Biographical note

Roy Apps is the author of more than fifty children's books, including The Twitches, Fang Gang and How To Handle. He is the author of the highly successful Dream to Win series for Franklin Watts. His novel The Secret Summer of Daniel Lyons won The Writers' Guild Children's Book Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Awards. It is now a successful musical. Roy writes extensively for radio, theatre and TV. In 2001 he was awarded a BAFTA for his children's TV work, which includes Byker Grove, The Ghost Hunter and Barmy Aunt Boomerang. Roy visits schools, libraries and bookshops to read from his books and to share the secrets of The Shed in Your Head . He runs Writing Projects for all ages and over the last few years has helped young and new writers make books, stage plays, films, performance poetry and most recently, an opera. I was born in Amman, Jordan and spent some of my childhood in Italy where I learned to draw Volcanoes and stray dogs (a constant source of fascination at the time). I went to school in England and learned to draw many other things too. At Art College I studied Traditional Animation which involved rather a lot of drawing. I have illustrated for a variety of genres including Historical (lots of research), Fantasy (lots of dragons) and Horror (lots of scary stuff). This has been wonderful since my favourite books also happen to be in these genres! To relax I like going to gigs, comedy clubs (there is nothing better than laughing for a few hours straight!) and exploring London. I live with some people I adore in North London where there is an abundance of old pubs and shops full of ancient trinkets, ghastly mummified cats and the odd cannon ball.