So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye-eee.... Megan Rix / Ruth Symes

How time has flown. I've just looked back at my blog posts and see I started way back in November 2011 and here we are 3 years later and my last post for now.

I've just finished my latest book tour as Megan Rix. This time it was for my book 'The Hero Pup' and we got to have guide dogs and hearing dogs and medical alert dogs, as well as my own two, Traffy and Bella, coming along to different sessions. It was fantastic! My favourite tour so far :) Back in 2011 I hadn't done any week long book tours and now I have 5 under my belt. I'd also never done a ppt presentation but now when we turn up at a school and they're having problems setting it up I'm (don't want to jinx it) so will just say usually able to sort it out. And requests to speak to 700 children plus staff at once - a breeze - done it twice now.

This year has been amazing. Two children's book
of the year award wins - one for 'Victory Dogs' at

lovely Stockton-on-Tees and one for 'The Bomber Dog' at beautiful Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury even provided a dog to come out on stage with me - not a german shepherd like Grey in Bomber Dog but a lively ball loving spaniel who works as a bomb sniffing dog.

Dogs are so wonderful and I never tire of telling children all the brilliant things they can do as well as showing pictures of the things my two get up to. Fortunately I have lots of pictures and the one where Bella as a tiny pup is trying to bury a sock always goes down well. As does the fox poo one :)

I've been so proud of Traffy coming into our local school with me to listen to children read. She's been such a hit and is always ready with a wag of her tail as a new child coos over her. Her special reading mat with letters on it was a true find and the children who've read to her have shown improvements even more than the school had hoped for.

The school was also the first one to hear a very early first chapter of 'Cornflake the Dragon' my new Secret Animal Society series that I'm writing as Ruth Symes. The Ruth Symes books tend to be for slightly younger children than the Megan Rix ones and I love getting letters from readers and pictures of the toys that have been made of the characters. I especially treasured an email I got recently about 'Dancing Harriet' and how the book was being used at a school in India to help teach tolerance and inclusion.

I'm going to miss not writing for ABBA for a while (other than hopefully an occasional guest post) but I've just got a bit too overworked what with running two careers as Ruth Symes and Megan Rix and so it's best to step out rather than find blogging a chore rather than a pleasure. But I'll still be reading it and looking forward to catching up with what's happening  :)

PS Just found out 'A Soldier's Friend' is one of the nominated books for 2015's Carnegie medal - yahoo! Good luck to everyone with books in it xx

PPS Thanks so much to Carol Christie for saying her son got switched back on to reading by The Bomber Dog I hadn't seen the comment at the end of my Dog Days posts until I looked back at the old posts I'd done yesterday. That's what it's all about :)


www.ruthsymes.com and www.secretanimalsociety.com and www.meganrix.com

The strange things children’s writers do – Lari Don

Yesterday, I helped dress a dragon in a car park.

The dragonmobile, at Pirniehall Primary in Edinburgh

But it’s not the strangest thing I’ve done as a children’s writer.

I've recce'd a castle, going in undercover as a tourist, to discover the best way to steal their most famous artefact.

I've interviewed a vet about how to heal a fairy’s dislocated wing, and a boat builder about how to fit a centaur on a rowing boat.

I've lost half a dozen journalists in a maze. (I guided them out again eventually. Most of them.)

I've told Celtic legends on an iron age hillfort, fairytales in an inner city woodland, and Viking myths in a cave.

And all of these things have been an integral part of my job as a children’s writer. Because writing is not just sitting at a keyboard and tapping out chapters.

The research (chatting to vets about fairy injuries and sneaking about castles) is often as much fun as the writing. And the promotion (dragon dressing and outdoor storytelling) is almost as important as the sitting at my desk imagining.

I suspect that as a children’s writer, you have to be just as imaginative in your research methods and your promotion ideas as you do in your cliffhangers and your characterisations.

But I can’t take credit for the dragon in the carpark. I did create a shiny friendly blue dragon, as one of the main characters in my Fabled Beast series. However, I had moved onto creating other characters in other stories, when my publishers decided to give the Fabled Beasts Chronicles new covers, and announced that they were going to promote the covers with a dragonflight tour.

Then the very talented marketing executive at Floris Books designed a dragon costume for her own car. And she’ll be spending most of the next fortnight driving me round beautiful bits of Scotland and the north of England (yesterday Edinburgh, today Perth, then Aberdeenshire and Penrith, as we get more confident and stretch our wings!) in a car which we dress up as a dragon in the carpark of various primary schools, then invite the children out to ooh and aah at our shiny blue dragon and her shimmering flames, before I go inside to chat with the pupils about cliff-hangers and quests.

So, this week, I’ve already learnt how to put a dragon’s jaws on at speed. And I’ve discovered that if the engine hasn’t cooled down yet, those flames coming down from the bonnet are actually warm!

Very brave Forthview Primary pupils sitting on dragon's flames!

So, yes, I do strange things. But I have fun! And I hope that my enjoyment comes across in my books, and in my author events.

I don’t think the adventures I create would be nearly as interesting without the odd conversations I have while I’m researching them, or the weird things I do to promote them.

So – what do you think? Should I just be sensible and stay indoors writing? Or is a little bit of weird now and then an effective way to make books, reading and writing more exciting for children?
 

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

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