The Robots invade Layton Library

It looked like today was going to be a boring day... But I Was Wrong.
Layton library is only ten minutes away from where I live and today they were having a "Brilliant Books" craft afternoon. Chris, Julie and the other hard working staff at the library were kind enough to invite me down to take part.

It was a nice sunny day outside so I wasn't sure how many people would turn up... but it was great to see that lots of people did come (and a good job too because it started raining outside)
I told a couple of stories and then everyone got down to the serious business of building robots, making bookmarks, colouring in and taking part in the book character treasure hunt. Up above you can see a wonderful model of Sparks - one of the robot characters from Robo-runners - made by Charlotte.

Here you can see Daniel and Amy with their excellent robot creations. Daniel's is called Spidey. (Something makes me think that Daniel is a Spiderman fan.) It looks like Spidey would be very good at doing lots of different things with all those arms. Amy's robot is called Robo... brilliant stuff.

Instead of making a robot person, Ben Armstead made a super sool robot owl with the bits an pieces he found. Ben's robot is called Hootey... which I think is a great name for a robo-owl. I wonder if I could have a robo-owl in one of my books?

I think that Katie is a big Jacqueline Wilson fan - she made a marvelous Tracie Beaker model...

Lauren made the biggest robot...here she is with Robo-boy.
As well as meeting lots of new people at the library it was a nice surprise to meet a few people that I'd met before. I met Saul last year when I went to visit a local school and today we had a chat about Robo-runners and Snail's Legs. Saul made a really interesting character called Top Hat Dancer.

Thanks to everyone that came along and made the afternoon so much fun... and for making me feel so welcome. I'm looking forward to going back to Layton library in September to meet the Chatterbooks group and find out what everyone is reading... see you there. I'll have to remember to take a couple of my favourite books along too.

This Tingling!

No... I've not got a tingling feeling in my head, though I do get a funny tingling feeling when I get a new book sent to me through the post (especially if it's on of my books).

Yesterday I told you about two brand new books that are coming out this month and today I can tell you that one of the first books I had published - An Itch To Scratch - has now been published in South Africa. Another one of the great things about writing books is finding that people all round the world can be reading them.

As you can see, in South Africa the book is called 'Dit Jeuk!' I can't speak or read the language that the book has been written in, Afrikaans, (I wrote the story in English and some other clever person translated it into Afrikaans) but I do know that Afrikaans is similar to Dutch - and in Dutch, Dit Jeuk mean This Tingling.

New Books

This month I have two new book coming out. The first one is Odysseys and the Wooden Horse - the story of the wooden horse of Troy. I was really excited when Melanie, one of my lovely editors at Franklin Watts, asked if I’d like to write a version of this story as it really is one of my favourites. It was interesting trying to write the story in such a short form and still keep in as many of the characters as I could – Achilles, the greatest warrior, Paris and Hector. The story has been brought to life with artwork by the marvellous Martin Remphry. It was great working with Martin again – he illustrated one of my first books with Franklin Watts – A gift for the king – and has also done the fantastic artwork for all of my Robin Hood Books.

Book 4 in my Robo-runners series, Powerball, is out this month too. Book 4 finds Crank, Al and their friends continuing their search for Robotika – a place where old robots can be free to live their lives in peace. Flying in the starship Terrapin, they land on the Iron City - a huge walking mining city of a city run by robots. Here, our heroes get their chance to become world famous powerball players… but things don’t go quite they way they had hoped.

Malham Cove and Gordale Scar

After a lovely weekend away with our three girls we decided to plan a day out for the whole family… a picnic in the Yorkshire Dales sounded like a good idea to us so we studied the weather reports to make sure that we picked the best day – Thursday was supposed to be heavy rain and Tuesday was cloudy with showers so it looked as though Wednesday would be the best day – sunshine and light showers.
We packed a picnic, our walking boots and waterproof coats – just in case – and set off for Malham. It was a very warm day but still managed to be very wet. There was no sunshine at all… but we still had a great time.

After parking the car we walked a mile or so to Gordale Scar. The gorge was produced by water from melting glaciers from one of the Ice Ages – quite old then.

From there, we walked over the hills to Malham Cove Malham Cove - a huge curving cliff formation of limestone rock. The face of the cliff is about 260 feet high and at the top is a large area of limestone pavement. The blocks of limestone are called Clints and the gaps are knows as Grykes and provode homes for all sorts of wildlife and wild flowers and ferns such as wood sorrel, Herb Robert, Green Spleenwort and Wall Rue.

When it’s warm and dry, walking across the limestone pavement is fun – they are like giant stepping stones. When its warm and wet it isn’t quite as much fun and the limestone blocks (clints) can become very slippery.

Stadium School

On Saturday morning we had a look round Cirencester and visited the excellent Corinium museum there. In the afternoon we went along to the launch of Stadium School - a fantastic new series by the wonderful writing duo Jefferies & Goffe. Cindy Jefferies (author of the Fame School Series) and her son Seb Goffe had invited us down for the launch and they kindly signed a couple of the books for us to bring home...

If you haven't read any of these yet, what are you waiting for... they're great.

A Busy Weekend

Over the weekend we had a couple of days away from home without our three daughters. No, we didn't lock them in the basement or send them to a workhouse for the weekend... Laura and Deanna went to Granny's house and our Rachel stayed at home (she was busy working) Lorraine and I drove down to Stratford Upon Avon saw Shakespeare's birthplace, had a look round the shops and walked along the river. We stopped for a coffee in a very nice little coffee shop, wrote a few postcards to send home and then went back to the car and drove down towards Cirencester where we were going to be staying for a couple of nights. Before reaching Cirencester we drove close to Chedworth Roman Villa. We called in to see the villa a couple of years ago but as we were so close, we just had to go again. Seeing the fantastic Roman mosaic floors is amazing... especially when you think of the people that once walked on those floors.