Blog
By the river
The best moments come when you least expect them. I was in London last week, visiting my publishers to talk about plans for my new book The Secret Life of Daisy Fitzjohn (Brightwood in the US). It was a lovely meeting. The book had been difficult to write. It had gone through multiple drafts and […]
Happy Birthday RLS
There’s so much I love about the short, adventurous life of Robert Louis Stevenson. I love the romantic figure he cut with his long hair and velvet jackets. His extraordinary passion for travel. The way he didn’t learn to read or write until the age of seven, and had to dictate to his nurse, because […]
Polaroids
I was cleaning out the backpack I took on holiday this year and I found some Polaroid photos in one of the pockets. I like using a Polaroid camera, although it’s hard to take a really good picture with one. They often come out either over-exposed, or too dark, their subjects either very far away, […]
Motivation
I went to Connecticut to talk about writing to a middle school. I wanted the talk to be interesting, perhaps even inspiring. But as I went along, I began to worry that I wasn’t being either of these things. It was hot in the hall, and I had been talking and taking questions for nearly […]