St Aubyn's School

Next week is Book Week and I will be driving around England and Wales visiting schools and libraries.

On Monday morning I'll be kicking things off by visiting St Aubyn's School in Woodford Green, Essex, so here's a BIG HELLO to everyone at St Aubyn's - I'm very much looking forward to meeting you all.

I will be spending Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday visiting libraries around Wales - more about that next week, and on Friday I will be in Warrington visiting Birchwood CE Primary School... Phew!!! it's going to be a busy week.

Hopefully I will be able to take a few photographs while I'm travelling around so watch this space...

School Visits - Cambridge Road Primary School

Yesterday I spent the day at Cambridge Road Primary School in Ellesmere Port (and very nice it was too) sharing stories, poems and talking about writing and being a writer. After starting with a whole school assembly and silly story I thought I was going to lose my voice. I croaked my way through the second session with Nursery and Reception but thankfully, after a break, everything was back to normal - Phew!!!

This willow elephant stands at the front of the school and I couldn't resist taking a picture of it as I left. Big thanks to everyone for all their questions and even bigger thanks to everyone that helped out with the stories by dressing up as Pirates and Cavemen...

Next week I'm visiting Ysgol Llanbedr in Denbighshire - so here's a BIG HELLO to everyone there, and also a BIG HELLO to all the ladies in Flint Library who I know come and read my diary from time to time.

Our wedding plans and preparations are coming along nicely - a good job too as there are only 36 days to go. On Wednesday of this week it was Rachel's turn to come down for her bridesmaid dress fitting... she looked absolutely lovely but you will have to wait until after the wedding to see pictures. Over the weekend we are getting shoes for the two youngest bridesmaids and next week we go to see the photographer... not many things left to arrange now... Very exciting.

Red Arrows, Back to Chester and Southport Airshow

Over the past couple of weeks I've been busy working on a couple of short, humorous plays which will hopefully be published together in one book. I can't tell you much about them at the moment though because it's  Top Secret... But I'm happy to say that I sent the plays off to my editor this morning and she loves them PHEW! 

We've been busy making arrangements of our wedding on 27th October - very excited and can't wait. On Monday, Laura came to see us and to have her dress fitting. she looks lovely in her dress, as Deanna did when she came the week before. I still can't show any pictures yet - you will have to wait for the wedding photographs...

Before trying her dress on we had a wander through the park and shared some nuts with the local squirrels... 

Saturday was spent in Liverpool getting bridesmaid dresses for the youngest two bridesmaids and on Sunday we went to Southport to watch the 21st Airshow. 

The beach was full by about half ten and there were queues of traffic while everyone else tried to get to the car parks... Amazing how many people were there over 100 000 over the two days according to the newspaper.  

Out and About in Chester

Deanna came to visit for the day yesterday so that she could be fitted for her bridesmaid dress - she looked lovely. I can't let you see pictures of her bridesmaid dress yet - you'll have to wait until after the wedding in October...

It was nice and sunny in the morning so while she was here we had a wander round the lovely city of Chester. After a look round a few shops we walked along the old city walls as we made our way to the bridal shop.  Here's a picture of Vicky and Deanna taken on the city wall at the back of the Cathedral, 

and another of Vicky and myself taken a little further along the wall. 

After being fitted for her dress we had a little drive to Flint to see the post box that has been painted gold to celebrate Jade Jones winning a gold medal in Tae Kwon Do. There were banners everywhere welcoming Jade home... a good idea painting a postbox gold in each of the medal winners home towns I think.  

On Holiday

The weather hasn't been great over the summer holidays but that hasn't stopped us having a nice time. I've not had chance to write in my diary so there's quite a few things to tell you about - a few days out, news about what I'm working on and lots of other things.

In August we spent a lovely week in Tenby, a small walled town with beautiful beaches in Pembrokeshire, on the south coast of Wales. We had some lovely sunny days and a couple of wet days but we still managed to get out and about, visit a few places and have a nice time.

Here's a view of Tenby harbour and one of the beaches...

It's quite a long drive to Tenby so we didn't do a lot on the first day other than unpack and have a walk into the town for a nice refreshing glass of er... lemonade.

On one of the nice days we travelled down the road to visit The Manor House Wildlife Park (you might have seen this on television, but if you haven't you can click on the link above and it will take you straight to their website). The Manor House Wildlife Park is dedication to conservation and it was interesting to see the work they are doing to conserve animals and plants in the wildlife park. As well as seeing some of the animals in their large enclosures there's also chance to walk among some of the animals and feed them... Manor House Wildlife Park isn't a big as zoos like Chester Zoo, however, it's well worth a visit to see what they're doing there.

Here's Vicky feeding one of the wallabies with a special food pellet that are especially for them to eat - you can't just give them a piece of your sandwich or a packet of crisps.

We were very lucky to be able to see some baby meerkats whilst we were there too. The babys are normally kept hidden away in their nest as they can't see but the mother was letting them have a bit of sunshine. You can see one of them here with dad staying close and keeping guard.

We drove across Pembrokeshire to visit St Davids - the smallest city in Great Britain. Here's a picture of St Davids Cathedral which dates back to the 12th century, and behind it you can see the ruins of the Bishops Palace.

  

While we were in Tenby we read about the Cwm Deri Vineyard which was nearby so we couldn't resist going along for a visit. It was a bit of a damp day but we really enjoyed walking through the vineyard and sampling a little bit of wine and cheese - Yum!

The grapes on the vines were only tiny as they won't be harvested until October - it's also been a very wet year (you might have noticed) and that hasn't helped much. We brought a few bottles of wine home with us and are saving them for a special occasion...

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I've been busy writing and visiting a few schools and libraries recently - but life's not all work... On 6th July we went to the theatre - Venue Cymru in Llandudno - to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show - and we had a great time - it was brilliant... 

Rather thank acting out scenes from the book as you might expect in a theatre, members of the original Hitchhiker's radio cast performed the story as they would have done originally on the radio. There were, of course, sound effects, music from a life band, and narration from The Book - those of you familiar with Hitchhiker's will know what I mean.

It was great to see Simon Jones, Geoff McGivern, Susan Sheridan and Mark Wing-Davey on stage (along with Christopher Timothy as the book... even though he stumbled over some parts - but that just added to the fun).

Big thanks and lots of love to my lovely fiancée Vicky, and to Connor, for such a thoughtful present.

It's a very long time since I read Douglas Adam's book but I will certainly be reading it again on my KOBO... once I've caught up with everything else I'm reading.

On with some writing now... The picture book is tweaked and with the publisher so I'm on with something bigger. Lots more in the pipeline too...

I'm busy... really I am!!!

Despite my lack of blog posts I really am busy at the moment. I've been working on a couple of picture books - tweaking and re-tweaking them, working on ideas for some bigger books, visiting schools and libraries and lots of other things...

Yesterday I answered questions for an interview that will be included in the North East Wales School Library Service Newsletter - interestingly enough, one of the questions was do I get to choose the illustrators  that illustrate my stories. The simple answer is no! - well... not usually... though I do sometimes get to choose from a selection of illustrators that my publishers are interested in, however, I've never had a book published without knowing who the illustrator will be. Not until now that is.


I've got a little book Splash! (only about 50 words in total - so a very small book for very young readers) which is coming out in September. The book was initially called Splish! Splash! but it seems that has changed... not a problem. Amazon tells me that it is being published in Hardback on 13th September this year... so that's good. Amazon also shows that the book has been illustrated by Sam Hearn, and the cover looks great - though I was surprised to see that the character in the story is now a girl, but that's not a problem either. After googling Sam Hearn and finding his blog   click here to see some of Sam's excellent artwork I'm delighted with what's been done and think the little book will look wonderful.