Meridian Television orchastrated the awards ceremony for the superb acheivements of the students at Christchurch School, Ashford. Amazingly, I was honoured to share the podium with Jamie Staff. I was given the joy of awarding the prize for creative writing to Estelle Sanders. Photographers were there flashing away, I suspect that this was because of the presence of our great inspirational Olympian, but it felt great for all of us but especially for the prize winners. If you wanted to get a feel of how important this was, you should have seen the look on the faces of the students parents. It was wonderful!

I have had a great letter from Catherine Barber, the Head at Christ Church and they have invited me back to award the prize to one of their students who has excelled in Creative writing! What an honour! I can't wait.

This was my first workshop with Year 7's and it proved to be a very different experience. They were attentive and well behaved but more importantly the ideas in the 'what happens next?' were very different. Not a single pupil suggested a dragon. They didn't manipulate what was already said but attacked the challenge from an individual perpective. It is interesting that as children get older they are able to develope deeper more complex ideas. Some of the ideas were totally unconnected but I think I know why this was. In their minds the ideas were much bigger but time didn't allow them to develop these ideas sufficiently.

The great thing about the way children think is that they are not log-jammed with the usual barriers that adults struggle with. They are open minded and anything is feasible in a strange sort of way. My aim is to help children realise that writing can be fun. I try to help them to free their imaginations and not to get too bogged down with grammer and spelling, these things can be fixed later. They seem to love the 'what happens next bit' where I read them Billy's approach to the first cave and they then carry on the story. You would not believe some of the amazing ideas that they come out with. For light relief I take them to where Billy learns to juggle and show them how it is done. Finally, I open the Blue Box, inside of which are exciting things that Billy collected on his journey. They can tough the Rorb, feel the golden arrows, have a look at his grandfathers Swiss Army Knife and turn the amazing weird looking hourglass. All in all it is very satifying for me and hopefully also for them.

Well at least some of it. 22 youngsters between 9 and 11 were on a tour of the UK. One evening 3 of the boys Sahkili, Tseppo and Selby asked for a story and so were entertained by the first chapter. These children are a few of Africa's 15 million orphans who have lost one or both of their parents as a result of HIV. In Africa, they live in centres where, thanks to foreign aid are fed, clothed and educated. Life is at it's simplest level and these children, like all children over the world enjoy a bedtime story. In Swaziland, they have a good command of English. Their teacher Auntie Lucy now has a copy of the first two books and reads to them each evening before bed.

Yesterday I visited Dulwich Prep and did a Creative Writing workshop with 110 children in 2 sessions. As part of the workshop, their teacher read out an extract from my first book and then they were invited to write what they thought might happen next. There were prizes for the most exciting adventures.

The stories were brilliant. They came up with amazing characters like: Snozzwaners, Bloodbottlers and even a Bingepi. There were golden waterfalls, dragons and goblins. One of the children wrote about Billy being chased by a mechanical dog that jumped into the water after him and exploded with a KaBoom! Another idea, which I wish I'd thought of, was the cave of a million life-times. And what about the alien with no nose but eyes as big as tennis balls?

We must get our children reading and writing more!

Watch this space, once I have read some of their work I'll publish bits from some of the best stories. Come back soon.

It is a mechanical spider that wants to eat the Zarians. It makes a really scary screeching noise. But it is really sneaky and can wait motionless for hours if not days, in order to trap its quarry.

When people ask me where I get my ideas from, at first I find it difficult to say. When I was young my mum told us all sorts of make believe stories. As a child I read Tolkein and C S Lewis. I then got on to Buchan and Greene. Then there was no stopping me and I got into Azimov. We all move on as I did, and I read all sorts or amazing stories like The Grapes of Wrath, Roots, Trinity, Shogun and any other interesting looking fat book that I could find.

More recently I've been enjoying Pulman, Tracy Chevalier and Joanna Harris.Naturally the Potter series added to my reading pleasure and nobody should let Discworld pass un-noticed.

Eleanor asked what children's books she might stock so here are just a few:

Rosies Babies-Martin Waddell, The Jolly Postman-Allan Alhberg, The Very Hungry Caterpillar-Eric Carle, Dr Seuss collection, The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark-Jill Tomlinson, The Tiger who Came to Tea-Judith Kerr, Winnie the Pooh-AA Milne, Charlotte's Web-EB White, Five Minutes Peace-Jill Murphy, Stig of the Dump-Clive King,  All of Roald Dahl, The Borrowers-Mary Norton, Peter Pan- JM Barrie, Tom's Midnight Garden -Phillippa Pearce, The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis, Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ramsome, Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank, The Hobbit etc - JRR Tolkein, All of Harry Potter - JKRowling, Watership Down - Richard Adams, Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain, King Solomon's Mines - Rider Haggard, Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee, Kim  - Rudyard Kipling, The Thief Lord - Cornelia Funke, Holes - Louis Sachal, The Discworld series - Terry Pratchett, His Dark Materials trilogy and other titles by Philip Pullman, The Wind Singer - William Nicholson, Goodnight Mr Tom -  Magorian, The Lion Boy trilogy - Zizou Corder, Kensuke's Kingdom - Michael Morpurgo.

And HEY!!

What about Billy Bonkel? We can't leave him out!

I've just had feedback from the 34 children that I visited in County Cork. They are all trying to learn to juggle after having read about Billy in the Labyrinth! Great, isn't it?

Just about anything can happen in a parallel world. If you have crazy ideas that you would like me to use in one of my books, let me know; you might win a prize and get a mention in my books. Why not log in and become a BB Buddy?