Showing posts with label childrens books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childrens books. Show all posts

Tuesday, 1 May 2012

...and a Groundhog came to visit

Phew! What a month April was! *presses back of hand on forehead* A to Z blogs every day! All that nostalgia! I've really enjoyed the memories but, goodness, the schedule was gruelling, a two-week stint of flu, and right in the middle of it all I had an unusual visitor...



A groundhog came to stay!

Phyllis is a friendly little groundhog and she'd travelled all the way from the US to be with me. This was part of her world tour and to find out where else she's been click on the World Tour Badge. Having travelled so widely, Phyllis was very keen to see what Leicester was like so...
I took her for a drive round our lovely City...
We stopped at Victoria Park but I was surprised when she refused to go for a walk.
      "It's going to storm," she said. "We'd better go home."
Knowing Phyllis as well as I do, I believed her and sure enough, as soon as we got home...

To find out more about Phyllis and her uncanny weather-forecasting skills which come to light in her latest book April Fool, Phyllis! pop along to Susanna Leonard Hill's website. It's where Phyllis lives.

As for me, Phyllis has gone home, the A to Z is over and I'm going to get back to my work-in-progress. It's been badly neglected. I might even blog about it some time soon.

Sunday, 18 September 2011

Wickedness


There’s a new book out that’s really wicked. *sigh* [That’s the sound of someone who’s feeling old.] I’d like to know how the word ‘wicked’ first came to mean cool and, while I’m on the subject, where did the term ‘cool’ come from? Everyone’s using it these days, except for me. Apparently it embarrasses my kids.

“You’re too old to say ‘cool’, Mum!” Charming! In my day it was ‘swinging’, ‘groovy’ or even ‘hip’. You knew where you were with terms like that. I wonder if it’s better to be cool than hot and how can wicked be both good and bad? What word do you use to describe something that’s really good?

...which brings me back to the book. I’ve mentioned before about our writing critique group. We’re all children’s authors and we meet twice a month, once to crit each other’s work and once to have lunch and discuss novels written by other children’s authors. [ok, ok, so it’s mostly to have lunch!!] One of our group, Deborah White, was recently signed up to a two book deal with Templar. The first book is now out. It’s called Wickedness and, like I say, it’s wicked. It’s about two flame-haired girls, both fourteen, both living in London, but four hundred years apart. It’s a full-on adventure story that includes history, fantasy and romance... something for everyone!

Seeing Deborah’s book emerge into the real world is a bit like watching a friend’s baby grow. We saw it develop and mature. We know both flame-haired girls as if they were our nieces. I can’t wait for you all to read it so we can discuss the story. It’s cool... sorry, I mean wicked.



Wickedness by Deborah White ISBN 9781848775312 It’s out in paperback at £6.99 [but if you scoot over to Amazon now you can pick up a copy for £3.91 – how do they do that?]

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There are only 12 days until our virtual 
Macmillan's World's Biggest Coffee Morning
From Friday 30th September to Sunday 2nd October we’ll be having cakes, drinks and fun right here on this blog and there’ll be lots of awards to be won... but most importantly, we’ll be asking for donations to Macmillan Cancer Support at JustGiving in memory of our Mum who died five months ago from cancer. We miss her very much. 

[This event has been registered with the Macmillan Cancer Support Charity and every penny of your donation goes to the Macmillan charity. Thank you.]

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