New Publication!

“I am Everychild,
That ever lived and ever died,
And ever swam and ever drowned,
Was ever lost and never found.
I am Everychild,
That ever laughed and ever cried,
That ever searched to find a land,
That ever reached to hold a hand.
I am Everychild.”

In her anthology, 'Winter Magic', Abi Elphinstone has gathered together stories which reflect all the magic, threat and freezing awe of winter: "frosty fairs enthrall you, husky dogs whisk you away on fur-lined sleds, and wishing books answer your heart's desire. Fairytales are re-imagined, lost legends remembered, and folk tales retold."

With my story, 'Into The Mountain', I had always been haunted by the Pied Piper of Hamelin whose piping had lured all the children of the town into the mountain. All my life, I had wondered what happened to the boy who was left behind because he was lame and couldn't keep up? 
 
Because there is something wintry about sorrow, I found myself in a cold, hard, winter landscape, with a sorrowing child obsessed with finding a way into the mountain.

'Winter Magic'
An anthology edited by Abi Elphinstone
For Ages: 8 and up
Simon & Schuster Children's UK
ISBN 9781471159800

What a wonderful thing a book is!

This simple object can be taken anywhere, read anywhere: in a park, on a bus, in your home, under the bedclothes with a torch. Reading allows you to experience hundreds of sensations, emotions, ideas and descriptions, all within that small confined space: brain to brain, creating a unique dialogue between just you, the reader, the author and, paradoxically, silence...  

 When I was a child I never said 
"When I grow up I want to be a writer."

  Little did I know!