I hesitate to tell you this – because I admired Diana Wynne Jones’ writing a great deal and I realize the blog theme is in her honour – but honesty compels me to share that I don’t believe in jinxes, curses or superstition. I know. What’s the point of being a writer if you can’t pretend there are more things in heaven and earth? Surely I should just revisit my parents’ advice and consider a career in something sensible.

I don’t doubt for one minute that Diana Wynne Jones did have no end of mishaps whilst traveling. But no matter how hard I try I can’t stop my treacherous little brain whispering, ‘well she probably traveled a lot didn’t she? More than the average person anyway which would mean her chances of encountering misfortune were therefore significantly higher than the norm.’

It’s a very unimaginative way of looking at things. But in my defence a lack of respect for superstition was one of the things I really loved about the smugglers who partly inspired the backstory in both Mistress of the Storm and Heart of Stone.

I grew up on the Isle of Wight, which has a long and proud history of smuggling (we’ve even got a theme park dedicated to the subject …yes, again I know but actually it’s pretty cool). Anyway, there is a road on the Island, near the center, known locally as Betty Haunt Lane. And the popular story about that track, even today, is that Betty was a smuggler’s daughter who fell in love with a customs man.

Later, apparently, she betrayed both her father and her smuggler friends by reporting them to the authorities. Read the rest of this entry »

Describe the place where you write/draw

I’m incredibly spoiled because I have a room above our garage that I use as an office and I tend to go there to when I’m at home. The view is lovely, and makes me have to pinch myself, but in the winter it is ridiculously cold.

What is your most treasured possession?

I think probably at the moment it is the felt bear puppet that my son Joe made. It is without doubt the best felt bear puppet in the history of that honourable craft (no maternal bias there whatsoever).

What times of the day do you work?

If I’ve got a ‘writing day’ I work 9 to 5, or 8 to 6 if I’ve set myself a hard task. Then in the evenings I try and do admin.

What distracts you?

Oh god, everything these days. I was really good at concentrating until about two years ago and now I’ve finally succumbed to the 21^st century disease of distraction. Currently I’m trying the Pomodoro technique, which is basically where you set a timer to 30 minutes and keep working until it beeps. One of my friends has this thing that switches his internet off. If you’ve got any other suggestions please do bung them my way.

What is your favourite smell? Read the rest of this entry »

Being a bit of a daydreamer is a great quality to have if you’re an author: first time it’s ever come in handy in my life. Generally speaking though, it’s not something you look for in a sailor.

I always have to start any blog posts about the sea and sailing with a caveat explaining that I’m not actually a particularly good dinghy sailor: it’s just something I love.

Oh how embarrassing then to have an entire series of eminent authors (and me) writing posts dedicated to sailing. I’m starting to feel like I’m on one of those radio confession slots now. But, dear reader, I have to admit that I am such an inadequate sailor that it nearly done for me, and another unfortunate.

I’ve blocked most of the details from my mind but suffice to say it was a summer in the 1980’s; I was trying to learn how to be a slightly-less-average sailor courtesy of a UKSA week-long course, and was dutifully tacking across Cowes harbour in a Wayfarer with some poor boy from London.

It had not been an auspicious pairing this young man and I. He was shy, I was awkward, the weather was freezing: we didn’t get off to a brilliant start. And after we’d spent 30 minutes in the mouth of Wootton creek – in the water and the pouring rain – trying (and failing) to right our capsized boat, relations were on the downhill slope.

But what do you know, come the last day the weather turned, we were a bit more confident and things started to feel much better. ‘How lovely,’ I thought to myself as I sat at the helm. It was Dinghy Week and there were lots of other boats on the water, the sun was shining. ‘Isn’t this pretty?’ I expect I was thinking to myself, possibly whilst playing a 1980s tune in my head by way of a soundtrack.

Lovely green water, clear blue sky, I wonder if I’ll get a tan today…

Until suddenly my crewmate’s hand grabbed mine angrily and tacked our Wayfarer violently. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the nicest things about being an author is that for some reason it seems to give you license to get in touch with other writers and say hello. Or maybe I just think it does. Anyway, that’s how I became friends with Ben Johncock; writer, Guardian journalist, hilarious tweeter, Literary Death Match Pugilist and fellow resident of darkest Suffolk.

So I was quite excited when the DFB blog asked me to write about my favourite short story of the year, because Ben had written it. And you don’t need to worry about personal bias either, well, not too much: look it got a lovely review from the venerable Scott Pack (who likes the Isle of Wight so he must be a man of taste, no bias there either).

Like all my favourite writing, the ideas The Rocket Man played with stayed in my thoughts long after I’d read it. Because in this story the sun is dying: these are mankind’s last days on earth.

It’s a haunting premise with good pacing right up to the ‘exquisite reveal’ that Scott quite rightly pinpointed. And it has an ending that leaves you shivering slightly and running to give your children a cuddle. The writing style is lovely too. It reminded me, in this instance, a little of John Wyndham. But whether you agree with that or not, Ben always has a very elegant way of putting things.

Now, this is technically a short story for grown ups, literary fiction no less, told through the eyes of a child. But I have a bit of a thing about not getting hung up on categories. The library I went to when I was growing up wasn’t very big, so I learnt to like an alarming range of things from Hardy, through books about engineering to Daphne du Maurier, which I don’t think did me any noticeable harm [cue nervous tick]. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve read any of the blurb about Mistress of the Storm, or its follow-up, Heart of Stone, (out in January book fans) then you’ll know the mysterious town of Wellow is a fictional version of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. I actually grew up in Cowes which is on the north side of the Island but I always loved Ventnor which is very remote and all the more magical for it.

To my often-voiced disappointment I don’t live on the Island any more. And what with small children, work, life etc. I realised that I hadn’t spent any proper time walking around the places I was describing for too long.

So earlier this year I decided to fit in some time on my own between school visits to remind myself what my lovely homeland looks like. It was wonderful I’m ashamed to report (it all felt horribly indulgent). After I’d visited Somerton and Solent Middle Schools in Cowes I drove straight to Ventnor to take in the view. You can just about make out the real Spyglass Inn in the distance here:

Read the rest of this entry »

Like most authors I read every book I could get my hands on as a child although, because money was tight, I only owned a tiny percentage of what I must have got through over the years. Mostly I borrowed titles from libraries. But anything I particularly loved I managed to get hold of in paperback and these I trawled through over and over again.

Now this is probably going to sound quite odd for a children’s writer but, until this summer, I hadn’t actually seen any of my precious childhood paperbacks since I was about eighteen. So I knew I’d read them, but I didn’t have them in my home any more. And I think part of me probably liked this because it meant they were all stuck in my subconscious somewhere (along with the television test card and my instinctive aversion to butterscotch Angel Delight).

Anyway, this summer my mum finally made a trip to her old attic, found as many of my books as she could and brought them up to Suffolk. Looking through them has been a strange experience – but also a brilliant one for this blog topic.

I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s read either of my first two books that they’re influenced by a love of classic children’s tales: the kind you read on a cold winter’s day (ideally with a bag of sweets and a mug of cocoa). I’ve always remembered clearly that I read and re-read a lot of strange second-hand books like the Abbey Girls series and these ones here:

Don't ask me what Susan rushed into, I've got no idea.

But it was lovely discovering the books I thought I’d forgotten about.  Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing our series of author storyblogs about misunderstandings*, we have a charming post from none other than M L Welsh.  Merry Monday!

‘Tilda

 *akin to Archie’s antics in I Don’t Believe It, Archie!

Misunderstandings are a daily occurrence in our house; I’m easily confused, my husband doesn’t really listen to anything anyone is saying and our two sons arguably don’t help by providing a constant backdrop of car/tractor/lorry/digger/drill noises, shouts, squeals and shrieks. Dear reader, it’s a disaster. But by a country mile my favourite misunderstanding has got to be the ‘hol’d’y home’ incident of 2008.

That was the year we took an ill-advised trip to Cornwall. It was not a success. Although we broke the journey into two sections, our elder son Joe felt the eight-hour drive to be too long and made his views on this known by screaming from Dorset until arrival. And it was downhill from there really.

We’d booked a cottage by the sea. ‘How lovely it will be,’ I thought. But Joe took ag’in the house from the start. In fact, he hated it. ‘Joe no wan’ go hol’d’y home,’ he would explain several times each day to my long-suffering friend Victoria, who was staying with us. ‘Joe wan’ go Joe home.’

Read the rest of this entry »