Category Archives: Uncategorized

LIVE, WITH LOVE

By Nicola | Published: September 15, 2014

It’s been so beautiful this week. Perfect weather, warm and still, like a blessing. Thanks to a shoulder injury that means more than 4 hours at my computer is agony, I’ve been out in it too, far more than I would have been normally. Normally I would have been frantically working, trying to Get Everything […]

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FACT AND FICTION and STORY SPACE

By Nicola | Published: August 6, 2014

As the author of books that are put in non fiction and fiction sections of libraries I don’t see that there is a hard boundary between fact and fiction. Look at any great works of fiction and you find truthful information about the real world – portraits of Victorian poverty and social injustice in Dickens […]

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Insect Story for Insect Week: Richard’s Bug

By Nicola | Published: June 30, 2014

More proper posts soon… But in the meantime a ‘story-ette’ I wrote for a friend’s retirement do. Looking at it again I think it could be one of a little series, and certainly longer. Anyway I like it. See if you do. Richard’s Bug   Richard’s little sister Kelly, was standing up in her cot […]

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Armenian Dreaming

By Nicola | Published: June 20, 2014

Driving up the steep red-rock track to the FPWC eco centre lodge on Caucasus Wildlife Refuge near the village of Urtsadzor, in the dry mountains of central Armenia, was like arriving on the set of a spaghetti western: the light was harsh and the rocks were stacked like giant building blocks 2000m high. I expected […]

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Flashes of Inspiration

By Nicola | Published: April 24, 2014

When I lived in Bristol, there were pollarded plane trees lining the busy rat-run to the main road, down which I drove most mornings. Caught in a queue of cars one morning, I glanced up to where the branches just managed to link hands above the brow of the hill. Against the light sky was […]

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Swifts, Creatures and Climate Change

By Nicola | Published: April 8, 2014

When I was little, between nought and seven that is, I lived in Victorian house in the midlands. I look at photos of it now and it looks huge and posh. I’m really not sure how my parents managed to buy it. It had a walled garden which to me seemed enormous, and an old […]

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Sleeping Beauty Episode One

By Nicola | Published: April 1, 2014

This isn’t really a sensible post of any kind. It’s just playing. Almost all of the writing I do now is Goal Orientated Behaviour, writing to a deadline, writing with a definite purpose, usually to fit an idea I may have sold to a publisher months, or even year ago. Because I’ve always written for […]

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Khartoum and Addis Ababa: KICS and ICS

By Nicola | Published: February 6, 2014

I’ve just come back from two weeks working in international schools – one in Khartoum (Khartoum International Community School) and one in Addis Ababa (International Community School Addis). I can’t begin to describe the welcome and warmth with which I was received. I had the most wonderful time, woking with children, teachers and librarians, and […]

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Shaped By Nature

By Nicola | Published: January 8, 2014

  Outside there’s a brief hole in the rain, but by this evening South Wales will be lashed again with the kind of downpour you only used to see in tropical monsoons, although here of course the deluge comes at an angle and at a lower temperature! On the other side of the Atlantic, Eastern […]

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THE KING OF THE SKY: Coming to a theatre near you?

By Nicola | Published: December 10, 2013

This time last year I had flu. It knocked me entirely off my legs for ten days. I lay in bed worrying about the deadlines I was missing until my head hurt so much I couldn’t even worry any more. The day I felt better was full of that lovely washed clean feeling that you […]

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