Mokie & Bik Go to Sea

Mokie and Bik Go to Sea (that’s the front end paper above) comes out tomorrow, in the USA and Canada. It’s always a bit of a funny feeling to have a book coming out and not be able to celebrate it where I live. If I’d thought of it in time, I could have had a skype launch! As it is, I will just have to wish it bon voyage right here.

The book’s been a long time coming; it was originally meant to appear a year after Mokie and Bik, but unfortunately the illustrator, Jonathan Bean, has had health problems and the publication had to be delayed to allow him time to finish the art work. Like the first book, the art has been worth the wait – and I do hope he’s recovering well now. He’s an incredibly talented young man. (I loved his picture book Night.)

One story in this book overlaps with the Australian version of Mokie and BIk, illustrated by Beth Norling. The story of the boat drifting out to the mouth of the harbour, and being brought in safely to the fuel barge by five year old Bik, is quite true. It was obviously a dramatic and traumatic event in the twins’ lives, and I wanted to build up to it as I did in this book.
(Their Dad jumping off to chase the dog who was chasing a cat down the wharf is also true - in fact that story is pretty much as Dad told it to me.)

And, if by any chance anyone reading this knows my dad and his sister Anne, please don’t mention that the book is out. (How to keep a secret... tell it to cyberspace!) I’ll be seeing them for their 80th birthday in July, and want to keep the book till then, as well as the CD of the 3rd book, Mokie and Bik in a House-on-the-Ground. It is unlikely to be published as a book now, but I have recorded it as an audio, which you can hear at the Macmillan site.

New website & lost address

I have a new website! Same address, but I've made it myself using iWeb. It's not quite finished, but it is at least up to date. The funny thing is that after always having decided that I'm hopeless at doing anything technical, I not only managed to do this, but really enjoyed it. So have a look; comments and suggestions are gratefully accepted!

The only downside is that I've lost the email address associated with the old site: wendyorr@wendyorr.com. If you have that address please delete it, as I won't receive it. If you have either of my other two addresses, they're still fine. And if not, there's an "Email me" button on the site.

Mokie and Bik Go to Sea

Yesterday was one of the most exciting days in an author's working life: the arrival of a new book. Mokie and Bik Go To Sea, the second Mokie & Bik story, will be out in stores in North America on the 31st of this month, but the author's advance copies always arrive a little earlier.

This one was especially welcome after its long wait – so a special thank you to Jonathan Bean, who persevered to produce wonderful illustrations again despite his difficulties.I hadn't seen the finished pictures before, and though I'd seen the cover in the advance reading copy a couple of years ago, the finished dustjacket is brighter, bluer, and more beautiful. I always forget just how much lovelier a finished book is than the ARC.

(That's it over there in the sidebar, in case you hadn't guessed.)

Actually even the story seemed new, as it's so long since I finished the edits! Reading the excerpt for the podcast was quite a relief because I still felt the twins' language was working. (Now I just hope other people think it has too!)

Like the first Mokie & Bik, this book is based on stories of my father and his twin sister's childhood on a boat in Vancouver harbour, though the one in which a seal fleeing a killer whale jumps into the rowboat, was based on something in the news when I was visiting my parents (ironically, while researching the background for the book.)

(They weren't really named Mokie and Bik, by the way: but my aunt was called Mokie Anne, because of how she said milk, and so I decided to match that with something - cookies didn't work, so I played with Biscuit - to Bikkie - to Bik.)