I Always Wanted to be a Writer

Family folk-lore has it that I planted my hands on my hips and informed my aunt and grandmother that I was going to be a writer 'when I grow up' when I was four years old. How they laughed...

       Later, when adults asked me - as they were always asking me - what I was going to be when I grew up, I used to say, 'A hairdresser.' I had an older cousin who was a hairdresser, and  that was considered a good answer, and shut them up.

I never wanted to be a  hairdresser.

          From the age of about 7, when my Dad gave me The Jungle Books and The Just-So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling, I wanted to be a writer.

          But I came from a family of Black Country factory workers, none of whom - at that time - had ever gone to University, or ever written a book.

At 15, and at 16, I entered the Children's Writing Competition, and won one of the three 'special' prizes in that age-group.  This spurred me on to write my first book, The Devil's Piper.  Acting on advice from a judge in the competition - the poet, Michael Baldwin - I sent the book to the Literary Agency, A M Heath, where it was taken on by Osyth Leeston. 

           She sent it to Faber, where the children's editor was Phyllis Hunt, who said that if I could rewrite the book to a higher standard, Faber would publish it.  I abandoned my education and rewrote it.  Faber published it - but because I was only 16, my father had to sign the contract.

Since then I've written over 63 books, for all ages, from Nursery age to Young Adult - and my YA books, such as The Sterkarm Handshake, are read by many adults.

     I won the Carnegie Medal, the most prestigious award a writer for young readers can win in the UK, for my book, The Ghost Drum.

     For my 'cross-over novel' The Sterkarm Handshake, I won the Guardian Fiction Prize. Both these books are under film option as I write.