Please admire this amazing banner!

This wonderful piece of art was designed from the amazing illustrations by Irina Avgustinovich (you can follow her on Instagram BTW @iravgust), by Becka Moor at Firefly Press (who you can find on Twitter @BeckaMoor).

It will work hard, being used as a background in videos, having its first public appearance at the book launch (details here: book launch info), going on school visits (details here: school visits info) AND the big one... the Scottish Book Tour this summer.

I'm so excited to get out and about and shout about this book. It is truly something special and has been a tremendous team effort. I can't wait for it to be in shops and libraries and schools and for everyone to read Lion's story.

More news to come - including the Scotland tour details. Exciting! 

You have to know by now that SCBWI is the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

I've been a member of SCBWI British Isles for over seven years and a volunteer for the last five. Every year there is a SCBWI writing retreat which is held in this beautiful house near Evesham in Worcestershire. 

It is always a magical experience to go and surround myself with children's writers and each time I come away with something different.

This year two brilliant authors  attended as our speakers and supporters, Jo Nadin (left) and Sara Grant (right). Both gave very different but equally inspirational talks and critiqued our work too. I've now got lots of ideas of where to go next with my writing.

It's time to return to my City Farm Series that I write for 2Simple (the school resource company) and so off I went for some research on a working farm.

A weekend away with this friendly bunch meant   feeding pigs, checking sheep and having a go at hand milking (which is not as easy as it looks). I even got up close and personal with Daffodil, the week-old calf. Adorable!

The other amazing thing was that the farmhouse was full of books. Animals during the day and reading at night - my kind of heaven. Of course I added mine to the vast collection as a thank you for the incredible weekend.

Now... back to Cate and her next exciting adventure.

BTW...If you want to find out more about the writing I do for 2Simple as part of their Serial Mash Scheme, then please visit their website: 2Simple

Very excited to say that my two proof copies of my new book, Call Me Lion, which is out on June 16 with Firefly Press arrived on my doormat this weekend.

Even though this cover is beautiful it's not the finished article. This is called a holding cover.  The actual cover will be revealed on Twitter on Friday morning. I'll share it here but do look out for it if you're on Social Media because it's an absolute stunner and I'm in awe of the illustrator Irina Avgustinovich. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the publishing process, these 'proofs' are a trial run and very few are printed. It is for us to check for any final errors and for early readers, like bloggers, librarians and booksellers to take a look at the story to see if it's something they want to shout about. They are also called ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies). 

I've been busy this week doing author visits to both cub packs of 9th Harpenden.

Author visits are hands-down my absolute favourite thing about being a children's author. It's fantastic to meet readers and do fun stuff like quizzes and games and activities. 

It's also totally brilliant to hear their story ideas, from flying elephants, to aliens with laser beams it's all wild, adventurous and exciting. 

So a huge thank you to both Elbrus and Everest packs for inviting me to meet you all. 

​It was a blast!