Station Zero

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...

This September Scholastic will be publishing my new novel set in the world of Mortal Engines . Here’s the cover, created (like all the others in the series) by Ian McQue . The rule I set for myself when I was writing this one was that it shouldn’t feature any of the people or places from previous Mortal Engines books. So  Thunder Cit y takes place just over a century before the original book, when the town-eat-town world of Traction Cities is slightly less ruthless than it will become later, and none of the characters from the original quartet has even been born yet. (I suppose Mr Shrike must be bimbling about somewhere, but he’s still just yer basic implacable killing machine at this point so there’s not much point in paying him a visit). So hopefully this new take will be accessible to people who’ve never read Mortal Engines , and hopefully people who have read it will enjoy an adventure set in the same world. My pen and ink drawing of the Traction City of Thorbury,  after...

 The year has got off to a slow start here because I’ve been poorly, so I’ve started illustrating The Lord of the Rings (as you do). The idea is to do drawings of the bits that don’t usually get illustrated (or that I haven’t seen many pictures of, at least). My favourite parts of the book are the early chapters about the Shire, Bree, and Eriador , so I may just concentrate on those, though maybe I’ll venture further for a bit of variety. I doubt I could manage the big cities and battles in the later parts, but who knows, maybe my penmanship will improve with practise.  Here are the elf towers on the Tower Hills: The Last Bridge over the River Hoarwell… The road from Hobbiton to Buckland… And a random hobbit lady feeding her chickens. More to come, though productivity will probably drop off because I have Actual Work on now, and a new small film to plan. Announcements about both next week.