It has been a busy year so far!

It started with the huge excitement of my son Matt being on television, playing Limbo in  BBC1 and Synchronicity Films brilliant adaptation of Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies.

Mayflies was an excellent, heartbreaking production and I am hardly biased at all.

In March, I did my first international author visit, and spent  a wonderful three days  doing workshops at the European School in Luxembourg, plus a lovely afternoon exploring the city. So grateful to the organisers for making it such an enjoyable visit.

My European adventure was followed by Unicorn Weekend at Stirling Castle, which was tremendous fun. I did four creative writing workshops and four readings in the Great Hall over the weekend, all themed around wild unicorns.

After that came the excitement of the launch of Euro Spies in April. Grateful thanks to Waterstones in Silverburn for organising a lovely launch, to all the kind booksellers who welcomed me in for signings and to the schools who engaged so enthusiastically in code cracking and clue solving events!

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Euro Spies is a fun spy caper set in six European cities – Paris, Bern, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Brussels and Amsterdam and I was lucky enough to be on a trip to Rome around the same time. There were so many perfect promotion opportunities. And so much pizza and pasta.

The summer term was packed with school visits, including a super afternoon as guest author at Bo’ness Academy’s fantastic Junior Red event and a lovely trip on the ferry to Kirn Primary in Dunoon. There were also some delightful meet-ups with fellow writers, at the Children’s Books North Social  and the Scottish children’s publishing picnic in Edinburgh.

Thankfully, despite being so busy drinking Prosecco and chatting to writing pals, I’ve managed to fit in some writing. My first reading book for schools, Terror on Titanic, is being published by Badger Learning on the 8th of September. Terror on Titanic relates the terrifying real-life experiences of Ruth Becker, who was just 12 years old when she boarded the doomed ship with her mother and younger siblings.

Currently, I am researching and writing another reading book for schools, again based on a real-life historical disaster, as well as doing line-edits for a new novel, which is coming out next year with Floris Books. More details about this one coming soon!