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!