It’s been almost a year since I posted anything on my blog. And here’s why:

I have long covid, which means that I caught the virus (last March, just before the first lockdown) and that I haven’t got better yet. I’ve spent the last 10 months struggling with exhaustion, brain fog and various chest problems. Because this is such a new thing, no one can tell me how to treat it or when it will go away.

But this post isn’t meant to be a medical moan. I just wanted to update you about what I’m doing as a writer, because lovely people have been asking concerned questions, and because I’m not answering tweets or emails very fast at the moment.

When I was knocked flat by covid, I was in the middle of writing the first novel of a new trilogy, but I had to put that manuscript back on the shelf in March and haven’t done anything particularly useful to it since. I have very little energy and very little focus, and the brain fog means that I sometimes forget things (like characters’ names, or why they went into an underground chamber, or what the word for that long sharp pointy thing is…) which makes writing an adventure story impossible.

However, there is good news. I’m not actually getting any better (still exhausted, still sore, all that boring stuff) but I am getting better at working round the symptoms. So I can now find a sliver of time most days when I have a wee bit of energy and a wee bit of focus, and I’m using that time to write again! (This blog is proof that I am managing sentences again.)

But I don’t just want to write blog posts. I want to write STORIES and NOVELS!

I’m nowhere near trilogy-writing capacity yet – my head still can’t hold a story which stretches across three books – so I’m being sensible and starting small.

I’m working on short fiction. I’m playing with picture books and retellings.

I’m not doing much on any particular day, and I’m doing it slowly and cautiously, but I hope that working steadily on short fiction will help me build up my writing muscles again, so that eventually I’ll be able to get back to novels and trilogies and great big magical adventures!

So, hang in there, be patient, and there will be book news on my website again eventually!  (I’m saying that to myself, as much as to anyone else…)

I should admit that this isn’t my first attempt to write short fiction while struggling with covid symptoms. Last spring, when I was confident I would bounce back from the virus in weeks rather than months (or years), I agreed to write a story for Cranachan’s Stay At Home collection of stories for lockdown. But to be honest, I adapted a story I’d already written, and now, several months later, I have virtually no memory of adapting it or submitting it. I’m almost scared to reread it, in case it’s complete rubbish! The rest of the book is lovely though…

It’s been a tough year for us all, and I’m sending my best wishes to everyone, because we’ve all faced our own individual difficulties during the pandemic. I hope you all stay well and safe, and I hope we can share stories again together soon.

(I’ve tried to be upbeat and optimistic in this post, because I am cautiously confident that I will write books again soon. But as well as an assertion of hope, you can also read this post as a warning about just how serious this virus is, and just how much damage it can do to creativity and career as well as to health. So, please wear your facemasks and follow the restrictions!)

I have 2 books being published in the space of a couple of weeks this spring.

The Legend of the First Unicorn – a picture book about the origins of Scotland’s national animal, written by me and illustrated by Nataša Ilinčić – comes out on 20 Feb (though most of the launch excitement will be around National Unicorn Day on 9 April.)

Fierce Fearless & Free – a collection of traditional tales about strong girls defeating their own monsters and solving their own problems, retold by me and illustrated by Eilidh Muldoon – comes out on 5 March, just before International Women’s Day on 8 March .

So why does that add up to a busy spring? I’ve already imagined, pitched, researched, drafted, written, edited and proofread the books. Surely I can just move onto the next book now?

Well, not really. It would be a bit daft to put all that work (at least a couple of years’ work, for each of them, in amongst writing novels…)  into any book, and then not bother to tell people about it!

So, over the next few weeks and months I will be:

appearing at various festivals

doing author events and signings in bookshops

visiting schools

writing blog posts

writing articles

doing radio interviews

and spending slightly too much time on Twitter …

All to share my excitement about the books, tell people about the books and perhaps encourage people to buy the books (though remember you can borrow my books from libraries for FREE…)

And it’s all very time-consuming, especially when I have a deadline for the next novel (shh, I’m not allowed to tell people out it yet!) later this spring. But it’s also great fun. I love sharing stories, and seeing readers’ reactions to new books.

I hope to meet some of you at events (check out my diary…) or hear feedback about what you think of the two new books!

One of the greatest pleasures of writing adventure books set in the Scottish countryside is researching locations: up hills, on beaches, and in lots of beautiful bits of Scotland.

But I don’t just go for a wander somewhere pretty! I visit potential locations to find out what’s there, but also to imagine what isn’t…

For the Fabled Beast series, I mostly researched locations I already knew from family holidays, like the Ring of Brodgar and Dunvegan Castle, or well-known tourist locations that were easy to find on the map, like Smoo Cave and Dunadd fort.

For the Spellchasers trilogy, I revisited woods and rivers and hills and moors that I knew from my Speyside childhood, and looked at them with a writer’s eyes, which was a slightly odd experience.

However, for my new series (which doesn’t have a name yet, and I can’t give away any spoilers – mostly because I’m not sure what happens in the end myself…) I’m mostly setting the action in places I’ve never been before, and often choosing to visit places that aren’t well-known, and aren’t always marked on a map…

So I might think: I want to defeat this monster, where could we do that? And after a bit of research I find an ancient poem hinting at a mysterious weapon used at a real historical battle, and decide to visit the site of the battle…

Or I might think: I want to write about that magical creature, where might she live? I know, perhaps she lives near the childhood home of my favourite folklorist…

Or I might say: I love that really obscure fairy tale, I wonder if I can find the (non-existent, magical) hill that fits the story?

So it’s like magical geographical detective work, with a fair bit of research and map-reading before I go. And when I get there, even if I can find the right location, it’s never exactly how I’d imagined it…

I’m discovering lots of bits of Scotland I didn’t know very well before, and lots of potential locations with historical or folklore connections which I think will be really exciting to write about.

Because that’s the point – I do all this research in order to write the best story I can. I visit all these places hoping to imagine new ways to use magic and ambushes and battles and surprises. I sit on rocks or walls or tree stumps, letting the landscape suggest new and exciting ‘what happens nexts’ for me to write, and new and challenging questions for me and my characters to answer.

I don’t tend to take photos of locations, because I reckon that if I can’t find the words to describe them when I’m actually standing there, I’m not going to be able to do it when I’m sitting at my desk looking at a photo.

But my very helpful location research quest team member and driver sometimes takes pictures of me while I’m scribbling:

Me on a very wet beach in Skye. I bought a waterproof notebook after this research trip.

Me on a windy rainy hilltop in Annandale. (Having foolishly left the new waterproof notebook in the car, at the bottom of the hill.)

My temporary desk on a sunny day in Angus. I remembered the waterproof notebook (that’s it on top of the OS map) but didn’t need it…

But it’s not just about the where, it’s also about the when.

It’s all about the right time of year. I often visit a location at completely the wrong time of year, because I’m writing it at the wrong time of year… The book I’m writing right now is set in early July, ie right NOW, but I’ve been writing it since the start of the year and will be writing it until the end of year. However, I’m trying to do as much of the location research as possible at exactly the right time.

And just as well. I first visited the place my baddie lives before Easter, and noticed that all the stone walls my main character would have to climb over in order to sneak up on the baddie’s lair were overgrown with brambles, so I wrote a very thorn-based scene. I went back last week, to check a few other things, and the three months of sun and rain and growth meant that while there were still brambles, they were barely visible past nettles, sticky willies, rosebay willowherb, and these lovely wild roses. So if I had written what I’d seen in March, as if that’s what my character experienced in July, I would have been horribly wrong… The landscape itself may not change from month to month but the vegetation does, and if you are on foot tracking a monster, that’s quite important!

But fitting all this research into the few days when the story happens, means that I have to research the scenes in the wrong order. One day this week, I spent the morning researching the location for the battle at the end of the book, then in the afternoon, I visited the village where the main character first meets the baddie, a scene which happens several days and many chapters before that battle. It’s a bit like time travel…

But it’s great fun, and I hope it means that my stories feel real and convincing to anyone who is familiar with the locations of my battles and quests. Also I’m sure that I come up with original and spontaneous ideas when I’m standing on rainy beaches and windy hilltops that I would never imagine sitting at my calm dry desk…

So, now I have lots of inspiration. All I have to do is write down all the ideas. In roughly the right order…

I hope you have a great summer, finding locations for your own adventures!

And here is a bonus baby roe deer that I met while researching last week. (At least, I think it’s a roe deer – happy to be corrected!)

I’m re-reading the early chapters of the novel I’m currently drafting, and I found these notes at the top of one of the chapters:

“My team are at the shore, and fend off one attack (probably not by the big bad, not yet). So, an initial attack. By what, I’ve no idea; fended off how, also no idea.”

And that is how I write my novels. (Honestly, it’s a miracle I ever get anything published.)

This is what those notes tell me:

I knew there was going to be a fight. I knew the attack wasn’t by the major villain, because I didn’t want to give away their identity this early in the story. I also knew I needed my main characters to win the fight. But I had no idea who attacks them, and no idea how they win.

And the really interesting thing is, I leapt into writing that chapter with no fear or trepidation at all. (And I’ve just been reading over what I wrote, and I’m really happy with it.)

I should clarify, these were not notes I made months. weeks or even days before I wrote this particular chapter. These are the notes I made on the morning I sat down to write it.

I had no idea what I was doing in this scene. But I wrote it anyway.

So how did I go from “ I have no idea, x 2 “, to a couple of thousand words of fight scene?

I did it by the power of questions!

a few of the notebooks I’ve been scribbling in recently

Because this is what I wrote next:

Q – Ok, if it’s not the big bad, who is it?

Q – Is it someone he sent?

Q – Is it someone he has paid or persuaded or compelled? How will that affect how they fight?

Q – Is it one monster, or a gang?

Q – If it is a gang, what could that gang be composed of?

A – Probably needs to be at least one opponent for each of my team. And the opponents need to be powerful enough that we are worried our team might lose, but not so powerful that they DO lose, or indeed that they get so badly injured we can’t move to the next scene So, we could go for….

And that’s when I started listing various magical creatures and their relative strengths, and working out how many baddies was enough to possibly defeat my team, but not quite enough to definitely defeat them.

And that’s where it all becomes secret and confidential and I can’t tell you any more!

But that’s a very brief explanation of how I go from ‘I have no idea’ to a story. I ask questions. And I write the answers (often in the form of lists or indeed other supplementary questions.)

There are probably faster, simpler, less convoluted ways of writing a novel. But this is the way that works for me! It’s also the way I enjoy writing…

Stories are all about what happens next, so finding out what happens next by sitting down and writing it, discovering the story as I type, feels perfectly sensible to me!

If you want to know what novel I’m writing – I can’t say yet. Though as you can tell, it does have monsters and magic and fights. And all going well, it might be out in a couple of years’ time.

So, if you’re ever stuck in a story, and don’t know what happens next, don’t worry! Just ask the story a few questions!

Do you have a local monster? I was lucky (I think!) because I grew up near quite a few monsters.

Nearest to me was the Green Lady, a ghost who wandered sadly round Balvenie Castle, leaving green slime on the walls as she trailed her fingers along the cold stone. My friends and I never saw the Green Lady herself, but we all saw the green evidence that she was there…

There was a local giant too, or I assume there was, because on the other side of the town from my house was a little cave called the Giant’s Cradle.

There was a kelpie, a legendary shapeshifting child-eating water monster, living in the river near my secondary school.

South of my house, in the Cairngorms, people occasionally felt the presence of, and sometimes even saw, the Grey Man of Ben Macdui…

And there was one more local monster. Not really local to ME – more than an hour away by car – but local to my grandparents in Inverness. The biggest monster, the best-known monster, the hardest-to-spot monster… NESSIE!

I never saw her. I never saw any of my local monsters!

I’ve written about most of them or their relatives though: Innes the mostly-goodie kelpie in Spellchasers and the definitely-baddie kelpie in The Secret of the Kelpie, a whole pack of Grey Men in The Shapeshifter’s Guide to Running Away, various giants in Breaking the Spell and Girls Goddesses & Giants, and of course, The Loch Ness Monster herself in The Treasure Of The Loch Ness Monster.

I haven’t written about the Green Lady yet, because I’m not a huge fan of ghost stories, but I can’t be sure what will inspire me in the future.

And I was really impressed that the last time I visited my old primary school and old secondary school, the pupils still knew about our local monsters and magical creatures, and told me stories about them.

Do you know your local monsters?

If you have a local monster – friendly or fierce – my publishers Floris Books would like you to draw your monster, so they can make a map of Scotland’s monsters to celebrate the publication of The Treasure of the Loch Ness Monster. If you can’t find any local monsters, don’t worry, you can make a monster up! (Which is often more fun anyway…)

So, if you want to enter the #MapMyMonster competition click here for details!

UPDATE! The MapMyMonster competition is now over, but you can see the winners here. And I’ll always be happy to meet your monsters, if you want to email me a picture or a story!

PS – Can anyone work out EXACTLY where I’m from, from all the clues up above?

When I chat to readers about the books I write, I often mention the joy of working with wonderful artists like Cate James and Philip Longson, and the privilege of seeing the stories I’ve written come to life in their illustrations.

But then I admit that the pictures I love most are the pictures I never see. The pictures inspired by the novels I write. The pictures that you, the readers, create in your own heads as you read the Spellchasers trilogy or the Fabled Beast Chronicles or Mind Blind or Rocking Horse War…

I can’t draw. Not at all. If I draw a cat, I draw it from the back, so I don’t have to attempt the face or the paws. (I can just about do ears…) So when I write a novel, I draw with words. I hope to draw pictures in your heads: a collaboration between my words, and your imaginations.

I’d love to see those pictures on paper, I’d love to discover what you see when you read about Molly shapeshifting or Innes galloping or Beth with her trees or Atacama by his pyramid.

And now I’ll get the chance to see those pictures! Because my publishers Floris are running a Spellchasers competition, with a prize of the full Spellchasers trilogy (including a very early copy of the final book, The Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat) for the best picture of a character or a scene from the two Spellchasers novels so far. The winner will also get a print of their artwork (which is a splendid prize!) and all the shortlisted artists will get one of those early copies of The Witch’s Guide.

Jordi Solano has created wonderful covers for the Spellchasers trilogy, but you might imagine the characters differently, and you will have your own images of the monsters and magic and action that aren’t on the covers.

So, what will you draw?

Will you draw the dryad, the kelpie, the sphinx, the toad? Or Molly herself? (As a girl? Or a hare? Or shapeshifting between the two?)

Will you draw a baddie? A flock of mobbing crows, a hunting pack of nuckelavee, a circle of grey men, a line of mosaic warriors, or a warrior queen by a roaring fire?

Will you draw one of the magical locations? The Promise Keeper’s Hall, the witch’s farm, a Speyside pyramid, a cave, or Beth’s wood?

Whatever you draw, I’ll be fascinated to see what adventures the Spellchasers characters have in your heads and in your pictures, once they’ve left my keyboard! I’m really keen to find out what you see when you read!

All the details of the competition are here: http://discoverkelpies.co.uk/2017/05/spellchasers-fan-art-competition/
And the closing date is the 23rd of June.
Best of luck!

I love riddles! And I don’t try to hide my love of riddles: I’ve put riddles in every single one of my novels so far…

I shamelessly used the Halloween guising scene in Mind Blind to slip in one of my favourite short riddles.

You to look at bit sideyways to find the riddle in Rocking Horse War.

But riddles are an essential part of the plot of the Fabled Beast Chronicles, with the task of solving or matching riddles of some kind  in every single one of Helen’s adventures.

And riddles are an even more important part of the Spellchasers trilogy, because they are an essential part of the life, job and self-image of one of the most important Spellchaser’s characters: Atacama the sphinx.

I slip riddle tales into my folklore and legend collections too, like the Russian girl who solves the Tsar’s riddles in Horse of Fire, and Odin putting on a silly hat to solve a king’s riddles in Dragon’s Hoard…

Where do all these riddles come from?  In the folktale and legend retellings, I often use or adapt the original riddles. But for the novels, I always write original riddles. I could probably add riddle-writing to my CV now, I’ve written so many…

But why do I write them? There are so many fantastic riddles out there (I know because kids often bamboozle me with ones I haven’t heard!) so why do I make up new riddles?

Because the riddles need to fit the story. Sometimes the answers are linked to the plot, sometimes the riddles are designed to allow the characters (usually Innes…) to argue about the answers. Also, I want to surprise readers, rather than give them a riddle they might already know.

Also, honestly, I like inventing new riddles. There’s a satisfaction to it, an elegance and a logic that you usually only get with numbers.  I sometimes call it maths with words – two of my favourite things together!  (Yes, I love maths. I did maths at university. I love algebra and circles and straight lines and triangles and problem-solving… ) Also, one of my daughters is a riddle-master, and sometimes we collaborate on the riddles, which is great fun.

But I don’t just write riddles for books. Last autumn I wrote five new riddles for The Beginner’s Guide to Curses launch, and was very impressed at how fast all the young adventure fans answered them.

And now I’ve written three more riddles (with the help of Atacama, of course) for a competition run by my publishers to win a signed copy of the next Spellchasers novel: The Shapeshifters Guide to Running Away.

I wonder if you can answer them? Good luck…

(I might be doing a few riddle-writing workshops once Shapeshifter’s Guide is published, so keep an eye on my diary if you want to learn my riddle-writing secrets!)

2017 is going to be a very Spellchasers year for me.  It’s all going to be about Molly, her curse, her friends and, of course, her enemies.  There will be a fair bit of shapeshifting, and a certain amount of magical combat.

2017 might even be more of a Spellchasers year than 2016, even though last year was the launch of the trilogy.

a sneak peek of the Shapeshifter’s Guide front cover and spine

The second book, The Shapeshifter’s Guide To Running Away, is at the printers RIGHT NOW, and will be published next month, with an official launch the month after. (I’m getting quite excited!)

And I’m currently editing the third book, The Witch’s Guide To Magical Combat, which will head off to the printers just before the summer holidays and be published in early autumn.

So, for me, this will be a very Spellchasers year. And for anyone who wants to read about Molly’s adventures, there will be two new books and the chance to find out how her story ends!

And then…? Well, then the trilogy will be finished.

Readers have months to wait, and lots to read about, before they can find out how Molly’s story ends.  But yesterday, while I was rereading and reconsidering the occasional verb in the final battle of Witch’s Guide, I suddenly realised that I’m nearly at the end of my journey with Molly and Innes and … everyone else (some of the ‘everyone else’s are characters that readers haven’t even met yet!)

I was reading a sentence in which Molly was walking towards danger, quite calmly, and I suddenly realised that I’m going to miss her. That she’s been a splendid heroine to work with, that I’ve had a great time with her, and that I’m going to miss having her in my head.

This sudden burst of emotion happened yesterday, ie in January, a whole 4 months before I proofread the third book for the last time, almost 8 months before it’s in the shops…  But I’ve been writing about Molly and her magical world for more than 3 years now, and those very few months feel like I haven’t got much more imaginative time left with her.  Soon, I’ll have finished creating and polishing her adventures, and she’ll be all yours!

Then I can start to write another adventure!

I’m looking forward to this Spellchasers year.  I’m looking forward to finding out what readers think of Shapeshifter’s Guide to Running Away and of Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat. But I’m also looking forward to whatever I do next…

Floris Books challenged me to write a very short story about what Molly would be doing on Christmas Day, for their blog, and I wrote exactly 70 words which ended on a cliffhanger, but then I wanted to know what happened next. So, here is what happens next!
(I’ve written it quite fast, just as I saw it happen in my head, and I’m currently working very hard on edits of Shapeshifter’s Guide to Running Away, so I haven’t spent much time tidying this little tale. If you notice any silly mistakes, my apologies!)

Pawprints in the Snow

Molly’s paws make tiny dents on the crust of last night’s snow.
She had wished for a white Christmas, hoping to test her hare-speed on a new surface. She hadn’t wished for the beast behind her. The creature she’d found chewing her stocking this morning.
Now Molly hears heavy breathing and heavier feet. It’s catching up.
She feels hot breath on her neck; snow melts to water under her paws…
Molly leaps to the left, and her paws are back on cold crusty snow. She sprints and zig zags across the rugby pitch, trying to escape the heat and the heaviness, the flames and the fangs.
The noise of the feet falters, and stops.
But Molly can’t stop running, because now she can hear flapping above her. Her wide hare vision shows that her pursuer has lumbered into the air and is swooping down towards her.
Speed isn’t enough to beat this beast. Dodging and ducking won’t work either, if it can hover above her.
How can she beat a predator that can run and fly and melt the snow under her?
Molly sprints and leaps and sprints again, hoping to confuse it, hoping to escape its long claws and hot breath.
She was getting used to magic and monsters in the wild lands of the north, but she didn’t expect them to follow her south to the sensible streets of Edinburgh.
She especially didn’t expect to find a monster in her living room, chewing the end of her Christmas stocking.
When she walked into the living room, her first thought had been – don’t you dare eat my chocolate coins! Her second thought had been – I don’t want mum and dad to see this, and I don’t want this to see mum and dad. Her third thought had been – RUN! So she flung open the back door and shifted into a hare in one practised move.
It wasn’t until she was running down the back garden, drawing the beast away from both her chocolate coins and her parents, that she finally thought –
What’s a dragon doing in my living room?
But now, Molly wishes she’d found somewhere small to hide rather than somewhere wide to run. She’s circling and dodging and zigging and zagging across the school’s rugby field, and the dragon is swooping and diving and soaring above her.
But, so far, it’s not roasting her or biting her.
Molly realises it’s not a very big dragon. It seemed huge in the living room, but compared to the wyrm she’d met in Speyside in October, it’s really quite small.
Perhaps she could fight it off.
Not as a hare. Hares can only run and punch. As a girl. Girls can wield weapons.
So she runs for the nearest fence, dives between the black iron railings, and becomes a girl again as she skids along the icy ground.
That’s when she realises she’s still wearing her pyjamas, and rabbit-printed cotton doesn’t give much protection against ice or snow. Or dragons.
She leaps to her feet, grabs a long forked stick from the snowy ground and waves it at the pursuing dragon.
Who is no longer pursuing.
The golden dragon is perched on the tall spiked fence, back feet gripping the rail along the top, front feet tucked up almost like a squirrel’s paws. The metal fence is bending slightly under the dragon’s weight.
Molly shouts “Go away!” and waves her stick.
The dragon is the size of a lion, or a tiger. Much bigger than a dog, slightly smaller than a horse. Definitely smaller than the wyrm Molly chatted to in October. So Molly waves her stick again. “Go away!”
The dragon’s shoulders sag and its long spiky tail droops.
Then the dragon falls clumsily backwards off the fence, lands on the rugby pitch, and blasts a long line of flame from its mouth.
Molly backs off, planning to run the long way home, lock all the doors, and find the fire extinguisher from the kitchen.
But then she sees what the dragon is doing with the flame. The long thin precise flame is melting shapes in the snow that Molly had marked with her zig zag line of paw prints. The dragon is writing words in the snow.
HELP, CURSE-BREAKER, HELP ME
Molly doesn’t run away. She leans over the fence and asks, “You want me to help you?”
The dragon nods, and perks up a bit, its golden tail wagging like a retriever’s. Then it swoops low along the edge of the rugby pitch, melting the snow with a long pen-like line of flame.
HELP ME BREAK MY CURSE. CURSED BY ANGRY WITCH – IF I BURN ANYTHING ELSE THIS YEAR, I WILL BURST INTO FLAMES MYSELF, TURN TO SMOKE & BLOW AWAY IN THE WIND
Molly walks beside the fence, reading the whole long sentence. She frowns. “Burn anything else? What did you burn the first time?”
The dragon droops again. WITCH’S GARDEN SHED. ACCIDENT. HICCUPS
Molly nodded. “So you annoyed a witch, and she cursed you so that if you burn anything else in the next week, you’ll become smoke yourself?”
The dragon nods.
Molly shrugs. “So, just don’t burn anything…”
The dragon sighs, a little cloud of sparks. BUT I HICCUP AND COUGH AND SNEEZE AND SOMETIMES MY AIM ISN’T PREFECT. PERFECT. STILL LEARNING
“Then turn off your flames. Just til the end of the year.”
CAN’T. WHEN I BREATHE, I MAKE FIRE.
Molly remembers the questions she’d been set as homework on the curse-lifting workshop. “Did you say sorry to the witch?”
The dragon nods. SAID I HAD TO LEARN LESSON. AND CACKLED!
The dragon has now written on all the snow near the fence. So Molly climbs the fence, and walks with the golden dragon to a smooth white part of the pitch. Molly’s slippers flap soggily on her feet.
The dragon writes in the clean clear snow. I’M SCARED. MAKE ONE MISTAKE AND I’M SMOKE.
“Do you burn things deliberately?” asks Molly.
The dragon shakes its spiky sparkling head. NOT ANYONE ELSE’S THINGS. JUST MY TOAST AND MARSHMALLOWS. BUT … HICCUPS
“Is there any way to put your flames out and just not make any fire at all until the New Year?”
The dragon opens its mouth. Molly sees a bright orange flame burning at the back of its throat.
The dragon hiccups, a blast of flame jets out of its throat, and Molly drops to the ground, making a messy snow angel as she scrambles away.
The dragon writes OOPS
“Just as well you didn’t burn me, or that would have ruined both our Christmases.” Molly stands up and brushes snow off her damp pyjamas, her fingers tingling in the cold.
She smiles. “I have an idea! Would you let me try to put your fire out?”
The dragon nods.
“Ok, give me five minutes.”
As the dragon dances and skips around her, melting a spiral of clawed footprints into the snow, Molly makes snowballs, her fingers growing numb as she forms the icy shapes. Once she has built a white pyramid of snowballs, she says, “Open your mouth, please.”
The golden dragon opens its jaws wide. Molly stands as close as she can bear to the furnace heat coming out of its mouth. And she starts to throw snowballs in. Like one of those serving machines on a tennis court, she throws them in fast, one after the other, aiming for the back of the dragon’s throat, for the base of the orange flame.
She misses with one or two snowballs, some bouncing on the ground, one getting stuck in the dragon’s left nostril. But most of the snowballs hit the target.
The fire in the dragon’s throat fizzles and sizzles. Molly throws in even more snowballs. The fire gets dimmer and dimmer, then dies.
When Molly has used up all her snowballs, the dragon breathes out. And the air that hits Molly is warm, not flaming hot.
Molly nods. “Now you can’t make fire, so you won’t trigger the witch’s curse. If you feel your throat sparking up again this week, eat more snow. I’ll use you as snowball target practice again, if you want. So you can use the Scottish weather to get round the curse until Hogmanay.”
The dragon uses its claws to scratch in the bare grass of the pitch, where Molly had scooped up snow to make snowballs.
THANK YOU CURSE-BREAKER. THANK YOU!
As the dragon flies away, Molly shouts, “But don’t eat yellow snow. And don’t eat any snowmen either!”
Molly squelches home, in her soggy slippers, to see if there are any chocolate coins left in her stocking…

If you want to read more about Molly, and what she did BEFORE Christmas, have a look at The Beginner’s Guide to Curses!

Why do we love Vikings? Why are Viking–themed festivals, parties and superheroes so successful? Why are we almost as familiar with the Viking gods as we are with the Greek pantheon?

What is it about Vikings?

Is it the swords? The beards? The dragon-prowed longships? The helmets? (No horns please, if you want to be historically accurate.)

Or is it the stories?

I think it’s the stories.

I think Viking myths and legends contain some of the best, most exciting, most vivid, most original plots in the whole world of stories. (For example, Viking gods can die. That’s higher stakes than any Greek myth!)

I love Norse and Viking stories. I tell them as often as I can. Two of my favourite stories to tell to a hall full of 10 year olds are myths about the Viking gods: the story of Fenrir the world-destroying wolf, and the story of the sun god Baldur. I also love telling the stories of when Thor met the Midgard serpent, and when Ragnar Lodbrok met a pet dragon… I love Norse stories!

But I don’t just tell them out loud. I’ve written down some of my favourites in collections of myths and legends: Ragnar and Baldur both appear in Winter’s Tales. The Viking warrior Hervor and her cursed sword appear in Girls Goddesses and Giants. Loki gets into trouble in my shapeshifters collection Serpents & Werewolves.

Viking stories inspire my own fiction too. The entire plot of my final Fabled Beasts adventure, Maze Running, was inspired by one small moment in Baldur’s story.

So, I’ve been playing with, being inspired by, and retelling Viking stories for years.

But I haven’t done a whole book about Vikings before. Until now! Here it is, The Dragon’s Hoard:

Isn’t it lovely?

And here’s how I finally got round to writing a book about Vikings:

I was chatting to Cate James, who illustrated the gorgeous collection of Scottish stories Breaking the Spell, when we were both appearing at the Wigtown Book Festival three years ago. We were keen to work together again, so we started brainstorming ideas. We came up with quite a few fun ideas (I hope they will all happen eventually!) One of our favourites was inspired by the fact that I had written a ‘Vikings invading Scotland’ story for Breaking the Spell, but it hadn’t made it into the final book (partly because it was a bit violent, but mainly because it was historical not magical so didn’t really fit with the other stories.)

I’d found that particular story, about the Earl of Orkney fighting a duel with the chief of Moray, in the Orkneyinga saga. The saga tale has the invading earl as the hero, but because I’m from Moray, I’ve always told it to kids from the other point of view, with the Moray warriors as heroes.

So I mentioned to Cate, over a cup of tea in Wigtown, that I was fairly sure there must be other excellent stories in the sagas, some of which might even be suitable for children. And it turns out that men with swords and scary monsters are two of Cate’s favourite things to draw, so we decided that I would look for a few more interesting saga tales, then we’d pitch the idea to our Breaking The Spell editor.

And I found SO MANY BRILLIANT STORES! Most of which I had never come across, even though I’ve been a fan of Norse and Viking stories for years.

When I put together a list of saga stories about swan warriors, dragons, riddles, saints, explorers, polar bears and zombies, the editor said YES!

So I spent months researching the Viking sagas to find the strongest stories, and Cate did lots of research into clothing, buildings, ships, weapons and helmets. (No horns!)

I found dozens of wonderful stories. Some of which were just too gory, bloody, vicious, nasty and revenge-driven for me to want to tell them to 10 year olds. (Or even my teenage daughters.) But there were still so many fantastic stories that I was really keen to tell.

Then I told them to classes (usually when I was doing author events about other books – I’m a bit sneaky that way) to find out which stories most intrigued and excited them.

Then I wrote the stories, and Cate drew the pictures, and now the book is ready! (That’s a short sentence, covering a lot of hard work…)

So, I’m really happy with our collection of Viking sagas. The book opens with a dragon and finishes with riddles, and there are Vikings on every page in between. What more could you want?

So, I’ve finally done a Viking book. But I don’t think I’ve got Vikings out of my system yet. I’m sure there are lots more Viking stories for me to discover and to share with you.

In the meantime, I’d love to know what you think of The Dragon’s Hoard, and I’m really looking forward to sharing these Viking saga stories with lots of young Viking fans!

PS – I should just say, this way of working – with me and Cate coming up with the idea together, pitching it together and working together – is VERY RARE. Normally I never even meet the artists who illustrate my words. But I like this way of doing it!