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Children's author, illustrator, screenwriter

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Big Sky Mountain

Big Sky Mountain Forest Wolves Longlisted for the Alligator’s Mouth Award 2023 (and Book 4 Update)

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I’m so excited to see my Big Sky Mountain Forest Wolves among the longlist for the Alligator’s Mouth Award 2023. So many terrific authors are with me on the longlist, so it really brightened up a dismal, murky old day when I heard the news! You can check out the full longlist here.

New Big Sky Mountain Book!

In other news, I’ve now completed the fourth and final book in the Big Sky Mountain series. Big Sky Mountain: The Sky Eagles will be out 20 July 2023. You can pre-order your copy here.

It’s always wonderful to reach the end of a book. It still feels like an achievement, just like every book has since I started.

This one feels especially good, what with fitting it around endless fatigue from my ME/Long Covid, doing a few illos a day, and generally limiting work time to what isn’t going to wipe me out. (I’m good at the long game, thankfully.)

Since finishing, I’ve tried to take some time off to try to get a bit better. I’m rubbish at resting, and the desire to do everything is strong, but the body is no longer willing. So rest I must.

The past month has seen me working on my mental health and brain rewiring to find a better way to overcome chronic fatigue, and the signs are really good. Using breathwork, cold showers, meditation and simple NLP techniques, I’ve really focused so hard on being positive, not fearing crashing again, and celebrating every little step forward.

Unlike previous times when I’ve started feeling semi-human over the past 15 months, this time my body seems to be in a better place to deal with everything and not have a negative response. And if I do have another crash, I feel better able to recover and take it with a positive spirit.

x

Alex

Big Sky Mountain: The Forest Wolves

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Yesterday was International Beaver Day, which felt like the right time to get in touch to let you know Big Sky Mountain: The Forest Wolves is out now!

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Big Sky Mountain: The Forest Wolves is available in all book stores!

After a storm, Rosa and Grandma Nan find a lost wolf cub and embark on a journey to return the cub to its pack. It’s a story about finding your family, whoever, wherever, and whatever they may be!

As with the first book, The Forest Wolves is inspired by my love of nature and adventure. If you’re interested in rewilding, you’ll enjoy the scene where a herd of hipster bison come crashing through the trees.

I had a lot of fun drawing them! In Britain we used to have lots of creatures like bison on our shores, but now we have very few. Red deer, and a few escaped wild boar continue to do a similar job in the wild, and they’re so important for our ecosystems.

Large mammals (the megafauna of old) fulfil many roles: they break up the soil which helps the seedbank regenerate, clear trees to let sunlight down onto the forest floor, and generally make the landscape better for birds, insects and smaller mammals. Without these creatures, us humans have to do their jobs, which costs lots of money, and takes lots of time…

Maybe one day we’ll see more large creatures back in our landscape. I can only hope! 

Book Three

Right now, I’m currently doing the artwork for the third book. I’ve really enjoyed being back in Rosa’s world. You can take a look at some of the works in progress over on my Instagram: 

https://www.instagram.com/alexmilway/

I’m struggling with long Covid still, which has made it slower going than usual, but I’m so fortunate to be able to take it easier and make time for a daily nap. My thoughts are very much with the people who cannot. 

I’ll be in touch again soon (hopefully) to send you the cover reveal for Book Three. Watch this space! Sending best wishes to you and your loved ones from us all here in St Leonards.

PS. Remember you can download the ‘How To Draw A Beaver’ guide on my website for free.

Big Sky Mountain Audiobook

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Imagine landing on a mountain, with no shops, no internet, and no TV, just a host of curious animals, a grandma and one big adventure! That’s Big Sky Mountain.

I often dream about wandering the hills of my childhood (around Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire) and you can definitely see a theme emerging as Rosa explores the new world around her.

If you’d like to join Rosa and Nan up on the mountain, you can now get the audiobook as well!

Here’s a little sample narrated by Penelope Rawlins

You can get it on Audible here.

(And here’s a link to National Geographic Kids which featured Big Sky Mountain recently)

Big Sky Mountain

Big Sky Mountain Book 2: The Forest Wolves

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It’s the Big Sky Mountain book 2 cover! The Forest Wolves is all about wolves, of course, but it also features bison and woodlands. All things I feel very strongly about!

It’s a story about belonging, being scared of what you don’t know, and – most importantly – what makes a family.

Join Rosa, Grandma Nan and all their friends over on Big Sky Mountain again.

Out in February 2022!

Big Sky Mountain book 1 is out now.

Draw a Big Sky Mountain beaver with Alex Milway

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Summer holidays are in full flow and I know it’s not always easy to think of things to do. Art and especially drawing is something we revert to on a very regular basis. My kids love it and so do I.

Everyone can draw – I really believe this – it’s just that it needs a bit of regular practice. Whereas we all write day-in day-out, so many people put down their pencils at the age of 14 and never go back. But it’s certainly true that sometimes you need a bit of confidence and support, and that’s something I find a lot at schools when I teach children to draw my characters.

It can be really hard coming up with something new on the spot – who doesn’t fear a blank page? – so I often take children through my character designs step-by-step to give them a character to work with. It’s just like learning a new word or a sentence: you can use it over and again, and build on it.

That’s where this free download comes in handy…

This one here 🙂

It’s a step-by-step guide to drawing and it’s so easy to follow. Pretty much all of my characters start out as a circle, and Iris and Elsie from Big Sky Mountain are no different. You can then colour and design it in your own unique way.

Once you’ve designed your beaver – or perhaps your own family of beavers – I’d love to see what you’ve achieved. If you want to tag me on Instagram or share on my Facebook page, that would be brilliant.

Why beavers?

The Big Sky Mountain series feature many ‘Keystone Species’ animals. These are species that make a huge and important impact on our planet and its ecosystems, fundamentally shaping our world. You’ll be seeing some of our other wonderful keystone species in upcoming Big Sky Mountain books.

Elsie and Iris, the parachuting beavers in Book One were inspired by two true stories. Conservationists really did drop Beavers from an aeroplane in a bid to move them to a new home (they survived the drop, you’ll be glad to hear). And beavers are often re-homed in same-sex groups to avoid overpopulation. The fact that it’s impossible to tell males and females apart from their appearance makes that harder than you might imagine!

Parachuting beavers

Covid has arrived at Hotel Flamingo HQ

As you may have seen over on Instagram, we are currently isolating because a family member tested positive for Covid. Not fun, but we’re getting by. In trying to think of things to occupy ourselves, my creative inspiration has mostly revolved around baking cakes and cooking food…you get the picture. And I have to say I am particularly proud of my spectacular Guinness cake! 

We also unearthed some pretty amazing tiles under the carpet in one of our rooms. It was like finding buried treasure! Now I have a tiny inkling of how amazing it would be to uncover a Roman mosaic… I may have got my hopes a little too high for what we might dig up in the garden (so far we’ve only found old iron and drink bottles from the 80s).

The good news is, I’ve also found time to start the next Big Sky Mountain book. Stay tuned for more news, including sneaky peeks at the artwork and other exciting snippets!

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And remember, download your free Iris and Elsie drawing guide here.

Big Sky Mountain Music

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In the rush before the launch of Big Sky Mountain, I somehow managed to get eight songs written, finished and up online at Bandcamp. I can’t quite believe it now!

https://alexmilway.bandcamp.com/releases

Albert the Moose is proving a very popular hit in the classrooms and workshops I’ve been running (via Zoom) in the past few months. Here’s a taste of what you can expect to see if your school runs a Big Sky Mountain event!

As you can see my antlers are a little bit too big for effective Zoom calls…

Alex Milway wearing giant moose antlers

If you’ve already bought Big Sky Mountain, thank you so much! Your support is amazing. It’s not easy launching a new series in the middle of a pandemic. Usually, I’d be doing school and bookshop tours and events, running lots of workshops and doing signings.

I have done a few shop windows, however, and I ventured back into London to run a session at the Barnes Children’s Literature Festival.

Here’s my window for Pickled Pepper Books in Crouch End, London. (By the way, the parachuting beavers were inspired by a REAL THING).

This series means the world to me. I already mentioned that I based the relationship between the two main characters on my relationship with my grandma. Rosa, a young girl, goes to stay with her grandma, in a cabin out in the wilderness. She learns to survive in the great outdoors, but she also learns about the natural world, ecosystems, and why all creatures are important.

In many ways, it has the same spirit as HOTEL FLAMINGO, and looks the same as well (since I did all the illustrations again), so if you liked that series hopefully this won’t disappoint.

And if you did read and enjoy BIG SKY MOUNTAIN, please consider leaving me a review on Amazon (even if you didn’t buy it there). It makes an enormous difference to people finding the book.

Book of the month!

Thank you LoveReading for making BIG SKY MOUNTAIN book of the month!

You can read their lovely review here.

Big Sky Mountain launches

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It’s Big Sky Mountain day! (Also known as Dress Like A Moose Day! – in my house, anyway) Out now in all the wonderful independent bookshops and online stores of the world!

Big Sky Mountain is the first book in my new series and I feel a celebration is in order. Obviously, launching a book is a reason to celebrate in itself, but so much has happened over the past eighteen months that I’ve been working on it, it feels like a particularly big achievement.

The world has definitely changed, and my world equally so. I certainly didn’t see a move to the seaside, or a global pandemic coming, and nothing changes how much work goes into making a book. When you have two children to homeschool for most of a year, you realise just what a task it is (especially when you decide to move home in the middle of it all.)

I know many other authors and illustrators have dealt with similar issues, and to that I absolutely salute them. I also hope that one day soon I’ll share a beer with them. (Goodness, those days can’t be too far away?)

It’s been quite an emotional thing making Big Sky Mountain. This new series came out of a desire to write about the wilderness, and the natural world, but it was about my relationship with my gran. I dedicated it to her for good reason.

While she had many years bed-bound towards the end of her life, in her younger days, gran was always so full of energy. She’d easily outlast me on those long walks across the Malvern Hills, and still come home ready to cook tea and knit into the wee hours. She’d always be the first to swim in the sea on holidays, putting me absolutely to shame, and there was a real sense of fearlessness about her.

Gran could be difficult and definitely rubbed people up the wrong way at times (including me,) but that was all part of what made her into the force she was – and she was definitely a force of nature.

There are many stories about her, but one I remember particularly well was when a car crashed on the busy road outside her flat late one night. She rushed outside with her St John’s Ambulance training and jumped right into the thick of it all.

As a young lad, you don’t realise what it takes to do that. Now I do.

As for the story, what started out as a tale about a pair of eager beavers settling nearby, became a book about becoming part of a new community, possibly even a family, and learning to fit in and survive.

It’s a story about doing good in the world, learning to look after yourself and finding your own place to fit in, and I’m really excited about that.

In many ways it feels much like Hotel Flamingo. There are jokes, animals – lots of new characters – and there’s even a little sadness, but I think it’s a little bit more personal, and there’s a lot of me in it. I hope you like it; it was a real joy to make 🙂

(By the way, if you want to watch the vide of me singing a song as Albert the Moose, you can find it here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CP7ovT7qWUV/)

Competition – Enter here!

If you haven’t entered the competition to win one of four signed copies of Big Sky Mountain along with an original illustration, you can enter now! The more people you share it with, the more chances of winning you have!

Win a signed copy of Big Sky Mountain and original artwork

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I’ve got four signed copies of Big Sky Mountain, each with an original pencil illustration from the book to give away!

All you have to do is head to the competition page and answer a simple question to be entered into the draw! The competition is running for a week, and the more you share it with friends, the more chances to win you get.

Good luck!

Get your entry in now!

Enter here!