Fantasy & Young Adult Fiction

I was not at all surprised to discover that Amazon Studios is following Peter Jackson's lead by filming its new Lord of the Rings series in New Zealand. As a teenage reader, I imagined Tolkien's Middle Earth being just like New Zealand, and I still do. But it is not just Middl...

The modern world seems to revolve around reviews these days, and very helpful that is too — especially when booking a hotel in a place you’ve never been. If you are in luck, someone exactly like you has left a concise and insightful review of the place you were hoping to s...

I’ve always associated the enthusiastic act of tossing underwear with rockstars and the 1970s: colourful and smelly festivals come to mind, with besotted, wild-eyed youngsters doing the flinging. To my absolute delight, I discovered recently that the bizarre phenomenon act...

‘So, you’re a writer?’ Insert pause of variable length. ‘What do you write?’ I think I’m getting better at handling conversations that begin this way, and, happily, after writing hundreds of drafts of the blurb, now at least I’m able to sum up Taelstone in a single senten...

Becoming a full-time writer and publisher means developing a whole new way of working, and different routines - ones specifically designed to help me reach my creative goals. Over the years I’ve learned (the hard way) that my somewhat scatty creative brain works much better wh...