Authors Electric

  Picture is an overhead shot of many swimmers swimming in blue water with the word "PRACTICE" floating among them Practice is to do something in a low-stakes environment that we will later do in a higher-stakes environment. Or so said the eighth-grade choir director when I was in eighth-grade choir. He encouraged us to keep singing, at home, in the shower, walking to school, to continue to turn each song into a well-oiled machine before we stood on stage in our long robes. I took him very seriously, and by the time the concert came I was very well-oiled.  This morning, for my first post of 2024, I got up before 6 am. I made coffee, fed the cats and the Guinea pigs, closed the bedroom door very firmly and quietly on the dog and my sleeping spouse, and sat down with my laptop in my lap, coffee by my side. I'm not thirteen anymore.  This means that there are pets to feed, and soon a child to wake and feed and layer with coats and bags and scarves and books and load into a c...

When I’m not writing about those crafty critters Anansi the Trickster Spider , Coyote and   Brer Rabbit  I’m writing non-fiction activity based features for magazines such as Practical Pre-school and Child Care magazine . Usually my topic is based around something real, for example animals, modes of transport or historical events. However earlier this year I was commissioned to use picture books as a basis my non-fiction activity features. So having recently received a copy of the picture book Three Billy Goats Gruff by our very own Susan Price I’ve decided to show you how I use a picture book as a basis for a non-fiction feature. So here goes. Many of my features will include a little life science, Any excuse to ensure I didn’t waste three years at university studying Environmental Science. So a book about goats provides me with a great opportunity to do this. So if I were using this book as a basis I’d need to know what type of goats I’m writing about...

Me at a school Talking to classrooms full of schoolkids is part and parcel of being a children's writer these days. I've no idea how this came about - in my day, the very concept of an author coming into school would have seemed bizarre. Anyway, a lot of children's writers visit a lot of classrooms. For me, it's a joy. Truly. I should think 90% or more of visits to schools absolutely make my day, gladden my heart and restore my faith in humanity. School visits make it worthwhile putting up with all the practical, emotional and financial rigours that the jobbing writer endures. As the end of the school year rapidly approaches, here are my personal thoughts on the subject, as distilled from loads and loads of schlepping around the country and trying to hold 10-year-olds spellbound for 45 minutes... It does get easier . When I started going to schools, I wasn't terribly good at the whole keeping-'em-spellbound stuff. Er, OK, to be brutally honest, I bomb...