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16 Ontario School Library Association …continued from page 15 You have a colourful and informative website, a blog, and you are a regular "tweeter"! How important is it to stay abreast of current social technology? I have to admit to having a love-hate relationship with these technologies. I love seeing what my fellow authors and illustrators are doing. I'm Facebook friends with many of them and it's a great, tight and supportive community we have here in canada. So I love keeping in touch with them. I also constantly check the sites for my favourite authors and illustrators to see what they are doing, so I know what fans want to see as well. So many readers, and they are getting online at younger and younger ages, use technology to engage with their favourite books. So, just for PR reasons, you need to be out there in the online world just to be noticed. They will also contact you directly with questions, comments. They are online, so you need to be. I do also like podcasts, and wish there were more kid-friendly ones. I'm trying to get more involved in that. Michael Hlinka and I did a book on money for annick Press. Some of the concepts are pretty tricky, so we've now done a series of podcasts (on the annick website) to go over those concepts. The downside is that there's so much stuff out there! You can get lost for hours and hours, and authors are notorious for wasting time when they should be working. So I often need to disconnect. What advice would you share with young writers? Write. Read. Finish your story, even if you are unhappy with it in the end. So what? Sydney crosby doesn't just show up for hockey games and expect to score. He practices ten times as much as he plays. What advice would you share with young artists? Draw. constantly look at what other people are doing. There are amazing artists out there and almost all of them are on-line somewhere. Watch their videos. Steal their techniques but make the style your own. of course, that only happens when you draw a lot. Your hand will start moving according to your internal rhythms after a while, and your pictures will look like your pictures. also, learn how to draw and edit digitally. This is the future. You can still draw most of your work freehand, but almost everyone is submitting their artwork over the internet these days … so you better be a master of that as well. Congratulations on being nominated for the 2014 Forest of Reading® Silver Birch® Award for Neil Flambé And The Tokyo Treasure. Good luck! z