{"id":876,"date":"2009-09-26T07:18:20","date_gmt":"2009-09-26T15:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/?p=876"},"modified":"2009-09-26T07:29:42","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T15:29:42","slug":"horrifying-em-in-harwich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/?p=876","title":{"rendered":"Horrifying ’em in Harwich"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first school visit of the new academic year was a two-day booking at The Harwich School<\/strong> in Essex. It was brilliant<\/strong>. The library, where I did my talks, was equipped with a laptop and a digital projector. Since I’ve just this week been sent the latest version of what might become the cover for CRAWLERS, <\/strong>I took the opportunity to test it out on its target audience…!<\/p>\n

\"topsecret\"<\/p>\n

The cover is a work-in-progress, so I’m not going to show it to you any more clearly than this (above) for now. But I will say that people’s reactions [‘Sick<\/strong>‘, ‘Cool<\/strong>‘ and – especially – ‘Ew!<\/strong>‘] were pretty much exactly what my publishers and I are hoping for<\/strong>. HEE HEE HEE!<\/p>\n

\"mrdace\"<\/p>\n

A monster<\/strong> thank you to Mr Dace (above) for inviting me and organizing this terrific visit, and huge and gleeful thanks to everyone I met at Harwich for the wonderful, warm welcome they gave me. All the questions I was asked over the course of the two days were excellent. Here’s one from Bex<\/strong>, 12, who wrote in to the Tim Guestbook<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What’s it like being an author? I wish to be one when I’m older<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I love being an author. It’s my dream job. But like any job, it’s not for everyone. Luckily it’s an easy one to try: all you have to do is sit down, make up a thrilling story, and write it<\/strong> – it’s as simple, and as difficult, as that.<\/p>\n

The internet is full of thousands of blogs and websites written by authors, which may also give you an idea of what being one is like. For a place to start, try www.trappedbymonsters.com<\/a> , the joint blog I’m involved in with seven other authors (you can see a poster for Dragon Orb <\/strong>by one of them, Mark Robson<\/strong>, in the first pic above!) All their websites are fabulous, and they’re easy to find if you follow the links on the TBM ‘authors<\/a>‘ page. But nothing will show you what being an author is like as definitely as making the time to give it a go for yourself<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Whether you find it suits you, or you don’t, I wish you the best of luck.<\/p>\n

Sam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first school visit of the new academic year was a two-day booking at The Harwich School in Essex. It was brilliant. The library, where I did my talks, was equipped with a laptop and a digital projector. Since I’ve just this week been sent the latest version of what might become the cover for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,12,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":911,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions\/911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}