My Life and Other Stuff I Made Up

Hi, I'm Tristan Bancks, author of the new children's short story collection MY LIFE AND OTHER STUFF I MADE UP . This week on this here blog I'm going to take you on a journey through the publishing process from initial idea to final design. I will give insight into the processes of the key people who ushered this project from concept to print.

Monday:         Author (Me)

Tuesday:        Publisher (Zoe Walton, Random House children's publisher)

Wednesday:  Editor (Brandon VanOver, Managing Editor, Random House)

Thursday:      Illustrator (Gus Gordon)

Friday:   Designer (Astred Hicks, Freelance designer, Design Cherry)

Many of the stories in MY LIFE AND OTHER STUFF I MADE UP sprang from things that have happened to me. I then grossly embellished those stories to make for a series of (hopefully) funny and surprising tales.

I grew up reading Paul Jennings books like Unreal, Unbelieveable and Quirky Tails. I loved these books. Nobody else, at the time, was writing surprising, funny, odd tales for children quite like these. I have used my love of those stories as motivation.

As a kid I always jotted my ideas down in exercise books and notebooks. I didn’t know what I would do with them but I just had to get them down. When I talk to kids in schools and fests I always encourage them to get their ideas down – ideas for stories, movies, inventions, video games, jokes, cartoon characters and general thoughts on life. You never know when they might come in handy.

Thanks to illustrator Gus Gordon and designer Astred Hicks, this book looks and feels a bit like one of my notepads as a kid, with pictures and weird, funny, gross stories and things that would make me laugh. A book like this is a space for a child to make their own, to explore the things and ideas that they love. I encourage everyone, as soon as they can write, to have a book like this where they can be bold and adventurous without needing to be ‘right’ or having to prove anything to anybody. It's the perfect antidote to NAPLAN testing.

Tomorrow, children's publisher Zoe Walton will provide her insight into the journey of My Life.

[caption id="attachment_2699" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Tristan Bancks, author"][/caption]

www.tristanbancks.com