School visit round up

As September comes round and the new term starts I've been looking back over last term's school visits . It was a such a busy time that I didn't have chance to blog about them then so here's a round-up of the highlights.

APRIL
Cambridge Home Educating Families Group

When is a school visit not a school visit?
When it's a visit to a group of students from Cambridge Home Educating Families.
Four visits in fact. I was delighted to be asked to give a course on all aspects of writing a mystery. We had great fun plotting crimes and creating detectives and villains and setting clues - there were so many great ideas, which produced some brilliant stories.


Here's a list of some of the titles - they all sound amazing, don't they? And how about the story we planned as a group. The Mystery of the Cursed Custard Creams. Who wouldn't want to read that book? Thank you to everyone who took part for joining in so enthusiastically and to Fathima Farouk who organised everything and made me feel so welcome. I really enjoyed meeting you all and sharing your writing ideas.

Reader Reviews

Can you spot an author lurking in the shadows?

My favourite reviews are always those from young readers.

I've been thrilled this week to receive three for The Serpent King.  Trinity, Gabrielle and Kezia have all been kind enough to get in touch to tell me that they've enjoyed reading Secrets of the Tombs and have sent in these superbly written reviews.

Thank you girls!

I'm sorry that the series has finished now, but I promise that I'm working very hard on writing of lots of other exciting adventures - I hope they'll be ready for you to read soon!

I hope they'll take me to some more magical places to research the settings for the books. Here's a photo of me sitting among the strangler figs on the steps of the ruins in Calakmul taking notes for The Serpent King last year.