Station Zero

For obvious reasons I approve of both stories about imaginary cities and old men blowing their savings on self-funded movies , so I felt obliged to go and see Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis despite the decidedly patchy reviews. And much to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it!  It's a very odd film: a sort of allegorical drama set in 'New Rome', which looks like New York, but where people wear slightly Roman-inflected costumes and have names like Crassus, Cicero and Ce(a)sar. The idea that the United States = Rome is an old one, but I'm not sure it's ever been done quite this literally: there are chariot races in Madison Square Garden. But the story isn't an updating of any particular episode from Roman history. It's about a genius architect 'Cesar Catilina', played by Adam Driver, whose vision of a utopian new city built from his wonder-material 'Megalon' is frustrated by the cautious mayor, Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). All t...

Thunder City will be published in the UK on 26th September - twenty three years after the original Mortal Engines .  I'd thought I was finished with the world of the Traction Era, because I thought if I wrote another Mortal Engines story I was likely to end up just repeating myself. Which I have: Thunder City features airships, assassins, city chases, flying towns, Stalkers, and lots of other stuff from the earlier books. But in order to shake things up a bit I've set it about 110 years before Mortal Engines starts, so no one in that book has been born yet, and the world the action takes place in is slightly different. It's the tail end of the Golden Age of Traction, when chivalric rules governed how cities pursued and consumed each other. By the time Thunder City starts those rules are starting to fray a bit, and there are predator towns and scavengers which behave very poorly, but the larger and older cities still act pretty sportingly. A predator town, behaving very po...

 The fifth book in the Adventuremice series is in UK bookshops now. It's called The Ghostly Galleon and has a spooky, autumnal, halloween-y vibe, with the Adventuremice investigating some ghostly goings-on on Bramble Isle. But are those real ghosts? Or are they just mice with sheets over them? People often say that children love scary stories, but I never did, and nor did Sarah McIntyre, so we try to make our stories as un-scary as possible, and any ghosts you may meet are more likely to be cute than terrifying. Captain Cheesebeard here is doing his best to be terrifying though... Sarah's artwork in these books goes from strength to strength, and the original paintings are all available through the Adventuremice.com website (you'll have to hurry though - they're selling fast). The website also features quizzes, videos, step-by-step drawing guides, and more. Meanwhile, Sarah's just finishing artwork for book six, which will be out next spring, and I'm writing b...

It’s just under a month until the publication of Thunder City , my new novel set in the world of Mortal Engines . To mark the occasion I’m lining up a bunch of events in September and October: the itinerary currently looks like this… On Monday, 30th September , I’ll be talking about the book at Waterstones in Bath as part of the Bath Children’s Literature Festival . On Saturday 5th October First Draft Books in Bovey Tracey, Devon and Bovey Paradiso arts centre are arranging a whole afternoon of Mortal Engines , kicking off with a screening of the movie, followed by a chat with me and book signing.   On Tuesday 8th October I’m part of a panel event at Cheltenham Literary Festival along with authors Liz Hyder and Piers Torday, discussing the creation of fantasy worlds. This is a school event, but I’ll be signing books afterwards if you happen to be at the festival that day, or want to pick up a signed copy from the bookshop later. On Saturday, 12th October I’ll be in Totnes for a...

I’ve been spending the summer in the Wild West, which Sarah Reeve and I have very convincingly recreated in a field near our house. Unfortunately it hasn't been very Wild West weather, but occasionally the sun shines, and we've made the most of it. Prairie Rascals , our new Bonehill Films production, is a Western, in which Dartmoor gets to stand in for the prairies and pinewoods of Arkansas while a cast of top Devonian and Cornish actors put on their best American accents. When her no-good homesteader husband is murdered by outlaws hunting for the the gold he stole during the Civil War, Annie Harper sets off to find the treasure for herself. Annie's played by Rosanna Lambert, a local actress who appeared briefly in our film Gwenevere as a mystical maiden. She’s great, and it’s been good to give her more to do in this one. Also returning is our Gwenevere title star, actress and artist Laura Frances Martin . Gwenevere was rather a serious role, but Laura’s a tremendously fu...

It’s time to announce a new Bonehill Films production. Making Gwenevere over the past couple of years has been one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done, so we’re going to try our luck in another genre which combines wild landscapes, dressing up, and a cavalier attitude to historical accuracy. We’re making a Western. Of course, most Westerns are filmed in America, and ours will be filmed in Devon, which might seem to put us at a considerable disadvantage. But our local bit of Devon looks like this… …and I think we can turn it into America with this one simple trick: (Banjo music intensifies.) Actually, I like the audacity of pretending Dartmoor is the Old West, and we’ll be joining in a time-honoured tradition - the first ever Western was filmed in Blackburn , and I remember my grandad telling me how as a boy he watched actors dressed as cowboys and Indians making films in Brighton, probably before the Great War.  Our film will be a hard-hitting tale of wrongdoing and reveng...