Winner of the Writers' and Artists' 2007 New Novel Competition, the 2012 Local Legend Spiritual Writing Competition, the Georgina Hawtrey-Woore YA Novel Award and the Segora International One-Act Play Prize, 2018, plus seven times winner of the Wilfred Hopkins Best Short Story Challenge. Also a retired hospital doctor and a keen photographer.
Emily, a gifted pianist, is saved by her imaginary brother, Jimmy, from committing suicide, by drowning in a pond, because of bullying instigated by a new girl at her school, Belinda. With the help of her granny’s imaginary friend, Jenny, who shows Jimmy how to enter the brains of the bullies who were once Emily’s friends, things are turned around.
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Helvetica Light is an easy-to-read font, with tall and narrow letters, that works well on almost every site.
Mandy rescues a young hedgehog whose nose is suck in a roadside drain grille. Problem is, the animal is hurt and as it's a Saturday she'll have to take 'Spikey' home but her dad hates hedghogs! How will Mandy and her two schoolfriends, Amy and Thomas, help Spikey?
Grump-Grump the Tummabump
For younger children
What must the grumpy little Tummabump, nick-named 'Grump-Grump, do to get asked to Mary-Lou's party?
Recent publications...
The story of medicine over the past seven thousand years, a mix of fiction and fact together with accounts of the writer's experiences as a hospital doctor.
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Also...
A young readers' novel about saving endangered animals and dedicated to Sir David Attenborough
Illustrated by the writer's nine-year-old Swiss granddaughter.
The Zookeeper's Daughter
Isabelle Scott, upset she won't be visiting her Swiss 'Mamie' finds herself transported into the lives of endangered animals in a magical book written by Old Jamie who helps run her father's zoo in Scotland, but is sick in hospital. On learning the fates of these animals because of what humans are doing to the planet, she and her best friends, Elodie, in Scotland, and Angélique in Switzerland, become determined to help all endangered species.
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And...
For young adults and adults...
The Fire Hills
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AD 180...The hated Commodus accedes the Imperial throne of Rome after the death of his beloved philosopher father, Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The son's evil influence
extends to the far reaches of the Roman Empire, threatening peaceful co-existence with
the Celtic settlements around the Fort of Trimontium...
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But for the Celtic Deer Goddess of the West, Flidais, and a brother and sister from twenty-first century Melrose in the Scottish Borders, the history of Europe might have been so very different.
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Revised editions of two novels for young readers...
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Moon Rabbit
A winner of the Writers' and Artists' 2007 New Novel Competition and longlisted for the 2008 Waterstones
Children's Book prize
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A story of friendship between a Scots boy and a Chinese girl who, after falling in the River Tweed in the Scottish Borders, end up in mythological ancient China where they must undertake a perilous journey in a land of talking animals and mythical beasts to retrieve the Blue Dragon's stolen magical pearl and golden staff before they can find their way back to Scotland.
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And...
The sequel to Moon Rabbit in which the two children's cross-cultural friendship blossoms into young love...
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Monkey King's Revenge
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Children's genre finalist for the 2012 Peoples' Book Prize
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The vengeful Monkey King kidnaps Maisie and takes her back to mythological China where, by using the magic of the jade snake, he plans to turn her into the Monkey Queen.
How can Stevie and his schoolfriends from the Scottish Borders rescue her?
Eyes of Fire
(Published August 2022)
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Texan teen, Adam, falls for his beautiful yet mysterious Mexican classmate, María. Neither knows where the ancient Aztec gold bracelet that she gives him will lead
them, and no one, including María, knows who she
really is. In a terrifying journey across North America, spanning different cultures, past and present, also
involving Adam's remarkable young sister, Chloe, and
her African American love interest, Lee, why the
Mexican girl is so special, and why they must
seek out an ancient Anasazi girl in the Mayan
underworld, Xibalba, defying the Death Lords
and the evil Anasazi warrior, Coyote Spirit, becomes
evident towards the end of this three-part novel
(adapted from an earlier trilogy, From Beast to God)
in which Native American beliefs conflict and merge with those of White Man of European origin.
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Featured on shepherd.com 'best books in the fantasy fiction that make the reader think more deeply about real-life issues'.
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Amazon Author page here
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FOR YOUNG READERS...
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Just published,
For first readers...
No More Bamboo!
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Ping Ping is fed up with eating bamboo and
goes off into the forest alone to find more
interesting food.
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But the forest is a dangerous place and the little panda soon learns that bamboo is not so bad
after all!
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Just published...
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Light & Dark
Short Stories
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Thirty-five short stories, some light and others dark, spanning different genres:
LIGHT… A talking spider, into karma, persuades an arachnophobe to mend his ways; The song of a skylark transforms the life of a grieving widower; A racist white supremacist wakes up as a Black man…
DARK… A woman loses her leg running from Franco’s men to save her son during the Spanish Civil War; A family Christmas get-together goes dangerously wrong because of three Victorian dolls; A lecher gets his comeuppance after the woman he stalks turns to face him and the tables are turned…
And more…
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