About me
19 Feb 2010
Oh dear! I hadn't realised how long it is since I wrote anything on the blog. Somehow my time's been swallowed up by Christmas and snow and the Google Book Settlement. I've also been busy finishing the seventh book in the Amy Wild series.
That's done now and so it will soon go to Desideria for the pictures. This one's called "The Lost Treasure" and I've just seen the cover which has a baby rabbit on it.
The next book is going to be about Willow, the Siamese cat from the Post Office, but I haven't worked out the plot yet. While I do that, I'm going to catch up with reviewing books for www.wordpool.co.uk.
I've been running that site for more than 10 years and I've enjoyed doing it. But I've run out of steam and want to spend more time writing and running www.contactanauthor.co.uk and a myriad other things. So I've decided to stop adding new reviews as soon as I've finished the backlog of books in my office. The site will stay online as it's a useful archive and I may still add articles to the Writing for Children section from time to time.
Kubus is thriving. He had the dentist the other week who filed down his teeth because they had developed sharp edges. He stood really calmly while it was done and seems much happier now his mouth isn't sore.
29 Oct 2009
Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote my blog - I've been busy giving my site a complete revamp. Do you like the way the mice move when you run the cursor over the links?
Tomorrow is publication day for the first two Amy Wild books and my publisher is running a competition to win both books and a year's membership of the PDSA Pet Protector's Club.
11 Sept 2009
I can't believe how long it is since I last wrote anything on this page. In case you're wondering, I did manage to get book 6 finished by the end of July. That was great as it left me free to go on holiday without taking any work with me.
The holiday was wonderful. We went to Russia and stayed with friends about 2 hours drive from St Petersburg. It's further north than here so it didn't get dark until 11pm and it was warm enough to swim in the Gulf of Finland in the evening. It was really exciting being in a country we'd never visited before and trying to read words in the Cyrillic alphabet. Russia is huge and everyone we met was really friendly. We visited St Petersburg, enjoyed the fantastic fountains at Peter the Great's summer palace, dunked ourselves in a holy spring and gathered berries and mushrooms in the forest for dinner.
We came back feeling really refreshed and took the rest of August off as well so I've gone back to the writing at the same time as you've gone back to school. I'm currently working on book 5 again, putting in the changes that my editor has requested. They are all quite small but some of them take a lot of thought to get right.
It's only a few weeks now until the first two Amy Wild books are published. My copies of book 1 arrived last month and they look great. The bookshops like them too so Usborne have asked me to write another two which is very exciting. I'm hoping to be able to fit those in with that pony book I've been thinking about for ages.
15 July 2009
Hurray! I've finished book 5 and my editor likes it. It's called The Great Sheep Race so you can guess what it's about. I'm so pleased it's worked - it was a really difficult book to write.
I'm now on the final book of the series and trying to get it done quickly so I can enjoy what's left of the summer. I've worked out the plot, written the step outline (that's a list of all the scenes) and nearly finished chapter 1. Now my target is to write 500-1000 words a day. Aaargh!
Will I get it finished by the end of this month? Watch this space to find out.
16 June 2009
Do you like writing stories? If so, take a look at this competition run by English Heritage. The task is to write a story about Lucky Spot - the crystal horse statue at Belsay Hall - and it can be any sort of story you like, including fantasy. If you'd like to be a writer, entering competitions is a good way to start. My first writing success was coming third in a local short story competition.
11 June 2009
My editor at Usborne says I can show you the real cover for the first Amy Wild book. So here it is. I hope you like it as much as I do.
10 June 2009
I'm still battling away with book 5, but I'm halfway through now so it shouldn't take much longer. I always seem to write faster as I get near the end of a book - it's like running downhill on a toboggan.
Next week I'm going to a party given by Usborne (my publishers) to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the launch of their fiction list. The Pony-Mad Princess was part of that launch so it's also the fifth anniversary of the Princess Ellie books, which is exciting.
I'm also excited because I've just seen my new series listed on amazon.co.uk for the first time. You can see the first one here. That cover is just a mock-up. The real one is even better.
Now that the books are online, I think I can let you into Amy Wild's secret. She can talk to animals! Most of the other characters in the series are her animal friends - I'll add a new page to my site soon to tell you all about them. My editor particularly loves Bun - a fat black cat who finds it hard to think about anything other than food.
19 May 2009
Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote. There have been a spate of family birthdays demanding my attention, including my own.
Book 5 has ground to a halt while I did a final rewrite to book 4. I had to work on the first 3 chapters to get the story off to a stronger start and introduce the mystery earlier. There has to be a mystery because this one's a detective story. But that's done now so I'm back on book 5 which now starts with an exciting scene with a helicopter.
Things are looking up on the riding front. I've started having two lessons a week on Kubus and they are making a huge difference to both of us. It's hard to remember how difficult he was when he first arrived - he found bending round circles really difficult and stopping was a big issue. Now he's behaving really well and only plays up if he's worried.
He's living out all the time now and enjoying being part of the herd. He's also enjoying the spring grass and getting rather chubby. I'm watching his waistline carefully - I don't want him getting lamitis.
7 April 2009
Book 5 is finally underway. I've finished working out the plot so I'm now writing the first chapter. That's always the trickiest one. In those first few pages, I have to set up the plot for this book and work in all the vital information that the readers need to know about Amy. (where she lives, what special thing can she do, why can she do it). I also have to gradually introduce the other characters who are important to this plot. That's a challenge too as there are quite a few of them.
Working in that information takes a lot of thought so I'm not writing very much each day at the moment. But I know I'll speed up as I go along - I always do.
1 April 2009
The big excitement last week was the arrival of the illustrations for the first Amy Wild book. They are great - Desidiria, the illustrator, has drawn the animals just the way I wanted. It's very exciting seeing the book coming together.
I've been ill for a couple of weeks with a nasty chest infection so book 5 is still at the plot development stage. This time the story revolves around five sheep - Floss, Drum, Sprig, Clover and Tallulah. Names of characters are really important - I spend ages deciding which ones to use.
Today was the first time I'd ridden Kubus since before I was ill. I was rather nervous and so was he - a situation aggravated by a tractor harrowing the field next door. We both had one eye on it all the time to make sure it didn't get too close and Kubus was very unhappy about going to the end of the sand school closest to the tractor.
He's got a new bit because the one I bought before was too small and rubbing his nose. I didn't know what to get so I rang the bit helpline run by Neue Schule. The lady I spoke to was really helpful. She knows loads about the bits they make and and she's trained several haflingers so really understood what Kubus needed.. I bought the bit she recommended and it works exactly as she expected - Kubus is reaching forward for it rather than pulling his head back away from it all the time. That's a big step forward for him and it will help him get more out of his lessons.
16 March 2009
Good news - my editor loves the fourth Amy Wild book. That doesn't mean it was perfect - there are always some things to sort out. But they were all fairly minor and didn't take too long to put right. Now I've done that, I need to get started with book 5.
I've nearly got the whole story worked out so the next step is to write a plot outline that breaks the story down into scenes. That's when I work out the details that I have overlooked so far - placing cues and making sure all the characters are in the right place at the right time. I don't start on chapter 1 until the plot outline is finished - it's my route map for creating the book.
Kubus is thriving at the new stables and he's definitely becoming better behaved when he's ridden. Although he's 12, we think he hasn't done much work so he's more like a much younger horse. I'm glad I've got the stable staff and students to help me reschool him - it's a time consuming, tricky process with quite a few ups and downs (but no more falls, fortunately).
What I'm really pleased about is that, despite there being so many people around, he seems to realise that he's mine (or more probably, that I'm his). He now trots up to the gate as soon as he sees me coming.
25 February 2009
Life's been very busy since Kubus arrived (we've dropped the Tommy). The new bit is still working well, but I've now moved him from the original livery yard because he didn't get turned out as much as I expected. That made him bouncy which didn't help the riding situation.
He's now at the riding stables where I was having lessons before I bought him. That's a much better situation for me because I'm not the only person exercising him. The stables train people for BHS exams and the students are riding him in their lessons to help with his schooling. I've just had a lesson on another horse to make sure I'm riding the same way as them and that I can do half halts properly. (They are the secret of controlling his speed).
Kubus has settled down rapidly and is very popular with everyone as he's so friendly. I really like it there too - there are always other people and ponies around during the day.
At long last, I've finished the fourth Amy Wild book (which is about chickens after all) so I'm now waiting nervously to hear if my editor likes it. (It's a bit like waiting to hear if your teacher liked your homework.) In the meantime, I'm getting on with plotting book 5. This one should be easier as I've got a story in my head already. It's about sheep.
The really good news is that I've finally seen some sample illustrations for the books and I love them. I hope you will too when the time comes.
28 January 2009
I've finally done it - I've bought a horse. He's a 14.2 Haflinger called Tommy Kubus and I already love him to bits. He's very sweet natured and behaves really well from the ground. Riding him's a bit more of a problem because he currently pulls like a train. So I've got lots of work to do, reschooling him into the soft, gentle ride that I'm sure he will be in the end. I'm really looking forward to trying out everything I learned at the Mark Rashid clinic I went to in the summer. Mark is a briliant horse trainer who gets amazing results in gentle ways. I can already see an improvement in Tommy and today I'm going to try a new bit that Mark recommends.
21 January 2009
Be very careful riding through gates. I was doing that yesterday when my stirrup caught on the catch and trapped my foot. I couldn't stop the horse in time so I ended up being pulled off backwards by my leg. Luckily the stirrup leather pulled off the saddle and my boot pulled off my feet so I landed on the ground relatively unharmed. That was a lucky escape - I could easily have hurt my leg quite badly so, I repeat my warning - be very careful riding through gates.
13 January 2009
Today I've been working on the step outline for the new book. That's a list of each step in the story in order, that I write on the computer using the numbered list facility in Word. Writing it is a really useful process because it makes me work out the order and pacing of the scenes. It also makes me decide how to move from one scene to the next and how to work in any clues or background information. For instance, in this book it's really important that the window is open so I need to make sure the reader knows this in advance without making it so obvious that you realise it matters.
My ongoing horse hunt is still taking lots of time and energy. I've decided I'd really like a Haflinger like the one I'm holding on this photo. I went to see one on Sunday who was really sweet but didn't feel quite right. I'm going to see another one soon so I've got my fingers crossed. He's quite a long way away but I hope he's going to be worth the journey.
9 January 2009
I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year. The highlight for me was a murder myster party on New Year's Eve. It had a wild west setting and we each played a different character with various goals we had to try to meet during the evening. We didn't just have the murder to think about - there were two railway companies competing to buy land, a dodgy card game to sort out and a silver mine to find. It was huge fun and we're going to do another one on my birthday. The game came from Free Form Games and was definitely the best murder mystery game we've ever done.
Since Christmas, I've done the rewrites on Amy Wild 3, rewritten my picture book and made some progress with book 4. I've been stuck on that for a couple of weeks but it's progressing nicely now I've abandoned the chicken plot in favour of something completely different.