Soccer Sabotage scores a trailer

Soccer Sabotage, Book 3 in the Graphic Guide Adventures series, continues to win readers across the country. To help spread the goals and the news, the great folks at Orca put together a trailer for the book. Check it out below:

Share the Soccer Sabotage Trailer with your friends!

Ramp Rats lands Shuster Nomination

Ramp Rats, the Book 2 in the Graphic Guide Adventure series has picked up some new fans over the summer months. Although Bounce and Pema’s biker gang-busting grindfest has been out for a few years, the comic aficionados at the Joe Shuster Awards have nominated Ramp Rats for their 2009 Comics for Kids award. Mike Deas and I are in with some great company, so thanks to the Joe Shuster folks and good luck to everyone nominated.

While Ramp Rats is winning friends and Soccer Sabotage is climbing the charts over at youtube, the Book 5 in the Graphic Guide Adventure series is getting ready to take on the net itself!

Media Meltdown on its way

Media Meltdown beams its way to bookstores in October 2009 and it’s set to change the way you look at your TV, game system and even the streets around you.

Combining more fast-paced adventure and mystery while uncovering the inner-workings of modern media, Media Meltdown is perfect for gamers, writers, readers and jammers everywhere.

To celebrate the launch of the book, we’re putting together a Media Meltdown website at http://mediameltdown.net/ filled with games, drawing tips, avatars and wallpapers to download and ways for you make a difference in your media-packed world.

Once again, illustrator extraordinaire Mike Deas has brought my words to life with his amazing artwork. Check out Mike’s post at the Graphic Guide Adventures website for a sneak peak at some of the illustrations and stay tuned here for news when mediameltdown.net goes live in a few weeks.

But wait! There’s more . . .

But is that all for the Graphic Guide Adventure series?

No way!

I’ve spent the last few months scribbiling away at Book 5 in the series: Food Fight. Due out in Spring 2010, Food Fight reunites readers with Devin and Nadia, as they stumble into a fresh mystery about not-so fresh food. As they track down clues and chase suspects, the kids learn the truth behind the food we all eat. Can’t say much more, but I’m very excited for this one too. Food Fight is now in Mike’s hands and he’s working his magic. Will reveal all when the time is right.

In the meantime, keep reading and enjoy the final weeks of summer!

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?

This is the second year in a row that my Max Finder Mystery series of graphic novels has received the nod from the AEP. The Collected Casebook Vol. 1 picked up a 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award for its innovation in children’s publishing.

I’m honoured that the AEP enjoyed the second book in the Max Finder Mystery trilogy as much as it liked the first. The AEP seal of approval means a lot because it more librarians will purchase the book and more kids will get to read Max & Alison’s mysterious adventures.

Cool!