Anita Loughrey's blog. This is my journal about my experiences and thoughts on writing. As well as news about me and my books, it includes writing tips, book reviews, author interviews and blog tours.
For more information about me and my books see my website: www.anitaloughrey.com. Follow me on Twitter @amloughrey, Facebook @anitaloughrey.author and on Instagram @anitaloughrey
I love the simplicity of this large, A4 hard-back picture book, Silver Linings by Fiona Woodcock.
Pip is not having a good day but her best friend Parker is forever the optimist and always manages to see the bright side of everything that goes wrong for her. But when disaster strikes for Parker it is up to Pip to put the smile back on his face.
This is a lovely heart-warming story of friendship with a theme of having a positive mental attitude. Young children will empathise with the things that happen to Pip that could potentially ruin the day but will cheer with glee at parker’s imaginative and fun solutions. Fiona’s pastel artwork add a feeling of joy whilst reading Silver Linings. Every page oozes hope and the spirit of fun and adventure. The underlying message of looking for the silver lining in everything is portrayed in a touching and comforting way.
This book was a pleasure to read. Silver Linings will resonate with children and adults alike. Ideal for bedtimes and to read to the class. Fiona’s pastel artwork adds to the feeling of joy whilst reading Silver Lining. Every pages oozes hope and the spirit of fun and adventure.
I would like to thank Fiona Woodcock for the gorgeous postcard with the lovely handwritten message I received with the book.
The answer is YES I enjoyed reading this book and I’m sure others will too.
You can buy copies of Silver Linings by Fiona Woodcock from your local bookshop, or online at uk.bookshop.org, an organisation with a mission to financially support local, independent bookshops.
When Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends go on an expedition to a Royal London Park they don’t expect to find themselves in the middle of a royal adventure. This charming story takes place at a very special Royal Coronation.
Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet lose Eeyore in the crowd so they come up with an ingenious plan to find their friend. Along the way they meet a King Charles III and learn about the importance of kindness, helping others and new beginnings.
I was particularly impressed by the detailed architecturally accurate illustrations of iconic landmarks in London by Andrew Grey. This is a remarkable achievement when you consider the speed they must have been drawn to get the book published in time for the royal coronation.
There are some well chosen interesting facts thrown in such as the River Thames runs through London, King Charles III’s love of the environment, the thistle being the national flower of Scotland and the pelicans in St. James Park were a gift to King Charles II in 1664.
This classic character children’s book will make a wonderful keepsake to honour the historic coronation of King Charles III.
The ideal commemorative gift centred around a children’s character we all love.
Today it is my turn on the blog tour for Inheriting Her Ghosts by S. H. Cooper. This tour is part of the Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA). This year, the BBNYA is celebrating the 55 books that made it into Round Two with a mini spotlight blitz tour for each title. BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 10 finalists and one overall winner.
If you want some more information about BBNYA, check out the BBNYA Website: https://www.bbnya.com/ or take a peek over on Twitter @BBNYA_Official. BBNYA is brought to you in association with the @Foliosociety (if you love beautiful books, you NEED to check out their website!) and the book blogger support group @The_WriteReads.
Inheriting Her Ghosts is a Victorian gothic horror novella. Eudora Fellowes discovers she’s the sole heir of her estranged great-aunt’s seaside manor house High Hearth, so leaves her childhood home with her two faithful hounds hoping for a peaceful escape and a new start.
But High Hearth is a place of tragedy and deception, and Eudora discovers that the secret to her great-aunt’s clandestine history lies behind the door with no key. She soon realises Inheritance often comes with strings attached, but rarely are they as tangled as those hanging over High Hearth. What awaits is a dark legacy shrouded in half a century of secrets. It doesn’t take long before Eudora realizes she’s not the only one to call High Hearth home.
The author, S.H. Cooper is a Florida based, multi-genre author with a focus on horror and fantasy. Her work has been published by Sleepless Sanctuary Publishing, Cemetery Gates Media, and Brigids Gate Press. In addition to short story collections and novels, she is also the writer for the horror comedy podcast, Calling Darkness.
When she’s not writing, she’s thinking about writing, talking about writing, or sleeping (wherein she dreams about writing). She is kept up and running through the tireless efforts of her extremely supportive family and coffee. Her horror novel, Inheriting Her Ghosts, is published by Sleepless Sanctuary Publishing on the 9th July 2021
My stop on the tour involves an interview with the author, S. H. Cooper about the writing of Inheriting Her Ghosts.
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Welcome to my blog. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed by me as part of the penultimate stops of your blog tour for your haunting new book Inheriting Her Ghosts.
Tell us a little about yourself and the inspiration for your book Inheriting Her Ghosts.
I’m an American author of horror and fantasy. I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, completing my first novel-length manuscript (which would much later become my YA fantasy novel, The Knight’s Daughter) at eleven years old. While I’ve always loved horror as a genre, I didn’t start writing it until 2016, when my sister suggested I check out the NoSleep subReddit to combat a long bout of writer’s block. It worked like magic and suddenly the words were flowing! Since then, I’ve published a slew of short stories, six books, co-edited two anthologies, and co-wrote a podcast.
Inheriting Her Ghosts drew inspiration particularly from Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black and Guillermo del Toro’s 2015 film, Crimson Peak. I’ve always been drawn to haunted houses and the gothic flair of both works struck a chord with me. The story of IHG came quite unexpectedly as I’d not done much in the gothic vein, and never anything Victorian. One day, I just heard a very distinct voice in my head (that sounded exactly like voice actress Erika Sanderson of The NoSleep Podcast) say, “The house inherited me as much as I did it. We were alike, this house and I…”, and wrote it down, not knowing I’d just met Eudora Fellowes and been given the opening lines to her dark tale.
How do you select the names of your characters?
Honestly, most of the time, there isn’t much of a selection process at all. It often feels less like I’m coming up with stories and more like I’m simply transcribing something that’s being told to me. Crawford Bentley was always Crawford Bentley, I never wondered over what to call Black Shuck and Cerberus. They just were. Eudora was actually a rare exception. She started with an entirely different name that never quite felt right, and early on, my editor, Elle Turpitt, confirmed my suspicion that it seemed off. Without knowing exactly what I was looking for, I started scouring Victorian baby name lists and when I finally came across the name Eudora and surname Fellowes, it just clicked and I knew without any doubt that was meant to be her name.
What is the most difficult part of your writing process?
Getting in my own head. Longer works in particular give me a lot of time to second guess, cast doubts, and worry over the most minute details that a reader probably won’t even notice, much less question (“Is the color of this furniture appropriate for the time period?”, “Is ‘nightgown’ or ‘night clothes’ the better term?’, etc.). Thankfully I have a wonderful group of fellow author critique partners and, as mentioned before, my editor, Elle. They’re great at helping me work through my own thoughts and excellent motivators.
What part of Inheriting Her Ghosts was the most fun to write?
100% Eudora’s relationship with her dogs, Black Shuck and Cerberus. They’re loosely based on my own dogs and it was so easy and enjoyable to bring the love I have for them to the page. While my pups aren’t as large, intimidating, or (let’s be honest) well trained as their book counterparts, I have no doubt they’d put themselves between me and any perceived danger and I’d definitely throw down with a ghost if it threatened them.
Where is your most productive place to write?
This is my “Don’t be like me, be better” answer: My phone. It’s a horrible habit. Don’t do it. Since I can take it anywhere, location doesn’t matter that much, but it must be totally quiet and uninterrupted. While music can help get me in the mood to write before I actually sit down to do so, it gets shut off the moment I’m ready to put proverbial pen to paper and if anyone interrupts me while I’m in The Zone, I…typically politely ask them to wait until I’m done, but there is some serious side-eye while I do it.
What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve ever been given about writing?
Take every piece of advice you’ve heard about writing and chuck it out the window. Ok, maybe not the stuff about having to be disciplined and, as with any art form, needing to practice, but most of the other fluff. The “How Stephen King Writes a Billion Novels a Year” and “One Hundred Ways You NEED to Change to Be a Real Author” type schlock. Writing is an extremely personal process and what works for Mr. King might only be a roadblock for you. Maybe you’re a plotter, maybe you’re a panster, maybe you write better with a set word count to reach, maybe it’s easier to never count words at all. The how you do it isn’t nearly as important as the fact you’re just doing it. Figure out your system and grow in the way that works best for you (unless your way is writing on your phone…).
Thanks again for your time in answering my questions. I am looking forward to taking a peek at the last posts in the tour tomorrow.
To celebrate the coronation of King Charles III, I am posting a commemorative book review to mark the occasion.
In this fun rhyming picture book, The King’s Hat, by Shelia May Bird and Mark Beech our new King is finding his crown a little heavy to manage. His good friend Tom the gardener explains monarchs must wear all sorts of hats and he must be brave and allow himself to be the king he was born to be. The joyful rhyming text of The King’s Hats will delight little ones as they explore all the roles their king might have to take and the many hats he will have to wear during his reign.
I really enjoyed The King’s Hat because it made me laugh. The rhyming verses are a pleasure to read. I’m sure every child will love listening to this exquisite story published to coincide with the Coronation of King Charles III today, Saturday 6th May. It also coincides with The Big Help Out, designed to encourage a national day of volunteering, which will take place on Monday 8th May and is intended to create a ‘lasting legacy’ for this coronation weekend.
Mark Beech’s glorious and hilariously warm illustrations with a caricature-style are fun and his traditional pen and ink style bring the story to life. I particularly like the illustration of King Charles dancing around the garden in his kilt pretending to play a golden spade as a guitar.
I believe young children will be able to identify and understand the different roles King Charles has to undertake and will enjoy thinking of other hats he can wear on other occasions. In the classroom children will love making and designing their own hats for a particular purpose and could do all sorts of role play using a selection of different hats.
I would recommend this book for all primary school book corners to commemorate this momentous event in British history.
You can buy copies of The King’s Hat by Shelia May Bird and Mark Beech from your local bookshop, or online at uk.bookshop.org, an organisation with a mission to financially support local, independent bookshops.
The Mr Men and Little Miss have been delighting children for generations with their charming and funny antics. Bold illustrations and funny stories make Mr Men and Little Miss the perfect story time experience for children aged two up.
In this charming and funny commemorative edition King Charles III goes on a royal tour of the Mr Men Little Miss world. It’s a right royal giggle from start to finish.
There have been preparations in every land. Everyone is very excited. In Happyland, Mr Happy and Little Miss Sunshine have planted a special flower display, while in Loudland, Mr Noisy and his band have been practising day and night and in Coldland they build a royal snowman.
Finally, King Charles III arrives at Middletown Airport for the Cleverland parade, where Miss Brainy had calculated the exact number of flags that were needed for them to wave. The King’s next stop is Nonsenseland where he looks right at home and the tour continues until he reaches Happyland and the grand gala ball and banquet.
A mad, raucous romp of a book guaranteed to make children squeal with laughter.
Celebrate the coronation of King Charles III on Saturday 6th May with this fascinating book packed with over 100 extraordinary and enlightening facts on the royal family, ranging from King Charles III birth to his appearance on Coronation Street.
These bitesize facts are delivered with humour and charm in this fun fully-illustrated book. Discover Charles is passionate about the environment, he was the first royal to go to school, Charles is a member of the Magic Circle and he does not need a passport whereas other members of the royal family do.
It is an entertaining read, easy to dip into and the ideal book to read on the day of King Charles III’s coronation. Great book for class book corners.
Title: The Indestructible Tom Crean Heroic Explorer of the Antarctic
Written and Illustrated by: Jennifer Thermes
Published by: Welbeck Publishing
The Indestructible Tom Crean Heroic Explorer of the Antarctic is a superb creative nonfiction picture book full of facts and information that will excite the imaginations of all young explorers. It recounts the incredible, gripping true stories of the Irish born explorer Tom Crean during his three treks to the Antarctica on the Discovery, Terra Nova, and Endurance expeditions. Each journey was laden with dangers from frostbite, hypothermia, loss of both human and animal companions, malnutrition and starvation. Tom Crean’s heroic acts of courage, perseverance, and teamwork is an inspiration to children of all ages.
The use of the present tense gives the text an immediacy I feel young children will enjoy. Jennifer Thermes makes excellent use of both graphic novel style panels and picture book techniques to keep the reader turning the pages. Her maps and dramatic illustrations were created using watercolour, coloured pencil, and salt. It would be fascinating to know how the salt effects the watercolour coloured pencils. Working with a limited palette to portray the Antarctica her artwork adds atmosphere and drama that encapsulate the perilous conditions Tom Crean and his companions would have encountered.
At the back of the book Jennifer lists some of the sources she used in her research which will inspire children to do their own research to discover more about the south Pole and the expeditions that took place. I like the inclusion of a timeline, vignettes of some of the animals you would find in the Antarctica and some fun facts to get the children’s creative juices flowing.
This book would be ideal for teachers to read to support a key stage one topic on the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
You can buy copies of The Indestructible Tom Crean Heroic Explorer of the Antarctic by Jennifer Thermes from your local bookshop, or online at uk.bookshop.org.
It is with great honour I am hosting Kate Peridot for the last slot of her book tour with her first non-fiction book Caring Conservationists Who Are Changing Our Planet, published by Walker Books.
Conservation is something dear to my own heart and more and more children today are becoming passionate about caring for their environment. I am a volunteer at my local BBOWT nature discovery centre where I do activities with groups of children on different aspects of nature and conservation, so I am particularly excited about being able to interview Kate about Caring Conservationists.
In Caring Conservationists Who Are Changing Our Planet, Kate Peridot takes us on a whistle stop tour around the world to discover the stories of 20 conservationists and the endangered animals they are campaigning to save, including the blue whale, great panda, honeybee, the last kākāpō, and the sea turtle. Sarah Long’s bright vivid illustrations capture the heart of the conservationist and the endangered animal.
This is a cleverly designed book full of inspiring facts about a wide variety of diverse conservationists and the endangered animals they are campaigning to save. The activities are fun and engaging I am sure young children will be eager to build a bug hotel, draw a campaign poster or make their own nature documentary to name but a few.
This vibrant non-fiction book is positive, uplifting and packed full of information, with 20 fun activities for children to try, this book will show children no one is too small to make a difference.
Useful for use in the classroom to support work in the science programme of study for – Key Stage One and Key Stage Two, in particular, Working scientifically and Living things and their habitats. The ideal book to buy to keep your children active and happy during the holidays.
The author, Kate Peridot, writes both fiction and non-fiction children’s books. Originally from London, she now lives with her family in the South of France. She writes wild and adventurous stories about animals, people and STEM that encourages a can-do spirit, a quest for knowledge and a sense of adventure. A further nine books non-fiction books are in production launching between 2023-2025.
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Thank you, Kate, for agreeing to be interviewed as part of your blog tour about your recent non-fiction book, Caring Conservationists who are changing are planet.
What was your inspiration to write a non-fiction book for children about the high-profile people involved in conservation and the endangered animals they are trying to save?
I live in the South of France and the impact people have on nature is more visible day to day than in the UK. I’ve stood on a melting glacier in the Alps, seen coastal pollution from tourism, and we’re in the second year of a drought. Despite a semi-arid climate, I’ve created a garden from scratch and slowly watched the animals move into the hedgerows and flower borders and it’s been really rewarding to watch a mini eco-system develop. There are bats, dragonflies, swallows, and giant toads that eat the mosquitos. Fireflies hide in the hedgerows and pine martins and wild boar steal our fruit! Nature, when given a helping hand, knows exactly what to do. Conservation is both a global issue but also a personal one. Children love animals and being out in nature. They want to understand and help, and I wanted to show them there are lots of people who feel the same way and are making a positive difference.
How did you decide which conservationists you would choose for your book, Caring Conservationists?
Charlie, the editor at Walker Books, and I agreed we wanted to feature mostly conservationists who were working within their own communities or protecting animals in the country where they grew up. Conservation often starts at home and children would identify with this. We also aimed to have a conservationist from every continent, protecting very different animals and also doing different types of conservation work. There is sustainable farming, growing super corals, rewilding, a park ranger, raising awareness of climate change and lots more.
The conservationists are as young as 4 years old and as old as 96! There are also a few famous conservationists from the recent past, such as Gerald Durrell and Jacques Cousteau, who inspired others to follow in their footsteps. Their charitable organisations continue to inform and train the next generation of conservationists.
Why is it important to raise awareness and educate young children about global conservation?
Children are naturally curious and will have their own favourite animal or two. I’ve included different conservation challenges and types of conservation jobs. In the media, the activism side of conservation often dominates and unfortunately, can be seen negatively, but that is only a small part of conservation work and there are a lot of quiet conservation projects where individuals and communities are making a big difference. This book shows children there are many ways to help nature and they can decide what they want to do. It can be as small as making a bug hotel out of bamboo straws, leaving water out for hedgehogs in the summer, learning about endangered animals nearby, or getting involved in school tree-planting projects.
Tell us a little about the format and activities in Caring Conservationists?
Children love non-fiction books because they can open a page and read bite-sized snippets of text almost in any order and dip in and out of any page. This makes fact-based books super appealing for a range of ages and reading abilities. On each page, we have the conservationist’s story as a narrative, and then there are short fact boxes about the animals. There’s another story box about the conservationist’s legacy as an animal champion, plus an activity too. Sarah, the illustrator, has done a wonderful job capturing the likeness of the conservationists, the animals and creating beautifully themed borders. There’s so much to look at on each page.
Do you have a favourite activity in the book?
That’s a difficult one, there are 21 to choose from. Thinking back to my 7-year-old self, I would have loved to make the reef collage or local wildlife scrapbook. I loved art! I would also have wanted to make a den with my brothers to watch out for any animals that flew or crept into our garden from the woods behind our house. If we were allowed to camp out after dark, even better!
Did you have any writing rituals whilst writing Caring Conservationists? Tell us a little about your writing process.
In every conservationist story, I looked for the moment the conservationist knew they had to do something to help, and I wanted to capture that hope and positivity. I don’t have any writing rituals as such, it’s mostly me in my quiet office with my notes and computer. I do about 2 hours then stop for a break. Otherwise, I just keep going each working day until the story and facts work together and the manuscript is ready for the editor to edit and the illustrator to draw.
How did you do the research for Caring Conservationists?
The majority was desk work, and some great information was supplied by the conservationist’s charitable organisations. I also visited St Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital in Buckinghamshire, founded by Les Stocker and his family, which has a visitor centre and the Oceanography Museum in Monaco, which was originally curated by Jacques Cousteau. This had the history of Jacques’s work, and his submarine, which features in the illustration, and also information about coral reefs, blue whales, melting polar ice caps and actual sea turtles swimming around. There’s also a zoo nearby for endangered animals which has New Zealand’s vulnerable flightless birds and some very noisy leaping lemurs, all of which make an appearance in the book.
Is there anything else you would like to tell readers about your books and writing for children?
I have two more animal books launching this spring/summer.
My Animal Family is available from 4th May, illustrated by Nick Jones, and published by DK and is for children of 6+ years. There are 15 animal families in the book and an animal from each family tells their story of family life. Discover who’s the boss, who looks after the babies, and who’s in charge of getting the dinner. Children can compare each animal family to their own family and choose their favourite.
Meet the Bears is for all bear lovers, whether that’s real bears or teddy bears! It’s illustrated by Becca Hall and published by Welbeck and for 4+ year-olds. It’s available from the end of June. Pack your teddy and join an around-the-world adventure to meet the world’s eight species of bears. From polar bears to giant pandas, from spectacled bears to the Asiatic moon bears. Which bear family does your teddy belong to?
And I have further animal and STEM books in the illustration stage which will be out next spring.
Wow! This is all so interesting. Thank you Kate for being so generous with your time in answering my questions. I look forward to seeing many more of your books on the shelves.
You can purchase Kate’s books books from most independent booksellers or online from uk.bookshop.org, an organisation with a mission to financially support local, independent bookshops.
To take a look at the other stops on the tour check out the tour schedule:
When I interviewed Natasha Farrant for issue #241 20 Jan 2022 of Writers’ Forum, she explained how she ensures there is a message of hope in her books for children.
At a fundamental level, The Girl Who Talked To Trees is about our relationship to nature and about finding the strength to stand up for what you believe in. The inspiration for the book was born of a conversation with her publisher at Zephyr. They had worked together on another collection of stories, Eight Princesses And A Magic Mirror and were thinking of ideas for a new book along a similar format. For a long time she had been thinking about how to respond creatively to the climate and ecological crisis.
She said it is so difficult to know how to do this for children – at an existential level, how do you balance the magnitude of the crisis with hope for the future? One of Natasha’s publishing friends suggested to do it through myth and fairy tale, and that really struck a chord with Natasha.
“I knew I wanted to write about the crisis but I also knew I wanted a book that would give hope for the future. I’m not saying trees are going to get us out of this mess, but they are a key part of the jigsaw – and such a relatively simple part.”
Natasha Farrant
She continued there are two elements to the book: the major element is the stories themselves, but each story is introduced by a number of science facts. Natasha feels stories are such a powerful force in bringing about change, but without the science we’ll get nowhere.
As with all her books, though the themes are serious and the starting point in this case was so huge, the overall aim remained the same: to tell stories which would captivate and transport. She spent a long time thinking about Olive and getting to know her, wondering what traits I could give her that children could identify with.
So:
‘She was clever and kind and intensely shy and her best friend was a four-hundred-year-old oak.’
Extract from The Girl Who Talked To Trees
Which fits, because:
‘When you are so shy you dare not even look at anyone in case they want to talk to you – or worse, want you to talk to them – a tree is a very sensible choice for a friend.’
Extract from The Girl Who Talked To Trees
From the moment they decided on the theme of the book, Natasha was on the look-out for trees which captured her imagination, like the baobab plane in our local park, famous because after World War Two it was struck by lightning. Everyone thought it was dead, but then it came back to life and became known as the Tree of Hope. Then there were the box trees in the woods near one of her friend’s homes. Once part of a formal planting scheme on a grand estate, they were now growing wild. Natasha liked the idea of a tree that had escaped.
Natasha revealed she prefers to write long hand, using a refillable fountain pen (no throwaway plastic) her husband bought her as a gift twenty years ago. She uses extra-large Moleskine notebooks because she likes their paper, and few things give her greater pleasure than the sensation of ink gliding across those smooth pages.
“This is a serious point: writing is hard, so it’s important to make those bits I can control as pleasurable as possible.”
Natasha Farrant
The notebook writing is for doodling, or as a fellow writer calls it, noodling. Natasha sets herself a goal of three pages a day for a first draft, and tries not to think too much about what she is writing so it is more like exploring, free to go in any direction she desires. She writes on the right-hand page, leaving the left-hand page free for notes, observations or actual doodles. She allows herself absolute creative freedom.
At a later point she starts to type everything up. Natasha claims this is where the more rigorous work begins, of trying to shape all that noodling into a story. This can be a hard slog, with many, many different versions printed and scribbled over and retyped until it’s just right.
For Natasha, the key to get anyone turning the pages is to make sure they really care about the characters and understand what is motivating them. For this, your characters must have a clear goal, that really matters to them personally and – because they care about the character – also matters to the reader. There should also be a sense that your characters are growing.
In the case of The Girl Who Talked To Trees, Olive’s goal is to save her tree. As she strives towards this goal, she also learns to overcome her shyness and to speak up. Natasha stressed this question of motivation and growth should apply to every character, not just the main protagonists.
Natasha said, if you want to write for children, it’s important that you read other children’s authors as widely as possible. And also that you acquaint yourself with some children. We all to an extent write for the child reader that we once were, but unless you are very, very young, tastes may have evolved since that time. Without losing sense of your own voice, do bear in mind trends and mindsets which may have changed since you were a child.
Much To Do About Writing 