LOCATION hosted by Library Girl and Book Boy

One of my aims for the book was for this setting to be more than an incidental backdrop, but to create an unforgettable real world arena in which the characters live and act.  I wanted to try and capture this wonderful place in a such a way that you could smell that tangy scent of summer bracken that covers the hills from the very pages… read more.

TECHNOLOGY hosted by booksfortopics.com

Some aspects of human ingenuity have taken a very long time to mature. For example, think about the time between the invention of the wheel to the invention of the motor car – a slow burn story of about 5,000 years.

The story of flight is very different. Back in 19th September 1783 a sheep, a duck and a chicken had the experience of their lives… read more.

FLYING hosted by missclevelandsreading.com

Learning to fly with the RAF in the Cambridge University Air Squadron gave me an appreciation of what Jim Rothwell – the main protagonist Tom’s mentor character – calls the ‘extraordinary privilege of flight’.  What he means by that is simply that you can see things, and notice things from the air that you can’t from the ground… read more.

INSPIRATION hosted by thebookactivist.blog

I’m kicking off the autumn term on the blog with the first stop on the blog tour for Spylark by Danny Rurlander. What a great way to bring in the new term!  Spylark is a fantastic middle-grade thriller full of adventure, lots of action and some great characters – not to mention a really cool and clever idea at the heart of the story…read more.

THE BEST TIME TO PLANT A TREE. Writing starter for just imagine.co.uk

My new thriller Spylark opens with 13 year old Tom Hopkins flying his homemade drone over the iconic “Swallows and Amazons” landscape he calls home. He stumbles across a criminal plot which catapults him into the world of global terrorism, and the beautiful Lake District hills and lakes suddenly become a more threatening backdrop for a struggle to… read more.

ESCAPISM AND REALITY. Feature for booktrust.org.uk

Danny Rurlander’s Spylark is all about a character with a mobility impairment who uses a drone to solve a tense mystery in the national park where he lives. The author explains how thinking about this bit of kit unlocked the entire story, and could do the same for you… read more.