Category Archives: Illustration

How I Write

Look at this! I don’t talk about writing for months and then I talk about it for two weeks on the trot! You’ll be relieved to hear, this one is more light-hearted. In my last blog post I mentioned how … Continue reading

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Interview with Xavier Bonet

Though we know the old adage not to judge a book by its cover, we all do. I love the cover of The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle. It tells a potential reader so much about the book before theyโ€™ve … Continue reading

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Counting down

Six weeks today, my middle-grade children’s novel, The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle, will be hitting bookshop shelves. I’m both excited, and very nervous. The excited part of me made this book trailer! For those of you who read my … Continue reading

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Picture Books 2020 (and pirate fishfingers)

I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year despite the clouds of Covid hanging over all of us. Being in Tier 2 we were able to see some family on Christmas Day. It was a very odd feeling, … Continue reading

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SMHAF

I’ve been thinking about how The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle was supposed to be out in the world this week, and in all honesty, I’m very relieved it’s not. What a strange time it would have been, to be … Continue reading

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A bright pebble

I found this pebble hidden on the path outside one of my visits this week. The neighbour’s front window was open a small crack. Inside the house, children’s heads bobbed around the windowsill, trying to hide, but desperate to see. … Continue reading

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World Book Day 2020

It is light now when I come in from my morning bike rides. The riverbanks are full of bird song and lolloping bunnies. In the streets near us, front garden shrubs explode with sparrow chatter as we pass on the … Continue reading

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How Billy Hippo Learned His Colours

Are you all safe and dry? I hope so. Itโ€™s been a wild one, hasnโ€™t it? We got off lightly down here, although I havenโ€™t been over to the allotment to see how the greenhouse has fared yet. Still, no … Continue reading

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Faces of Transition

New work I did for the Scottish Centre for Conflict Resolution (SCCR) went live last week. Their conference theme this year is The Faces of Transition. As part of this commission I used imagery from the Roman god Janus to … Continue reading

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Picture Books 2019

In my fit of gardening optimism, Finch and I went to the allotment to clean the greenhouse at the weekend. Okay, it didn’t go quite like that. I cleaned the greenhouse and Finch made obstacle courses for woodlice in the … Continue reading

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