Author Archives: Nicola

The Monkeys Want an Autograph

By Nicola | Published: October 9, 2012

There’s so much I want to write about my trip to Borneo, but as Im off to research dancing bears in Bhopal tomorrow I haven’t time for it all yet. So this is just a start…         When it comes to seeing wildlife I’m not lucky. I’m like the guy in the […]

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An Inordinate Fondness For Pangolins

By Nicola | Published: September 21, 2012

I’ve tied off all the work ends that needed tying, I’ve found my mosquito net and worked out a way to get hold of a pair of functioning binoculars (my beloved Bausch and Lombs had an uninsured collision with a marble floor) so, bar the malaria tablets and the leech proof socks (no, I’m not […]

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Mother Cary’s Butterknife

By Nicola | Published: September 20, 2012

  So, no pictures in this and almost no conversations so Alice wouldn’t like it. But given that it won’t get an airing with an ISBN number on it, I thought I’d put it here. Part of my ongoing love affair with selchies and mermaids and my sneaking suspicion that I might be one or […]

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Festivaletteratura…The Best Literary Festival in the World

By Nicola | Published: September 10, 2012

I’ve just got back from four days at the festivaletteratura, the most wonderful literary festival – I’d be tempted to say – in the world. Not only an amazing line up (well ME… oh yeah and Toni Morrison, Neil Macgreggor, Roddy Doyle, Luis Sacher and a whole long and gorgeous list of writers from Italy […]

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writing in the hubbub

By Nicola | Published: August 20, 2012

It’s a weird thing, at home in my study I can’t stand the slightest sound. I have a tin of fly spray beside my computer because I can’t even work through a buzzing fly. When I lived in the Devon countryside, I had to wear my partner’s chainsaw ear defenders to keep out the sounds […]

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Why Write Non Fiction?

By Nicola | Published: August 16, 2012

For a while now there has been terrible gloom amongst the writers of non fiction for children. almost no body gets paid royalties, just a flat fee, and that has been getting flatter and flatter, and is now so flat for many writers as to be a molecular monolayer. And it isn’t just the money, […]

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Just Finished

By Nicola | Published: August 15, 2012

I don’t normally get covers of books before I’ve written them, but its happened a few times this year, and last week my lovely editor at Random sent me the ‘first go’ at the cover for my next book for them, ‘Whale Boy’. I’ve never had a cover that spoke so intimately to me whilst […]

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Walking on Skirrid Fawr

By Nicola | Published: July 1, 2012

I have terrible posture, physically and emotionally. I’m always looking down. This means I don’t trip up on the small stuff but I’m capable of walking into trees, walls, ditches, dark alleys and dead ends. The upside is that I notice and cherish details…a snail, grass, people’s hands, the corner of an eye, a kiss. […]

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Dominica Diaries

By Nicola | Published: June 14, 2012

I’m back from the tropical wonderful-ness that is Dominica. Outside, here in Wales, the weather is doing comedy rain, rain so hard, so visibility-obscuring as to be faintly ridiculous and artificial looking; the kind of rain you get on cheap, made-for-TV movies when a guy with a big hosepipe is standing just out of frame […]

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