Writer and illustrator Dallas Clayton created this for children: An Awesome Book – an almost day-glo coloured, charmingly sketchy story about the importance of dreaming, and dreaming big.

Unable to find a publisher, he decided to press and promote the book himself. So far, it’s going rather well, selling out faster than he can print it. Watch a video about his tour here.

Crucially, he’s so confident you’ll like it, you can read the whole thing here before you buy it.

He’s also started The Awesome World Foundation; for every copy of An Awesome Book sold, another is donated to schools, hospitals, libraries, camps and shelters worldwide.

A nice dream, beautifully executed.

CLUE: Her characters would revel in this challenge.

Now you’ve seen all three (here, here and, um, here) drop us a line at editor@fifthestate.co.uk with your three guesses. We’ll pick a winner from all the right answers – to whom a box of books will be winging out. You’ve got until next Friday, the 23rd November.

And to help you out here’s the final ‘blind’ analysis from our graphologist, Diane Simpson:

My first instinct when viewing this busy, untidy script was to sit back in my chair with screwed up eyes. If this was the spoken word then this would surely be a garrulous individual – not boring but simply with an overpowering desire to communicate. Regardless of all else, this will not be a ‘one book’ wonder.

The variable size and clever connections tells us that here we have someone with a vast reservoir of energy and willpower at her disposal and yet, oddly, a rather scattered motivation. So much to see, so much to do! This is a positive, very enthusiastic individual with real thirst for productivity that could well put other considerations into the shade.

Unlikely to be happy in the role of a leader, she tends to respond in a reactive rather than proactive way. She is strikingly observant. She keeps her options open as long as is possible and is particularly alert to the shades, nuances and implications of change.

Although apparently open, she is able to contain her reactions and responses and will deliberate in a positively Machiavellian way in order to gain her desired ends. A plotter par excellence!

Very much a ‘now’ person, she is highly project orientated and takes immense pleasure from a completion – which is all very well was it not for the sheer number of projects she is likely to maintain at any one time. The ease of writing flow indicates she favours free expression and has a particularly adept way of improvising; if something won’t work one way then there will always be another and another.

Interestingly public and private at the same time, she is unafraid of the public arena and yet neither craves nor needs attention that usually accompanies public life, in fact, in an odd sort of way, it is almost irrelevant.

This is a people-person who at the same time is extremely driven, independent and self-critical. Immensely creative and generally optimistic, she is almost sure to aim for a positive ending every time. Those complex links and connections point to problem solving as a real forte for this individual and she uses a combination of logic and intuition to achieve her ends.

Diane Simpson, a professional graphologist, gave us this analysis :

Here we have a somewhat intense individual. Highly driven and very intelligent, she is a controller and in turn will resist being controlled.

She is likely to be known for successfully getting her own way. She will achieve this by relinquishing very little of herself. In a business sense this would probably reveal itself by her having an inability to delegate – her work will become her ‘baby’ and not something to be handed over to another.

Here we have an adept communicator, but there are also signs of visual artistry in this writing. Note the Greek ‘d’s’, the dives and swoops of the pen as it connects entire words and the many other presentation related manifestations. This is someone with a real eye for line and design; someone able to visualise exactly what she wants to achieve.

A real stickler for detail and discipline, she reveals a respect for both in the way she dots her i’s. Most people complete a word and then go back to dot any i’s; the further back their hands have to travel, the less accurately placed the dot – not so with this writer! Despite the writing being speedily and unhesitatingly written, the longer the word and the further back her hand has to travel, the more accurate the placement of the i dot (an unusual and frankly quite amazing indication of this woman’s attention to detail).

The endings of words tend to be abrupt; she doesn’t linger. This is a sharp minded, somewhat impatient individual who really will not suffer fools at all, never mind gladly. Neither particularly introvert nor extrovert, in fact showing a disinterest in how she appears to others, I suspect that people may tend more to bore and irritate than to intrigue and attract her.

The wealth of angularity in her script suggests a certain spikiness of response in other ways; this is someone who will stand her ground in the face of opposition — her first thought being to question the motivation of the opposer rather than the content of their argument.

Creative and practical thinking are manifest in this woman’s writing in equal parts, leading me to believe that creativity and practicality will play equal parts in what she does.

Check back tomorrow for our final author – and to send us your guesses…

So who’s behind this tiny scrawl? Clue: trust your inkling…

Diane Simpson, a professional graphologist, had this to say about today’s author:

At first glance this small, neat script appears to trot unprepossessingly across the page. His exceedingly small personal pronoun does indeed suggest that this man is a modest individual; but being modest does not mean ineffectual.

There is evidence of strong personal discipline in this angular, firm script. Here we have a man who is far more likely to harbour a preference for detailed, factual understatement than ‘in your face’ floridity of wording.

It seems to me that he takes himself rather seriously. He requires no outside criticism as he provides more than enough for himself. He is self-critical and self-monitoring …he really cares about getting things right. I don;t think he’s shy – but he chooses to keep himself to himself.

I began to trace the writing and found that it is guarded and careful rather than relaxed and freely written. This is someone who is particularly sensitive and at times somewhat pedantic; not the sort of person to easily catch unawares.

His words tend to terminate abruptly, so he’s not one for small talk. However, I do note the extra effort he has put into some of the lead-in lines at the beginning of words — a reflection of his liking and need for preparation.

His critical faculties are sharp and he seems to set himself apart from others …definitely not a hearty ‘Hail Fellow, well met’ type. I don’t think he’s shy – but he chooses to keep himself to himself. I wonder whether he has a ‘garden shed’ of sorts (or some other sort of world?) in which to disappear when he chooses?.

I don’t think this man unduly trusts other people and their opinions, his preference being to do things in very much his own way and in his own time. He seems to relish the independence afforded by freedom of action and decision.

On reflection I suspect that this man would shy away from the prospect of having his handwriting analysed – which makes me feel rather guilty!

Check back tomorrow for another!

The HarperCollins archive holds a collection of some of the most notable correspondance from our history, and if you browse through a few it’s striking is how personal and special they feel in comparison to typed correspondence. The handwriting is so diverse and idiosyncratic that it’s impossible not to infer something of their character from their style.

Out of curiosity, I decided to get the handwriting of some of our more eminent authors analysed professionally. I provided Diane Simpson, a professional graphologist, with letters from our three illustrious writers, omitting – of course – to tell her their names.

Diane had patiently explained the science of Graphology to me, suggesting it was ‘nothing more mysterious than a branch of behavioral psychology’. I have to admit I still suspected that handwriting analysis was a vaguely mumbo jumbo pursuit – now I’ve received the results, however, I’m rather more impressed…

We’ll publish the handwriting analysis of three of our most celebrated authors over the next week, and we’d like you to guess who they are. In keeping with Fifth Estate’s reputation for the finest prizes, the winner will receive a box of our finest new books.

When we’ve published all three you can e-mail your guesses to us at editor@fifthestate.co.uk – and we’ll pick a winner from those that get all three right.

To give you a headstart, all the authors have three things in common:

Best of luck!

We no longer live in her house. We were going to move out anyway — she really was a pain, honestly — but no one deserves to be faced with out-and-out abuse first thing on a Monday morning, especially from a jumped up squirt like me.

It’s at times like these that I curse the ease and convenience of email. This would never have happened in the days before computers — it’s pretty hard to think of a situation in which you could ‘accidentally’ slag off your landlady by letter, isn’t it?

Putting pen to paper takes consideration, slowing the conversion from what’s in your head to how you would like it communicated. With email, words and sentences seem to tumble out of your head and attain legitimacy as soon as they appear on screen. And with a habitual twitch of the forefinger they’re sent.

It would take unusual conviction to write, seal, stamp and send an ill-advised letter to your girlfriend while drunk. Not so with email. One little click and your incoherent ramblings are in the inbox of your bemused belle. You can’t really send a letter by mistake. Even if you scribble something down in the heat of the moment, you always have the walk to the letter box to ponder the likely consequences of your missive.

When I look at my sent emails, I can hardly believe it was me that wrote ‘total pain in the arse.’ No sooner had the word popped into my head, it was sent. Staring blankly at me from the screen it looks so ridiculous and over-the-top. There is absolutely no way I’d have written that by hand. Apart from the fact that a letter would have taken a day to get there, when you write something pen-in-hand, it’s considered, pondered, and just right. In fact, my handwriting is so bad I usually need write it out again — another layer of consideration.

Essentially though, it’s me that’s the problem, not the technology. The truth is that the incredible convenience of email communication fails to protect me against my own haste and my itchy mouse-finger. The best emails — both sent and received — follow the format of the letter that it has replaced and require the same care and attention. And of course, if I really want to, I can always make that special effort and put pen to paper.

So all next week, in praise of the humble letter, Fifth Estate will be dragging out missives from some of our most famous authors – and submitting their handwriting to analysis. We’ll then be challenging you to identify the author from their handwriting. After days of deliberation, numerous think-tanks and heated debates, we decided to call the feature The Famous Author Handwriting Challenge. Are you up to it? Be sure to tune in on Monday…

Never knowingly normal, Radiohead are thought to be communicating information about their new album through a series of cryptic messages. The doodle-like images have been posted on the official site without explanation.

According to culture blog a reminder, this one reads ‘Yes we are still alive…and a bit bored.’ Ok I made the bored bit up. Posted at the beginning of this week, the images have spread quickly across Radiohead fansites and music blogs as fans scrabble to decipher the messages in anticipation of the bands 7th album.

This is a beautifully oblique piece of online PR, and a bit of fun for the average Radiohead fan. Is anyone trying anything similar in the book world? Forget press releases, more codes please.

A few months ago a strange story started to appear on the pavements of San Fran. People found themselves following a romance through a series of spray-painted stencils connected to each other by arrows (more photos here). Starting at two different places, the choices made by readers along the way determined whether the romance had a happy or unhappy ending. In a great little twist, the story used the city surroundings as an illustration to accompany each piece of text — a truly immersive tale.

The authors of this sidewalk novella chose initially to remain anonymous, but soon semi-revealed themselves as ‘The Strangers’, two stencil artists who see their work in philanthropic terms; “Part of what we find really interesting about it is it connects people to public space and gets them walking around the neighbourhood and interacting with other people.” Read the full story here.

Whether you see this as vandalism or art, it’s a novel way to tell a story; a ‘choose your own adventure’ short story for the Banksy generation. I’d be fascinated to see this idea taken a step further (and I’ve no doubt somebody somewhere is doing just that), and made even more interactive through the use of something like Grafedia:

“Grafedia is hyperlinked text, written by hand onto physical surfaces and linking to rich media content – images, video, sound files, and so forth. It can be written anywhere – on walls, in the streets, or on sidewalks. Grafedia can also be written in letters or postcards, on the body as tattoos, or anywhere you feel like putting it. Viewers “click” on these grafedia hyperlinks with their cell phones by sending a message addressed to the word + “@grafedia.net” to get the content behind the link.”

Imagine an interactive narrative literally linking the real world, web or mobile content (audio, video, text…) and even, god forbid, a book. What do you think?

So Gautam Malkani’s debut, reading from Londonstani , is like a collective happy-slap from the desis of Hounslow. “It’s quite brutal” he explains, before launching into the profanity strewn first chapter:

Serve him right he got his muthafuckin face fuck’d, shudn’t b callin me a paki, innit…

Malkani’s performance is excellent. Tall and slight, and perhaps slightly geekier-looking than you might expect, he speaks with confidence. His voice is that of a typical middle-class South Londoner, but it is flecked here and there with telling traces of his Hounslow upbringing. So even while he is explaining the genesis of the novel, in his Cambridge PhD dissertation on South Asian identity, the rapid-fire desi rudeboy never seems far from the surface.

I’m generally not a fan of readings. I find books are better on my own terms. Just as a book can be interpreted very differently depending on how you approach it (as a course requirement, having found the author’s photo attractive, or unattractive, beach reading, airport fodder, prize winner, classic…), so too with who is reading it to you. An annoyingly nasal voice, obsessive water-sipping, or strange emphasis or inflection can ruin a reading. You then have to factor in the obligatory crying baby, and the over-responsive audience member empathising demonstrably and guffawing at the slightest provocation… More than once I’ve found myself trying hard to pay attention, only to find myself thinking about what I’m having for dinner as the lights go up. Of course, I clap politely. But books play so much better in my head.

With so much talk about the growth of the cult of personality to the detriment of the actual work, readings seem to draw me too much towards the author. Check out my third paragraph. It should be about the book, right?

Malkani’s reading, however, is different. His energetic, almost theatrical performance brings the ‘street’ vernacular of the novel to life. The linguistic mashup of hiphop terminology, txt msg spk and Punjabi slang is thrilling and impressive enough on the page, but Malkani’s interpretation takes it even further. Visceral and hugely engaging, the reading unleashes a latent humour I was only half-aware of when I read it myself. I suppose I was too busy marvelling at the linguistic dexterity, the rudeboy panache, and trying like a lame gorra white boy to master the pronunciation in my head (more often than not channelling Richard Madeley’s version of Ali G). The audience is enthralled and laughing hard. I’m disappointed when he finishes.

In just a short excerpt, the reading illuminated the material, hinting in the lives of Jas, Hardjit, Ravi and Amit a story of race, yes, but more than that, a very funny satire of male insecurity and middleclass alienation. As the lights come on and we file out of the hall, the chatter is enthusiastic and discursive, like when you come out of a great film or play. I’m definitely going to read the book again, and I might even go to a few more readings…

A book reading that’s enlightening and hilarious? Now that’s impressive, innit.