We launched the fourth and final book in the First Aid for Fairies series last night.  In a hot and crowded hall just off the Royal Mile (there were groups from at least 6 primary schools there!) we held a launch party for Maze Running.

But what is a book launch FOR? For readers it’s a chance to eat some crisps, and get a signed copy of the book before anyone else. For the publishers it’s a chance to let booksellers and buyers know the book is out there. And for the writer it’s a chance to thank all the people involved in turning a story into a book (and for Maze Running there were lots of thanks, including publishers, agents, early readers, my kids, vets… I hope I didn’t forget anyone last night!)

So a launch is really a hello to a book. A birth day birthday party, perhaps.

But last night was not just a hello. It was a goodbye too. Because Maze Running is the last in the series, I was saying goodbye to the characters and to the series.  Which wasn’t easy.  And quite a lot of readers in the signing queue asked me to write another one PLEASE! But I can’t write another First Aid for Fairies book.  I stood up there and said to everyone: “This is the last time Helen will go on an adventure with the fabled beasts, to heal their injuries, at the solstices and equinoxes.” And while the word “last” in that sentence seems quite definitive, it might be possible to gallop a centaur through the wide gaps in the rest of the sentence…

However, several other readers in the signing queue mentioned that their favourite book of mine was Rocking Horse War, and wondered if I would write a sequel to that, now that I’m done with Helen. So that’s an idea I’m kicking about as well…

But right now, I’m not thinking about what I’m going to write next, I’m concentrating on saying hello to Maze Running, and goodbye to the fabled beasts.

So here are a few (slightly blurry) photos of the launch. Me reading to a small group of fabled beast fans, and a few favourite character pictures from Lorne Primary in Leith and Calderwood Lodge in East Renfrewshire.

Thanks to everyone who helped to launch Maze Running!

chatting to a handful of fabled beast fans

some of Lorne Primary's favourite characters

some of Calderwood Lodge Primary's favourite characters

I just looked at the very first folder for Maze Running, created when it was still called First Aid Four, and when I was working on each chapter individually, rather than in one big manuscript.

Looking at the names of the chapter files, you would think that I never sat at my own desk:

• One chapter was started in a primary school staffroom (Chap 6, Priorsford)
• Another was started in a primary school general purpose room between author events (Chap 17, Troon)
• At least three were written on long train journeys
• One was started in a train station in Lanarkshire when I on got the wrong train and was stuck in a waiting room for a couple of hours
• One quest was completed on the platform at Dundee train station
• One chapter was written in a hotel when I was doing a book festival in the North of England (Chapter 20, Durham)
• One was written in a B&B in Gairloch, in the far north west
• Another was finished in a guest house in Wigtown, in the far south west
• One was started at Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh
• “Chapter 11, Mitchell” suggests that I injured a dragon in the Mitchell library (quietly!)
• Three different chapters are titled “ballet” because I started them sitting on cold steps outside my daughter’s ballet class.
• And another is called “Argyll quest at ballet exam” because I wrote part of the fourth quest while my daughter was sitting a ballet exam.  (She passed.  Helen and the fabled beasts didn’t do quite as well!)

In Maze Running, I send Helen and the fabled beasts on seven different quests, missions and rescues, to the south, north and west of Scotland.  But I’ve realised that the book was written in even more places than that!

So, does this mean I spend too much time away from my desk? Am I not taking my writing seriously enough? I don’t think so, because I don’t need a desk to write – I just need my netbook, or a pen and a bit of paper.  Or I can even just scribble on my other hand, or a napkin…

Does it mean I’m only inspired to write when I’m out and about, rather than at my desk, and should get out more often? I don’t think that either! I write a lot at home too, but because I’m not transferring those files from one computer to the other, I don’t give them such detailed names.

It really just means that my three jobs – being a writer writing, being a writer talking about writing and being a mum – are all part of the same life, rather than neatly separated.  So I take whatever book I’m writing with me everywhere I go, and write it wherever I can.

It also shows that I can have really good ideas when I’m sitting outside a ballet class, or in a cold train station.  Even if I am typing with gloves on.

I write fast-moving action and set my books all over Scotland, so writing on the run and in lots of different places is probably very good for my stories. And I write for 8–12 year olds, so working out how I’m going to start the next chapter just after speaking to P5 about cliff hangers and just before speaking to P6 about chase scenes, is probably the best way to write!

I wonder where I’ll write the next book?

tools for writing on the run: netbook, notebook, napkin

I’m quite excited! My tenth book (ten books, in four years!) will be published this week. Orange Juice Peas is about a little girl called Jessie, her big brother Ben and a very messy teatime. And it has wonderful bright cheery pictures by Lizzie Wells.

Even though Orange Juice Peas isn’t in the shops yet (it should be available at the weekend) I already have a copy which I’ve sneakily read to a few groups of children.

Reading a new picture book out loud to children for the first time is a strange experience.  It’s not the same as reading a carefully selected cliffhanger extract from a novel to 9 year olds.  Reading a whole picture book to group of 5 year olds, especially for the first time, feels quite risky.  What if they won’t sit quiet and listen?  What if they get bored and wander off, or start picking their noses, or asking to go to the toilet, or poking the child sitting beside them?  What if they don’t like it?  (These are very small children, remember, and if they don’t like something they might not be polite about it!)

So I get quite nervous the first few times I read a picture book to an audience. It’s my first chance to see if the story works.  I do read a book out loud to myself when I’m drafting it, and to my own kids when I think it’s finished. But the book doesn’t feel real until I read it to kids I don’t know, to see what they think, to see how they react, and to find out the most important thing: will they laugh at the right bits?

I’m delighted to say that yes, the couple of times I’ve read Orange Juice Peas to kids – in Selkirk and in Falkirk – they have laughed. At the bits I hoped they’d find funny, and at other bits as well!

Also, some of them went “aww” at the right bit near the end too.  And some of them tried to count the peas on the pages where the editor, designer and I had spent hours checking the numbers of peas (so Sally and Helena, that was totally worthwhile!)

Now I am ready to take this book out into the world, because it seems to work. (Phew.) And that’s something you can never be sure of, whether it’s your first book, your third book, your tenth or your hundredth, until you actually know what the readers think of it!

Orange Juice Peas

I’m in the middle of lots of school visits around World Book Day, which you’d think would only last a ‘Day’ but seems to last at least a fortnight!

One of the best things about lots of school visits is lots of great questions from pupils.  I answer questions at the end of every session, so I probably answer dozens of questions a week, possibly even hundreds a week at this time of year.

What amazes me is I’m still being asked new, original and surprising questions.  There are questions which come up pretty much every time (when did you become a writer, how many books have you written, what’s your favourite book?) but I’m impressed that kids are still asking questions which I’ve not heard before, questions which make me think hard about my writing process.

The best question I got on World Book Day was from a pupil at Stockbridge Primary in Edinburgh, who asked: “What’s more important for a writer, imagination or knowledge?”  I thought that was fascinating, because creative writing teaching often concentrates entirely on imagination, but a story won’t be convincing if it’s full of errors. On the other hand, if you have lots of facts, but no flash of inspiration bouncing off the facts, then you haven’t got a story.  I came to the conclusion that both imagination and knowledge are vital, but that I start with imagination then fill the gaps with research.  New writers are often told to “write what you know” but if I only wrote what I know, then I’d write boring books about making packed lunches. Instead I allow myself to imagine stories about injured centaurs or living rocking horses, then I research the time or place or biology and write about the NEW stuff I know.

Another question I was asked recently at Westercommon Primary in Glasgow was: “How do you know when a story is finished?”  That’s a brilliant question, because we spend a lot of time thinking about good ways to start stories, and we may not think hard enough about how to finish them. I explained that my stories are finished when my characters have solved the main problem.  Because it isn’t a story without a problem: a mystery, a quest, a baddie to be defeated.  You spend the story trying to solve the problem, and once it’s solved, the story is over.  Boom.  The End.

A pupil at St Mary’s in Glasgow asked: “When you reach a certain age, will you want someone else to continue your work?”  That made me laugh, because I never want to reach a certain age… But the serious point we discussed was whether someone else could carry on my work, indeed any writers’ work, or whether it’s individual to us.  If a person’s life work is campaigning for animal rights, or planting a forest, or running a jam factory, someone else probably could continue it, but no-one else could write my stories.  Not exactly the way I write them.  Because my stories come out of my thought processes, my experiences, my way of research, and my own individual (hard to explain and impossible to replicate) flashes of imagination.  That’s the magical thing about writing: we all write differently.  So no, if I ever reach a certain age and stop writing, that will be it.  No more Lari Don books.  I’d better get a move on and write another one while I still can!

I’ve been asked other fascinating questions in the last few weeks, but my author events are noisy and fast moving, so I don’t often remember the exact questions afterwards.  If you asked an original question which I’ve not mentioned – sorry!

And if you can come up with a question which you think no-one has ever asked me before, please do ask it!  You don’t have to wait until next World Book Day or until I visit your school, just post a comment here or email me on: info@laridon.co.uk

And if any other writers want to share the best or most original questions they’ve been asked, I’d love to read them!

The start of the Year of the Dragon has made me think about dragons. Though I don’t really need to be encouraged to think about dragons – the book I’m deep in the middle of editing has seven speaking dragon parts, and any number of minor spear-carrying dragons.  But this seems like a good time to celebrate other people’s dragons too!

My favourite dragon books include:

The wonderful heartrending dragon in CS Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is my earliest dragon memory.

The amazing How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell, the funniest, cleverest, most exciting series of dragon books ever.  Though I’m not sure I’d want Toothless under my helmet.

Philip Reeves’ No Such Thing As Dragons, which is dark, spiky, tantalisingly short, and a fabulous novel for slightly older readers.

And the very similarly titled, but for much smaller people: There’s No Such Thing As A Dragon by Jack Kent.

I also love the splendidly distant dragons in Vivien French’s Flight of Dragons.

I have mixed feelings about Eragon and its sequels, partly because they are almost too big to hold, but also because I thought I’d been really original, creating a friendly female dragon, making her blue and calling her Sapphire.  Then shortly after First Aid for Fairies was published, I read Eragon, and met his friendly blue female dragon, called Saphira.  I’m very relieved about that final vowel.

I have a couple of favourite dragon reference books too (I’m not sure if you can call them non-fiction!)

My first dragon collection was A Book of Dragons, edited by Roger Lancelyn Green (though I see it has my wee brother’s name on the first page, in pencil. Perhaps I could rub that out, because he’s not getting it back now!)

And more recently, I’ve loved the wonderful tactile Dragonology books by Dr Ernest Drake (which aren’t mine either – they belong to my kids.)

And finally, my favourite dragon myths.

I’ve enjoyed telling dragon myths for years, partly because they come with inbuilt excitement (a dragon! fire! teeth!), partly because they come from all over the world, and partly because it feels right to share dragon stories when I’m doing author sessions about the novels with Sapphire in them.

My favourite dragon stories to share include:

A seven-headed Chinese dragon

A Greek dragon who kept a shepherd boy company on the hills

A Viking dragon defeated by a sheepskin

A Polish dragon, also defeated by a sheepskin (some dragons are easily fooled)

A Persian dragon who teased a horse

A Georgian dragon who was sung to sleep

And an Irish dragon who lost his tongue

(If you want to find out more about these dragons, you’ll have to ask me to come and tell you the stories!)

Dragons are universal, appearing as the monster of choice in many cultures and countries, so I’m fascinated by theories about where our dragon stories come from.  Do we need monsters for our heroes to prove themselves against? Did our ancestors need explanations for those big fossilised bones and teeth? Or maybe, just maybe, these stories are about real dragons, and they’re still out there, somewhere…

What are your favourite dragon books and stories? Please let me know!

(And here is the dragon who sits beside my computer – hand made for me by a Sapphire fan!)

I was in Castlebrae High School library this afternoon, chatting to S3s for the Craigmillar Book Festival, and I mentioned that I had a new book for teenagers coming out in February. So the lovely librarian, proving that librarians are a whizz at technology, went to her computer, googled it, and said, “Look, here it is.” She’d found the cover image, on Amazon. A cover that I had not seen, at all. I didn’t even know the publisher had designed it yet.

So in full view of a room full of teenagers, I walked over to have a look. Risky thing to do. Some of my book covers have made me cry, or at least use a few rude words.

But I quite like this one. She doesn’t look like the heroine did in my head, but neither does she look so unlike her that I don’t recognise her.

So I was able to keep chatting to the pupils, while keeping glancing over at the cover, and smiling a little. It was a weird way to meet a new book, but I’m happy.

So – cover of next book. What do you think?

(I’m not as much of an IT whizz as the librarian, so if I haven’t managed to put the picture up, here’s a link to the page!)

Postscript (2 weeks later) It turns out the cover above is NOT the real cover.  I think it was created for a catalogue, and it shouldn’t really be up on Amazon.  So I wonder how it will change for publication…

Fife has grown on me. For years, Fife has been where trains from Inverness go really slowly and stop in lots of places when I just want to get home to Edinburgh. But today I got off at a station in Fife and visited a local school (they invited me, I didn’t just turn up!) and I had a wonderful time!
I met 50 pupils at Parkhill Primary, in Leven, who had all read First Aid for Fairies. They had put dragon masks up on the wall, and written news stories about fabled beasts (the centaur giving a builder a fright in a distillery caught my eye) and they had lots and lots of fabulous questions about the book.
I do enjoy answering the “what’s your favourite book?” and “why did you become an author?” questions that I get from kids who are getting a chance to meet an author, any author, but I really love the specific questions I get from kids who know my books well.
Today, we discussed whether Yann was right to use dark magic on a weasel (I thought he was right, 50 P4/5/6s disagreed with me. Fair enough) and who were our favourite characters in First Aid. Yann and Catesby came out top, with Rona and Sapphire close behind. Sadly NO-ONE voted for Helen. It’s just not cool being human…
The best fun we had was making up a story, all of us at the same time, just chucking ideas in the air. We ended up with a brilliant story about a robber trying to steal the manuscript of the fourth First Aid (which I’d taken to show them) and all the kind people of Fife helping to rescue it.
The biggest surprise of the day was finding out the Gaelic for peat-cutting tool from their teacher. (It’s tairsgeir, which happens to be essential for something else I’m writing…) So thanks Mr Morrison. Teachers do know everything.
And I ate a macaroni pie on the way home.
So, lots of reasons to love Fife.

I’ve just done two of the weirdest author events ever. The libraries’ summer reading challenge this year has a circus theme, and so I was asked to talk about writing and words and general fun with books at a couple of libraries this week. That’s the sort of thing I do all the time. But this time, because it was a circus theme, I was doing the event with CLOWNS. I’ve only ever had one experience with a clown, when he decided it would be very amusing to interrupt me while I was telling a rather serious Greek myth to some P7s. Which wasn’t helpful. So I was a bit nervous about working with Oli and Gus in Hawick yesterday and Edinburgh today. But they were lovely. Really funny, very good at juggling with penguins, umbrellas, trumpets, hats, silver cups, and all sort of other oddly shaped things. They were really easy to work with too – we even discussed when it was ok to heckle. And I think I may have heckled them more than they heckled me.

We made up stories together – them juggling objects, and me making stories up about what they were juggling. And the harder, pokier, and more dangerous the objects the better!

So, that was fun. And slightly silly. But the silliest thing I did today wasn’t inventing, on the spot, a story about a cockerel whose alarm clock didn’t work, it was shouting ‘bottom’ in front of several politicians.

The event today was in a the gorgeous reference library in Edinburgh Central Library. It’s a huge room, with a massive high painted dome. I go there to research books (I did a lot of research for Rocking Horse War there, right under the dome) and it’s normally a very serious, quiet room full of students and researchers and if you drop a pencil or open a book loudly you worry that you’ve disturbed someone’s very important thought. So normally I’m very quiet there. But today, there were only me and the kids and lots of important politicians who’d come to see how the reading challenge worked. No desks, no researchers. So I stood under the dome, and I shouted ‘BOTTOM!!’

Now, I didn’t just do that for fun. Though it was fun. I did it because we were talking about our favourite words, and how to make stories and books out of them. And I’ve written a book about bottoms, and bottom is a pretty good word, so it made complete sense to shout ‘Bottom!’ in this very beautiful serious room.

And I got away with it! But I don’t know if they’ll ever let me back…

So, here are some pictures of me with the lovely, wonderful, talented, funny and utterly non-terrifying Oli and Gus.
Here also is a bit of footage from the Scottish Government website – the first time ever, I’m assured, that someone has said BOTTOM on the website about running the country. . .

(And please do go into your local library and see what fun things they’re doing for the Circus Stars Reading Challenge!)