Authors Electric

  On June 30 th we were to set off for the Deal Festival via an overnight stop in Crowborough to catch up with my aunties. On the return journey we would have another stopover in Tunbridge Wells to see my brothers. On Wednesday 29 th Niall, who had been uncharacteristically vague and forgetful for about a week, tested positive for covid. I followed suit 24 hours later. In the meantime, a flurry of emails and phone calls cancelled everything. We would have been at the World Premiere of Joy Spencer’s The Mud Maid Suite, signing books, presenting participating schools with signed hardbacks…the familiar kinds of things I thought I’d left behind years ago now, until Joy had a trip to Heligan and was hooked, first on the sculpture and then on the book.       I can’t think of myself as a children’s author legitimately these days. I’ve been dusting off some poems for children lately, not with any clear purpose, but they were written ages ago. All the books are now o...

Recently, I was asked, by a Scottish Person, ‘What’s the connection? You wrote The Silkie and Tattybogle – what’s your connection to Scotland?’ I wasn’t sure if this was an aggressive challenge or what. In any case, the answer   - which I didn’t give because other things intervened before I could – was complicated. My name before I married was MacDonald and there is both Scottish and Irish ancestry there, but it was my name by adoption, not blood. I’m English with a dollop of Cornish, so I could claim a connection that allows me to write about The Mud Maid and The Giant, and I grew up in Sussex, so The Hob and Miss Minkin is probably permissible too.  My play for children, very loosely based on the Aboriginal dreamtime myths, is apparently taboo, however. Wait a minute, though: there’s the possibility of an ancestral name linked to Ashkenazy Jews who came over in the 17 th century. Hooray! That opens up more possibilities! Yes, this i...