Author of Grace Ella: Spells for Beginners on Day 9.
We’re delighted to welcome the lovely Sharon Marie Jones to our author advent! Sharon grew up in mountainous North Wales. As a child, she listened in wide-eyed wonderment to local tales about giants and had her very own fairy door on the crab apple tree at the bottom of the garden. She is Mam to three boys and worked as a Primary School teacher for twelve years, before finally allowing herself to pursue that magical dream of becoming an author. She now happily gazes out of the window and writes full time. Sharon’s debut book Grace-Ella: Spells for Beginners was published in September.
Name three things on your Christmas list this year! A lie-in, which I happen to ask for every year. My son thought I wanted a ‘lion’! Roar! A bwca to come and do all the clearing up. A bwca comes from Welsh folklore. He’s like a little pixie, who if treated well, will come and clean up your house in the night. Socks with no holes in them.
(Ooo I think I’ll put a bwca on my list too!)
Christmas is a time of family traditions – what are your best (or w
orst!) family traditions? We always watch ‘The Snowman’ and ‘Father Christmas’ in the run-up to Christmas – with the wood burner glowing, we snuggle up on the sofa – it’s lovely. As a child, it was my job to decorate Mam’s Christmas cake with all the bits and pieces. I loved creating a story in my mind as I was doing it and I knew the story, even if no one else could see it. The worst has to be having spent years eating my Mam’s over-boiled sprouts and pretending I liked them (I hope she doesn’t read this)!
There are wonderful stories shared at Christmas time. What is your favourite story to read at Christmas? My sons always love me to read the book we have of the poem ‘T’was the Night Before Christmas’ in the days leading up to Christmas. As a child I loved the story of ‘Babushka’.
If you could have Christmas dinner with anyone (alive today or person from history) who would it be? I think it would have to be with Santa himself. At his house, of course. It would be magical. We’d have a great feast and I bet he has all his elves do all the clearing up for him.
You have created a wonderful character in Grace-Ella: Spells for Beginners. If Grace-Ella were to cast a special spell for Christmas what would it be and why? I think that she and her friends, Bedwyr and Fflur, would build a snowman and Grace-Ella would cast a spell to make him come alive. They’d have great fun with him, especially trying to disguise him so that he could get past Mrs Bevin! Mr Bevin, on the other hand, wouldn’t be too bothered by seeing a snowman sitting in his armchair.
(I love this idea!)
Grace Ella and Mr Whiskins the cat have a wonderful partnership. If you could choose a magical festive companion for the Christmas season who would it be and why? Oh, I’d have to have Rudolph. My son Ned, always asked me to sing ‘Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer’ to him every night throughout the year, so I would have to choose Rudolph to tell him how much Ned loved him.
Reader’s question from the children at Inkpots Writers’ Hut: where did you do your first ever book signing and how did you feel? I did my first book signing at Waterstones in Aberystwyth, for the launch of ‘Grace-Ella: Spells for Beginners’. It was crazy! The queue was out through the door and they sold out of all the copies. It was a truly magical feeling knowing that children were going to be reading my story. And to see my family looking on proudly made it all the more special. I finally felt like a ‘real’ author.
Turkey or goose? Turkey
Real or fake tree? Real
Mince pies or Christmas pudding? Oooh, can I have both? Um … mince pies then.
Stockings – end of the bed or over the fireplace? End of bed
Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve? Christmas Eve
We’re so pleased you participated in our festive Q & A and we wish you a very peaceful and Happy Christmas.
Follow Sharon’s blog at sharonmariej.wordpress.com and on Twitter @sharonmariej
Carys Jones loves nothing more than to write and create stories which ignite the reader’s imagination. Based in Shropshire, England, Carys lives with her husband, two guinea pigs and her adored canine companion Rollo. When she’s not writing, Carys likes to indulge her inner geek by watching science- fiction films or playing video games. She lists John Green, Jodi Picoult and Virginia Andrews as her favourite authors and draws inspiration for her own work from anything and everything. To Carys, there is no greater feeling then when you lose yourself in a great story. We couldn’t agree more! And it is that feeling of ultimate escapism which she tries to bring to her books.
worth and Lumiere Pop! Figures and Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys. Though I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting the castle even though I’ve been very good this year!!
Reader’s question from the children at 
Jamie Thomson has been a writer of books and computer games for many years. He is now the minion and slave of the Dark Lord, Dirk Lloyd. He lives in the dungeons below his Master’s Iron Tower, chained to a desk, where he spends every day writing for his overlord. Or else. The Dark Lord is a comedic fantasy about a Dark Lord trapped in the body of a human boy here in modern day earth. The first in the series, won the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, 2012 and also made the top 100 kids books of the last ten years in the Sunday Times. Jamie has also written a series of comedy adventures in space, The Wrong Side of the Galaxy and A Galaxy Too Far. Jamie does fantastic workshops in schools and at festivals. He recently took part in the inaugural 
household.
e a dragon as Evie’s magical companion? The Bone Dragon is very much about the line between truth and fiction… and there’s such a rich history of Dragons in fiction, it gave me a lot to play with: referencing other books and stories helped me keep the reader guessing about what sort of dragon Evie’s Dragon is… I purposefully wanted to keep the ground shifting, one minute making it seem like the Dragon falls under the mentor archetype, then ‘revealing’ it as more ‘shadow-like, then confusing everything so the only conclusion seems that the Dragon plays a ‘shapeshifter’ role. But I can’t lie – if I could have a magical companion, it would probably be a Dragon. The ‘able to breath fire’ thing is a major selling point.
Reader’s question from students at Warden Park Secondary Academy: what do you do if you get stuck when you’re writing? First, I try to figure out why I’m stuck. Sometimes it’s because I need a break… but usually it’s because I don’t know what happens next: maybe I know what follows plot-wise but somehow I don’t know what little steps and pieces of dialogue take the story from where it is to the ‘next big step forwards’. The answer almost always lies with the characters: maybe I’ve made someone act out of character so it all feels wrong… or maybe I’ve got an idea that just won’t work because the character would never do the thing I want him/her to do next. The solution is to go back to who the characters are and what motivates them… and then figure out how to change the context and situation so that it is not just believable but inevitable for them to carry out the plot I’ve got in mind. So when I’m struck I try to recognise that it’s my way of telling myself I need to think a bit more carefully, plan a little more, and respect who my characters are as if they were real people.
thebookactivist 