i write

And then one day I saw a clairvoyant who told me that I was a writer. I told her she was doolally, but several years later I was playing Monsieur D’Arque in Beauty and the Beast in Stuttgart and the Muse descended. And what a little hussy she was. The first thing I wrote was The Oscar Song and I surprised even myself because it came out in perfect rhyme. I found more and more that I liked writing for children. My first children’s book was called The Do Not Open This Book Book which was rejected quite unfairly by every agent in Christendom. When I got back from Germany I enrolled on a children’s writing course at the City Lit in London, and within about two years I had my first contract with Hodder for One Newt In A Suit. Over the past couple of years I have sold four more books and am published by Andersen Press and Random House too. I also lecture on picture books at Winchester University and work as a freelance editor for Cornerstones. Memorable experience? Working with Kathleen Tynan on the Kenneth Tynan Letters. And her friendship.

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