I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan – an examination

SPOILERS AHEAD! Lois Duncan was a household name if your house was home to kids with library memberships in the 70s and 80s. Her books for young people were Young Adult before the genre became mainstreamed. Looked down on, these books were known back then as Juvenile Fiction. Not that Lois Duncan ever wrote fiction…

Me & Mr. Cigar by Gibby Haynes

My first published novel was a Young Adult book called Conjuring The Infinite, a sort of greatest hits package of everything that freaked me out as a child. There's a bit of Twin Peaks, a little Stephen King, and a smidgen of Doctor Who. Basically, I wanted to write the weird books that the teen…

Tracking Down Tracks!

Tracks was a British teen fiction imprint from the 80s/90s. An entire generation grew up with these books. So what happened to them?

I Wanted To Write About Robert Cormier

Some writers defy categorisation. They cannot be filed, stamped, or absorbed. Yes, you may find their books in certain areas of the book shop or the library, but essentially these writers remain difficult to anticipate, their work always surprising and interesting. I'd place Francesca Lia Block, Cory Doctorow, Sam Pink, Kathy Acker, Jason Starr, Jeff…

Spite And Malice At High School

I've spent the last few years writing fiction for younger people. I'm quite happy with what I've put out so far, because there's a market for weird books for the weirdo teens. I was one myself, and I always wanted to write books that I would have read at that age. But being an author…

Glowglass is out!

At last. It’s here. My brand new novel Glowglass is finally out and available to buy in all good bookshops/online and can also be ordered or found in yr local library. It’s a dark tale of a girl on a video tape with a story to tell and a secret to hide. She’s soaked in…

UKYACX 2016!

I'll be attending this year's UKYACX which takes place in Newcastle Library on the 17th September. It'll have a lot of special guests and a very large pot for tea, which is basically the reason I'm going down to England. I'm a tea tart. It's the start of many trips down to England, because they…

All About Lois Duncan

Lois Duncan may be dead, but she certainly isn’t gone. Her books, her stories, still exist and we can always bring her back whenever we open the pages of one of her books. I owe a lot to Lois Duncan, because she was one of my original Favourites; the list of authors that made me…