Welcome to my site!

I’m just back from a lovely trip to  visit Oban High School and Dunoon Library

Setting off to Oban on Thursday morning, although it is winter, the weather was kind and the views were stunning with snowclad mountains and clear, if sometimes icy looking water.

It was stunning scenery all the way so I thought I would share some of it with you.

It was lunchtime when I arrived in Oban and headed for the High School.  I was speaking to two 3rd year groups in the library and was met by Lynsay, the school librarian, who had everything prepared for my visit.  I also met some enthusiastic readers who dropped into the library during their lunch break and there was great excitement about  a school trip the following day to Hamilton, to see the play of Theresa Breslin’s book  Divided City.

I spoke about all three YA novels and afterwards there was time for questions.  Just before they left I was asked to choose the best question and one lucky winner in each class won a free copy of one of my books  There were some very good questions so it was quite difficult to choose between them! Some of the students bought books and I was also asked to sign copies for the school library.

All too soon it was time to say goodbye to Oban High School and set off again. This time I was heading for Dunoon, where I was speaking the following morning.

As you can see the view of the sunrise over the water at Dunoon was quite beautiful and I was glad I caught it because  unfortunately it very soon disappeared and the sky became quite grey.

In Dunoon Library I met the lovely children from Primary 3 and 4 at St Mun’s Primary School.  I told them the story of Hamish McHaggis and the Great Glasgow Treasure Hunt and we found out about Hamish and his friends, the Hoggle and the Whirry Bang.  We looked for the mini beasts hidden in the pictures and tried to remember all the answers to the clues in the treasure hunt.

There was a lively question and answer session and some of the children came forward as we  discovered some of the jobs involved in getting a book from the first idea in an author’s head to a published book in a bookshop or library.

Before they left I showed off the new Hamish McHaggis cuddly toy which has just arrived  (here’s a picture, I’ll be putting up some much better images very soon!)  It will be available in shops so if you can’t find it, just ask!  Everyone agreed it was very soft and cuddly and they all wanted to give Hamish a little cuddle before they went back to school!

I had a lovely time andI think the children all enjoyed it,too. In fact I’ve already heard from one of them, Ryan who was ‘the editor’!

I’ve also been updating my ‘upcoming events’ page as much as I can with some of the exciting events I have to look forward to, including the Aye Write Festival in Glasgow.  I am looking forward to having a bit of writing time now, although by the end of February I will be off on the road once again!

You can find out more if you drop by my blog Bookwords

                 *****************************************************************************************

           Happy New Year

A good review is a lovely way to start the year and my thanks to the Bookwitch for a great review of Don’t Judge Me –

Good to know that I kept her guessing!

You can read it here   The Bookwitch review”

My last school visit of 2012 was a great one!  I visited Johnstone High School last Wednesday and spoke to 60 pupils from the S2 English classes, about my books and the research I did for them.  They asked some really interesting questions.

Here is a report of my visit by one of the S2 students.

On the 12^th of December, people from every second year English class were visited by a woman named Linda Strachan. She is an author from Edinburgh who has had some 60 books published. She has written picture books, children’s books and novels for an older audience. She won the Catalyst Teenage Book Award in 2010.

She was here to speak to us about her teenage novels – Spider, Dead Boy Talking and Don’t Judge Me. She told us all about the inspiration for her books and the research she carried out to make her novels as realistic as possible. She told us that she was studying car crashes and was able to observe fireman training when they staged a car accident and were practising taking the roof off of cars. Also she went with the ambulance service on a Saturday night to witness what happens when there is an accident on the road- which sounds very scary to me! She explained to us what all of her books were about, what her characters were like and read us extracts from her books too. At the end we were given the opportunity to ask Ms. Strachan questions. This was very beneficial as it gave us the chance to find out about how she came into the business, what age she was when she started writing and what her future plans were.

We were very privileged to be in the presence of such a successful writer and it has really inspired me to read more books and improve my writing.

Thank you, Louise, for a great report and I hope you enjoy reading the books!