What do children's writers do at the weekend?

Children's writers meet one another at all sorts of events - festivals, book launches, conferences -and they're a friendly lot. This means that they tend to get together at other times, too, and this weekend Susan Price and I did just that and had a whale of a time trying out some stocks. All in the name of research, of course! Susan's latest book, Feasting The Wolf, was published last year by Usborne. It's a dramatic story of courage and honour, set in the time of the Vikings, and it will keep you hooked right to the end. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Feasting-Wolf-Susan-Price/dp/0746077009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209280617&sr=1-1

Baby birds...

All baby animals are cute - and baby birds can be absolutely gorgeous. Because birds that fly have to fledge before they leave the nest, they don't look all that different to their parents. They need their wing feathers before they can get out and about. But birds that swim and birds that run are a different matter. We don't have ostriches or cassowaries or emus in England, but we do have lots of ducks and geese and swans...

Spring is here... well, nearly...

I thought I'd show you a couple of plants that make a change from daffodils and tulips. They are both insectivorous plants - they grow in poor soil and get most of their nutrition from insects. The monster on the left is the biggest pitcher plant in the world, and I used it as one of the jinx box's disguises in Jinx on the Divide. The plant below is the biggest flower in the world, and it smells even worse than a sinistrom. It's called Rafflesia. I took both of these photographs when I was in Borneo in 2004.

Unauthorised Links

Two messages were posted on my previous entry here, both of which had links pasted in. As I do not know either of the authors of these, I have deleted them without opening them in case they were carrying viruses. If you want a link from my site, please e-mail me personally through the contact page on the main website, explaining your reasons.

Author visits

I'm sometimes asked if I do author visits to schools, book groups, festivals and library events, and the answer is - yes. I live in the south-east of England, and I'm willing to travel anywhere in that region. But I also have friends I like to visit in different parts of the country, and so other areas are possible too. For details of what I do, visit the Scattered Authors Website.

http://www.scatteredauthors.org/index.htm

My latest book

Fury, my new book, will be published by Barrington Stoke on 22nd March. It's about a girl who lets the Furies of Ancient Greece escape into our world through a crack in an old pot... There's a link to it on Amazon. co.uk below. This is a stand-alone book, rather than the beginning of a series.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fury-Elizabeth-Kay/dp/1842995693/ref=sr_1_31?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195830746&sr=1-31

Best wishes for the new year

I hope 2008 is a good year for you all - I have a new book coming out in March, called Fury. It's published by Barrington Stoke, and I'll post more details closer to the time.

New writing classes I'm teaching this term - at the Leatherhead Institute, Surrey, starting at 7.30pm on 14th January - telephone 01634 298600, and at The Malden Centre, Surrey, starting at 1.00pm on 17th January, telephone 020 8336 7770.