Hello world! About this time last year, I declared 2019 as THE YEAR OF PUTTING WRITING FIRST. You can read about it here, but basically I made the decision to scale back on my editing and mentoring business, say “no, sorry” to new clients, and put writing (and[…]

Hello world! When I was a primary school teacher I did a Graduate Diploma in Reading/Language Education to add a fourth year to my qualifications. By this time, my passion for children’s literature and literacy education had taken a firm hold, and it was no surprise that my[…]

Hello world! I think it was my good old friend Ernest Hemingway who said “The only kind of writing is rewriting.” And ain’t that the truth? Proven to me in spectacular fashion in last weeks of 2017. Earlier in the year I blogged about writing picture books and[…]

Hello world! The other week I had a phone call from author and friend, Claire Saxby. She asked what I was doing. “Tearing my hair out!” was my exasperated reply, before explaining that I was working on a new picture book text and had spent the past couple of[…]

Hello world! It is no secret that I first fell in love with children’s literature when I was a young primary school teacher – and my first children’s lit crush was for picture books. Now many years on, with my children grown and me no longer teaching, I[…]