Finding the motivation and working on my blog…
For sometime now, I have struggled to begin River Dark, the sequel to Candle Dark. There were so many other things to complete, such as networking, book signing, updating my blog – all aspects of publicity that are so important if my books are to become more widely known. Updating the blog has been a pleasure during the month of April, for the task was to make a blog entry every day during that month. I decided that my entries would be about my favourite children’s book, and so it was a task I really enjoyed. The photograph of a book cover is from the Orlando series of books that I was given as a child. (http://caroleannecarr.blogspot.com)
How I started writing……
As a child I first wrote stories to keep myself company, for I had no brothers and sisters. Then I wrote plays on scraps of paper and asked the children who lived in the same street as myself to act in them with me. I grew up during the years of the Second World War and in my childhood there were no libraries in our classrooms, but we each had a school reader. This was a book containing a collection of fairy tales, and as we struggled to understand what the words meant, we enjoyed the beautiful illustrations and the stories. Then one day – it was just before we broke up for the long summer holidays and I was eight – we walked a mile to the nearest town with our teacher to visit a library for the very first time. I can still remember the wonderful feeling, walking back to school along the dusty pavements on that hot summer’s day, clutching my first precious library books, and knowing I could return to the library and borrow more. During the following winter, when left on my own in a room that had a dusty collection of Victorian novels, I read them all, often scaring myself to death with some of the more frightening stories. But it was my eagerness to enter those many exciting worlds within the pages of the books that led me to be a teacher and an author. During my years teaching in a Shropshire Primary School, I accompanied children on many environmental study trips, and I am now using those visits as material for my adventure stories.
As a grown up I had a varied life, working as a teenager in a bank in Zimbabwe, then returning to England to become deputy head of a primary school. After early retirement, there were many careers. Working first as an actress, I then set up my own art and craft business, trained for three years to hold the Office of Reader in the Church of England, and then became a full time writer of children’s fiction. Living in Shropshire, I write historical fiction for older children, suitable for Key Stage 2 and 3. I have just completed my first fantasy, set in the Shropshire village of Tong that moves into Norse Mythology. At the moment, I am writing the sequel to Candle Dark, to be called River Dark, set on the Severn.Candle Dark is a story about a pit pony driver in the Blists Hill mine and is an exciting adventure suitable for Key Stage 2 and available in my bookshop and at the Museum Book Shop in the Victorian Village at Blists Hill. I have further books planned for the Wolf, the Task Bearer Series, and the Little Boy Series for beginner readers, and I am looking forward to writing more adventure stories.
Happy Reading!
Carole Anne Carr
B.Ed.Hons.(Primary), C.Ed.(Medieval History), HDTheology, HDChildren’s Literature, Office of Reader (West of England Ministerial Training College)
Member of The National Children’s University, Society of Authors and the National Association of Writers in Education, Shropshire Children’s University, Storytelling Society.
As a child I first wrote stories to keep myself company, for I had no brothers and sisters. Then I wrote plays on scraps of paper and asked the children who lived in the same street as myself to act in them with me. I grew up during the years of the Second World War and in my childhood there were no libraries in our classrooms, but we each had a school reader. This was a book containing a collection of fairy tales, and as we struggled to understand what the words meant, we enjoyed the beautiful illustrations and the stories. Then one day – it was just before we broke up for the long summer holidays and I was eight – we walked a mile to the nearest town with our teacher to visit a library for the very first time. I can still remember the wonderful feeling, walking back to school along the dusty pavements on that hot summer’s day, clutching my first precious library books, and knowing I could return to the library and borrow more. During the following winter, when left on my own in a room that had a dusty collection of Victorian novels, I read them all, often scaring myself to death with some of the more frightening stories. But it was my eagerness to enter those many exciting worlds within the pages of the books that led me to be a teacher and an author. During my years teaching in a Shropshire Primary School, I accompanied children on many environmental study trips, and I am now using those visits as material for my adventure stories.
