placemat mania!

Printing has begun!

Here are the first few lino-prints, pressed onto mulberry paper and hanging in my living room to dry. Donate 100 bucks to the food bank and I'll say thanks with a print. See the CBC Sounds of the Season webpage for details.

My rough sketch for the 2011 linocut.

Here's the rough sketch for this years lino-print for the CBC Radio Sounds of the Season show. It's the Soldiers Tower at Hart House. I made the first sketch during Remembrance Day ceremonies there. The deal is - donate $100 or more to the food bank, and this is my thank you to you. This year's show is a little later than usual - December 15th.

Neil Flambe website!

The new Neil Flambe website has launched! There will be more fun stuff to come. This is a slightly re-jigged pic of Neil that's on the new #1 cover. Enjoy! 

Neil Flambe #3 hint....

I was on a recent survey trip to a little place called Paris. This is a hint of a very important place in Neil Flambe and the Crusader's Curse. Look for it in May 2012!

More "restaurant" doodles

Love those place mats!

Family Circus

Bil Keane has died. 89. Every cartoonist wishes for a long and fruitful life like that. Will his funeral route have dotted lines to follow?

halfway!

It's nice being a dual citizen... just when the last of the frozen Canadian turkey soup is gone... I can start looking forward to the US version.

This is this year's bbqed bird from a few weeks back.

Children's Book Bank

I had a great visit to a great place today - the Children's Book Bank here in Toronto. Just look at how warm and inviting the space is! It's like the library of your warm and fuzzy dreams.

The amazing staff take gently used books and hand them out to readers who can't afford to buy their own.

I talked about Neil Flambe to a group of grade 6ers who actually like the obnoxious ginger chef. This is me giving them a quick cartooning lesson.

And there's a great student-run trivia night fundraiser coming up in TO on November 21st. Emceed by the great Robert Paul Weston.

Click here for more details!

Some pics of the tardis porch

WOW! A little Neil!

So.... we did a Dr. Who themed porch yesterday (pictures will be posted later)... BUT the coolest thing was that there was a young man dressed as NEIL FLAMBE!

Look at the hair!

He didn't even know that I lived in the hood... so it was a totally unexpected and COOL!

I am very touched.

Tintin

There's been a lot of Tintin news these days (can't wait for the movie!).

Here's a flight of fancy. Tintin as a Canadian saving the Stanley Cup.

I mean, his dog is named Snowy (at least in English)... shouldn't he be Canadian?

Sneak Peek Neil Flambe #4

I handed in the pics for Neil Flambe #4 yesterday. NF and the Tokyo Treasure. It's due out next year but I can tell you there will be some manga... here's a sneak preview.

Golly

So I'm up for the Silver Birch Award again! Multiple times, as it turns out.... which is completely mind-blowing.

Neil Flambe #2 is up for fiction. Neil #1 won the award this year (thus the picture). And as with last year, great co-nominees. It is honestly an amazing honour to be included with all these amazing writers.

Canadians are so lucky to have such a great kid-oriented literary culture and we authors are so lucky to have such amazing librarians and educators... and readers too!

Game Day is nominated in the non-fiction category as is Cathy Rondina's Don't Touch that Toad! which I was honoured to illustrate.

See everyone in May!

See ya tomorrow!

I'm giving a talk on non-fiction tomorrow at the Young Writer's Festival... at the North York Central Library.

It is definitely a different challenge than writing fiction.... and is often more rewarding.

I loved giving the people in Game Day a chance to shine. The book is a series of stories about all the people behind the scenes in sports.

They inspire me. They have to do their jobs just as well as pro athletes... or else the athletes are not going to be able to do anything.

Do they get the recognition? The money? No.

Are they happy? Yes.

School visits

I'm gearing up for another busy year of visiting schools.

Interested?

Just send me an email (look over to the right for the contact info.)

WOTS Toronto!

Here's a peak at my booth at WOTS - with lots of friends and family.

I'm drawing (by request) a ninja cat. The dragon hockey pic was my morning doodle. All available for 5 bucks! Just send me an email...

final preview

See you all Sunday at WOTS Toronto!

And even more bookmarks!

See you Sunday at WOTS Toronto.

more bookmarks

and the originals are available at Word on the Street this Sunday.

Check out my booth. KS 13!

Word on the Street

Every year I have my own booth at Toronto's Word on the Street. I make bookmarks and sell them cheap (5 bucks for an original Sylvester!)

Here are some of this year's crop.

See you Sunday, September 25th!

First edition of Neil Flambe

Interesting to see booksellers on amazon put up first editions of Neil Flambe for $200 (must be a joke?).

Here's the REAL first edition. JJ Lee and I handed out this handmade version of the old radio play back in 2007. If you were lucky enough to be at the Harry Potter 7 release party in Vancouver you may have one. How much are those worth? Hmmm... millions?

And I'm just finishing the edits on Neil Flambe and the Tokyo Treasure before handing it in... then getting the pics finished.

WEAR A HELMET

This is why you should ALWAYS wear a helmet when you are on your bike.

People who know me know that I never go anywhere on my bike without my helmet - except for last night when I biked to the end of my alleyway, hit a speedbump, lost control and smashed my face into the asphalt.

Idiot.

I have gotten into discussions with helmetless cyclists who say the helmet won't protect them from collisions. Yes, but the real reason to wear a helmet is to protect your head from minor cockups like mine last night.

@arthurslade

I had a chance to interview the great Art Slade for The Sunday Edition on CBC Radio this week.

Here's a pic Art took of the two of us at this year's Silver Birch ceremonies.

You can listen to the interview here. It's in hour one of the show.

more doodles

From time to time I post the doodles I do during story meetings when I'm wearing my radio hat. I love ball point pens. Here's the latest.

ME in triplicate... yikes!

This is from Lakefield. Adam and Chris played younger and older versions of me in the intro to my reading. COOL!

Lakefield

I had an amazing weekend in Lakefield for the literary festival there. It's a town obsessed with books (Margaret Laurence, Susanna Moodie and her sis all lived there). They treat authors like royalty. Here's the display in the local Hardware store for Splinters! WOW

great news!

Here's the story on the Quill and Quire blog about Neil Flambe's new home.

I'm over the moon-cake thrilled.

Book Three is called NF and the Crusader's Curse. Here's a pic from my trip to Rye, Sussex and the Rye Museum.

Scared?

The Award!

I just realized I never posted this year's actual Silver Birch Award (on the right). A young TDSB student won a contest to design this year's award!

Game Day

Game Day - my behind the scenes look at the world of sports - is a starred recommendation in Canadian Children's Bookcentre Booknews "Best Books 2011". :)

cat d'oeuvres

This is my mood today.

I need to do some (a lot) of restructuring before I can turn this into a finished piece, but it's where my brain is at I'm afraid.

a preview of Neil #3

I've been working away on Neil Flambe #3 (The Crusader's Curse) and here's a preview of Isabella's new haircut.

You may remember from Neil #2 that she lost her normally long curly locks... now it's more of a bob.

I always like drawing Isabella. She's confident, nice... but always seems to be looking back at me with wry disapproval.

Award winner!

Splinters was named a Nautilus Silver award winner!

Wow.

I was absolutely blown away this week. My book Neil Flambe and the Marco Polo Murders was the winner of the Silver Birch award for Fiction. This award is an author's favourite - because it's voted on by students in grades 4-6 all across Ontario. The finalists are always amazing, and the list this year was great.

This is me at the ceremony on a windy day at Harbourfront.

(That's Eric Walters to my left wondering why I'm dressed like a goof... I mean chef).

Too loong...

Boy has it been a long time since I posted. OOPS. I've just wrapped up an amazing week in Quebec touring as part of the TD Bookweek! Something like 18 school visits over 5 days. I'll be at Pages in St. Leonard tomorrow. I hope to have some pics up soon. In the meantime, here are some pics from my recent research trip to Paris. I drew little Neil Flambe pics on all the placemats... did the staff throw them out? burn them? keep them? Dunno....

A while back I blogged about a wolf logo I designed for my friend Sean's School. Well, now they are painting an official version on the gym wall... so COOL

Feeling honoured

Both Neil Flambe books AND Splinters made the Resource Links top books of 2010 list. Wow.

nice nod for my friends and Neil Flambe

Neil Flambe gets a nice honourable mention nod from the OLA.

another

Neil Flambe heads to Tokyo in Book #4 (if it ever gets published) so this one seems to have a slight Japanese bend to the chef hat....

cooking up a doodle

I've blogged before about doodling when I'm on air. I've been drawing a lot of chefs recently.