MAGIC AT DRYSDALE'S SCHOOL

The 7^th Sprite Sister story is on its way!

It was an iron fist of a winter. For months, a biting easterly wind swept across Norfolk, chilling our bones and making us huddle indoors. When will it end, we kept asking? For months I was unwell and struggled to write. It seemed the cold would never pass and my book would never get finished.

Now, outside my window, the apple tree is covered with buds, clasped tight like tiny little pink fists. We have had the first rain in weeks – a gentle April shower. The air is bright and warming gradually. The birds are busy building their nests, the daffodils are in bloom and Spring feels as if it is finally here.

And I have finished my 7^th Sprite Sisters book, Magic at Drysdale’s School. It feels a good time to be launching what may be my final Sprite story – though I have left enough strands to carry on the series if I change my mind.

Here is the blurb for the back jacket:-

When Zak Ashworth joins Drysdale’s School, the Sprite Sisters and their cousin Verena know that trouble will follow. Zak carries within him the dark power of the screegling – one of the vile subterranean insects that he summoned to Sprite Towers and which brought terrifying danger to the Sprite family.

As Flame anguishes about having a secret magic power and Marina comes face to face with Zak, Ash is led to a mysterious stone. Soon the Sprite Sisters, Verena and Zak are drawn by an Earth power that none can escape. But where Zak goes, the screegling goes too –– and its dark magic will out.

I don’t have a jacket design to show you yet, but it won’t be long. Once that is finished, I shall publish my story as a print-on-demand paperback and as an e-book, the same as the other six titles. The magic of self-publishing is that once you have the component parts assembled, sending out your story to the world takes only a matter of hours.

The first five Sprite stories are set in one year when the sisters are aged 13, 12, 10 and 9 years. The Boy With Hawk-like Eyes – the sixth title – moves the story on two years so that Flame is now 15, Marina is 14, Ash is 12 and Ariel is 11 years old. The easiness chumminess of the sisters in the early stories has given way to teenage doubts and tensions.

In Magic at Drysdale’s School, Flame is wracked with worry about her magic power. Unable to tell her boyfriend Quinn, she feels torn between being honest – as she is, naturally, and wants to be – and having to keep secret one vital part of her being. The result is conflict.

The story follows hard on the heels of The Boy With Hawk-like Eyes and similarly the adults play a less important role. In these stories the magic must be kept absolutely secret and the sisters must make decisions for themselves.

As you might expect, much of the action takes place at Drysdale’s School. Flame and Marina are now weekly boarders at the big independent school, along with their Sprite cousin, Verena. Zak Ashworth has also joined Drysdale’s and his dark magic has followed him. Wary of Zak, the Sprite Sisters refuse to speak to him.

In the earlier Sprite stories, the sisters discovered that Sprite Towers was full of magic. They battled against the evil Glenda Glass and found the way to use their magic power to protect themselves. They discovered a plan that enabled them to travel back to the past, wrestled with an evil ghost and met a relative who had died ninety years ago. Using their magic power to travel through portals, the Sprite Sisters found a way to change the future.

In Magic at Drysdale’s School, Ash is drawn to a large stone outside the school chapel. With her power of Earth she is able to feel the power emanating from the stone. In this story, we enter the world of ley lines – known as dragon lines in China and Geisterwege in Germany. This is a story about Earth energy and magic pathways.

Will the Sprite Sisters continue? That, I don’t know at the moment. I have been approached by a production company and am confident that the Sprite Sisters will make their way to film or television in the next few years. A top Japanese agent is working hard to sell the series in Japan. Things are afoot in the world of the Sprite Sisters.

Meanwhile my creative thinking is moving to The Earth Stories. This trilogy will be set in Breckland, a wild area of West Norfolk inhabited by the Iceni tribe two thousand years ago. With a post-apocalyptic scenario, The Earth Stories will be about a small group of survivors who go back to the Old Ways and use Earth Wisdom. Their shamanic magic is challenged by another group of survivors intent on recreating technology as we know it today.

THE SPRITE SISTERS

Four sisters

Four elements

Four powers

THE WRITER'S BUBBLE

Two hours, fifty-five minutes and counting. By my reckoning I should be able to file this blog at midnight. I wrote 1200 words in 90 minutes the other evening between 9pm and 11pm. But I won’t write even 500 words now unless I can go into the bubble.

The bubble is a quiet place. It’s a soothing, yet dynamic space where the ideas and words appear exactly as you need them. You don’t fight the words in the bubble. They plip into your consciousness as if by magic. Ah yes, you think, as you type the words. Of course . . .

For me, the bubble appears in the evening. When the day’s busy-ness recedes, when the business of eating is complete and when I can find no other excuses – that’s when I sit down and write the words that have eluded me all day, maybe all week. It is time to write this chapter, I tell myself as I settle at my desk – and write it I will before I go to sleep tonight.

And, somehow, I do. I may have faffed about all day, but around 9pm my brain settles and the words begin to flow: because that’s what happens in the bubble. The words come, one by one, the sentences build and little by little the story emerges right in front of your eyes. You find yourself writing a twist in the plot that you did not know was there until the moment you press the keys. That’s a good idea, you think. I like that. I wonder where it’s leading me? And, providing you don’t rush, providing you feel the stillness around and inside you, providing that you trust the process – then the story will unfold. And, as it unfolds, right before your eyes, you know it’s the story you were seeking all along. It feels – like magic.

My bubble came as the snow fell; four inches in the first night and the world transformed. For the next two weeks, I watched as the snow deepened and the ice grew more deadly. Inside I was warm, protected and quiet. Day by day I stayed inside my bubble and each day wrote a new chapter. How my story would finally resolve I did not know, but, like a crossword being pieced together and alert to the clues in front of my eyes, its resolution suddenly became apparent.

Suddenly I was typing the words THE END. Is that the best bit? I always laugh. It seems a surprise to finish a story!

For a few hours, maybe days, you smile. The feeling of elation remains even as you print out your story, do the read-through, correct the typos and tighten pieces of writing here and there, then print it out again.

Then, carefully, you place your manuscript in a box file – and, as you do this, the elation recedes. Suddenly it feels as if it has another life. This story is not just in your head or stored on a file on your computer anymore, you realise, staring down at it. As you close the lid on the box file you know that your story is already out there.

You get into the car and place the box file on the seat beside you. Nobody has seen this story, you think, glancing down at it as you find your way through the traffic. Nobody but me knows what happens – but it has already gone, flown away. In a matter of minutes you will hand the manuscript to your editor. This story that you have owned, which did not exist until a few weeks ago has to find its own way in the world.

You drive home feeling happy, but a little empty. The bubble has faded. The house needs cleaning and you need a walk, a good long walk. Over the course of the next week you find your mind begins to empty of words. The mental clutter of life returns. But the bubble is there, waiting.

Sheridan Winn is author of the Sprite Sister stories.

She has just finished writing the 7^th title in the series,

Magic at Drysdale’s School.

http://www.sheridanwinn.com