About me
9 January 2012
I've finally published my pony anthology so Perfectly Pony is now on sale on Amazon. It's a Kindle ebook, but you don't to have a Kindle to read it. If you download a free app from Amazon, you can read it on a computer, an iPad, an iPhone or an Android tablet or phone.
Look inside the book at amazon.co.uk
Find a Kindle reading app
4 January 2012
Happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely Christmas.
I'm busy looking forward to the film of War Horse. I loved the book and the stage play was the most amazing thing I've ever seen, so the film has a hard act to follow.
24 November 2011
I've done it at last. Sasha's Story is finished and, better still, my agent thinks it's great. She says she cried twice while she was reading it because she was so involved with what was happening.
I'm so relieved. The story still needs fine tuning before it's ready to send out to publishers, but we should be ready to do that in the New Year.
In the meantime, I'd better get to work on my pony anthology as we want that available as an e-book, ready for any of you who get a Kindle for Christmas.
The other big news is that I've moved Kubus. He's now at a farm around the corner from me instead of being on working livery a half hour drive away. He's settled into his new routine extremely quickly and I'm loving having him so close. I now see him twice a day most days instead of only 3 or 4 times a week, and he feels much more like my horse.
31 October 2011
Hallowe'en and Sasha's Story still isn't finished. But the end is in sight. I'm hoping to reach it in the next few days if I can ignore all the distractions and concentrate on writing. My agent will be pleased - she's been waiting for it for ages. I've never taken this long to write a book before.
As soon as it's done, I'll be able to dive into the e-book anthology which is now called Perfectly Pony. My husband is currently designing the cover so we've been busy choosing a brilliant pony photo for the cover. Our favourite at the moment is one of three haflingers side by side - they're definitely my favourite breed.
I'm also planning to start a blog that's separate from this site where I can post articles from time to time. More about that later.
27 September 2011
I am becoming increasingly excited about the e-book revolution. I had a Kindle for Christmas and find I now read much more. I've also published my first e-book - an updated version of my very first book, A Special Child in the Family, which has been out of print for years. It's very exciting being in control and seeing sales figures as they happen instead of having to wait for a 6 monthly royalties statement.
That's inspired me to do more Kindle e-books. The next one will be out sometime before Christmas and will be a collection of horse stories and horse facts - the sort of thing I loved reading when I was a pony-mad child. Most of the content has been published before in two pony books that have been out of print for a long time but I'm planning to include at least one new story as well.
But that will have to wait until Sasha's Story is finished. I'm now past the major turning point in the story so I've been working out the details of the remaining plot. I finished that yesterday so hopefully today I'll be making real progress again. I've written 30,000 words now (that's more than 4 Princess Ellie books) and I'm guessing that I've got another 15,000 to go. It will be such a relief when it's done. I never feel truly confident about a book until I've reached the end.
1 August 2011
Two months have swept by in complex muddle of builders installing our new kitchen, a brand new grandson arriving, an existing granddaughter having her appendix out and a sea of pain from a bad hip (a legacy from last year's fall)
You may have noticed that list doesn't mention writing, mainly because it ground to a halt. But everything is now calm. The holiday season has arrived and my hip is better, thanks to some excellent physio, lots of swimming and switching to an autoatic car. So I'm now motoring through the new book, aiming for 1000 words a day and sometimes getting there.
The characters are all real people in my head so I know instinctively how they're going to react in any situation. The horses are real too - jet black Meteor, fat little Pumpkin and Bamb,i the gentle giant. I'm really enjoying the story so I hope you will eventually. Before then I've got to think of a title - always tricky.
25 May 2011
Life's getting exciting. I've now got some advance copies of my new picture book, Doctor Hoof and I'm really pleased with them. The illustrations are fantastic and the whole book looks great. You can find out more about it on my picture book page.
24 May 2011
I went to London for two days this week to give a talk at the Pop-Up Festival. It was great fun. The class of children I spoke to were part way through reading The Secret Necklace and really enthusiastic about the characters. We spent a while brainstorming ideas to creat a new story line and came up with a funny plot about a pig who lost his memory so completely that he couldn't remember what sort of animal he was.
The talk was in the Grant Museum of Zoology which is full of fascinating exhibits, mainly skeletons. I'd never realised before that a turtle's shell is part of his skeleton so he can't take it off.
The Sasha book is finally progressing again. I'm on chapter 5 at the moment and suspect the book's going to be longer than I expected. I've also been exploring e-book publishing so may be putting a book or two online in the next few months.
12 May 2011
Oh dear. I'm not much good at blogging. Maybe I should give up entirely. Several months, Easter and a Royal Wedding have passed since I last wrote anything.
Come to that, I'm not much good at writing either at the moment. The book went completely wrong so I've had to stop writing while I developed the characters in more depth and worked out the plot in much more detail. That's taken months, but I've done it and am now starting to write again from the beginning. Hopefully all that extra thought will mean it goes more smoothly now.
5 January 2011
Happy New Year. Very little has happened with the book over the last few weeks - snow, Christmas and colds seem to have taken all my time. But the break has done me good and I'm now back at my desk able to see what I was doing wrong before.
This morning I realised that a scene I wanted to include didn't move the story forward enough to be interesting. So it needs to be shorter and I need to work in some conversation that reveals an important fact. That's the kind of rewriting/rethinking that writers have to do all the time.
If you've looked at this page before, you may notice the picture's changed. The previous one showed Sampson - the haflinger I used to ride. The new one is of my own horse, Kubus, taken on a rather grey day after Christmas.
3 December 2010
I went to London yesterday to the presentation of the Usborne Young Writers Awards. It turned out to be a real adventure as the Island where I live had snowed heavily the night before. I walked through the snow to the ferry and then walked through a silent, almost deserted Southampton to the station, wandering if I'd manage to get any further. Luckily one of the few trains running arrived soon after I did so I jumped on and had an ordinary, but rather slow journey until the train stopped outside Waterloo station. Apparently the station was too full of trains so there were no spare platforms for us to use. It was frustrating to be stuck so close to our destination.
About 45 minutes later, I finally managed to get off the train and find the bus to Usborne House. I was almost the last to arrive so all the other authors and prize winners were already eating lunch. I had a lovely time chatting to Iona (who finished my story starter) and her mum and listening to the talks on how a book is produced. Peter Usborne presented the winners with certificates, everyone had their photos taken and then the winners set off for the London Eye. They must have got a spectacular view of London in the snow.
The journey home looked like a disaster at first because all the trains from Waterloo were cancelled. But the staff were great at giving information and working out how to organise the trains and crews that they had (which weren't necessarily the ones they expected). They kept announcing that they'd get us all home and they kept their promise. When I finally got in, I felt I'd had a real adventure. Next stop the Antarctic or maybe not.
1 November 2010
The new book is finally progressing. I've just finished chapter 3, and the next step is some really detailed plotting to work out the details of the rest of the story. But it will still be a long time before it's ready for you to read.
As usual, the ideas for this story are popping into my head at unexpected times, and they're mixed up with ideas for the book after this one which is a bit confusing.
11 October 2010
Many thanks to everyone who came to my talk at the Cheltenham Festival. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm delighted with all the horse names you suggested for my new book. I can't promise to include them all but there's definitely going to be a pony called Pumpkin.
I'm doing another talk later this week. That's to student teachers so it will be very different. I'm going to talk about how I worked out the plot for The Starstruck Parrot.
All this travelling around has left me less time for going to the stables. But Kubus is thriving anyway. He's growing his winter coat so he's starting to look like a woolly bear.
The new book is making progress too. It always takes me ages to write the first bit where I'm setting everything up, but I'm hoping I'll speed up now I've got as far as chapter 3.
9 September 2010
My big event for the autumn will be my talk about Amy Wild at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. If you want to come it's on Saturday 9th October 2010 at 4:45pm at St Andrew's Church, Cheltenham. You can find out how to get a ticket on the Festival website.
8 September 2010
I'm not much good at blogging. The whole summer has gone by without me writing anything. But I'll try to do better from now on.
The last couple of months have been filled with non-writing activities, so I'm only now settling down to work on my books again. But the ideas have been growing in my head while I've been having time off so I'm hoping to start making better progress with Sasha's story than I have up to now.
I've been trying a different approach to writing that book - starting at the beginning and seeing where I go. But I've decided that doesn't work. I need to do much more planning so I know exactly what the story is before I do much more. That will give me more confidence and avoid too many major re-writes.
I've also had to spend time working out the other main characters in the story and where they live. It takes a surprisingly long time to decided where the rooms are in their house, how many stables they have and other important details. Once I've mentioned facts like that in the story, they are fixed so I need to get them right.
One thing I've just decided is the name of the most important horse in the book. He's called Merlin and he's palomino.
21 June 2010
I've finally started writing my new pony book - the one about Sasha. It's taken me ages to get started - there are so many things I have to decide first. Names take ages - I need to have the right ones for all the characters and for the horses and the places. Then I have to decide exactly where to start the story and what's going to happen.
I managed chapter 1 okay but found it really hard to move on to chapter 2. My first attempt at that went so wrong that I had to throw it away. Then I realised I had to change the timescale in chapter 1 to make chapter 2 happen in the dark and that's made a huge difference. Progress is still slow but it's better than it was and will speed up once I really get going.
I've been spending most mornings at the stables, drinking in the atmosphere, watching the horses and making notes. It really helps being up there - I can pick up the tiny details that make a book come to life.
4 May 2010
I'm finally back to riding Kubus again. As many of you will know, it takes time to rebuild confidence after a bad fall so I'm taking things gently and having some lessons.
I've finally finished Book 8 about Amy Wild. My editor likes it and I'm currently doing the rewrites she's asked for. Rewriting is important - it polishes the book and sorts out any little glitches is the plot and the pacing.
I had a lovely time in London last month, talking to my publisher and my agent. I'm now much clearer about what I'm doing next - it's a pony book aimed at those of you who want something longer than a Princess Ellie book. I may well go back to writing about Amy or Ellie in the future, and I fancy doing some more picture books and maybe sorting out the other series that went wrong.
Two bits of good news:
1 - The Secret Necklace has been shortlisted for the Explore Book Awards.
2 - The artwork for my new picture book is gorgeous. The illustrator has made the characters come alive and added lots of tiny little details that are fun to spot. The book's coming out next year. I'll tell you more about it as soon as I can.
24 March 2010
This time there's a reason for the big gap since I last blogged. Three weeks ago, I was riding Kubus in the sandschool without stirrups when he was frightened by a bird. He shot sideways and I fell off. (serves me right for letting my attention wander). Unfortunately, I bruised my hip badly and my back muscles decided that was one fall too many and went into spasm. I'm now having some great treatment called Body Stress Release and am feeling much better. But I haven't done much at all for the last three weeks - especially creative stuff like writing.
As a result, I'm a bit behind with the 8th Amy Wild book but I've now written the plot and am currently fine tuning that before I start chapter one.
That's the last Amy book I'm committed to writing at the moment so I'm off to see my publisher next month to decide what to do next. I still fancy doing another pony book - maybe the main character will fall off while riding without stirrups. (nothing ever goes to waste for a writer).
Isn't it lovely to see the spring at last? The daffodils are in flower in the garden and the spring grass is starting to come through for the horses.
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.