Once upon a time...

Over the last few years, since the second edition to 9/11: Official Complicity was published in 2010, I have been lucky enough to have been invited to a number of schools in West Yorkshire and the Wirral, putting together a workshop for the children, encouraging them to read and write. And it was at one such school in Chester, that I got the children to participate in a competition. The competition was for them to write a short story, and the winner would appear in my next children's novel, which at the time was Christmas Presence. After careful deliberation from myself and the staff, we all agreed that Isobel Jones's short was the best, and as promised she is now one of the leading characters in the novel. With the success of the competition, I decided to do another one at a school in West Yorkshire, and in this case a young boy called Mo won, and appears in the second of the Leap Year series - Leap In The Dark, which is to be published.