Pugs of the Frozen North, the book what I wrote with Sarah McIntyre back in 2015, has been one of our most popular titles (indeed, it’s probably outsold anything I’ve written apart from Mortal Engines – go Pugs!). This Christmas it’s been chosen for the Winter Reading Challenge in UK libraries, which you can read more about here.

I can also now EXCLUSIVELY REVEAL that I’ve been working with the playwright and composer Brian Mitchell (The Ministry of Biscuits, Those Magnificent Men) on a Pugs of the Frozen North STAGE PLAY, which will start touring next year.

Wait… A STAGE PLAY?!? you ask. But… HOW?!??!

Well, Brian specialises in small, touring productions in which a tiny cast of actors play a huge cast of characters and a few everyday objects provide all the sets, so he was undaunted by the prospect of staging a sled race to the North Pole involving pugs, polar bears, noodle-crazed yetis and a giant, marauding kraken. It’s essentially the same story as the book, although we’ve had to adapt it slightly because we can’t have more than three characters on stage at once (and in some of the small venues the show will play in there wouldn’t be room for them all even if we could). Also, highly-trained thespians though they are, the cast can’t really portray 66 excitable pugs, so the plan is to have the audience play those.

Brian is currently busy writing songs and incidental music, and the first production will be on Sunday, 16th Feb 2020 at the Exeter St Hall in Hove, and the wonderful Book Nook children’s bookshop will be helping out with publicity and selling tickets. (Tickets will also be available online nearer the time.) Sarah and I are planning to be there for the premiere, but if you can’t join there’s another performance at the same venue the following Sunday (23rd Feb).

After that the Pugs will be yipping their way up and down the country. We already have dates in Yorkshire and Devon (TBC), and hopefully there will be lots more to follow – watch this space, or my Twitter account, or The Foundry Group (Brian’s production company) for further details.

Pugs of the Frozen North is published in the UK by Oxford University Press, and available from all good bookshops.

You can find pug drawing guides, classroom notes, and even a knitting pattern here.

And finally, here’s Brian in a small but hard-hitting acting role as a farmer inconvenienced by Kevin, the Roly Poly Flying Pony.