I had the oddest feeling as I was writing the Spellchasers trilogy. Whenever I injured my characters, I kept expecting Helen to turn up, and start to do her first aid thing.

I am still quite happy with my decision to end the Fabled Beast Chronicles and to start writing another set of magical adventures. I might (maybe, perhaps) return to Helen, her music and her world in another book, sometime far in the future. But right now I’m delighted to be in Molly’s world, with shapeshifting and races, curses and crows.

Of course there are a few minor similarities in the two worlds I’ve created.

There’s my persistent habit of having a horse-boy as a sidekick. In the Fabled Beasts series, there’s Yann, the centaur, half horse and half boy. And in Spellchasers, there’s Innes, the kelpie shapeshifter, who can be either horse or boy.

Ok, I admit it. I like to write characters who can gallop, kick hard, and who aren’t always friendly and polite. But Innes and Yann are very different people, with very different problems, and very different ways of dealing with those problems. Not the same horse-boy at all.

And there are Scotland’s hills, rivers, trees and weather. But Fabled Beasts was mostly about places I love visiting on holiday: Orkney, Skye, Sutherland etc, whereas Spellchasers is set in Speyside, in the town where I grew up and went to school. So that was VERY different to research and to write.

There are baddies, of course. But because it’s a trilogy, the baddies in Spellchasers all have a connection to each other. So even though I do introduce a new villain in each new book, the old threat from the previous book might still be hanging around. The same dark magic just keeps getting darker and more dangerous…

And of course, there’s a group of friends. But there are no dragons or selkies or phoenixes in Spellchasers. This time there’s that kelpie, a dryad, a sphinx, and a toad. Though I have to admit that flower fairies appear in a cameo role in Spellchasers. But I know Lavender will be horrified by what I do to them.

Also, the Spellchasers team aren’t actually Molly’s friends. They have the same goal, and they work together, but that doesn’t mean they’re friends. So I didn’t trust the Spellchasers team in the way I could always trust Rona and Sapphire and even Yann… Especially Yann.

So, Spellchasers and Fabled Beasts are very different. I wanted to write something different, and I hope I have. I hope I’ve created a new adventure in a new world.

But is it a different world, or is it the same world? I wondered about that, as I was creating Molly’s world. And perhaps it could be the same world. There’s nothing in the magic or the plot of Spellchasers that says it isn’t the same world as Fabled Beasts. Nothing happens in these adventures, that would be impossible in the world that Helen and Yann adventured in. And of course, The Beginner’s Guide to Curses is set in a part of Scotland that Yann and Helen never visited, so it could even be happening at the same time!

But there is one major difference between the world of the Spellchasers and the world of the Fabled Beasts. In Spellchasers, some of the magical beings aren’t too worried about hiding their existence or identity. Innes and Beth go to the local primary school, and some of their classmates (the ones whose families tell the old stories) know they are a kelpie and a dryad, who look after the rivers and the trees. And Molly’s entirely human aunt knows where to find a local witch when Molly needs help with a magical problem.

So, some perceptive human residents of Craigvenie know a bit about the magic around them. And that never happened in the Fabled Beast Chronicles. Yann and the rest went to great efforts to hide their homes and their existence. The Fabled Beasts’ adventures could have been happening right here, right now, in a world where we tell magical stories but don’t believe in magic next door.

So perhaps the world of Spellchasers is the same as the world of Fabled Beasts, perhaps Helen and Molly might meet some day. Or, perhaps Spellchasers is set in a world a little bit more magical than our world, one where your neighbour might be magical and you might KNOW!

But whether it’s the same world or not, it’s certainly a world with danger and fights and injuries. And there were times, when I was writing the first draft and someone got hurt, that I wanted, even expected, Helen to turn up with her first aid kit and take over!

I did miss Helen’s first aid skills, her common sense, and her experience balancing the magical and human world. The first two books in the Spellchasers trilogy take place over just ten days, and the third is set only a few months later. Even by the end of the trilogy, Molly is still trying to work out how this magical world she’s fallen into works. I’m sure she’d have benefited from what Helen learnt in a couple of years of adventuring, and she’d certainly have benefitted from the first aid kit…

But Molly has one advantage that Helen doesn’t. Speed. Molly is really really really fast on her feet. (Or on her paws!) And that was so much fun to write!

So, I can’t wait to find out what you think of Molly’s world, and the magic Molly encounters…

There are so many exciting things about being a writer:

• Having the initial idea
• Writing the first line and the first scene
• Meeting and getting to know your characters
• When your characters come to life and do something unexpected
• Writing shocking / surprising / challenging scenes
• Working out how to get your characters out of a trap
• Working out how to defeat the baddie
• Getting to the end
• Going back and slashing out lots of words to find the story inside the clutter
• Getting first reactions from early readers…

All of those are fab.  And all of them are why I do this job.

But after all the excitement of writing a story, there’s a different sort of excitement. The moment a story becomes a book.

And here it is! Here is The Beginner’s Guide to Curses as an actual book!

I’ve held it. I’ve cuddled it. I’ve flicked through it to double-check a line that I needed to be sure of in order to get a scene right in the next book. I’ve read the first page out loud to kids in a bookshop.

So, it’s definitely a real book.

And I’ll be reading from it, chatting about it and signing it at the Edinburgh Book Festival on the 13^th of August, if you want to come along.

Then after that, wherever you are, you should be able to get hold of a copy of your own!  (Or if you are very keen, you can pre-order it…)

Because of course the entire point of a story becoming a book is so that other people can read it!

And now – even more excitement. (Because being a writer is ALL about the excitement.) I can now also show you the covers for the other two books in the trilogy:

What do you think? I particularly like the looming baddies at the top of each book, and I love the fact that Molly and her friends are having to run faster every time to get away! (The artwork is by the brilliant Jordi Solano)

Now I’m off to put the finishing touches to The Shapeshifter’s Guide to Running Away, then cut a few thousand words out of The Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat, to get those stories ready to become lovely shiny books next spring and next autumn.

Any book has at least two phases of life, maybe a bit like a caterpillar and a butterfly. Or in the case of my new trilogy, like a tadpole and a toad…

For me, as a writer, the book is most alive when I’m writing it, when I’m living inside the story, when I’m making decisions about what happens next, when I can still make changes.

And with my new book, Spellchasers: The Beginner’s Guide to Curses, that phase is very nearly over. I will get one more chance to look at it, not to change my mind about character names or fight scenes or magical plotlines, but just to check that no apostrophes have gone for a walk and that no spelling mistakes have snuck in. After that, my role as this book’s writer will be over.

After that, it’s up to YOU!

After that, the book is only alive when you are reading it! (Or telling people about it, or drawing scenes from it, or acting it out in the garden on a sunny day, or imagining what might happen next after a cliffhanger, or wondering how you would cope if you had a magical curse thrown at you…) That’s when the book is at its most alive.

Normally the book would snooze for a while, in between me writing it, and readers reading it. The book would be waiting for the printer and the marketing people and the distributors and the book reviewers and all those other vital people to do their things.

But this particular book is so bouncy and alive, that it refuses to take a nap at all.

And so, Floris have decided to let a few, a very select few, readers have a look at Spellchasers: The Beginner’s Guide to Curses several months before it’s in the shops.

A few keen readers will get a chance to see a very early copy of the book (so early, it might not even be wearing its jacket…)

And you could be one of those readers!

All you have to do is tell my publishers why you want to get a sneak peek of the first Spellchasers adventure, and the winners will be the people who write in with the most creative reasons.

Here’s are all the details: the closing date, the email address, all of that sort of stuff.

So, if you want to bring Spellchasers: The Beginners’ Guide to Curses alive before anyone else, now’s your chance!

A new book!  With a new monster! 

My first book of 2016 has just been published!  The Secret of the Kelpie is a picture book retelling the story of the Scottish kelpie – the shape-shifting, child-eating water-horse.

I did the research and wrote the words, and the fiendishly talented Philip Longson did the gorgeous scary illustrations.

The Secret of the Kelpie is about a family who meet a beautiful horse by the side of a loch and realise too late that the horse is a kelpie who plans to drag them into the water, to drown them and eat them… So the littlest sister Flora has to discover the kelpie’s secret and try to save her big brothers and sisters.

I had to do lots of research to find out about the kelpie’s powers and the kelpie’s secret. And I found out that there are lots of different kelpie stories from lots of different parts of Scotland, and that kelpies in different places are different colours (white, gold, black…) and like to eat different people (children, fishermen, young women, married couples…) I discovered that some kelpies like their home comforts (one kidnapped a stone mason to build him a fireplace), that some kelpies are good at building themselves (there are bridges and churches and mills apparently built by kelpies), that some kelpies can grow bigger to fit more children on their backs and that some kelpies can be defeated by… actually, that’s a secret.

I was surprised to discover that not all kelpie stories are set by remote lochs in the Highland and Islands.  There are great kelpie stories from the east too – from Angus and Aberdeenshire for example.

But now I had far too much kelpie research for one picture book.  (Writers often end up with far more research than we need, unless we want our book to be a list, rather than a story.) But luckily, the research I did has also resulted in a MAP so that you can go on a kelpie hunt too!

My lovely publishers Floris have created an interactive map so that you can see all the locations in Scotland where kelpie stories are told, and click on the horse’s head in any location to read a snippet of the kelpie lore from that place.

So, why not find out about the kelpies nearest you, and see if you can go on a kelpie hunt during the Easter holidays or some weekend?

But if you meet a beautiful horse, be VERY VERY careful…

PS – But I have another even more exciting use for all my kelpie research, because one of the main characters in the Spellchasers trilogy (see previous blog post) is a kelpie, with a few different powers, and lots of different secrets! But you’ll have to wait til August to find out about him…

I LOVE stories about shapeshifters.

I’ve made up a few shapeshifter stories myself: Rona, the selkie in the Fabled Beast Chronicles, regularly shifts from girl to seal and back again. And Rona was the first character, apart from Helen, who got her own point of view chapters and heroic action, in Storm Singing. Those scenes were some of the most challenging I’ve ever written, because I had to imagine myself as a creature of a completely different shape, with completely different abilities. Also thinking about why and when Rona would choose to shift from one shape to another was fascinating. (It usually came down to the use of hands …)

Most of my shapeshifting knowledge and lore comes from old stories, and a remarkably high percentage of my favourite traditional tales are about shapeshifters. When I collected my favourite Scottish folktales and legends in Breaking the Spell, four out of the ten tales were about shapeshifting of some kind or another.

In Girls, Goddesses and Giants, my collection of heroine stories, my favourite baddie (who is defeated by my favourite heroine) is a shapeshifting demon.

And The Tale of Tam Linn, a retelling of my favourite Scottish fairy tale, illustrated by the magically talented Philip Longson, is also about shapeshifting – a boy who is stolen by the fairies, and then turned into lots of different Scottish animals (stag, wolf, wildcat…) to try to prevent a girl from rescuing him.

Now, I’ve followed the logic of that path, and written a whole collection of shapeshifters.

Serpents & Werewolves is a collection of fifteen of my favourite shapeshifter stories… illustrated by Francesca Greenwood’s stunning silhouettes. There’s a frog, who doesn’t get kissed, and a dragon, who does. There are several werewolves: a goodie werewolf (sort of), some baddie werewolves (definitely), and a werewolf cub, who was great fun to write. There are escaping fish and diving birds and tricky foxes, a very large serpent and a very tiny caterpillar, and all of them change shape as the story goes on…

As with all the collections I write, some of these stories are ones I’ve loved and told for years. But some of them are new discoveries for me, as I researched shapeshifting tales, looking for stories that I wanted to get to know, from lots of different places, about lots of different animals.

And I found, as always, that researching and writing a book threw up more questions than answers:

Why does almost every culture in the world have stories about people changing into animals, and animals changing into people?

Why do we want (or need) to imagine something human in animals, and something animal in humans?

Why do we like to imagine ourselves with the strengths (and weaknesses) of animals?

Is it shapeshifting a superpower or a curse?

At a logical level (because I like my magic logical…) if you shift into something much bigger or much smaller than your human self, where does the extra bulk come from, or go to?

And what animal or bird what would I like to turn into… ?

My fascination with shapeshifting hasn’t ended yet! I’m still asking those questions, and I’m still writing about shapeshifters…

I can’t give too much away just yet, but in the trilogy of novels I’m working on, the main character is a slightly reluctant shapeshifter… So right now I am having great fun writing about creatures much smaller and much faster than I usually do.

So, there are more shapeshifters to come!

And if you want a wee taste of the stories in Serpents and Werewolves, here is a sample put online by my publishers….

I love to see stories written by school pupils after my adventure-writing workshops, but it’s also really special to see stories or poems or plays or pictures from kids who have read the books rather than met me at an author session. Because what they’ve created hasn’t been inspired by me bouncing up and down like a daft thing in a classroom, but by the words I write on the page.

So I was delighted to receive this poem, inspired by the Fabled Beast Chronicles, from Virginia Curtis, age 10, who lives in the Cheviots:

Wing beats slow and steady,
My selkie friend asks are you ready.
Centaur cantering along behind,
Minotaur shouts this world is mine!

Fairy flys up to me,
Says, look over there, it’s him we seek!
Fawns, urisks attack and scare us,
Dragon roars I’m not a bus!

We are flying away,
We are all shouting, Hip,hip,hooray!
Wolf-person howls in the distance,
Which monster will stricke next? Giant ants?

Isn’t that fantastic!

My favourite line in the poem is probably ‘Dragon roars I’m not a bus’ because to be honest, I did sometimes use Sapphire the dragon as a handy mode of transport, and also because I am REALLY missing Sapphire as I write my new adventure, because without her, it’s much harder to get my characters around!

But I also really love the line ‘Which monster will strike next? Giant ants?’ I’m not considering a giant ant as a baddie at the moment, but for as long as I’m writing there will always be another monster and an other adventure, so that’s a brilliant line to end on.

I love seeing art or words inspired by my books, because it allows me to discover how readers see the characters. I know who the characters are in my head, and that’s what I try to put down on paper, but when readers read the books, the characters and stories come to life in a different way inside their heads. Stories about the characters (or haikus, or floorplans for selkies’ houses, or wanted posters for the minotaur – I’ve seen them all) are a great way for me to discover how readers experience the characters.

That’s why I love reading poems from readers, and all the other wonderful things readers send me!

Thanks so much to Virginia for letting me put her fabulous poem on the blog. (Please keep writing!)

So, the kids are back to school. It’s the start of another writing year!

I don’t have many books being published this year, but I am working on quite a few books for the next couple of years. (Being a writer is not about instant gratification.)

I don’t have a novel coming out in 2015 (sorry!) mostly because I moved house (twice…) in 2013, then spent a fair chunk of 2014 campaigning in the Independence referendum. But I am working on an adventure novel right now, and I hope there will be exciting news about that sometime in 2015.

The next thing I’ll be doing for the novel is work out how to get my characters home after a shoreline battle, so that they can have an argument and answer a riddle.

I do have one book coming out in the autumn of 2015 though – a collection of shapeshifter stories (werewolves, snakes, hawks, foxes, caterpillars…) These are the old stories that inspire the magic and characters and action in my novels. I’m sure this book will be gorgeous because it’s being published by the same people who worked with me on Girls Goddesses and Giants, and on Winter’s Tales.

The next thing I’ll be doing for this collection is a very careful edit of a story about a frog.

I’m also working on another collection which I’m very excited about – retellings of stories from the Viking sagas, with dragons and warriors and magic and polar bears. It’s been a real challenge to find the right stories (I read a lot of sagas in 2014…) The best thing about this book is working with one of my favourite artists, Cate James, who illustrated the wonderful Breaking the Spell. These Vikings are going to look fantastic!

The next thing I’ll be doing for this collection is whittle down the very long list of stories I’ve found, to focus on the absolutely best ones for the book. Oh, and have a cup of tea with Cate.

And I’m also very excited about a picture book I’m working on – another Traditional Tales retelling for Floris books, likely to be out in 2016. The Tale of Tam Linn is such a gloriously beautiful book, so I hope we can do something just as special with the kelpie tale I’m working on right now.

The next thing I’ll be doing for this picture book is read every single word out loud, to make sure it works in the air as well as on the page.

I have several other books on the go too, and I’m sure I’ll be able to tell you about them soon!

I hope you all have a creative and story-filled 2015! I’m off to meet some deadlines…

2013 has been a weird year for me. I moved house twice and had six books published, but not one of the six was a new novel.
So in 2014, I plan to stay put, publish fewer books and get stuck into some serious novel writing.
It seems weird that I published more books than even before in a year when I was distracted by house moves (and selling and buying and decorating and lawyers and packing and unpacking – all of which manages to be both boring and stressful.) However almost all the books I published in 2013 were written in 2012 or even 2011, and not one of them was a novel.
I was delighted with the new books though: The Magic Word has the most amazingly magical and funny pictures by Claire Keay and my first proper cat character (hello Beanie…); Masha and the Bear is possibly my favourite of the Barefoot Animal Stories so far, because I think Masha is the cleverest little heroine (nothing like Little Red Riding Hood – she doesn’t need anyone to rescue her from the animal she meets in the woods); but I love the Hungry Wolf too, because the lamb in that is so cheeky that you almost feel sorry for the wolf, and Melanie Williamson’s pictures of the daft wolf still make me laugh out loud.

2013’s picture books

So, three beautiful books with great pictures and stories that I’m proud of. I hope I’ve done that before though.
The big change for me in 2013, apart from the constant house moves, was the publication of my first (and second and third) collections of myths and folklore. I’ve retold old stories before, in the Mountain’s Blood, or the gorgeous Little Red Riding Hood. But this year, full length collections of Scottish stories (Breaking The Spell), heroine legends (Girls, Goddesses and Giants) and winter stories (Winter’s Tales) all came out. I wrote the Scottish stories a couple of years ago, and the heroine tales last year. Winter’s Tales is the only book out this year which I actually wrote this year – it was pulled together in the spring before the first house move.
And I am so happy about these collections. Every single one contains stories that I love sharing with children, stories which inspire the fiction and novels that I write, and it is wonderful being able to share them with even more people.
Breaking The Spell includes the legend of Tam Linn, Girls Goddesses and Giants includes a seven-headed dragon, and Winter’s Tales includes Loki the Viking trickster god – all stories I love sharing, all stories which have inspired plots and scenes in the First Aid for Fairies series.

2013’s myths, legends and folktales

Though it was weird writing these stories down! These are stories that I tell all the time in schools and libraries and at book festivals, to show what inspires my fiction, so I was typing exactly what I tell. And I think that’s worked (the books are getting really good reviews and reactions anyway…) It was also a fascinating challenge choosing the right balance of stories – dark and light, long and short, gory and funny, stories from lots of different places – and researching the background to them all. It felt like being a student again, only getting to choose my favourite thing in the world (stories!) to write my essays on.
So, lots of new books this year. Which is great. But unfortunately, there wasn’t much new writing in 2013. I often say that I can write anywhere: trains, staffrooms, cafes, outside dance studios… but that only works so long as I have my own study to go home to at night, so I can pull it all together. But when I didn’t know where I’d be writing next, and when all my stuff was in boxes, it was really hard to see ahead in novels, to concentrate on what happens next. So my writing this year has been a bit stop start…
Anyway, that was 2013. Three different studies and six different books. But no novels. I do feel bad about that.
However, 2014 is nearly here. And there’s a novel!
In March 2014 my first teen novel, a thriller called Mind Blind, will be published by KelpiesTeen. And I am SO excited.

Mind Blind

This is another big change for me. Mind Blind is for older readers, it’s not about magic, it has some very nasty characters and some very dark and dangerous scenes. I loved writing it (last year…) I loved editing it (this year, on lots of different floors in lots of different houses) and I am so excited about what readers will think of it (next year!)
And also, now that I’m settled in my lovely new bigger brighter study, I’m working on a new adventure. But I can’t tell you about that yet. You’ll have to wait until next year, or maybe even the year after….

(And yes, those are not-yet-unpacked boxes in the background of the photos. I’d rather write than unpack…)

I have a bit of a traffic jam of books waiting to be published over this summer and autumn.
It looks like I’ve been writing a lot of myths, legends and magic this year, but in fact, THIS year I’ve mostly been writing novels. It was last year and the year before that I was researching and writing lots of myths and legends, but some books take a while to be edited and illustrated. However, I think they are all very much worth waiting for.
So here are the books being published in 2013, and possibly a hint about what’s coming up in 2014:

Girls, Goddesses and Giants: Tales of Heroines from Around the World (A&C Black, July 2013)
This is my first ever collection of myths and legends, and I’m so proud of it. I have always been slightly disappointed that so many really exciting adventure stories are about boys, so I’ve spent years searching for authentic old stories with girls who fight their own battles. And now here are all my favourite heroines gathered together in one book! There is a Japanese girl who meets a sea monster, a Viking warrior who braves ghosts, a Hindu goddess with 10 arms, a Sumerian goddess who meets 52 monsters in one journey, and an early version of Little Red Riding Hood which I’m sure will surprise you! This book is illustrated beautifully by Francesca Greenwood.

Masha and the Bear & The Hungry Wolf (Barefoot Books, August 2013)
The third and fourth books in the Animal Stories series I’ve written for Barefoot Books, short chapter books retelling traditional tales from around the world, designed for newly independent readers. Melanie Williamson’s amazing pictures bring these stories to life beautifully.

Masha and the Bear is about a little girl who gets lost in the forest, then gets trapped by a bear in a cave. But she doesn’t need a woodcutter or hunter to save her, she gets home all on her own using brains and baking skills!

The Hungry Wolf is about a wolf who wants to eat a little lamb, and about all the ways the tricky little lamb fools the wolf and saves herself. It’s a combination of many of my favourite trickster tales, and was great fun to write!

Breaking The Spell: Stories of Magic and Mystery from Scotland (Frances Lincoln, September 2013)
I am so excited about this book – it’s a collection of all my favourite Scottish stories, illustrated by the fabulous Cate James. There are selkies, kelpies and fairies, but also witches, warriors, riddles and baby monsters. There are stories you might know, and stories I’m sure you’ll never have heard before, and one story that comes directly from my own family’s lore. And you might even recognise where the inspiration for some of my novels comes from…

The Magic Word (Picture Kelpies, September 2013)
Not a retelling! This is an original picture book, my only fiction of the year. The Magic Word is about a little girl who can’t be bothered to write her birthday thank you letters, and tries to take some unusual short cuts. The pictures by Claire Keay are really magical, and I’m very much looking forward to reading this to little ones!

The Magic Word cover

Winter Tales: Winter Stories from Around the World (A&C Black, October 2013)
Another collection illustrated by the atmospheric silhouettes of Francesca Greenwood – this time a collection of winter tales. I’ve included some of the oldest and most exciting myths explaining the cycle of the seasons (yes, Persephone is in there, but so are some gods and goddesses you might not have met before) and also lots of folklore and fables about snow, polar bears and wolves from all over the world. I was particularly pleased to find winter tales from the southern hemisphere as well as the north. I hope it will be ideal for sharing stories by a warm fire with snow falling outside!
And this is the one book published in 2013 that I did write this year (earlier on, in that very long winter!) so I don’t have a finished cover to show you yet! But I’m hoping for a wolf…

And next year? Floris Books are bringing out the first three novels in their new young adult list, TeenKelpies, and I’m delighted to say that my next novel will be one of them!
And after that? Well, I’m currently writing a fantasy adventure set in the northeast of Scotland, so if you enjoyed the First Aid for Fairies series, you might want to read this adventure too…

I visited Traquair Maze again last week, filming an interview about Maze Running. I’ve been to the maze several times now, the first couple of times to research the novel, then another couple of times for press and publicity things (research is far more fun!) But this time, something had changed.
We came round the corner of the lovely old house, lugging cameras and tripods and copies of the book, and we walked into a
BEAR.
A bear. Just standing there. Ignoring us.
It took a minute to realise that it was a statue of a bear. There were two of them: one bear near the corner of the maze by the house, the other bear near the entrance of the maze. And they were obviously permanent residents – there was even a sign saying ‘do not lean on the bears.’ It’s probably ok to feed them, or tell them stories, though!
They were lovely bears. But they annoyed me, because they weren’t there when I researched the book! So when I described Helen running round the maze, or Sapphire landing between the house and the maze, I didn’t mention any bears. And now someone reading the book who knows the maze, or someone who visits the maze after reading the book, might say: ‘How came Helen never saw those big bears?’ or ‘Why didn’t that writer research the maze properly before she wrote this book?’
I did research it! And if the bears had been there when I first visited, Helen would undoubtedly have used them in some clever way to defeat the Master.
But the bears weren’t there last year. So they didn’t make it into the book, and now the book is already out of date, even though it was only published a couple of months ago.
Does it matter? Is it just one of the risks of using real life places, that they don’t stay the same? It’s happened to me before though…
When I first visited Dunvegan Castle to case the joint for the break-in during Wolf Notes, there was a ‘prisoner moaning’ sound effect in the dungeons which sounded like a monster howling, so I put that in my book. When I went back to do an event about Wolf Notes, they had changed their sound track and the moan wasn’t there any more. (So I read a different bit that day!)
These changes in a location can make me feel like the world is moving my goalposts without telling me. And every time it happens, I think, ‘oh no, I should never revisit locations!’
I never regret using real locations, though, because I want the fabled beasts to have their adventures in the same Scotland we live in!
But sometimes these new discoveries at locations can enhance the book, in a way which is almost magical.
I researched Smoo Cave for Storm Singing in the winter, so there were no boat tours to the inner caves (that didn’t affect my research, because all the action happened in the outer cave and the first cave, which you can see from the viewing platform.)
I went back the next summer, to read the quest in the cave to a group of kids in the cave, and I went on the boat trip too. When the tour guide dropped bread in the water of the dark cave, where I had imagined a giant eel snapping at Helen’s feet, suddenly the water was alive with fish, snapping at the bread. That was a spooky and shocking realisation that what I had imagined – predators under the water – wasn’t very far from the truth!
Locations change, of course they do. That’s bound to happen if I use real life places. Sometime they change in a way which makes my research a wee bit out of date, and sometimes they change in ways which make the adventures seem even more true!
And I didn’t really get too annoyed about unexpected bears. Especially when they were happy for me to read Maze Running to them…

Reading Maze Running to a Bear

Unexpected bear, at Traquair