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Showing posts from July 13, 2020

Author Interview: The Author in The Time of Coronavirus - A Weekend Notes exclusive

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Me, trying to adapt to the swings and roundabouts of life There's a lot of useful information and enlightening blogs percolating about the writers-verse about the importance of self-help, patience, and mental plasticity in this whirlpool of changing times. When physical security - our health - is compromised, then it follows our mental well being may be affected. Stress (including eustress, aka good stress) keeps us on our toes, one leap ahead in the scramble to live another day. But it needs some adjusting to, just like change. To say that this pandemic affliction has been good for me (as an author) is a slight distortion of reality and not meant to sound flippant or disrespectful . How can such universal pain be a good thing? But to say that I have learnt much and benefited by the confinements and challenges thrown up in all our faces, is no exaggeration.  In this article published in Weekend Notes on line zine by Belladonna, I and several other well-know children's authors

Review: The Monster Who Wasn't

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Most of us have believed in monsters at some point in our lives, whether metaphorically or from when we believed they dwelt underneath our beds and behind our bedroom doors. This extraordinary middle grade fiction not only reignites the notion that we coexist with all manner of devilish beasts, it bravely intimates that not all of them are bad. Could there be some that fall somewhere in between good and bad? Is it possible to love a monster? Sam hatches one fateful night in the vast underground lair where all monsters dwell and begin. He is a curious and inexplicable creation never before seen by the noxious collection of pixies, ogres and trolls. Resembling something of an imp, the grumpy gargoyles adopt him as one of their own. Displaced and unexplained, Imp (aka Sam) learns more and more about his new world with each passing minute, however not the answer to his existence; why he looks like a human but behaves like a monster. From atop his cathedral spire home, Sam adapts to garg