I was born within Newcastle and I spent suit childhood years in a big Catholic family in Felling-on-Tyne. I had four sisters and a brother and much much more relatives in the streets nearby. suit dad had been in Burma during that war. Your dog and suit mum married in the late 40s. Papa became an office manager in the engineering factory. Mom was a shorthand typist until she had your children. We moved several when I was a infant, but always within Felling. Felling have been a coal mining town, nevertheless by the time I remember anything the pits have been all closed. The river at the foot of the town was lined with warehouses and shipyards. At the smt was a wild area we called the Heather Hillsides. As i loved playing football inside fields above the city, camping out with suit own friends, messing about using suit grandfather in his allotment. I was an altar boy, together with I still know snatches in the Latin mass by center. I loved our local library, and dreamed of seeing suit books on its shelves someday. Favourite books as some sort of child/teenager included the tales of King Arthur and his knights, the guides of T. Lobsang Rampa, and Hemingway's stories. I also useful to read suit sisters' Enid Blytons. I always knew that I wanted being a writer. One of suit uncles had a small printing works. suit mum said that she used to take me there as a baby and I used to laugh and point in the printed pages coming off the rollers - so maybe I began to love print when I was just a few months old. I decided on primary schools in Felling and Sunderland - both which I liked. I went to grammar school in Hebburn - i always disliked. On the surprise of some people (eg a few teachers and especially suit own headmaster) I went on to the University of East Anglia and did a degree in English and North american Literature. After stints being a hotel porter, postman and labourer, I trained being a teacher. It seemed the perfect job for a writer: limited hours, long holiday seasons, what more could I want? How wrong I has been. I wasn't just exhausted because of it, I also found it fascinating, and I learned a huge amount. suit partner and i worked five years within a primary school on a large estate in Gateshead. While I was there, suit own first short stories started to be published in small magazines. I needed more hours to write, so that i resigned and sold the house. I went to are in a commune based in a dilapidated mansion in a beautiful part of Norfolk. As i lived for a year . 5 on a few 100 pounds and wrote suit first decent stories truth be told there. When suit money ran out, I found their employment writing booklets for an adult literacy scheme. This concluded in suit final teaching career, in a school for children with learning difficulties. suit first book for teenagers, Skellig, was published with 1998. In advance of that, several short stories had seemed in magazines and anthologies, and were broadcast on Radio 4. Two collections with suit stories for adults, Sleep deprived Nights (1985) and A kind of Heaven (1997), were published by IRON Press, a little North Eastern publisher. I was editor with the fiction magazine 'Panurge' with 1987-93. I wrote a novel called Seances that took five years to jot down and was rejected by every publisher in the country. Then Skellig came coupled. That seemed to come out of nowhere, as if it absolutely was waiting a very long time to be told. From time to time seemed to write again. Since Skellig, I've prepared several more children's fiction: Kit's Wilderness, Heaven Big eyes, Secret Center, The Fire-Eaters, and Clay; and a collection of stories based on suit own childhood, Counting Stars. suit own first picture book, Kate, the Cat along with the Moon, illustrated by that wonderful Stephen Lambert, ended up in 2004. I also write for any theatre. suit first children's enjoy, Mad Girl, Wild Boy toured england in 2001. suit stage adaptation associated with Skellig was produced at the Young Vic in 2003, with suit play for younger children, suit Dad's a Birdman. Heaven Eyes was premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005. I live with our neighbors in Northumberland. We stay just beyond the Roman Wall, which for centuries marked the place where civilisation ended and this waste lands began. My websites: Purchase With Style In Mind - Not Fashion