Dust and Rain: Chipo and Chibwe save the Green Valley Two children make a perilous journey through the heart of modern and magical Africa to save their parents’ farm in the Green Valley from drought and climate change. Kambili brings the drought in a whirlwind of dust into the lives of CHIPO, an eleven-year-old girl with a special gift, and […]
Spinning stories out of the stuff of life
When you see this post I will have just arrived in Zambia and my children’s book Dust and Rain: Chipo and Chibwe save the Green Valley will have been published by Gadsden Publishers. How a story grows and changes as the world spins It was a shock when I first realised that my story, Dust and Rain, so relevant 20 […]
The fateful story of becoming the author of books
No simple way to become a writer It’s never simply a question of sitting down to write a story. First, you need money, food, a room of your own and time alone. If any writers have all those things without also having paid employment, I haven’t met them yet. You also need to learn your craft, to practise it and […]
Dust and Rain: Chipo and Chibwe save the Green Valley
What happened next in the making of this story There is the ‘day job’ and there is the troubling and tragic war in Ukraine. It’s necessary to have something ordinary to occupy your mind. I must carry on with my stories and writing and I believe my little children’s book does matter, even in a small way. It certainly did […]
The story of two children who try to stop the drought destroying their farm
The long and surprising journey made by the story of the Chipo and Chibwe and the drought Readers and friends, I have wonderful and exciting news to share with all of you. For the first time in my long writing career, one of my books is being commercially published, not self-published. The Drought, my middle-grade children’s story, will be published […]