Moonlocket Books Are My Bag Instagram takeover

| Peter Bunzl

Yesterday afternoon I took over the @BooksAreMyBag Instagram account to post some images to do with my book #Moonlocket which has been nominated for the Book Are My Bag Readers Award. I was able to post some development images of the artwork from Becca Stadtlander and Kath Millichope. As well as some images of my developmental writing from early drafts of the book. Here are the posts –

 

Hi all! This is @peter_bunzl – I am taking over the books are my bag instagram for a bit to post some images to do with my book #Moonlocket which has been nominated for the #BAMBReadersAward …So to start with here’s an image of the books cover – designed by Kath Millichope and illustrated by the AMAZING @beccastadtlander I think that they created something spectacular that perfectly encapsulates the book. I love the theatrical flavour of the rich velvety background and the embroidered stars, and the harvest moon, a call back to the #Cogheart clockface. I adore the London skyline, with hints of all the dark places Lily, Robert and Malkin visit in the story! #BAMB #Usborne #UKMG #ChildrensBooks #CogheartAdventures #BooksAreMyBag #IndieBookshops @Usborne_books @peter_bunzl

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Takeover by @peter_bunzl — ‘Here’s a look behind the scenes at Kath Millichope and @BeccaStadtlander ’s development work for the cover of #Moonlocket – you can see Becca’s early sketch of Robert and Lily on bicycles with Malkin riding in Lily’s basket, just as he does at the end of the story and a rough designs of Tolly – a new friend who Robert and Lily meet on this adventure. Plus designs for Jack Door – the book’s villain and for the Moonlocket and the Theatre of Curiosities – a mysterious theatre where there’s some spiritualism and ghostly goings on and the characters end up discovering a big clue in the story. In the centre are the cover roughs – I love the early rough design and the sparkle and deep purple of the first interpretation of the cover!’ #BAMB #BambReadersAwards #Usborne #UKMG #ChildrensBooks #CogheartAdventures #BooksAreMyBag #IndieBookshops @Usborne_books @peter_bunzl #BAMBReadersAward

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Takeover by @peter_bunzl — “Here’s some photos from my work developing the early drafts of #Moonlocket – This is the cover of the zero draft, which I wrote at the beginning of 2016. The zero draft, is what I like to call the first version of the book, it’s purpose it just to spew out as many words as possible in vaguely the right order, with a vague indication of the plot. The point is just to get the words on the page, then you can correct them later. Before I even start the zero draft, I usually have some visions of a few ideas for scenes circling around the main concept. So what I like to do is write those things down as one sentence on a post it and start gathering them together in order. This helps me work out the plot. Then I start to scribble longer notes – they might be versions of a scene, details about the characters, or information about the plot and the character relationships, after that I will write a short treatment – I didn’t put an image of that as it’s too spoilery! – and then I just start in on writing the zero draft. Here’s the first page of the zero draft… I cropped it because I’ve written a note at the top which tells the whole plot in one para with spoilers… Also, as you can see, the opening of the zero draft chap 1 is different from the final book!” #BAMB #BambReadersAwards #Usborne #UKMG #ChildrensBooks #CogheartAdventures #BooksAreMyBag #IndieBookshops @Usborne_books @peter_bunzl #BAMBReadersAward

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Takeover by @peter_bunzl –,”Here’s a picture of my writing desk and workspace. I tidied because I knew you were visiting! You can see a big poster in the background given to me by Usborne, that was made for the launch of #Cogheart. There are some post-its stuck around the screen, normally they have scene notes on to do with the book I’m working on: so a couple of these are from book 3 and a couple of them are ideas for future things. Also, I have a second monitor going on, so I can have Evernote or research pages open while I’m writing on the main monitor. For the actually drafting I like to use a programme called #Scrivener to write my drafts. The great thing about Scrivener is you have all of your files saved in one project – down the left of the screen there you can see all the chapters listed in order, and you can skip between them so it’s very easy to navigate about the manuscript, which is great when you’re doing larger edits on the manuscript.” #BAMB #BambReadersAwards #Usborne #UKMG #ChildrensBooks #CogheartAdventures #BooksAreMyBag #IndieBookshops @Usborne_books @peter_bunzl #BAMBReadersAward

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Takeover by @peter_bunzl –‘Some of the visual from my #Moonlocket research. For each book I write I make a pinterest board of images. This board is secret until the book is published and then I make it public. Here’s a snapshot of the Moonlocket board: you can see lots of great vintage images of paper moons – which I love, btw, Paper Moon is one of my favourite movies. Also some tarot cards which is a clue to one of the characters in the story. And an Edison talking doll a number of these dolls have a brief cameo in one action scene from the book. The second slide is a printed page from timeanddate.com – you can type in any year into that website and find out what the day was for any date. This was super useful as Moonlocket is set over a week in Jun 1897. Even more useful you can add the phases of the moon, since this is one of the motifs of the book it was good to know what the moon looked like on each day! The third slide is a print out from pinterest of a Victorian style house. It is how I imagined Lily’s home Brackenbridge Manor to look in the stories. The image has a floor plan, which is great because I can mark what each room is on that. It gives me some idea of the geography of the building, although I didn’t stick to closely to it in either book. The same with the map – here’s the rough map of Brackenbridge I drew with my editor Becky, we had to fudge some of the locations as they were mostly made up as I went along, especially in Cogheart. And then here’s the finished map from the book drawn by @beccastadtlander and Antonia Miller…’ #BAMB #BambReadersAwards #Usborne #UKMG #ChildrensBooks #CogheartAdventures #BooksAreMyBag #IndieBookshops @Usborne_books @peter_bunzl #BAMBReadersAward

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If you want to vote in the Books Are my Bag Reader awards, you can do so here…
You can also read a Q and A with the nominated authors here…