Katherine Roberts

Sometimes it seems blogs are all hard work and no play, but occasionally something happens that reminds you why you do it, and the lovely Jenny Alexander who writes in the House of Dreams has sent me a blog award! Liebster is a German word meaning "dearest", and the award is given to up-and-coming bloggers with less than 200 followers, which means the unicorn qualifies unless 161 people suddenly follow him before he's finished this blog post. According to Jenny, these are the things you should do if you receive the award: 1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you (tick). 2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog (the unicorn might bend this rule slightly... see below!). 3. Copy and paste the award on your blog (tick). 4. Hope that the people you’ve sent the award to forward it to their five favourite bloggers (the unicorn is going to modify this rule and suggest UP TO five since he's already ben...

Today the unicorn welcomes author  Pauline Fisk , who tells us how she came to write her Smarties Prize winning novel MIDNIGHT BLUE, now relaunched just in time for Christmas as an e-book for Kindle... over to you, Pauline! The house stood on the hilltop above my village. In the morning when the sun came up, its windows turned to gold and you could see them shining for miles around. When I first knew it, the house was lived in. But even after its tenants moved out, the farmer who owned it insisting on not replacing them, leaving it to fall down, I always reckoned it was the best house in the county. It wasn’t just its stooping old beams and quarry-tiled floors that made it special, or its inglenook fireplaces and jumble of never-ending rooms, corridors and staircases. It was the view. Hampton Haze stood above Rea Valley, with the hills of Shropshire in front of it - including the rocky Stiperstones - and Wales at its back door. It caught all weathers, which was w...

This Sunday the unicorn will bring you an exclusive guest post by Smarties Prize winning author Pauline Fisk, talking about the magical house she lived in while she was writing her book "Midnight Blue". Curious? Then be sure to visit again next week and leave Pauline a comment!

I know, I know... nothing new posted here for two weeks! What has the unicorn been up to? Well, I do have an excuse. I'm helping my author write her third Pendragon book about King Arthur's daughter , and my poor little unicorn brain can only think about creating one piece of writing at any one time. Bowed horn. But since it's now officially winter, and you humans have been messing around with the clocks so that it gets dark at 5pm, I thought you might like to revisit these lovely posts guaranteed to make you feel warmer: http://reclusivemuse.blogspot.com/2011/02/muse-monday-nis-by-katherine-langrish.html http://authorselectric.blogspot.com/2011/10/trail-of-tale-joan-lennon.html There. Don't you feel warmer already?