Irish Book Awards shortlist announcement

Here's some photos from the shortlist announcements for the Bord Gáis Irish Book Awards from last Thursday.

My fellow Walker Books author and friend Sarah Webb is nominated in the Senior category. Here's Sarah and myself with Conor Hackett, 'the best rep in the world!'

It was so great to meet Derek Landy at the shortlist announcement. He just lives down the road from me in Rush, but we hadn't meet before. Megan, my daughter loves the Skulduggery Pleasant series. She is reading book 2 at the moment and loving it. Derek signed a photo for her and she was totally thrilled!

And so lovely to meet Cecelia Ahern too, she lives near my folks in Malahide.

Go, go the northsiders!

However, Paul Howard aka Ross O'Carroll Kelly wasn't so sure about all this northside competition!

Click here to vote.

Busy in Bangor

Some photos of the workshop from Saturday. Great Hugglewugs were drawn and decorated with sticky gooey glittery sparkles! Thank you to everyone one that came along. The Library in Bangor looks fantastic and it was great to meet Patrick Benson, Anita Jeram and Paul Howard who gave workshops too.
All the illustrators sat in down the back of the class when Patrick was giving his workshop! He talked about illustrating Roald Dahl's The Minpins. I loved the way he showed the kids everything from rough to thumbnail to finished art. He didn't seem at all precious about his artwork which was really refreshing. In fact he passed it about the class so you could have a really good look at it. So now I have a few new illustrating tricks! Thanks Patrick!