INTRO

June! Half way through the year! I am in an edit frenzy, aided by the sun on my balcony. Currently, that means bouncing back and forth between “this book is great and I love it” and “why am I editing this there's nothing of value here at all” at a rate of around 10x a day. When I can feel both simultaneously, perhaps I will know that the book is done.

I am, frankly, exhausted. But we persist.

THE NEWS

I'm writing this not too long after the Leeds Book Awards, about which returning readers may remember me getting quite excited. So, how did it go?

Well, we didn’t win, and I'm not even a little bit bothered about that. I got so, so much out of the day, and I couldn't ask for more. What a wonderful day.

It was perhaps the best event I've ever been involved in, and a remarkable testament to Leeds’ commitment to literature and investment in children.

There's nothing quite as powerfully affirming as a room containing 350 children losing their minds about books. I talked about writing and about how I read as a child. I answered questions about reading and writing and worldbuilding and whether or not the waste disposal frogs ever go on strike (yes, they do). I listened to children performing scenes I wrote, and doing voices for all the characters. I signed school library books and copies that looked like they'd been loved and chewed and sat on and I signed reading journals and hand-written reviews and scraps of paper. I met an audience I've never met before, a crowd of kids who loved the book and were touched by it. I found that we have a passionate audience of shy 13 year old girls covered in pride flags, and I've never been more proud or more hopeful for the future of reading. My heart is very full, and I hope it remains that way for a long time.

WHAT AM I WRITING?

It's been a month of bits and pieces. As we're now half way through the year, I think it's time to pause and take stock of The Projects:

PROJECT RS: first draft complete, waiting for the rest of the team to have time to give it a read. I'll try to give it a first edit pass before that happens, but the big next step will be “my co-creators read it and we work out what direction to take it in”.

PROJECT V: has been read by one person so far. I've implemented her notes and made some changes. One more pass, mostly to tidy up seams where chapters have moved and make sure everything flows, and it'll be ready for a second reader, I think. I'm still not really sure if this book is anything, but it IS shaped like a book now.

PROJECT SONG: waiting for schedules to line up, not actively working on this one until that happens.

PROJECT DISAPPEAR: I'm having some thoughts about how to retool this one. It needs pretty dramatic changes, and I think that's going to mean a change of POV character and possibly a different medium. Not an active priority, but it'll be nice to go back to this when I clear a few more things off my plate.

PROJECT AQUARIST: I don't think I've mentioned this before. It's a deeply silly bisexual teen romcom. The first draft got massively out of hand (to the tune of an absurd 120,000 words), and I need to strip out most of the middle of it and tighten focus in the back half. I think this is going to be my next main focus - I'm finding myself desperate to go back to these particular idiot characters, and I very much believe in this book.

WHAT AM I READING?

May was a hungry month:

This Place Kills Me (Tamaki and Goux)

The City We Became (Jemisin)

The World we Make (Jemisin)

Linger (Stiefvater)

The Old Ways (Macfarlane)

Galaxy: the Prettiest Star (Axelrod and Taylor)

Galaxy: as the World Falls Down (Axelrod and Hickman)

Some Body Like Me (Lapinska)

This is How You Lose the Time War (Gladstone and El Mohtar)

Deep Secret (Jones)

Artezans: the Last Spellbreaker (Lapinski)

The 10% Solution (Rand)

The Moustache (Carrère)

Stop! Hibari-kun (Eguchi)

On Starlit Shores (Glendining)

The Unworthy (Bazterrica)

And Then? And Then? What Else? (Handler)

MY LINKS

Buy The Restaurant at the Edge of the World (UK)

Buy Off Menu (US)

My bookshop.org reading lists

FRIENDS MAKING THINGS

This month, I’d like to talk to you about Mark Stack and Annie Marcano’s Travis Munoz and the Fire of the Aztecs, due out in the UK on the 22nd.

I read a lot of middle grade, and I think a lot about mythology, and this? This is The Good Stuff. It’s lovely, clear MG storytelling: Travis is a kid who loves baseball, and discovers that he’s got special powers from the Aztec gods, which is a difficult responsibility. Chaos ensues. It’s got detailed mythological engagement, great character beats, culturally specific angles on things, instantly likeable characters, and beautiful, charming art. This book is fun.

We’re lucky to live in a world where “gods are real in the modern day” stories are starting to stretch outside European mythologies, but progress is still slower than it should be. Travis Munoz deserves to be a huge, huge hit; there should be so many more of these books. Mark and Annie have absolutely nailed a shape of story that feels fun, elegant, engaging, and like it could go on for ever without ever getting stale. This is the kind of book that kids are going to finish and immediately want to read the next one.¹

Get out there and buy a copy of this book. Buy one for yourself, and then buy one for every child you know.

¹ _{It’s me. I’m kids.}

OUTRO

It's been a long, isolated month of words in and words out, as I push as hard as I can to make creative work a larger part of my life. This is what I want to do; I know that for sure now. I just need to get there. It's a long road ahead, and I am very tired, but I can do this.

• Ollie, Edinburgh, June 2026

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