Here's a little guest post from my most patient patron of the arts. Stuart's been drawing houses today.
Stuart: Ha ha, that looks terrible!
Sarah: No, it doesn't. I like the way you've drawn them.
Stuart: Here's your tea.

When the Society of Authors asked me to organise an event and let me choose Science Fiction as the theme (my last theme was comics), I had such fun pulling together this fabulous group of writers for our Worlds of Tomorrow panel. It's the first time the Society of Authors has hosted an SF event and they were very excited! And other bloggers have beat me to the write-up: check out fab blogs by writers Jeff Norton, here, Rebecca Earl here, and Jonathan Green, here, and if you're on Facebook, Candy Gourlay has posted a bunch of photos (many of which I have nicked for this post). To be honest, I was so caught up in hosting the event that it's all a bit of a blur now and I've forgotten most of what we said, but these bloggers took good notes.



So last Tuesday, I zipped up my space boots and joined the panel in front of a big crowd at Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road. Oo, I was not the only one in interesting footwear! Who could these belong to?


Photos by Candy Gourlay

( Click here to find out, under the cut! )

Look! It's my picture book artwork, all beautifully packaged up to take in to Rebecca and Pauliina at the Scholastic UK office this morning! (I only use plastic of the finest quality.)



Ha ha, here it is on my messy desk, all that artwork in one pile. I'm too tired to remember when the book will actually come out, but I'll make lots of noise about it before then. Oh my goodness, I am so glad it's all done, this book was killer. In a good way, but killer.

Thursday was a super-exciting day! I met up with Philip Reeve and our agents at the Paddington Bear statue in Paddington station and we took the train to Oxford to celebrate the signing of our four-book contract with Oxford University Press! Here's my agent, Jodie Marsh, and me. I was so chuffed she could come along, I know she's SOOO busy, but she said she'd been looking forward to the day out of the office. Yay!



And here's Philip with his agent, Philippa Milnes-Smith, who just negotiated his Goblins contract with Laika animation studio. I'd never met Philippa before, and she turned out to be great fun, and the four of us had such a good natter about publishing and life in general.

( Click here for lots more under the cut! )

I have loads of stuff I want to post, but right now I need to keep my head down and press on to meet some big deadlines. But I had to show you what I saw at Paddington Station. Not only does it have a bear keeping daily vigil, but now there's a resident hawk! I don't know what the lady's name is, but the hawk's name is Sally. (Special apologies to Cooey the Pigeon.)



Oh, and do you remember that comic I made about Mr Shufflebottom? Well, Le_Woodman on Twitter forwarded me a comment by ‏@qikipedia that made me smile: The names people have been most eager to dump in the past 100 years are Handcock, Glasscock, Hickinbottom, Shufflebottom and Winterbottom.