I say it’s another sign, because the first book in the Graphic Guide Adventure series, Wild Ride, is nominated for the 2009 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Award. This isn’t new news, but it is to my knowledge the first time a graphic novel has been nominated for one of the “Tree Awards” (Silver Birch in Ontario and more varieties in other provinces.) Sequential art FTW!

All this is a round-about way of saying that I’ll be heading out to Halifax for the Hackmatack Awards ceremony in May. Very excited about that. I’ll also be visiting schools in the run up to the awards, so I’m looking forward to meeting the readers and securing their votes by any means necessary (this stuff makes the US elections look like a tea party, let me tell you.)

Thanks to Resource Links and Hackmatack for including the GGA books and a big thanks to the creative powers of Michael Deas, illustrator extraordinaire who gives the whole serkies its fantastic look. Just check out the cover art for Soccer Sabotage, GGA #3 on the left. Kickin’! (in every sense of the word.)

While I’ve been busy writing Media Makers, Book 4 of the Graphic Guide Adventures series, my illustration partner, the fantastic Michael Deas has been busy drawing the art for Book 3: Soccer Sabotage. Over the weekend, my editors at Orca Book Publishers sent me Mike’s pencils in full colour and they’re looking great! We run a high security facility around here, so I can’t show you the roughs but has put together a very cool Soccer Sabotage banner – it’s the one at the top of the post. Pretty cool, huh?

You’re going to have to wait until 2009 (I know, I know – it says spring 2008 on the banner – we’re working on that!) to get your hands on Soccer Sabotage. But Book 2 in the GGA series, Ramp Rats, hits bookstores in October and is already getting good reviews – which I’ll get up once I have the first draft of Media Makers into Orca – see how it all works in cycles?