Flying towards the dark
illustration by Jude Daly from ‘The Star-bearer’ I’m home in the dark. Yesterday I arrived, dragging my case through the sleet from South Ken tube station, clutching a skimpy cardigan, bare brown feet in their paper-thin shoes slowly going blue, and couldn’t budge the door for the mounds of post stacked up behind it. Not a single incredible book deal or film offer! So I took to my bed with coffee and some back copies of the London Review of Books [less formidable than the buff-coloured envelopes] and found this bitter-sweet poem by Francis Hope [for which I have no...
Collaboration
The Oxford dictionary defines to collaborate as: to work jointly esp. in a literary or artistic production. to cooperate traitorously with the enemy. Perhaps it’s this sinister connotation that publishers have in mind when they try to keep authors and illustrators apart (in case the author and illustrator start collaborating against them). But don’t be put off – there’s something very positive about working with your illustrator. Jude Daly and I have collaborated for many years. I claim her as one claims my agent and my publisher – mine even though she works for others. Since we both grew up...