Authors Electric

Setting up for the Creative Writing group, Headington School. One of the best things I get to do as a children’s writer is visit schools.  I love these visits. There’s nothing like getting together with a group of 9 – 13 year-olds and their teachers and introducing them to the ideas behind a particular book, drawing them into the excitement of story creation and giving tips on how to make strong, believable characters and a gripping plot. Ante's Inferno by Griselda Heppel Because my books tend to be inspired by other, much greater works, there’s plenty of background information young people find fascinating. Ante’s Inferno , for instance, in which 12 year-old Antonia finds herself on a dark journey to the heart of Hell, is based on (can you guess?) Dante’s Inferno. Dante, in turn, drew  deeply from Greek and Roman legend of the afterlife, rendering my school talk full of references to monsters like the Minotaur and Harpies, and giving my audience the chance to tell me what the...

Stig of the Dump by Clive King Last month something happened to me as a children’s writer that filled me with delight. Something that would have been unthinkable even a generation ago. When I was young, few children’s adventure stories had heroines. In most of the books I loved – Stig of the Dump, The Land of Green Ginger, The Phantom Tollbooth, Tom Sawyer, Peter Pan, Jack Holborn – it was a hero who drove the action. Jack Holborn by Leon Garfield I’m not in the least complaining about that; I loved Barney, Abu Ali, Milo, Tom etc. And of course there were many superb – if less obviously adventurous – stories with female protagonists: The Secret Garden, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Charlotte’s Web, Carbonel…  But here’s the rub. It was a well-known truism that girls would always read stories with boy heroes, while boys wouldn’t dream of returning the compliment with ones that featured girls. As a writer, if you didn’t want to halve your potential audience, it made sense to...

Not having had a book published recently, I didn’t expect any bookings for World Book Week this year, in fact I hadn’t even clocked exactly when it was. So two requests for author visits landing in my inbox came as a lovely surprise. Clifton Lodge School, West London The first was from a charming, small prep school in Ealing where 61 children from 8 - 13 years old squeezed into a front room to hear my talk on Dante, Hell, Greek mythology, and World War 1, and what all these elements have to do with my fantasy adventure story, Ante’s Inferno .  It can be tricky to cater for such a big age range, with fidgeting indicating that I’m either floating somewhere above their heads or aiming annoyingly low, but there was no sign of this here. Perhaps being such a small school gives the pupils a feeling that they’re all in this together, resulting in less need than usual to assert their age differences. Whatever the reason, they made a wonderful, alert group who as...

In the last few weeks I’ve done several sessions with 10-12 year-olds in a very lively school (Finham Park 2, Coventry) that is deeply committed to instilling a love of writing and reading in its students. I had the pleasure of hosting four workshops, each with a group of eight children and the help of the wonderful school librarian. I’d like to think I encouraged them to some extent in their love of books, but I can say for sure that they inspired me.  I did something I’ve never done before – shared some early ideas with potential readers for a book I’ve just started to write. Possibly dangerous, I know. I used to be very wary of sharing new ideas with anyone, but it felt right this time, and this story is not exactly new to me anyway. It’s being doing the rounds of my head and a few other places for several years and had a number of knock-backs on the way, in particular from my publisher several years ago, who commissioned a series from me based on the idea and then, afte...