mythic Australia that was hugely influential on me as a young reader. (I even had a pet brush-tailed possum called Hush, rescued from the forest beside our house.)

— From all reports, the best reading of Guess What? you’ll ever hear is by Mem Fox herself. I can’t find a video of her performance anywhere on the web, but my mum recalls that a great, urgent emphasis must be placed on the constant refrain of “Guess? Yes!” In lieu of a video, you can read about how Fox developed the book on her website.

That’s all for now – happy witching!

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