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63 ratings | 29 reviews | avg rating:4.60

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Maggie Lyons

Goodreads Author

Born

Ystrad Mynach, The United Kingdom

Website

http://www.maggielyons.yolasite.com

Twitter

maggielyons66

Genre

Children's Books

Influences

Jane Gardam, Roald Dahl, Jerry Spinelli, Jeff Kinney ...more

Member Since

October 2011

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscommaggiel

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I’m a trapeze artist, astronaut, spy — just kidding! Well, the bit about being a spy is true. It was a long time ago in a far off land, lots of fun, and planets away from my middle-class upbringing in the UK. I was born in a little coal-mining town in South Wales and properly brought up in England where I did English things like attending an all-girls grammar school, playing rounders, doing two hours of homework every day, and going on soggy caravan holidays with my family. With no regard for my family's physical and emotional health, I also trained as a classical pianist - daily four-hour practices. Once I grew up — wait, that’s a fib; I’ve never actually grown up — I experimented with hedonism in Paris, where, among other things, I taught I’m a trapeze artist, astronaut, spy — just kidding! Well, the bit about being a spy is true. It was a long time ago in a far off land, lots of fun, and planets away from my middle-class upbringing in the UK. I was born in a little coal-mining town in South Wales and properly brought up in England where I did English things like attending an all-girls grammar school, playing rounders, doing two hours of homework every day, and going on soggy caravan holidays with my family. With no regard for my family's physical and emotional health, I also trained as a classical pianist - daily four-hour practices. Once I grew up — wait, that’s a fib; I’ve never actually grown up — I experimented with hedonism in Paris, where, among other things, I taught English to very proper French schoolgirls, and I failed to abide by the British embassy’s social rules in Romania, but that’s another story. My job in Bucharest was to appease visiting Royal Ballet dancers. If you’ve ever attempted to herd butterflies, you’ll know what I mean. Soon after that I gravitated to the USA because the streets there were supposed to be paved with gold. They weren’t, but I stayed anyway and finally wound up catching my breath in a tranquil fishing and farming community on Virginia’s coast.

The rest of my so-called professional life has been a regal zigzag through a motley variety of careers from orchestral management to law-firm media relations to academic editing, all of which entailed a lot of writing and editing. Although that work brought me plenty of satisfaction, it didn’t produce the kind of magic that can come from writing fiction and nonfiction for children.

Children’s literature has always fascinated me. My parents read bedtime stories to me when I was a child and I read stories to my son when he was small. All I needed was an excuse to borrow books from the children’s library, and declaring myself to be a children’s writer did the trick. Studying the work of great children’s writers gives me the chance to indulge my love of that enchanting mix of innocence, escapism, imagination, and humor that bubbles out of children’s literature.
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Maggie Lyons’s books

Average rating: 4.3 · 81 ratings · 52 reviews · 2 distinct works

	Dewi and the Seeds of Doom 4.25 avg rating — 64 ratings — published 2012 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Vin and the Dorky Duet 4.47 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2012 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Great Middle Grad...: Dewi and the Seeds of Doom - Ends December 12th - COMPLETE	2	7	Nov 19, 2012 03:16AM
Great Middle Grad...: Reviews by Kids - Choose a free book and read its reviews here. 62 titles available.	63	280	Sep 28, 2013 08:57PM

Maggie’s Quotes

“His smile was so wide he’d have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway”
― Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee

tags: humor, metaphor

24 likes

“His nostrils flared, he was breathing like a picadored bull.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee

tags: humor, simile

6 likes

Maggie’s Friend Comments

Comments (showing 1-6) post a comment »

date

newest »

message 6: by Maggie

Dec 05, 2012 12:15PM

MG fiction - blogsites: I've started a list of blog sites that promote middle-grade fiction and authors. I'd love to have your comments, additional sites, updates, corrections, etc. See my blog at http://maggie-lyons.blogspot.com

reply | flag

message 5: by Maggie

Nov 28, 2012 06:54AM

Suffering from writer's block? Try my invention for helping to quell it at http://maggie-lyons.blogspot.com/

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message 4: by Maggie

Nov 25, 2012 05:30AM

Great Middle-Grade Reads group is offering several giveaways by various authors. My two books are on the giveaways list. Vin and the Dorky Duet Dewi and the Seeds of Doom

reply | flag

message 3: by Maggie

Nov 21, 2012 05:17AM

New blog today about blipping grammatical bloopers. Trying to rev up my blogspot at http://maggie-lyons.blogspot.com/. Your comments much appreciated.

reply | flag

message 2: by Maggie

Nov 01, 2012 08:17AM

Phew! Dewi and the Seeds of Doom now safely landed at my site.

reply | flag

message 1: by Maggie

Oct 31, 2012 06:44AM

My new book Dewi and the Seeds of Doom is now published. It appears in the database, but comes up under the name of another author who has the same name as I do. I'm trying to sort this out. I'll do a giveaway for Dewi once my name problem is solved.

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