When I started writing my first book, I didn’t realise that was what I was doing. I had always enjoyed telling stories but that is where it ended. When my dughter Harriet was young, each evening when I got home from work I would read her a story. Inevitably she would ask for ‘Rosies Babies’, which was a brilliant book except when you have read it fifty times in a row. One evening when she again asked for Rosies Babies I suggested that I might tell her a story instead. ‘Yes please daddy’ she replied and so I started… ‘There was a little boy called Billy Bonkel…’ and at that moment the character was born. The following evening to my surprise she wanted the Billy Bonkel story again and so I began until disaster struck. I couldn’t remember how the story went. ‘No no daddy that didn’t happen’ she said. ‘Oh didn’t it, what happened then?’ Harriet put me right and I continued. After I’d erred for the third time in just as many minutes my wife Polly suggested that I write the story down. That evening I put pen to paper and I have been writing ever since. That was twelve years ago and I am now just starting the seventh book in the series. I write for pure pleasure each day on the train to and from work, escaping into parrallel worlds where anything can happen.

 A good chum of mine who had always worked in publishing and was, back then, the outgoing CEO of Macmillan, heard my tale and gave the manuscript to his daughter Lucy, who was only eight at the time but with an advanced reading age. She loved the book and harragued her father for the next book in the series. Due to Lucy’s dogged persistence, her father Iain pressed me to keep writing and the first person to see each new manuscript was Lucy. She is now twenty and studying English, History, Latin and Greek ay University but is still nagging her dad for the next book. You can imagine my surprise when last summer her father Iain Burns invited me to lunch and presented me with the uncorrected version of my first book with ISBN number to boot. I am not often lost for words but on this occasion I was speechless as the tears rolled dowm my face. He eventually found me a sympathetic editor and together a book was born.

Mark Bracey who had been an illustrator at Dorling Kindersly designed fabulous covers and book marks which the children (9-13) really like. Jamie Buxton has since edited the second book in the series and is working on the third.  I have road tested the book on hoards of children and their parents and have had a wonderful response and some have kindly written reviews on Amazon.co.uk and Blackwell on line.