Two unique, thought-provoking posts by two unique YA authors. The first is Night Runner by Carnegie Medal-winning Tim Bowler and the second is Replica by Australian writer Jack Heath. Writing Night Runner by Tim Bowler Night Runner is a fast-moving story and it came to me at a sprint. It’s about a fifteen-year-old boy […]
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Deborah Ellis shares her experiences of researching her latest book, set in Afghanistan, My Name is Parvana. Late in the l990s, I spent time in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. Millions of Afghans fled there from the Soviet occupation, the civil war and then the atrocities of the Taliban. The stories I heard there […]
Read moreWe were talking about the old days, and I remembered the weirdest things. Like people calling them ‘friends’. And how they said they were good for your brain. Some families even laid a place for them at dinner. Debut novelist Nikki Sheehan shares her thoughts on the phenomenon of imaginary friends, based on her research […]
Read moreStand-up comedian and author of the brand new The Private Blog of Joe Cowley, Ben Davis shares his top 3 favourite April Fool pranks… Hi everybody! My name is Ben Davis and I’m a writer. My debut novel is called The Private Blog of Joe Cowley . It’s about a fourteen-year-old boy who starts his own secret blog to document his […]
Read morePolly Shulman shares the challenges of writing her time-travel novel, The Wells Bequest , a story full of fantastic objects from popular science fiction stories and packed with fascinating time-travelling conundrums! I thought the hardest part of writing a time-travel novel would be getting the historical details right. I was wrong. The hardest part was dealing with the […]
Read moreWilliam Hussey, author of Haunted , talks about where ideas come from… ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ That’s the question writers dread most, because, you see, often it’s as much a mystery to us as to anyone! How does the first spark of a story ignite? I believe that the writer’s unconscious mind does most of […]
Read moreThis week marks the centenary of the death of Emily Wilding Davison, an activist who fought for women’s suffrage in Britain, famously stepping in front of the king’s horse at the Epsom Derby. Author Julie Hearn joins us to talk about Emily, the suffragettes, and the inspiration behind her novel Hazel . For a while, years […]
Read moreHistorical fiction author Marie-Louise Jensen introduces us to the hidden world of smuggling – the backdrop to her latest novel Smuggler’s Kiss. Isabelle is rescued from drowning by the crew of a notorious smuggling ship, and finds herself in a world of adventure, romance, and a thrilling fight for justice. Researching smuggling is a tortuous […]
Read moreDave Cousins, author of 15 Days Without a Head and Waiting for Gonzo , shares his story making secret. One of the most common questions asked of writers is where do you get your ideas from? It’s a question that many will struggle to answer—not me. I know exactly where my stories originate. I’ll let you into the secret, but don’t go spreading it around. This is […]
Read moreGeraldine McCaughrean , Tim Bowler , Sally Prue , and Gillian Cross are four incredibly talented and inspirational authors who we are very proud to have on our list. With all four authors having new titles published this spring, an ideal opportunity arose to gather this awesome foursome, so we challenged them to a four day roadshow of events across the U.K. and […]
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