Once Upon a Saga – Fables and the Art of Long-Form Storytelling

By Nick Cross

After 13 years, 14 Eisner Awards, 150 issues and almost 6,000 pages, the Vertigo comic book series Fables has reached its end. What began as a simple postmodern twist on fairy tales quickly evolved into a sprawling, beautiful, dark, engrossing, ambitious and occasionally frustrating saga. As I closed the cover on the final volume, I felt both exhilaration and the sad pang of loss. Under those circumstances, it seemed only fitting to introduce this tremendous grown-up comic series to a wider audience and also take the opportunity to explore the challenge of writing truly long-form stories.

Making things up: Getting Started

By Teri Terry

Part 2 in Making Things Up: a blog series about the creative process.

So...you like writing. You think you’ve got a knack for it, and you have some things to say. Or maybe you’ve written loads already, and the time has come to write something new, but you’re stuck. How do you get started?

The Many Faces of Diversity

By Candy Gourlay

So let's be honest. We authors are terrified of diversity in children's books.

Are we doing it right? Are we offending anyone by not including/including a character who is 'other' in our stories? Who is allowed to write about other cultures/races/sexual orientations? Who should be offended? Who should just keep their mouths shut?

I have publicly expressed some views on diversity (read Growing up I thought Filipinos were not allowed to be in books), but in the main, I have to confess I have been careful not to step in to the public spats that burn across the world of social media like brushfires that are hard to put out. I keep my counsel not just because I am so busy it feels like I'm drowning, but because the heat is intense.

And yet here I am, described by many as one of the UK's 'diverse authors'.