Days From My Sketchbook

Over the past couple of years I have been keeping a visual diary in my sketchbook of days that have been interesting for one reason or another. It keeps me busy in between books. Here's a little look at a few of them.

Fairy Doors

Here are some pics from the Fairy Doors workshop at The Lord Louis Library. It was huge fun and we had lots of fabulous fairies and elves attending. Thanks to all the lovely staff at the library for making me feel so welcome. X

Flossie Bonce is on the Loose.

My fourth book, Flossie Bonce has been published and made her first appearance at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival, read in a fairy circle.

It's a story about a daft fairy who helps Father Christmas when he is poorly on Christmas Eve. But wait - what's this she's putting in the stockings... a parsnip? Find out why and what she does to put things right. For ages 3-8 years. 

It makes a great present for girls for Christmas - I can sign a special message for you in the front of the book.

Have a look on my website for more details:
www.scarlettinc.co.uk

Winging It at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival

I had such fun at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival this year. Despite my fears that I had forgotten to bring something vitally important (like glue/ books/ fairy wings) the two Flossie Bonce Fairy Workshops went brilliantly. Both were full to capacity, despite the appalling and torrential rain. Everyone liked listening to Flossie Bonce and I got laughs from the adults in all the right places. 

I think you need to write for 2 audiences when creating children's books- the child and the adult. After all, if the child loves a story, it's the grown up who has to read it a million times! It had better be entertaining!

This is the front page of our local paper's 'Weekender' with one of the fairies admiring her wonderful fairy wings that she made. 

Here's a link if you want to have a look at Flossie Bonce
http://www.scarlettinc.co.uk/flossie_bonce.html

AS and US

Sometimes being creative is about doing nothing and Tuesday was one of those days. I should say that I mean 'nothing' by my normal standards. Big fella (he's 14 now) and I went on a foresty jaunt with our other Home Ed friends to make dens, and while there we watched a very entertaining game of Fireman Horse Golf where the local firefighters where whacking a full sized plastic horse up a hill with a rather useless looking golf club. There weren't getting very far and after a while gave up, put the horse on wheels and loaded it back onto the fire engine. 

You might make the mistake of thinking I had eaten poisonous mushrooms from the forest floor prior to the firemen turning up, but I can assure you that I didn't and it really happened. Ask around. There were witnesses.

Can we please just play football next time?

I don't think I've mentioned here before that we Home Ed our eldest son. There are many reasons, one of which is that he was the last year to go to Middle School before the Isle of Wight disbanded them and went to a two tier system. There are many stories attached to this period in our lives that make me want to eat copious doughnuts, so I try not to think about it.

We have the pleasure of being a 50% Aspergers household and school just didn't fit. Home schooling is much better for us all and has given our son a good grounding in 'college style' education, that is, if you don't know and you need to find out, go and FIND OUT! (with assistance when required). He often does his GCSE work in his PJs of with his t shirt on back to front, which simply wouldn't have been acceptable at school. My feeling is that his education is the most important thing and that all the other stuff will get learnt when he's ready to learn it. 

We do a lot of functional skills - shopping, cooking, generally looking after oneself, and he reads for hours and hours. He also loves Minecraft, Sonic and Mario games and finds he can 'be one of the guys' when he plays with others. We don't allow any fighting games as my philosophy is that what goes in has got to come out. 

People often say to me "Ooh, I could never educate a child, I'm not clever enough" but that is a cock eyed way to look at it. You don't have to be an expert on every subject that your child wants to learn, you have to be resourceful and facilitating. You have to allow your child space and time to develop and give them the opportunity to do the things they like to do and float away from the things they don't. For example, our son wanted to do a timeline from the Stone Age. He literally wanted to know it all... every king, queen and event. We got up to the Tudors before he said he didn't want to do History any more. I think that's quite a feat. He knows every what every King/Queen died of from Ethelred the Unready onward. We're currently revisiting a bit though, with a look at the current Royal Family and any quirky facts he can find.

Here are a few of the things that we've done:

Proved that the Apollo Space Mission was faked. And then decided we could be wrong (in the style of Stephen Hawking & his Doctorate work)

iGCSE in Chemistry (grade B)

Made a giant (5ft) Roman hurling catapult thing for the Learning Zone Home Ed film

Trampolining Swimming and walking

Listen to every episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage

Watch QI & Dara O'Briain's school of Hard Sums

Read read read! Including all of the Chronicles of Narnia, all of the Harry Potter books inc. the weird little spin offs, The Faraway Tree et al, Roald Dahl in every form, The Worlds Stupidest Signs/laws/Headlines, everything by Jeremy Strong and all of the Womble books, science books, joke books and Michael Morpurgo books. And zillions of instruction manuals. Methinks this is an engineer in the making.

This year we're having a go at 4 more iGCSEs and learning how to run a bath so it isn't stone cold when you get in it. 

Never a dull moment.

The waiting is over!

This week my Flossie Bonce proofs arrived. After last week's trauma of not being able to upload the artwork to my Printer's Dropbox, I received the proof copy on Thursday. 

The front cover isn't quite right; the Isle of Wight sticker is in the bleed area and not printed out, but they are fixing that and then we are good to go with printing.(My fault, not the printer's.)

Here they are.

And this is my favourite spread of the whole book! It's the front endpage.

If you'd like to pre-order a Flossie Bonce, you can do so HERE.

Really looking forward to showing Flossie off at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival. I'm doing two fairy workshops on Sunday 20th October 2013. If you want to book tickets, you can do so HERE and go to the bottom of the page to find my bit.

Thanks for reading! Bright blessings!!

I'm waiting.......still waiting.

I'm not very good at waiting. There's a lot of toe tapping and huffing going on at the moment because I'm waiting for the proof of Flossie Bonce to come through my letterbox. I've got a digital copy, but it's not the same. You can't tell if the colours are right and I reckon I read text differently on screen. It's easier to slip a typo or spelling mistake into somehing on screen. Case in point. 

So Flossie is nearly ready for print and I have been whiling away the days cutting out fairy wings for the workshops that I'm doing at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival. 

I'm doing 2 FAIRY WORKSHOPS on Sunday 20th Oct, where we will be making the wings look gorgeous! Come dressed as a fairy if you like. Whilst they wings are drying I will read, for the first time ever, Flossie Bonce. Books will be on sale at the pop up Waterstones shop at the entrance to Northwood House and I can sign any that come my way. Check the link for lots of interesting stuff going on that weekend. Every time I look at the website, more authors have been added. It's like the Magic Porridge Pot!!

In other news, the dogs are in a foul mood because I washed their blankets yesterday and made them smell of apples and daisies (according to the Comfort bottle) and they think it is an abomination. The keep giving me withering looks of disapproval. Ho hum. You live in MY house, you've got to SMELL nice.

www.isleofwightliteraryfestival.org