Claire Fayers's Blog

Merry Christmas everyone!

I’ll be taking a few days off but I’ll be back in the New Year with news of my new middle grade sci-fi, coming September 2023, Tapper Watson and the Nemo Machine. Yes, it has a title at last! I’ve finished most of the editing and I’m very excited.

If you haven’t read it yet, here’s a special Christmassy story I wrote last year, featuring Storm and friends.

A Stormhound’s Christmas in Wales

Don’t forget, I’ve started a newsletter where I’ll be sharing writing tips and prompts, and releasing advance information about my upcoming books. You can sign up here.

Have a very happy holiday break and I’ll see you in 2023.

Hi all! It’s summer time! The garden is blooming, the cats are inventing creative ways of escaping through windows and I’m enjoying my DIY garden office.

I had a great week away in Yorkshire and got to be a superhero at the Bradford Festival. I’m looking forward to appearing at the Between the Trees festival in South Wales on the 27th August.  I’ve never been to the festival before and it looks fabulous – a mix of music, storytelling, science and nature.  You can see the line-up of speakers here.

I’m continuing my weekly writing challenges on my Facebook page every Friday along with other snippets of news and a round-up of books I’ve been reading throughout the week. I’m also taking bookings for the next school year so if you’re a teacher or librarian who’d like a visit, please do get in touch via my contact page.

I hosted a wonderful writing day in the garden for my critique group and other writing friends this summer. My long-suffering husband was on hand to keep us fed and watered throughout the day. We had writing activities and mini-workshops, Julie Pike, author of The Last Spell Breather talked to us about her publishing journey and there was loads of time for chat, laughter and catching up. Here we all are in the garden. It was so much fun, I’m hoping to make this an annual event at least, and host other get-togethers.

Finally – book news. I’m deep in edits for book number six, which is a sci-fi fantasy mash-up, starting in Swansea Bay and launching off into a thousand worlds linked by a river of memories. This one was hard work at first – I went through countless outlines with my agent before I came up with a storyline we both liked, and then I drafted and redrafted, added characters, removed characters, tweaked and meddled. And now my fingers are flying and I’m laughing as I write. There’s still over a year to go until it’ll be in the shops and I already can’t wait to share it with you all.

On top of that, I’ve just signed my contract for book number seven. I can’t say anything about it yet but it’ll be a fun one and I’m very happy.

All the best and enjoy the rest of the summer!

 

Whew! And Phew! And Wheeeee!  (That was the sound of March flying by at supersonic speed.)

This has been my busiest month since I went full-time as an author. It’s been so much fun, visiting schools. I did I quick count and I estimate I met over 2,000 children in 11 different schools, so a huge thank you to all the schools who invited me to visit. I had fun judging the entries for my local school eisteddfod and the Abergavenny Writing Festival competition for young writers. The Abergavenny Writing Festival happens from the 7th-9th April and there are lots of great events so if you’re in the area it’s worth having a look. Oh, and I also made my film debut with the Time Tunnellers for St David’s Day. I even managed to sneak in a holiday – my first proper one in two years, which was very nice, and I read lots of books, and did lots of admin. (Who knew there’d be so much admin to do when you’re an author?)

I have a few more school events lined up for April but I’m planning a month of creativity and getting back to my own writing. I’m looking forward to starting work with my new publisher, Firefly Press on my science fiction novel which will be out next year. I want to get busy with some new ideas too and so I will continue to post weekly writing challenges every Friday afternoon on my Facebook page. I’ll be tackling all these challenges myself and it’ll be great if other people want to take part too, so please come and join me there if you’d like to do some fun writing.

Finally, the best news from March, my Welsh Fairy Tales Myths and Legends has been shortlisted for the Tir na n-Og award. I blogged about this award when Storm Hound won in 2020. It’s for an English language book with a Welsh connection. But ‘Welsh’ books aren’t just for Wales – they’re for everyone. This year’s shortlist features stories of families and friends, war and wildlife, and how we can all make a difference to the world around us. Go and read them and let me know what you think.

Claire

 

 

 

Hi all,

Happy St David’s Day for March 1st, and happy World Book Day.

I’ve been dashing about South Wales, sharing Welsh tales and creating exciting new stories. Thanks to all the lovely schools taking part, Monmouthshire Libraries, and the booksellers at Storyville Books in Pontypridd.

If you can’t get to an event in person, there are lots of fun things happening online.

Here’s a little video I made for the Time Tunnellers (a group of lovely writers of historical fiction) for St David’s Day. It’s all about Lady Charlotte Guest, who translated the Mabinogion into English. If you’d like to know more about her, I wrote a guest blog post for the Time Tunnellers.

This week, the Accidental Pirates is featured on Twinkl, which is a fantastic educational site for all ages. They have a special World Book Day resources page and a World Book Day blog post.

Very exciting news – my Welsh Fairy Tales Myths and Legends will be published in Welsh by Rily Publications with a translation by the wonderful Siân Lewis. I’ve always wanted to have one of my books translated into Welsh so I’m very excited. Here’s the Welsh cover.

I’ve ordered some special Welsh bookplates ready for when the book comes out in April and there will be celebrations, so keep an eye out for more news.

Finally, the deadline for the Abergavenny Writing Competition has been extended until March 6th so there’s still time to enter.  I’m on the judging panel, and the prizes are great – mentoring sessions with some of Wales’s top writers. It’s free to enter, so if you’re a young Welsh writer, it’s well worth having a go.

I’ll be signing off for Christmas after today. I’ll be back in the New Year and in the meantime here’s a festive short story. My friend, Hazel, asked me to write a Storm Hound story featuring the Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet, and I was happy to oblige. If you haven’t read Storm Hound yet, it is available from bookshops and libraries everywhere. It’s very good.

 

 

A Stormhound’s Christmas in Wales

by Claire Fayers  (with a little help from the cats)

For Hazel

 

Egypt. A long time ago. No, even longer than that.

Ra, king of the gods and ruler of the sun looked at his daughter in disbelief. “You want a what?”

“A holiday,” Bastet repeated, licking her paws to clean behind her ears. “I’ve defeated the evil serpent Apep – again. I’ve placed my children in households all over Egypt to protect against disease and famine.”

“Your ‘children’ seem to spend most of their time sleeping and eating,” Ra commented. “They are growing lazy.”

“And that,” Bastet said, “is the problem. They need entertainment and there is precious little here. I propose a quest.”

Ra sighed. He pulled the sun across the sky every single day and no one ever heard him ask for time off to go on quests.”

Bastet fixed him with a long, unblinking stare.

“All right!” Ra burst out. “You can have a week off. Just stop looking at me like that. Where are you going on this quest?”

Bastet smiled. “The future.”

 

It was Christmas. This was a good thing, Storm had decided. Much as he enjoyed life with his human family in Wales, there were drawback. Weather, for example. No one had warned him about human weather, which could change six times a day and was often wet. Or the dangers. He’d just about got used to traffic, but then there were delivery people who banged on the door, holding strange boxes. How was he supposed to know which ones were safe and which were wizards in disguise? The human homes were full of things that beeped or buzzed, and outside wasn’t much better because every human seemed to carry a device which could suddenly make a noise and demand their attention. Then, of course, there’d been the strange months of quiet, when schools and shops and everything else was shut and people stayed in their houses. Jessie’s Dad had been doing something called ‘working from home’ which mean he stayed in his bedroom all day and Jessie and Ben crept around downstairs reminding each other and Storm not to disturb him. Storm had been on serious high alert since last summer and it was exhausting.

But Christmas had returned and it had brought lights and fires, fights and feasts – a poor imitation of the feasting and battles that happened in Odin’s Halls, but it wasn’t a bad effort for humans. Today was called boxing day and it had begun with sausages and then a run around Abergavenny Castle. Storm and Jessie returned home, both panting.

Now, Storm lay in front of the fire in the back room of the Price’s home, while Dad read a book and Jessie and Ben argued over whose turn it was to use some strange device made of plastic and glass.

Then Storm heard it – a faint noise outside, like the crackle of faraway lightning. His ears pricked. None of the humans seemed to have noticed it.

Magic, Storm thought. He’d been tensed up and ready to fight magical threats for so long that it was almost a relief to know the threat had arrived. First things first  – don’t alarm the humans. Storm rose carefully to his feet and padded out of the room to the kitchen door.

“You can’t need the toilet again already,” Jessie said. “We’ve only just come home.”

Storm gave an ‘I need to empty my bladder’ whine, which was guaranteed to get the humans moving. As predicted, Dad hurried to open the door.

Stand back, human, Storm commanded. This may be dangerous.

He stepped outside. A small, black and white face looked up, past him and straight at Dad.

Are you going to let me in? The words were spoken with a sense of quiet command and accompanied by a little squeak.

“It’s a kitten!” Ben said, rushing past Dad and scooping the odious creature into his arms.

Dad made a strange noise, somewhere between ‘oooh’ and ‘aaaaw’. It was a most unseemly sound.

Storm let out a low growl. Bastet, goddess of cats. What are you doing here?

Research trip, the kitten said. I shan’t be staying long.

Too right you won’t be. I am Storm of Odin and this house is under my protection.

The kitten hissed at him. Oh do be quiet. I know who you are. That’s why I chose to come here. This house is already touched by magic. It will suit me nicely.

No it will not! Go and find your own magic house. You’re not welcome here.

The kitten blinked her golden eyes slowly. I am Bastet, the queen of all houses, she said. I am welcome everywhere.

Storm barked. The humans ignored him.

“She’s shivering,” Ben said, stroking the kitten’s head. “We can’t leave her out here.”

“Take her inside,” Dad said. “She can’t have come far. I’ll go and ask the neighbours.”

“She looks hungry,” Jessie said. “Let’s see if she’ll eat some turkey.”

The three off them walked back inside.

Bastet met Storm’s gaze and delicately poked her tongue out at him.

Told you. Welcome everywhere. She closed her eyes, tilted her chin up against Ben’s hand and began to purr.

 

“Bad news,” Dad said, coming into the house the next morning, holding a pink box with Bastet in it. “No one’s reported a lost kitten and she’s not microchipped so the vet can’t trace her owner. I’ve left our details, just in case.”

Jessie and Ben were busy designing Found Cat posters using Dad’s computer.

Storm thumped his tail on the carpet to get their attention. It didn’t work.

“We should give her a name,” Jessie said.

Ben grinned. “I’ve already got one – Sunny. Storm and Sunny!”

Oh no. Don’t you start treating us like we’re some sort of double act. This is not a normal cat.

Bastet/Sunny stepped out of her cat carrier, arched her back and looked around.

“I’ll print some posters to go up,” Dad said. “Sunny better stay with us until we find her owners. But don’t get too attached to her – she doesn’t belong to us, remember.”

None of them seemed devastated to have a cat under their roof. In fact, Ben looked disappointed at the thought that the creature would not be staying long.

Jessie went to the window. “Dad, what are all those cats doing in our garden?”

What did she mean, cats? There were more? Storm’s coat bristled as he padded to the door to see.

He’d never learned to count so he had no idea how many cats were there. One… two… three… four…. lots. Nutmeg from next door, the fluffy white cat from the house at the end of the road, the ginger Tom from across the park, the tabby who owned a family of authors, and a whole load of extra cats that Storm had never seen before. They prowled around the garden, digging up the flowerbeds, sniffing at the lawn, scratching the old oak tree.

Storm barked. Begone cats!

Bastet jumped into Dad’s arms. He stroked her head, his eyes taking on a glazed look. “Be quiet, Storm. There’s nothing wrong with a few cats.”

Are you kidding me?

Bastet sneered at him, jumped down and pawed the door.

“I’ll take her,” Jessie and Ben said together.

Storm watched as his three humans scrambled to open the door and accompany the kitten outside, leaving him standing abandoned and alone in the kitchen. He sighed. He didn’t want to go outside, anyway, not with all those stupid cats about. He chewed the table leg – his usual way of expressing his displeasure – but the wood seemed tasteless today and he gave up and made a flying leap to the draining board so he could get a better look outside.

Bastet jumped down out of Ben’s arms and every cat in the garden lay down, even Nutmeg who should have known better. Bastet strolled among them, touching noses with them all, her tail upright and quivering. Storm quivered too, in rage. This was his home, his human family. He was not about to share it with anyone, definitely not with a cat.

 

Two days passed.

Oh look, we have matching food plates, Bastet said. Isn’t that nice? She finished her last mouthful of fish and sat back to wash herself.

Storm suppressed a growl. The humans didn’t like him growling at the kitten for some reason. All right, he said, what do you want? You said you were here to research. Maybe I can… He almost choked on the word… can help you. If it means you’ll leave sooner.

Bastet blinked at him. Toys, she said.

Toys?

Yes. Playthings, amusements. We are bored in Egypt. You help me find the best amusing toy and I shall leave you in peace.

Storm felt the fur on his neck rise. You invaded my house because you were bored?

Bastet twitched her ears. I heard you left Odin’s halls and became mortal for the sake of crunchy treats. She snatched one off Storm’s plate.

Hey! That is an exaggeration. It wasn’t just the crunchy treats. It was Jessie too, and Ben and their Dad. And Storm had been younger then and knew less about the world.

Ben appeared, dangling something long and shiny. “Mrs Williams next door brought you a toy, Sunny.”

Bastet patted it disdainfully. You call that a toy?

Ben’s eyes filled with disappointment.

Oh no you don’t. I don’t care if you’re the goddess of cats. You don’t come here and mess with my humans.

Storm grabbed the toy out of Ben’s hand and ran off with it.

That is MINE! Bastet shrieked. She tore after him. Storm raced up the stairs, the toy dangling from his mouth. Bastet leaped over the banister and overtook him. Storm swerved around her.

I thought you didn’t like this toy?

I don’t. I hate it. But it’s mine. Give it back!

Storm ran back down the stairs. Bastet bounced off the lightshade, turned a somersault and left claw marks all the way down a wall as she landed. A chair fell over with a crash. Storm leaped over it and caught the edge of Jessie’s art cupboard. The door sprang open and pens, pencils and craft materials tumbled out.

“Storm!” Jessie yelled.

Why is this my fault? Blame the cat.

He turned and saw the cat pawing at a ball of wool.

What, pray tell, is this? she asked.

Storm shrugged angrily. It’s wool. It comes from sheep. Jessie uses it to hang her pictures up.

Bastet sniffed the ball then rolled on her back, wrestling with it.

Jessie laughed. Bastet snagged her claws into the wool and pulled out loops of it turning the neatly wrapped ball into a sorry mess.

I approve, Bastet said.

 

The next morning, the kitten had vanished.

Ben and Jessie spent the morning searching the house for her and calling her name all along the street. Storm wished he could tell them not to waste their time. Bastet had returned to her own world. She’d always said she wouldn’t be staying here long.

The house was normal again. It was… quiet.

“She probably got out of a window in the night,” Dad said. “Let’s hope she found her way home.”

She did. But Storm knew the humans couldn’t understand him – and even if they could, he had a feeling it wouldn’t cheer them up much to know the cat had gone forever.

The ‘Found Cat’ posters Ben and Jessie had put up on all the lampposts became soggy in the rain. Dad put the extra food saucer back in the cupboard. “We could think about getting a cat,” he said.

Ben shook his head. “I don’t want another cat.”

Storm sighed and wandered into the kitchen. He knew Bastet would be trouble, but he hadn’t realised she’d hurt his humans by leaving them.

Then he heard a faint sound, like the crackle of faraway lightning, and something small streaked through the garden. Storm’s ears pricked and he barked.

“Sunny!” Ben shouted, running to the door.

It couldn’t be, but it was.

A small, black and white kitten looked up at him and mewed.

Bastet! Storm said.

The kitten shook her head. No. Bastet took my form when she visited, but this time it’s really me. I don’t like it in Egypt. It’s too hot and everyone keeps building pyramids. I liked our queen’s stories of this house so I decide to move here. If you will let me – Bastet said I had to ask permission. She gazed at him, wide-eyed. Bastet said you were the most impressive stormhound she ever met.

She did? Storm watched as Ben raced into the garden and picked the cat up, then as Jessie ran outside too, and Dad came down the stairs with a big smile on his face. Storm’s tail began to wave.

There will be rules, he said. No eating my food. No bringing dead things into the house. No sleeping on Jessie’s bed – that’s my spot. No breaking stuff. No…

Wow, rules! I love rules! What’s for breakfast?

The kitten jumped out of Ben’s arms, bounced off Storm’s head and skipped into the kitchen where she gulped down the last piece of turkey that Storm had been saving for later. Then she curled up in the middle of the kitchen table and purred with a sound of distant thunder.

“Sorry, Storm,” Jessie said, patting him.

Storm licked her hand. Funnily, he didn’t mind – not too much, anyway. He’d enjoyed being part of this family. Maybe it was time the family got a new member. As the humans were so fond of saying, Christmas was a time for sharing.

 

 

It’s my birthday! My present to you is an original short story mash-up of my favourite subjects. Read on…

 

A Dinosaur in Timeby Claire Fayers

 

For the immediate attention of the Director of the Earth Space Exploration Centre. May 12th, 2283.

Ma’am,

I know you are busy and have many urgent matters to attend to, especially today, for which I apologise, therefore I will be as brief as possible. My story is a strange one and I am not sure where to start it.

I supposed it began on the day I discovered my neighbour had invented a time machine.

Please bear with me. I know this is hard to believe. If time travel existed, people would have come back from the future by now and we’d all know about it, right?

Apparently not.

I had just turned twelve and my parents had bought me a telescope for my birthday. Being a curious boy, I used it to spy on my neighbour. He lived in the house at the back of ours and I could see into his downstairs room from my bedroom, if I leaned out of the window. He was a quiet man, about my grandfather’s age, and he always smiled and said hello when we passed him in the street, so I knew he wouldn’t mind.

I’d expected to catch him reading or washing his dishes or something equally boring. Instead, I saw him drag a grey cylinder into the centre of the room and climb inside it. There was a flash of light and the cylinder vanished. Then another flash and it reappeared covered in mud.

I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to bother the neighbours. I ran around the road and tossed my football into his garden so I’d have an excuse to knock at the door.

My neighbour opened it, looking a little dishevelled, the sort of look you get if you’ve overslept. (I guess you don’t remember what it’s like to oversleep, or sleep at all, given what’s happened. Once again, I sincerely apologise.)

“What are you doing?” I blurted, forgetting about the football that lay abandoned on his lawn.

He had an odd look on his face. Like he’d overslept after watching too many horror films and he’d woken out of a nightmare. Maybe I should have gone home then.

He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “I am,” he said, “in the middle of making the greatest scientific discovery of all time. The secret to unlocking time, if you will.”

I understood straight away, of course. I was twelve years old and obsessed with science fiction comics. Of course I knew what it all meant. The vanishing and reappearing cylinder, the terrified, exultant look on my neighbour’s face. It strikes me now that he never told my family his name. We weren’t friends, you see. We were the kind of neighbours who nodded, said hello and walked on.

To return to the story.

“A time machine,” I said. “Cool. Can we go back and see the dinosaurs?”

He didn’t deny the existence of the machine.

“No,” he said. “Your mother will have my head if I let you get eaten by velociraptors.” He walked back through the house to the back room where the capsule lay on the floor. I followed him. He didn’t seem to mind.

“How does it work?” I asked.

“With science. Very complicated science that you cannot hope to understand at your age. I will demonstrate how it works. You wait here, I’ll have a quick nip back in time and look around, and I’ll be right back. In fact, I’ll come back almost to this very moment so you’ll barely know I was gone.”

He climbed into the cylinder and slid the lid shut.

Five seconds later, the cylinder disappeared.

Two minutes after that, I was still waiting for him to return.

Two hours later, I knew my mother would be calling me for dinner, so I had to go.

After two days, I started to suspect that something may have gone wrong.

Two weeks later, the cylinder arrived back in my neighbour’s garden. I was climbing the fence to get to it when the top panel slid back and a creature emerged.

It wasn’t my neighbour – unless my neighbour had inexplicably been turned into a dinosaur.

Once again, I know what you’re thinking, and please bear with me. It was a small dinosaur, and, in case you’re interested, yes, it had feathers.

It looked at me with its yellow, reptilian eyes, and I felt myself turn cold.

“Do you know how to work a time machine?” it said.

I fell off the fence in shock.

“You spoke!”

It snapped its jaws in an irritated fashion. “Maybe you could try looking a little less surprised. We did have brains in the Cretaceous Period, you know.”

“But you’re a dinosaur.”

The dinosaur glanced down at itself. “Gosh, thanks for pointing that out. Deinocheirus to be exact. It means ‘terrible hands’.”

I looked at Deinocheirus’s hands. Each claw was as long as my arm and curved like a sabre. I started to back away.

“Sit down,” Deinocheirus ordered. “We need to plan.”

My legs gave way and my backside hit the grass. “Plan? Plan what? What are you doing here? What happened to Mr… um…”

“Trampled by a Tyrannosaurus,” Deinocheirus said. “He should have looked where he was going. Luckily, I was able to save the time machine. The return details were set to this time period so I thought I’d see what was here.”

I pictured my neighbour, whose name I didn’t even know, flattened in a dinosaur footprint. “It’s how he’d have wanted to go,” I said uncertainly. I eyed the time machine. “We can go back in time and save him, though. Can’t we?”

Deinocheirus shrugged its feather. “I suppose you could try. Right after we’ve saved the dinosaurs.”

I blinked. “Pardon?”

“Giant asteroid strike,” Deinocheirus said. “Sixty five million years ago give or take a week. Wipes out almost all life on Earth and you primates go on to evolve into the dominant species. Don’t ask me how.” It gave me a sour look. “But now I have a time machine. I can save the world.”

Deinocheirus could save its own world, it meant. A world full of dinosaurs. A thrill of excitement went through me.

Imagine me, saving the dinosaurs.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

Deinocheirus examined its claws. “You’re the one with the superior mammal brain. You think of something.”

“Can we go back in time and bright them forward?”

“One at a time? Have you ever tried fitting a Tyrannosaurus into a time machine?”

I looked at the slim cylinder, built to take one human body.

Imagine dinosaurs alive in our world.

Imagine them trampling on cars, biting chunks out of buildings, knocking down bridges. I’d seen enough films to know it never ended well. The Earth belonged to humans now and throwing a million dinosaurs suddenly into the mix could cause a disaster more catastrophic than the original asteroid strike.

Imagine me being responsible for the deaths of millions of people.

“Maybe, if you went back and warned the other dinosaurs, you could come up with an escape plan,” I suggested.

“Such as what? The end of the world is nigh, run for your lives? Where can we go? This whole planet will be uninhabitable.”

This whole planet.

And that, dear Director, is why I am writing to you today.

You will be wondering where your prototype generational space ship is.

I’m afraid we stole it. Patched it into the time machine’s engines and took it right back to the Cretaceous Period.

It took us many hundreds of attempts, but that was all right. We have a time machine, you see.

It’s not big enough for all the dinosaurs but we filled it with representatives of most species. And eggs. Eggs take up very little room. The project ‘Dinosaur Ark’ took fifty years from its conception in my neighbour’s back garden to completion.

I don’t even have to be telling you this. Without this letter, you’d never find out what happened. But I know that you will build a new space ship – I’ve seen it. I know that Earth in your day is becoming uninhabitable once again and you need to escape. The ship is your own chance of survival, just like it was the dinosaurs’ only chance.

I also know that when you send a ship into space, when you travel to new planets full of optimism and feeling like heroes, you’ll find that some of them are already taken.

Sorry about that.

There’s one last thing, just in case you think I’ve got away with this. I’d like to assure you that I haven’t. I said the whole project took fifty years, and though we have a time machine and therefore, in theory, unlimited time, we continued to age. Gradually, I looked less like the twelve-year-old boy who knocked on my neighbour’s door, and more like the man who opened the door that day.

It appears that at some point, fairly soon I’m guessing, I will move into the house at the bottom of my twelve-year-old self’s garden. I will not need to invent a time machine because I have one already. If you can work out how that makes sense, you are far cleverer than I am.

The day my twelve-year-old self knocks on my door, I will go back in time and be trampled to death by a Tyrannosaurus.

Come to think of it, it’s not a bad way to go.

 

 

You might have noticed a little shouting about a new book this week. Here’s the link if you missed it.

Firefly Signs Fayers Out-Of-This-World Adventure

Penny Thomas, Publisher at award-winning children’s and YA publisher Firefly Press, has acquired world rights in middle-grade sci-fi adventure Lethe by author Claire Fayers, from Gemma Cooper at The Bent Agency.

Fern and Tapper should never have met. Fern lives with her inventor dad in Swansea, the capital city of Earth. Tapper comes from a galaxy far, far away and his space submarine has only stopped at Earth for an emergency repair. But when Fern’s dad loses his memory, Fern and Tapper set off into the Lethe, one of the great rivers of space, to save him.

Lethe is a joyous, wildly imaginative mash-up of Greek myth and science fiction, full of extraordinary worlds and characters.

And here’s an interview with, um, myself, to tell you more.

Lethe? What’s that?

Stand by for some Greek myth. The Lethe is one of the five rivers of the underworld. You say it with a long ‘e’ at the end – Leethee. It is the river of forgetfulness that souls must pass over on their journey to Hades. Once they’ve drunk its waters, they forget everything that happened to them in life. Seems a bit unfair, but them’s the rules.

Obviously, I couldn’t stick to what the mythology says – that would be boring. Instead, I turned the Lethe into a giant space river that connects a thousand and one different worlds. Its memory-filled waters are constantly creating new things that appear and vanish in an endless mash-up of creativity. But if you drink the water, it will strip the memories right out of your head.

A thousand and one worlds, you say. How long is this book?

Don’t worry, we don’t visit all the worlds. But you will meet lots of strange alien people, including a humanoid dragon, flying octopods and (my favourites), Scylla and Charybdis the lobster mobsters.

Sounds… bizarre. Where did you get the idea from?

I had the thought of writing a heist adventure, and my favourite heist is the story of Jason and the Argonauts from Greek legend. Then I was playing around with the idea of lost memories and the two things sort of got mixed up in my head.

When’s the book coming out?

Not until 2023, which sounds like ages away but I know the time will fly by. And I have plenty of other projects to keep me busy in the meantime.

Is this the start of a series?

Possibly. There are four other rivers to play with, so watch this space.

Really? Haven’t you written enough books already?

No, never!

 

It’s just over five years ago since a Waterstones bookseller from Oxford emailed me and excitedly told me that she’d read my book, liked it so much she recommended it for Waterstones Book of the Month, and it had been selected.

Much screaming and Prosecco ensued.

It was a fantastic month, seeing posters on the London Underground, pirate window displays all over the country, and my little book piled high on tables.

In the following years, I experienced a change of editors and sadly the pirate series ended after two books. I do however have the first half of book three and I’m determined to finish it and self-publish it one day, just for the satisfaction of finishing the story.

Success takes many forms, however. I was thrilled when my fourth book, Storm Hound won the Tir na nOg award last year. I’m also delighted that my book of Welsh Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends is doing well all over Wales (and, I hope, the rest of the UK.) I popped into Cardiff Waterstones yesterday and they brought out a big stack of them for me to sign. Lots of people have told me they’ve never come across these stories before and I’m so happy that people are discovering them now.

Then, there are little things. The look on a girl’s face when I said I liked her story.  A friend’s son writing a poem based on one of my Welsh stories and being crowned bard at his school eisteddfod. Visiting schools and seeing children’s imaginations catch fire.

Actually, come to think of it, these are not little things. The most important thing you can do as an adult is to make a child believe in themselves and it’s a huge privilege to connect with children through stories.

The next five years? I’m proud to be taking part in The Mab project, a bilingual retelling of The Mabinogion, with a cornucopia of top children’s authors, all brilliantly illustrated by Max Lowe. There’s still time to pledge support and be among the first to get a copy when the book comes out next June. I’m also working on a new book, and will hopefully have more news on that soon, and several other projects are jostling about in my brain, including that third Pirates book. We’ll see which one comes out first.

In the meantime, thank you for your support, and remember, if you’d like to keep on supporting your favourite authors you can:

Borrow books from libraries.Buy from independent bookshops.Leave an online review.

Happy reading!

 

 

 

 

Today is the third part of my series on using fairy tales to write your own quest stories.

For the first two parts see

How To Start a Quest

The Sticky Middle of a Story

I’ve been working my way through The Leaves That Hung But Never Grew, which you’ll find in my collection of Welsh Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends.

Our hero, Seren, unhappy that she and her mother were too poor to afford food, set off to seek her fortune. A rude old man told her that if she wanted to do something, she should look for the leaves that hung but never grew. Over her travels, she discovered that these are magical leaves that can grant wishes, but they were stolen by a wicked witch long ago. Eventually, she finds the witch’s cottage where a magic talking boar tells her that the witch keeps the leaves in a purse under her pillow at night.

Now, we are reaching the end of the quest. This is the final challenge your hero must overcome to gain the reward, and the challenge has to be something big.

Think of the hardest, most frightening thing you can possibly imagine. Bonus points if it’s something your hero is especially afraid of.

Your hero hates snakes? Make her fight a giant, multi-headed cobra. She’s afraid of drowning? Make her swim across a freezing river, full of rocks and crocodiles.

Whatever this final obstacle is, we have to believe that your hero may die in the attempt. Your hero must believe they could die, too. If it’s terrifying for them, it will be even more terrifying for us reading about it.

When you write the scene, think everything your hero can see and hear and what they’re feeling. Spend a few minutes with your eyes shut, imagining the scene in your head, before you write it down.

Here’s my scene from The Leaves That Hung But Never Grew

Scared? You should be.

Luckily for Seren, she manages to grab the leaves before the witch wakes, and because the leaves can grant wishes, she can use them to defeat the witch and get herself safely home.

Once your hero has achieved their quest, it’s time for them to go home too. And you can give yourself a big pat on the back for finishing your story.

 

I hope you enjoyed this series check out my videos for more fun writing games.

 

If you followed last week’s post on fairy tales you’ll have some ideas for sending your hero off on a quest.

Now we come to the middle, where the story can often become bogged down and we have trouble working out what can happen next.

Fortunately, fairy tales can help us. Remember The Leaves that Hung but Never Grew?

 

So, Seren set off to seek her fortune. It’s a good reason for a quest.

Very soon, she came across a big, white house, where a rude old man shooed her away, telling her, “If you want something to do, go and find the leaves that hung but never grew.”

Seren had no idea what those leaves might be, so she carried on walking, until she met a dwarf. She asked if he knew anything about the leaves and he flew into a panic. “Those leaves are highly magical. But they’ve been stolen by a wicked witch who eats children like you.”

Seren continued on her way, feeling slightly less brave, and, as night fell, she came to a cottage where a sweet old lady welcomed her inside. Oddly, there was a large, wild boar chained in one corner. Even more oddly, after the old lady went to bed, the boar spoke. The old lady, he told her, was none other than the wicked witch, and she kept the magic leaves under her pillow.

That, in essence is the middle of the story. Obviously, there’s a lot more description and talking, but it’s easier to write all that once you know what’s actually happening.

This middle follows a common fairy tale pattern – the rule of three. Three brothers, three bears, three dwarfs… All right, there might have been seven dwarfs so that’s a bad example, but very often things do happen in sets of three.

With this in mind, plotting the middle of the quest suddenly looks a lot easier.

Your hero leaves her home and sets off bravely. She travels for some time and on the way she meets three characters who will help her in her quest. In Seren’s case, this looks like.

Character 1: Rude old man.

Helps by: telling her to find the leaves that hung but never grew.

Character 2: frightened dwarf.

Helps by: telling her the leaves were stolen by a wicked witch. (Quest becomes more dangerous.)

Character 3: magic, talking boar.

Helps by: telling her the leaves are under the witch’s pillow. (Quest becomes a LOT more dangerous.)

Now it’s your turn. Who does your hero meet on their travels, and what help do each of these characters offer? See if you can make the quest more dangerous each time, too.

I’ll come back next week to finish the story of the Leaves the Hung But Never Grew, and look at how to end your quest with a bang.

 

Check out my videos page for more story-telling ideas.