The First Trapped Bumblebee of the Year - Joan Lennon

My bedroom window is inexplicably alluring, even though I do not sleep in a push-up bra.  Vampires do not haunt the sill but, all spring and summer and well into the autumn, bumblebees, other kinds of bees, and wasps do.  They buzz about outside, find a way in (buzzing) and then seem incapable of retracing their steps.  They fling themselves loudly against the glass instead, waiting for me to come, open the window to its full extent, and shoo them out.  And this week, after a long winter, I woke to the first bumblebee doing the routine.  Loudly.  Buzzing.

Mrs. Tittlemouse has her own problems with bumblebees

Beatrix Potter The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse (1910)

(wiki commons)

Like the bumblebee (go with me here) I am in a state of dependence on others.  I am in the midst of a number of projects where I've done my bit, and I'm waiting for the other people involved to do their bits so I can then do what I need to do to take the whole thing to the next/final stage.  I'm waiting on art work, a translation, edits, website pricing, the go-ahead for a proposal. 

I'm waiting for somebody to open the window so I can get out.  Get on.  I've tried to distract myself by starting a What-the-hell novel, but I'm just buzzing.  Not really committing.  I have to be writing something, but ...  

So that's the story from here.  Lots and lots of waiting.  Sound familiar?  I bet it does.  But at least the wait for spring is almost over.  

I've freed a bumblebee to prove it.

Vilhelm Hammershol The Tall Windows (1913)

(wiki commons)

Joan Lennon Instagram

Putting Lockdown in a box - Tracy Darnton

This blog has crept up on me in the strange time warp of lockdown. What week is it? I've no idea. This is blog number four (four!!!) since this started. As I'm measuring my life now by Bin Day and Bin Day Eve, rather than by actual dates or months, I'm afraid this one is rather last minute. 

So I thought I'd share my Lockdown Box. In this weird twilight world of Lockdown/Not Lockdown, I've been thinking that even though we as a family are still largely marooned at home, something has shifted and we should assess Lockdown and better still, put it in a box. I want to do something practical in the same way I do after a bereavement or a momentous family occasion. I curate it, tame it, make it something I can put a lid on and file on a shelf. Something we can revisit in the future. What did you do in the Lockdown, Great Granny? Well, I shall say. Hold my cocoa and pass me that dusty box.

What's in it?

I half wish I could include that letter from the Government but it was ceremoniously ripped into tiny pieces. Or the giant catering can of tinned tomatoes that my local greengrocers improvised and kindly delivered to us. Or one of the lids of ice cream cartons from Deliver Moo keeping us supplied from our local Marshfield Ice Cream. Or the terrible 21st birthday cake I made from any old rubbish in the cupboard. 

I do have celebration cards for my kids stuck with their parents instead of celebrating rites of passage end of A levels and uni finals. And mementoes from the Hay festival they recreated in the garden for my birthday. 

And we've added the art we painted after watching Grayson Perry and a picture of our Lockdown Reading Pile. And the map of footpaths we discovered on our doorstep for all those walks which kept us going. And the menu from my Come Dine With Me Sicilian evening that I hoped would start off the rest of the family to do the same - but sadly didn't. 

And the book I worked so hard on but am bringing out with no book launch party - just a supreme sense of irony as it's about the effects on a family of preparing for disasters like pandemics. Yes, dear Reader, I foresaw the toilet roll shortages. 

Lastly, I'm a list maker - To Do, Shopping, Birthday gifts to buy, TBR - so we're starting another list. A family list poem. 

        The Lockdown A to Z. 

The poem's too personal, too angry in places, too mundane in others to share on this blog. And, anyway, you can guess what my Z stands for. I recommend it as a way, whatever your age, to remember and to make sense of what we've experienced so far. 

It's not finished yet - because Lockdown/Not Lockdown isn't finished. But when it is, it's going in the box. 

Tracy Darnton writes YA thrillers. Her latest novel The Rules is published on July 9th. It will be launched in a socially distanced way on Twitter @TracyDarnton but she's looking forward to a future party. 

When being a writer doesn’t mean writing – Lari Don

I am a writer, therefore I write books. That’s my job. Simple! Or not so simple…

It was a slow-dawning realisation for me, after the publication of my first book, that the job of a writer isn't that simple. That as well as writing books, I have to promote those books: school events, book festival events, bookshop signings, writing workshops, blog tours, maintaining a website, being cheerful about writing on Twitter…

All of that promotional activity, time-consuming though it is, at least has a direct connection to my writing and my books, and sometimes even to booksales. But recently I’ve noticed I seem to be doing more and more things that I never anticipated doing as a writer, and that have very little direct connection with my own writing.

Here are some things I've been asked to do recently: 

judge and write feedback on work by members of writing clubs

mentor a teenage novelist / storyteller

create a storystarter for a digital learning project

tell stories to librarians at breakfast

take part in a photocall to promote a book tour (not my book!)

take issue on late night telly with an academic study on how kids read books

and give a lecture on Why We Love Monsters alongside scientists talking about dinosaurs.

I’ve also realised that I’m rubbish at saying no! Mostly because these all of these projects seem interesting, challenging and potentially inspiring.

I should stress that I do sometimes say no, and that when I say yes, I'm usually paid the going rate for doing these projects. I should also stress that a couple of the projects above have been genuinely wonderful and creative experiences.

But it does throw up a few questions:

How do writers balance all these demands on their time, and still find time to write?

How do we choose which things to say yes to and which to say no to? (I find the Kessler equation handy, though I suspect I don’t use it rigorously enough.)

Why do people think writers can do all these varied things? What is it about writing books that makes people think we can do so many other things too? (Or that we would want to…?)

And what odd things have other writers been asked to do?

Almost all the things I’m asked to do have at least a tangential link to writing, though not always to my own writing or my own books. and I’m usually delighted to be asked. But this is not what I thought I’d be doing when I started on the path of being a writer. I thought I’d be sitting at home with endless clear hours ahead of me to play with stories and to imagine worlds, rather than snatching time to scribble down dialogue while travelling between school events and judging panels…

However, I believe stories can do anything, and the more unusual projects I say yes to, the more I test that belief. And the more readers, writers and booklovers I meet, while doing all these slightly odd and unexpected things, the more my own love of stories is expanded and enhanced.

But right now, I’d better get on with writing the next book! Because despite all the other distractions and demands, that is still the heart of my job…


Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales, a teen thriller and novellas for reluctant readers.

Lari’s website 
Lari’s own blog 
Lari on Twitter 
Lari on Facebook 
Lari is on Instagram as LariDonWriter

Keeping the story warm – Lari Don

Many things get in the way of writing a book. (Over the last few years, I’ve struggled through moving house, teenagers with exam leave, and constant elections and referendums...) But one thing that regularly gets in the way writing a book, for me, is promoting the previous book.

It shouldn’t take me by surprise, but it seems to ambush me every single time.

Whenever I finish a novel, I allow myself to start investigating new ideas, I get excited about one particular idea, I ask deliciously intriguing questions about that story and begin to consider the answers, then just when I’m ready to start writing – boom! Suddenly the previous book - the book I’d already said good bye to – is published and I have to start promoting it. The time and energy required to launch a book means weeks or months when it's hard to find time to settle into writing the next book...

I’m not complaining. I’m really not. I love that I have a publisher, Floris Books, who care enough to host a launch party, and send me to Aberdeen, Newcastle, Wigtown, St Andrews and all sorts of other places to talk about my books. I love meeting librarians, teachers, parents, booksellers and READERS! I love that. But at the same time a small quiet part of me just wants to settle down into a new story.


So, despite the fact that I have been out and about for all of September and most of October telling people about the Spellchasers trilogy, I have been trying to keep the new story warm.

I knew that if I waited until everything calmed down, if I waited until I had perfect writing conditions, I might be waiting around for ever. And I might lose the ‘what if’ and ‘what happens next’ excitement that makes me want to write this new story. So I tried to keep the story momentum going, even if only a little bit a day...

notebooks, on a comfy bed

Therefore, while touring with the Spellchasers trilogy, I have been reading 18th century collections of folklore on trains, scribbling ideas in notebooks while teachers sat kids in front of me in neat lines, asking my characters vital questions in bookshop cafes. And I have been writing actual words in actual sentences in hotel rooms (never easy, with a comfy bed right there, just asking to be snoozed on...)

But I honestly, I didn’t think I was getting anywhere. I thought I was just making a token effort. I felt like I was only writing tiny slivers of story. Half a scene here. Half a scene there. A snippet of dialogue. A thought about the baddie. A hint of a character’s true voice.

I thought I was just trying to keep a foothold in the story’s world, so that when I finally got time to think about it in peace and quiet at home, I might still have a wee bit of momentum.

But last week, I finally got a chance to stand back and look at what I have. To see how (whether!) all the half-scenes and snippets of dialogue fit together. I was delighted to discover that I had written 10 chapters! They need a lot of tidying, but the characters and their problems are there, and I'm now ready to write forward...

So taking the time to promote the previous book hasn’t stopped me writing the next one at all! All I had to do was keep the story warm, and keep my notebooks close by as I travelled...

Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales, a teen thriller and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Lari’s website 

Lari’s own blog

Lari on Twitter

Lari on Facebook

Lari is on Instagram as LariDonWriter

Writing under siege by wildlife – Lari Don

I’ve spent most of the last few months, winter and spring, working on the last two books in my Spellchasers trilogy. And due to the inevitable noise and increasingly late bedtimes of the teenagers with whom I share my small terraced house, I’ve done most of that work in the garden shed.

But not on my own. Despite going out there for peace and quiet, I am never alone in my shed.

My small wooden box

The magical world I’ve created in the Spellchasers trilogy is about human beings shapeshifting into animals and birds (and even a few creepy crawlies, in the final book) so the constant presence of creatures in and around my writing space has been occasionally inspiring and sometimes a bit threatening.

My shed backs onto a tree-lined path, so there is almost constant birdsong, which is always lovely. But there are also occasional quarrelling and swooping crows. The baddie in the trilogy is called Corbie (Scots for crow) and he is often aided by his flock of curse-hatched crows. So the clamour and flurry of crows just a few feet away from me as I sit in a thin wooden box has sometimes felt quite threatening, especially when I am in the midst of helping my heroines and heroes defeat a flock of crows. Do they know what I’m writing, I wonder? Are they annoyed about it? Are they about to fly in here? Will they ambush me when I leave?

A helpful cat

Then there are the cats, and the dogs. Both animals feature in the trilogy, usually as a danger to my heroine Molly, who is a part-time hare and an occasional mouse. My own cats regularly try to distract me from writing by lying on manuscripts and draping tails over keyboards. And their wet and muddy pawprints (a cat walking into a shed from a rainy garden and jumping straight onto pg 121, leaves impressive pawprints) can be quite atmospheric in a scene about a girl being stalked by a predator... The cats next door often tap dance, noisily and surprisingly, on the shed roof. And dogs, barking in neighbouring gardens,or being walked on the path behind, can be equally surprising for both me and Molly, especially as her transformations are triggered by the sound of predators.

And then there are the insects, creepy crawlies and mini beasts. I don’t mind the slaters (Scots for woodlice) or the ants or the daddy longlegs or the little beetles with shiny wingcases (in fact, I found a minor role for those jewel-like beetles in the third book, the Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat.) I find the persistence of wasps trying to build their nests in my shed, from the scraped off wood OF my shed, rather admirable - though I do discourage them quite firmly. But I don’t like the spiders. In fact I’m terrified of spiders. I have to check the shed for spiders every single day before sitting down to write. And they still appear. Above my head or in the dark corners... And that constant fear of the suddenly lurking spiders informs every dangerous and tense scene in my adventures.

I’ve not been visited by a toad, wyrm, kelpie or sphinx, but the final book in the Spellchasers trilogy doesn’t go to printer until next month, so there's still time!

So, the wildlife in and around my writing space has definitely added to the writing experience, and influenced the content of my trilogy.

And now that I’m nearly done, I wonder what I will write next, and whether it will contain birdsong, barks and pawprints.

I’m fairly sure there won’t be any spiders. Not as characters, anyway. They may be present as a lingering sense of danger though, lurking in the corners of everything I write...

Do other authors feel that where they write influences what they write?

Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales, a teen thriller and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Lari’s website 

Lari’s own blog

Lari on Twitter

Lari on Facebook