My Blog

It has finally happened. For seven years my husband has been shut away in his study in the evenings. He has been working hard on the commute on the train each day, making fevered notes with little diagrams and arrows. There have been early-hours-of-the-morning excursions downstairs to the laptop when inspiration has struck. There has [...]

Last weekend I attended the Federation of Children's Book Group conference for the first time. I was helping out as a member of the Reading branch. I won't attempt to summarise the conference agenda because Margaret Pemberton and others have already done an excellent job on that front. I really enjoyed the conference and it [...]

Picture Book Club went on tour for the first time in April! We ventured as far as Oxford! Many thanks to Oxford Waterstones in Broad Street for hosting us in their café. Our speakers for the night were James and Lucy Catchpole of the Catchpole Literary Agency and we had a great crowd of attendees [...]

Tuesday 14th March saw the fifth outing for Picture Book Club. This time we were in Windsor. Thank you once again to Waterstones for being wonderful, generous hosts. We were very excited to be joined by not one but three special guests! First, we were delighted to welcome Meg McLaren, author-illustrator of Life Is Magic. Meg [...]

I have finally been successful in getting some feedback on the new stories that I have been working on post 'Amelie'. This feedback falls into two categories; peer and professional. I have been late to the party with peer feedback but have finally got with the programme and joined a local SCBWI critique group run [...]