The nightmare escapes: a writing prompt at our creativity camp

My wife and I our currently in Korea, teaching a creativity camp for tweens and teens. We’re combing writing, art, prop building, and acting to provide the students with a week of intensive creativity!

One of our opening activities was based around the idea of bottling dreams. Students brainstormed characters, focusing on their fears and nightmares. The students then “built” the nightmares by imagining that they had been bottled.

Students could be as literal or symbolic as they wished. I brought a lot of general supplies such as black sand, hair, cotton, and feathers, all of which could be trimmed or stretched to represent the negative qualities of nightmares. There were also some more “on-the-nose” objects, such as plastic bugs and snakes!

For story purposes, those bottles get accidentally opened, unleashing story inspiration!

Here are some photos of the students’ bottles and brainstorming . . .

A boy in an inside-out shirt, a flying tiger, and a thousand doorways: My new book series!

I’m very excited to announce that I’ve signed with HarperCollins Children’s Books for a three-book middle-grade series. Book 1, The Secret of Zoone, is about a boy who stumbles through a secret door and into a magical station at a crossroad between worlds (so, as you can guess, a lot happens there).

I can’t wait to introduce readers to my cast of characters, including . . .

Ozzie, the boy in the inside-out shirt . . .

Tug, the skyger with failed wings . . .

Salamanda Smink, the inept wizard’s apprentice . . .

and Fidget of Quoxx, the princess with inappropriately purple hair.

I’ve been working on this world (worlds!) in one way or the other for ten years. It’s involved not only writing, but a lot of doodling, drawing, brainstorming, prop-building, and traveling the world.

I’m so thrilled that the series has finally found a home. It combines many of the things I absolutely adore: doorways, keys, talking (and flying) animals, magic, and steampunk.

I want to thank my agent Rachel Letofsky with CookeMcDermid for all of her support, but in helping me get the manuscript in shape and, of course, in finding a dream publisher for it.

I also want to thank all those people who helped by preceding the book: the one and only Marcie Nestman, Paige Mitchell, Kallie George, Sarah Bagshaw, Renuka Baron, and a cast of young readers, including Nadia and Rachel.

I’m currently hard at work with my wonderful editor, Stephanie Stein, to complete final edits on Book 1 for its release in 2019.