Rae of Light

Originally a guest post on Rita Carla Monticelli's blog. Before settling down to writing and self-publishing I used to be a full time teacher in an inner city London school. Regardless of the country you teach in, anyone will tell you this is a challenging environment. Very quickly into my teaching practice I realised I had a knack for communicating with children with Special Needs (SEN as it’s called here in the UK). Most times when people think of Special Needs they latch onto the idea of a child with learning difficulties. Several times during my 13 year teaching stint I was reminded that while the majority of my students did indeed have these difficulties there were others whose behaviour marked them as SEN when in fact they were highly intelligent. Their lack of engagement with the average classroom content and insular or confrontational attitude masked their talent. At the very start of my teaching career, a...

Emily Benet is a half Welsh - half Spanish Londoner currently living on the beautiful island of Mallorca.  Wherever she's lived her passion for writing has followed. Her debut book  Shop Girl Diaries   began as a blog about working in her Mum's eccentric chandelier shop.  It won the Completely Novel Author Blog Awards at the London Book Fair. Her second book, a romantic comedy called  The Temp , also began its life online, as a serialised novel on Wattpad and racked up two million hits under its original title Spray Painted Bananas.  Her newly released novel, #PleaseRetweet , teases society's obsession with celebrity and social media. www.emilybenet.com www.twitter.com/EmilyBenet www.facebook.com/EmilyBenetAuthor Foreword Not too long ago, guest writer Benet was sharpening her fingers and offering guest posts to all and sundry on Twitter. So I took her at her word.  Little did I realise my loose use of the term "downtime" would give my ...

Rosemary Hayes was brought up and educated in the UK but has also lived in France, America and Australia. She has a background in publishing (with Cambridge University Press and later running her own company, Anglia Young Books). Her first novel, Race Against Time , set in Australia, was runner-up for the Kathleen Fidler Award. Since then she has written over forty books for children which have been published in the UK and Australia by several leading imprints. A feature length film of one of her books, The Blue-Eyed Aborigine which retells one of the most extraordinary, and violent, events in Australia’s history, is currently in development. Her most recent books, The Mark , a fast moving novel about two teenagers on the run and The Travellers , four stories about gypsy children, were published in August 2015. As well as writing for children, Rosemary is also a reader for a well known Author’s Advisory Service and runs creative writing workshops for both adult...