I had thought last month that I would make more frequent entries here but I realise that it has been almost three weeks already.

I was due to do some CPD sessions on creative writing ideas with primary school teachers in North Ayrshire but this has been re sheduled for the spring which has allowed me to spend more time writing in my shed this week to catch up after I spent the rest of last week looking for wedding venues with my daughter who got engaged recently.

One of the things I love about my work is that I am asked to do so many different things. at the end of next week I will be going into Edinburgh with the East Linton library after school club to visit some of the locations mentioned in children’s books, taking the lead from the Reading Round Edinburgh book (see it in the New Books section). I will be reading extracts from some of the books such as Nicola Morgan’s Fleshmarket; Gill Arburthnot’s The Chaos Clock; Joan Lingard’s The Sign of the Black Dagger and my book, Greyfriars Bobby. It should be fun but I do hope the weather hold fine for us.

I was running a workshop for nursery and early years teachers at the Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh when they ran their Zest for Life day recently. It was all about how to use book as a jumping off point to telling stories and I was delighted by the wonderful storytelling skills shown by some of the groups when I gave them a starting off point and asked them to create their own story ideas and tell them to the rest of us. There was much laughter during the session so I hope they all enjoyed it as much as I did.