Welcome to my site!

To contact me click on the ‘contact me’ in the box above (on the shelf).

October is well and truly here and although the trees are showing the golden glints of autumn it has been warm and sunny for the last couple of days and ‘Tuscany’ (my writing shed) gets very hot when the sun shines through the windows. It was almost 8o degrees on the thermometer, so very pleasant and it meant I could leave the doors open.

Every free moment lately has been spent out in Tuscany (no, not in Italy- it’s my writing shed in the garden!) working on my new book,‘Writing for Children’ (Pub A & C Black.). It is for adults who want to write for children and is due to be published in June 2008. Although next June is still some time away I noticed that it is already up on Amazon for pre-order. I have enjoyed working on it but I am now especially keen to get it finished. I love it when a book is almost there and you can see the end approaching.

I also have some new ideas for stories I want to write buzzing about in my head. I have made some notes and put them away for now but it is almost like knowing you have a bar of chocolate waiting in a drawer you are not allowed to open!

Time is my enemy, there is never quite enough of it! September started well with a long weekend in Paris which was lovely. This is me outside the Louvre.

I also managed to spend quite a lot of time in Tuscany writing, but I like to get out of there every now and then, so it was good to be doing a few events at the end of September, and during this last week or so.

This was taken when I was in North Lanarkshire for the Bookstart launch and there is another photo on my events page, reading to a nursery class at New Stevenson Library. I will be adding more photos of past events very soon.

I am going to be doing some CPD work with teachers in the next month, starting with nursery and early primary school teachers in the storytelling Centre in Edinburgh and at the end of the month in North Ayrshire with upper and lower primary school teachers working on creative writing ideas.

This is my new website. I hope you like it as much as I do!

I will be adding things to it in the next while so keep coming back to have a look and see what has changed. On the EVENTS page you will see some of the events and school visits that I will be doing and some photos of those I have done recently. If you want me to come to your school or festival please have a look on the ASKING ME TO VISIT page.

There are lots of new photos and information on the ABOUT ME page and you can find out about my books and how to buy them on the BOOKS page.

There are just a few pictures up on the GALLERY page but lots of more fun things will be up there very soon. If you sent me some drawings you might even see them up there soon.

Look on the LINKS page for links to interesting websites, including other children’s author’s websites and other writing related sites.

If you want to get in touch with me, click on CONTACT ME on the shelf. I would love to hear from you!

I would also like to say a huge THANK YOU to my very good friend Sally J. Collins for the delightful artwork on the site. She has faithfully reproduced some of my favourite objects and ornaments and her drawings are, as always, a delight!

Many thanks also to Leslie – Kodiak Web Design – for her eternal patience and skill and most of all her enthusiasm for the project!

Things have been a bit static lately on my website because the lovely Leslie is busy redesigning a new one for me. This will hopefully be ready to go online very soon. But for the moment here is some of what has been going on with me in the last while.

August is here and once again Edinburgh is wearing its vividly colourful garb as the Festival City. Next week the Edinburgh International Book Festival starts on Saturday 11th August for just over two weeks of literary delights in Charlotte Square Gardens. It is a busy time for me especially the first weekend when I am chairing a panel event on How to Get Published on Saturday, speaking on Writing for the Educational Market on Sunday and running a workshop on Writing children’s characters on Monday. The following week I am running another workshop on Writing for children under ten on the Monday and finally on Tuesday I am introducing Greg and Kate Mosse who will be talking about various aspects of the writer’s craft – See my EVENTS  page for further details

I will be at the Society of Authors in Scotland AGM where I will be standing down from the committee. It has been an interesting few years – meetings were far from boring and often characterised by frequent outbursts of laughter. I will especially miss the cream cakes! Perhaps I might be persuaded to come back and report to them occasionally in my position as vice chair of the Literature Forum – Who said I couldn’t be bribed by cream cakes??

I have been travelling around a lot in the last couple of months. I was visiting schools in Aberdeenshire in June. I had been contacted by Banchory Primary School P2 who sent me some lovely pictures and stories they had written about Hamish McHaggis and I visited both P2 classes there. I also visited Crathie Primary School, MacDuff and Rosehearty primary schools, Maud primary and Old Rayne Primary School,

In July I visited schools when I spent a week in Kent starting with the Archbishop Courtenay Primary School, Wilmington Primary School, Garlinge Primary School and finally Linden Grove Primary school where I stayed on after speaking to the children to present two lucky pupils with bicycles they had won in a special draw, for regular reading over a number of weeks.

I also travelled to Cardiff and then London in connection with the Channel 4 TV quiz programme CODEX. This is filmed in the British Museum in London in the middle of the night. I was one of a team of three children’s writers and we had to answer questions about some of the artifacts in the museum. The quiz is hosted by Tony Robinson. It was a great experience, particularly being in the museum which is such an amazing place especially during the night when it is all closed to the public. We started filming at 3am and I thought I was tired but as soon as it began I forgot all about that and it was great fun! My other team mates were children’s writers Charles Butler and Mark Robson. Did we win? Well…….we were sworn to secrecy until the programme is shown on TV, sometime in September. I will post up the date when I find out!

We also did some filming at the Archbishop Courtenay School in Maidstone and the children and teachers there were absolute stars! The film production crew were a good bunch and a great time was had by all.

I also spent a week in a lovely old manor house in Oxfordshire with the SAS (Scattered Authors Society) 25 wonderful children’s writers which was a delight. So once the Book Festival is over I will be heading for my writing shed for a bit to catch up… more on that later…