Happy World Book Day!

It’s been a great week

Today WORLD BOOK DAY  I was close to home in Haddington’s lovely new library.  I met the children from Primary 7 at Kings Meadow Primary School at the John Gray Centre.

In the afternoon I was at Knox Academy, also in Haddington, and met some very enthusiastic readers from S1. We talked about Don’t Judge Me, and how we all make assumptions about our friends, people we know and even strangers. We also talked about Spider and Dead Boy Talking.

Afterwards I was interviewed for East Coast FM by two of the  excellent school reporters Lottie and Sophie!

There were some very interesting questions and observations at both sessions today and it was lovely to be working with East Lothian Libraries, if not for them I might never have got started in my writing career!

All this week has been really good and very interesting!

MONDAY– I attended the Publishing Scotland/ BA Conference and heard all sorts of things about the publishing business and how people buy books, in Scotland and elsewhere.  Met some lovely people. There was a keynote speech by ‘Gregory’s Girl’ star turned author John Gordon Sinclair, which was fun.He was uber delighted when he picked up his ‘author’  badge at Edinburgh Book Festival last year!

A lot of talk about ebooks and a greatly entertaining session on book covers.  I also attended a breakout session with the lovely Cordelia Ditton from Voicebusiness who showed us, in the short time allowed, some great tips on effective networking!

TUESDAY – I was in Tullibody near Alloa visiting St Serf’s Primary School. I had a great time.  The staff there looked after me so well and the  children listened to Hamish McHaggis stories and asked lots of great questions. Some of the children had been writing Hamish stories and although I only had time for a quick glance at them I could see they had put a lot of hard work into their stories and pictures. Well done!

WEDNESDAY – I was visiting The Edinburgh Academy Junior School.  Every year they work on the Hamish stories when they are working on topics about Scotland.  The children know all about Hamish and his friends and they even have little Hamishes that come to stay in their classrooms now and then.  I was quite delighted when I was reciting the ‘In the highlands of Scotland there’s a secret glen…’ poem from the back of the Hamish books during the session and the entire audience, over a hundred children, all joined in and they knew it all by heart!

There was much excitement when Hamish himself actually appeared for a quick visit but he didn’t stay long as he had to go back to the Whirry bang for his picnic basket, he was feeling a little peckish!

I hope to have some photos, soon.

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