If ever someone tells me they have a children’s picturebook story they want to write I’ll beam enthusiastically and say ‘How fantastic. What’s your favourite picturebook you’ve recently read?’ Their...

When I create a teenage character for a fictional piece of work, my first priority is to give that young person an engaging, entertaining and fresh voice.  I surround my...

This article was originally titled ‘How to write for children’. But there are millions of ways to do that and millions of children with millions of tastes. Then it became...

If you read a lot of author interviews or FAQs you’re probably sick of seeing this bit of advice: ‘make sure you read lots of [genre/field X!] if you want...

My books have been described as “deceptively simple”, a description that I have never been fully comfortable with. Perhaps this comment is a reference to the spare text or the...

Sometimes, as a writer, introducing yourself is a terrifying thing. You mightn’t know this, but people do presume published authors are psychic, that we can instantly access the answers to...

Harvesting, my debut novel, was a tricky one to place in the world of publishing today. Told from the perspective of two teenage girls who get caught up in the...

I was facilitating a workshop some weeks ago with fourth class and one of the young girls asked me why I had switched from writing for adults to that of...

Two different writers, two different age groups, and two different publishers – but Ruth Frances Long and E.R. Murray are both writing urban fantasy books set in Dublin. A Hollow...

Every few years, someone announces that “fairy tale retellings are back!” In truth, however, retellings are just about the oldest kind of story there is. Sure, technically the first story...