Here are Lettuce, Vern and three of the bunnies with my good friends Esther and Samuel, who love what they've seen so far in the DFC. They are very cool people. Samuel joined my book club a few years ago, when he was nine, even though it wasn't really meant for children. I had spread the word among my friends that I was starting up a book club, and when Samuel asked if he could be in it, I said I didn't think I'd be able to set up a separate club for kids. But every time he saw me, he'd ask again, and now he's been coming for about three years. About a year in, he started bringing along his little sister, and they both talk about the books they've read in the first half hour of our meeting before heading off again. So, of course, they're the first people I wanted to introduce to Vern and Lettuce!

They were very stoic in the photo shoot; Samuel started streaming tears from hay fever and Esther and I accidentally sat on an anthill. We've all decided we don't want a career in modeling.



Here's another picture from Draw Vern & Lettuce, this time by Lindsey!

I had an ecstatic phone call from David Fickling on Friday, saying all sort of nice things, and that someone from the Independent had loved Vern & Lettuce and wanted to run the strip in the newspaper. How exciting! I agreed to let them run it and we spent ages discussing which strip to let them have. It slightly niggled in my mind that I shouldn't be giving anything away that's going to appear in the DFC, but the lure of having an A4 colour spread in a major newspaper proved too much for me.

I needn't have worried! Stuart and I went for a sunny walk this morning across the park to the station to pick up a newspaper and spent at least five minutes trying to find the strip. We finally spotted it, in black and white and the size of a postage stamp! So nothing given away. And it really is a good write-up, I can't help but be pleased about that. Well done to 10-year-old Jacob Moreton who wrote the article.

Independent on Sunday, 18 May - Read the online article here

You can get some good deals if you sign up for the DFC comic by Monday, 19th May! Only two more days!!!

DFC contributor Garen Ewing just wrote this review of the DFC launch party and his remarkable day that, well, that left me a bit breathless! Having internet friends can feel a bit strange, but it's so fabulous when I finally get to meet them and find they're as great as I hoped they'd be.

By the way, does anyone know what kind of beetle this is? Is it the sort of thing I want infesting my lavender bush? It's gorgeous, but I don't know if it's a helpful kind of beastie or something I should be worried about.

What a brilliant evening! I didn't get back until 2am and am still trying to wake up, but here are a couple snaps from the night. My photo taking was sparse and a bit random. (Did anyone else take any photos?) Nikki Gamble wrote a review of the party on the South Bank for Write Away here.

Here's Vern and me with Giles Andreae, which was very exciting, both because Giles is lovely and because I'm illustrating one of his books. (Our agent introduced us and it was the first time I'd met him!)



And here's Lettuce and me with my good writer/illustrator friend Layn Marlow.



Vern needs one more person to have 100 friends on Facebook!

Edit And here's Lettuce recovering from the party with a cuppa, thanks to nice_cup_of_tea in Zurich!

I just got this in the post! It's, like, a practice version of the DFC, with little glimpses of the amazing stories to come! Everyone, you SO have to subscribe to this! If you do it before the 19th, you can get a better deal with the Early Bird special, so don't wait! Subscribe here!

www.thedfc.co.uk