The music, the lights, the smell of candyfloss dragging you into a fun-filled world of tricks and stunts and laughter and close happy times with your family. It sounds like a perfect life. I wrote the Circus Quest series sitting in a Circus Warehouse where performers and students were rehearsing and learning new tricks to take on tour. Bit by bit I added to the circus world in my head and on paper while I watched the students and trainers prepare for new performances for the coming touring year. Although the circus life sounds wonderful, it is filled with hard work too. Everybody must keep fit and supple for their performances. They must be able to work together in a huge family atmosphere. Sometimes injuries and equipment breakdowns can make circus life stressful. I wanted to show what life is like behind the Big Top. It can be a fabulous way to spend the summer. The Circus performers all said that the joy on children's faces is the best payment in the world.

I've been scribbling ideas down since I was a child. I lived inside my head a lot imagining huge epic stories. When I was a teaching student I started to write down ideas. Sometimes they remained idea fragments and sometimes they evolved into stories and got published. My stories often spend years being refined and changed before I stop twiddling with them and leave them alone.