My Life as a Jellyfish

One of the fun things about writing children's books is that you get to lead to double life.

For months  you are cloistered away in your office planning a book, writing the first draft or wrestling the second draft into shape. You surface only to forage for toast, stomp round the fields with the dogs or halfheartedly harrass passing teenagers into tidying their bedrooms.

Then, there are other phases, packed with school visits or promotional events. You rise, creaking and blinking, from your desk, put on your party dress and venture out into the world.

Or maybe that's just me. I've come to realise that I'm the world's worst multi-tasker. I know of many more balanced authors who are able to, say, write two days a week, and do events, or other jobs on the other days. Or even write in the evenings or before breakfast. Not me. I only have two modes of operation. (1) Writing (nothing else gets done), and (2)  In Between Writing (everything else gets done as quickly as possible before Writing starts again).

This is me!

That's why I'm like a jellyfish.

That Takes the Biscuit

Ta da! Can you spot the cool biscuit logo?

I'm very excited to tell you about a brand new publication that I've been working on for the last few months.

No, I don't mean The Phoenix Code (although I'm pretty excited about that too, of course) and I haven't secretly been rustling up a new Adventure Island mystery either.

This new publication is a brilliant magazine by Coton Primary School newspaper club.

Now, when I say I've been "working" on this publication, I have to admit my role in the process was pretty minor. It's the pupils who've done all the real work.  In the early sessions, I talked about what goes into a newspaper and how to write exciting articles. The children were bursting with so many great ideas, one of my main jobs was to try to filter them down to something that we could actually fit into one copy - otherwise it could have turned into a newspaper fatter than Harry Potter, The Deathly Hallows!