• I had a wonderful day today, at Northwood Prep School in Rickmansworth. I felt almost at home, as I used too live in Bushey when I was 10/11. The signs to the Aquadrome made me feel quite nostalgic. We spent many happy summer days there as a child. Not so nostalgic is the proximity to Mt Vernon Hospital, where I had a cyst taken out of my eyebrow when I was about 13. It was done by the plastic surgeons at the burns unit. I remember being quite scared by some of the burns patients, until I talked to them and realised they were real people underneath the scars.

    I arrived at my hotel last night to be told I was booked in for tonight! There had been a mix up, but they fixed me up at the Latimer Hotel in the impossibly quaint village of Latimer. It was all very lovely, except that the room next door decided to have a party at one in the morning!

    The school in built in an old farm. The buildings are timber framed, and all the new buildings are built to the same style, which makes the whole very homely and on a human scale.

    Sue Smith, the Librarian looked after me wonderfully and the canteen did a great lamb hotpot.

    It was interesting having all boys in the audience. My books are very boyish. It was great not to have to add bits in for the girls! Thanks for a great day..

    I stopped off at John Lewis in High Wycombe to get some material to make my Viking Vik tunic for World Book Day in Devon – now to get on and make it!

  • It’s a bit weird writing stories when I know that the covers are already sorted out! I’m revising the third story of Axel Storm at the moment. Actually, I’m pretty much re-writing it. I decided to change a major part of the series, which has put a different slant on all the stories. It’s made them all much better, but does involve a lot of re-thinking.

    I struggled with this story, Jungle Fortress, all last week. I’ve been waiting for the last stone to fall into place. It did, last night as I was falling asleep. I woke in a panic this morning, wondering if it had only been a dream and that it was nonsense or that I couldn’t remember the idea.

    Phew! It drifted back to me and it makes sense too. Better get on an write it now

  • Here is a lesson to help you draw a bat – c’mon – you know you always wanted to! I realised that I’ve been drawing them wrong for quite some time. Amazing what a bit of research will do!

    Today marks a bit of a milestone in my drawing school- I’ll hit 25,000 videos shown on youtube. I think that’s quite good – i’s not like I’m showing videos of sneezing pandas or children getting bitten. It took me a year to get 2,000 views and abut four months to get the next 23k. My viewing graphs show a really nice curve, that statisticians would find very satisfying. Many thanks for all your views.

    Any ideas about how I might improve would be gladly received. I don’t have a lot of time for it, so I do tend to do it in a bit of a rush.