Festive Guest Post - Amy Ephron - The Other Side of the Wall - Tess & Max’s Top Ten Favorite Things about London at Christmastime

Today on Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books we have a wonderful guest post by Los Angeles based author Amy Ephron. We're going to take a winter festive walk with Max and Tess looking at their top favourite things to do in London at Christmas time.  

What would you do? 

Check out the post for inspiration and take a walk on The Other Side. If you would like to read my book review then please click the link below. Thank you for reading and have a GREAT Christmas. 
                             
                            The Other Side of the Wall by Amy Ephron
            Philomel Books | Hardcover ISBN: 9781984813275 | $16.99 |Ages 8-12
                     Mr. Ripleys Enchanted Books - BOOK REVIEW HERE
                                              
                                               ABOUT THE BOOK:
In this new adventure with Tess and Max, internationally bestselling author Amy Ephron takes readers to London at Christmastime, where a new fantastical journey awaits.

It’s Christmas break and Tess and Max are in London, staying at the posh Sanborn House with their Aunt Evie. As they wait for their parents to arrive, there is an unusual snowstorm that makes the city seem as if it's caught in a snow globe. Perfect weather for an adventure in Hyde Park. But when Max, Tess, and Aunt Evie leave to search for a cab, they find a horse and carriage and driver curiously waiting for them at the curb. And that's just the beginning...

Soon Tess is charmed by a mysterious boy named Colin who lives at the hotel all year round--on the 8th floor. But Max is sure the elevator only had 7 floors the day before. And how come everyone at the hotel seems to ignore Colin? Things seem to get stranger and stranger. There's a 1920s costume party in Colin's parents' apartment. A marble that seems to be more than it appears. And a shadow that passes mysteriously by Tess and Max's hotel window.

Tess & Max’s Top Ten Favorite Things about London at Christmastime

1. Ride the London Eye, the big Ferris wheel, and marvel at the Christmas decorations sparkling all over the city. (Hope Tess doesn’t have to rescue anyone.) 

2. Have tea at Harrods. (No Nutella, please.) 

3. Go to Hyde Park, especially if it’s lightly snowing. 

4. Watch the ceremony of the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. 

5. Shop at a bookstore and check out the mysteries as their Dad likes British mysteries. Check out the poetry section for something that would appeal to their mom. Persuade Aunt Evie that they both need new chapter books. Max might even distract Aunt Evie, while Tess buys a book about British birds and hides it in her backpack for Aunt Evie to open on Christmas, too. 

6. Go to Victoria skateboard park. Awesome 

7. Convince Aunt Evie to take a drive in the blue Bentley all the way to Hampton Court. And, once there, try to navigate their way through the maze. (Careful, you never know what’s on the other side.) 

8. Split a prime rib dinner on Sunday night at a fancy pub in London. 

9. Wander Kew Gardens at night on their amazing new dark walk and explore the “immersive light trail.” 

10. Go to Portobello Market, the outdoor antique fair, with Aunt Evie. Hope Aunt Evie magically finds another matching glass to the crystal one that was their grandmother’s. and Tess finds a snowball with a horse and driver and carriage inside and when you turn it up-side-down and turn it right again, it looks as if snowflakes are falling all around the carriage and the cobblestoned street.

                                         (Photo by Katrina Dickson)
   About the Author

Amy Ephron (www.amyephron.com) is the author of The Castle in the Mist, her first book for young readers, which was nominated for a SCIBA Award, and of Carnival Magic, a companion book. Amy has also written several adult books, including A Cup of Tea, which was an international bestseller. Her novel One Sunday Morning received the Booklist Best Fiction of the Year and Best Historical Fiction of the Year awards and was a Barnes and Noble Book Club selection. She is a contributor and contributing editor at Vogue and Vogue.com, and her work has appeared in numerous other publications. She was also the executive producer of Warner Brothers' A Little Princess. Amy lives in Los Angeles with her husband; between them, they have five children. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @amyephron.

Guest Post: Nick Tomlinson - The Ghouls of Howlfair - How I Became a Horror Writer

Hello everybody. The nights are getting darker and Halloween is getting closer. I hear you all asking, what's new in the scary kid's book world? What book is going to get your heart racing and your spine-tingling? Well, this is the book for you. It's the fantastic debut spooky mystery by Nick Tomlinson (illustrated by Kim Geyer). The Ghouls of Howlfair will be published by Walker Books this October (2019). This might just be the book that you've been looking for. 

Welcome, Nick, to Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books. Thank you for writing this guest post about the book and how you became a Horror writer. I am sure that this post will entice everyone to pick this book up and read it this coming autumn. Bookdepository.com

Firing Jacob and Hiring Molly – How I Became a Horror Writer 
Aeons ago, after my first book (written for grown-ups) got good reviews but only sold four copies, I decided to become a children’s writer. Everyone was going loopy about Harry Potter, and becoming a famous children’s writer struck me as the best way to achieve my artistic dream of selling more than four books. Also, I’d had an amazing idea for a middle-grade fantasy story, and I wanted to write it before someone else got there first. 


In kids’ fantasy books, you tend to get the main character who journeys to a magical world (say, Narnia) from somewhere real (say, Smethwick). Often there’s a reason why the character’s destined to go to that fantasy world. They have credentials - they’ve defeated Voldemort or they’re meant to fulfil an ancient prophecy or something. This is where I tripped myself up: I had a good reason why my character, Jacob, was supposed to journey to my fantasy land (Howlfair, a scary town full of monsters), but it was so flipping complicated that it took me half the book to explain it. Jacob and my book were doomed from the start, but I wrote it anyway, and rewrote it, and rewrote it. 


There was something pure about my early efforts to write the book. Specifically, they were pure rubbish. Every other page saw some soothsayer step from behind a curtain and deliver a speech about a meaningful aspect of Jacob’s backstory. By the final scene, the monsters were so bored with delivering speeches that they wanted to be killed. 


My agent didn’t deal with children’s books, so we parted ways and now I had no agent. I wrote hundreds of drafts and sent them to scores of agents; many liked the opening chapters but spat out their coffee when I told them the final word-count. They’d advise me to cut fifty-thousand words, so I’d chop the manuscript in half and then neaten up the edges by adding some clarifying dialogue about Jacob’s highly significant past, and suddenly presto! The manuscript was even bigger than before. Like a self-renewing monster from Greek myth. 


I carried on hacking down and bulking up my manuscript for fifteen years, always convinced that the next draft would be the one that’d get published. 


My fantasy setting, Howlfair, was a town built over a gateway to Hell. Miners had accidentally opened the gateway, flooding the whole valley with monsters. The townsfolk had organised themselves into special groups to take on the monsters – the Order of Noble Vampire Hunters, the Order of the Silver Bullet, etc. My protagonist, Jacob, accidentally found himself joining a group of wimpy warrior-farmers that everyone else laughed at. But, owing to a three-hundred-page backstory involving a potion Jacob had drunk when he was four, Jacob’s destiny was to lead this rag-tag group in a mission to save Howlfair from a demon. It was a pretty good premise, I thought - but I couldn’t make it work. It wasn’t until I was lounging in a beer-barrel hot-tub on a dog-friendly eco-holiday in Wales, a holiday my wife and I had booked after adopting a dog we’d found outside a petrol station in Birmingham, that I suddenly realised how to save the story. 


What if I stopped trying to write a fantasy book and wrote horror instead? In horror, a character doesn’t go from Smethwick to Narnia. In horror, something malicious comes from Hell to Smethwick. Something evil invades the day-to-day. Your character doesn’t need a reason to go where the action happens, because in horror the action happens right here. 


Unfortunately, this meant that I had to fire poor Jacob. His backstory was a many-tentacled presence in my mind. The thought of him gave me vertigo. I needed a new protagonist, one without baggage. 


For a long time, a character called Molly Thompson had been patiently haunting my imagination. I’d never considered her for this story because she wasn’t a feisty brave hero like you nearly always get in kids’ fantasy books. She was a shy bookworm, based on the shy bookworms I’d taught in a Birmingham girls’ school, girls who described themselves as weird and clumsy and socially awkward. I’d hoped to write a book one day in which these girls could meet a character like themselves, a character who was shy and awkward but 
unstoppable, and Molly would be the star of that book. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt as though Molly wanted to be in my Howlfair story. 


I turned Howlfair from a fantasy world into a corny tourist town with lots of silly old legends about monsters, legends nobody believes in. Nobody, that is, except a shy, unstoppable amateur historian named Molly Thompson, who lives in the creepy Excelsior Guesthouse. Molly knows the old legends better than anyone else, and she certainly knows them well enough to spot when one of them – the legend of the Ghouls of Loonchance Manor – is starting to come true… 


How does Molly fare? Well, she’s definitely not your usual brave adventurer. But, though I feel bad for Jacob, I hope readers will agree that once the scary old stories of Howlfair begin coming to life and someone needs to stop them, Molly turned out to be the right person for the job.

Twitter: @Tomlinsonio
Website: https://www.nicktomlinson.com

Carlie Sorosiak - I, Cosmo - Blog Tour - Nosy Crow Books (8th Aug 2019)

It's an absolute pleasure to be part of the blog tour for Carlie Sorosiak's I, Cosmo which was published by the mighty Nosy Crow Books on August 1st, 2019. This is a fantastic and poignant story from the perspective of a much-loved pet, a dog called Cosmo. Below this review, Carlie has written a small post about the process of writing from this perspective. 

This is a brilliantly written story that makes you think about Cosmo's relationship with Max and his feuding family. The narrative is very thought-provoking whilst also dribbling with turkey juices and doggy humour. The more you read, the sadder the story gets, so get ready with the tissues! The story is very sensitively told and is an insightful view of modern-day family life.

The story plays with human emotions setting you on a path of human frailty and the complexities of a family unit.  It's a very relatable story, one dog's attempt to save his family, that will both delight and entertain you from the very first page. You will dance and skip through the beating narrative which will engulf you with warmth, sadness, and happiness. All of which works on so many levels. 

This is a barking and slightly different adventure where cats are not allowed.  I, Cosmo is a wagging-tail star in the making! 

Author's Guest Post. 
On writing from an animal’s perspective. 
Several times now, I’ve been asked: How difficult was it for you to write from a dog’s perspective? I think the assumption here, in large part, is that it must’ve been difficult – than placing oneself in the mind of a non-human narrator is a considerable challenge. Looking back at the writing process, I can absolutely see why people might think that; after all, Cosmo is more prone to focusing on his sense of smell (and on squirrels) than the average human. 

But I’ll admit that I’ve never truly fit in with most humans. I find a great deal of them entirely perplexing. Some social interactions baffle me; deciding where to sit in my middle school cafeteria was akin to diffusing a bomb – in stress level, at least. My comfort has always been with animals, dogs in particular. They’re great listeners. They wear their emotions in the flick of their tails, in the position of their ears. I understand them in a way that I never have with people. 

So I was quite confident when I started writing Cosmo – and that confidence continued the whole way through the process. I hope I’ve captured that essential dog-ness. And I hope that I, Cosmo is a comfort to others like me, who often prefer the company of animals.

Author Bio - Carlie Sorosiak grew up in North Carolina. She has a master’s in English from Oxford University and another in publishing from City, University of London. She is the author of two novels for young adults, If Birds Fly Back and Wild Blue Wonder. Her goals include traveling to all seven continents and fostering a wide variety of animals. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and her American dingo. 

Twitter: @carliesorosiak 
Website: carliesorosiak.com

Book Synopsis
The story of one dog's attempt to save his family, become a star, and eat a lot of bacon. Cosmo's family is falling apart. And it's up to Cosmo to keep them together. He knows exactly what to do. There's only one problem. Cosmo is a Golden Retriever. Wise, funny, and filled with warmth and heart, this is Charlotte's Web meets Little Miss Sunshine - a moving, beautiful story, with a wonderfully unique hero, from an incredible new voice in middle-grade fiction. 

Come and join in with the rest of the blog tour for more reviews, guest posts, and giveaways. See the list of stops below. 

Julie Pike - The Last Spell Breather - Blog Tour (Stories that Inspired)

Welcome to the second week celebrating the brilliant publication of Julie Pike's debut book. we're delighted to be hosting the blog tour for The Last Spell Breather which is a fantastic read. I wholeheartedly recommend you spare the time to read it. This post is about the stories that might have led to inspiring this book.

If you were to write a book, blog readers, what stories might influence the novel you would write today? Have a think, it's an interesting question. If you have any thoughts and you would like to share them on Twitter then use #TheLastSpellBreather. 

I would like to thank Julie and Oxford University Press for letting Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books host a stop on this wonderful blog tour. You are always welcome here at any time. 

I hope you enjoy the post. 

I am delighted the Spell Breather blog tour has swung by Mr. Ripley’s Enchanted Books. As you’re reading this web page, you already know that for brilliant books you can’t beat a ‘word of mouth’ recommendation. Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books is a place I have discovered many great books over the years. 

The first person to recommend a book to me was my mother. She introduced me to Enid Blyton when I was six, and happily watched as I devoured as many of her magical adventures as my pocket money would allow. I wrote a sequel to Enid Blyton’s Book of Brownies, because I enjoyed the story so much I wanted to carry on the adventure. I remember writing it with a blue ballpoint pen, on lined A4 paper. When it was done, I tied the pages with grey wool, ‘borrowed’ from my mother’s knitting bag. 

When I was a young teen, Mam introduced me to Georgette Heyer. Her adventure stories were thrilling! One of my favourites is The Masqueraders, where a brother and sister, fleeing from the Jacobite rising, swap clothes and have dangerous adventures in Regency London. I adore her character Prudence, who dresses as a young buck, brazening it out, drinking and duelling. It may seem tame today, but it was written in the 1920s, and I first read it in the 1980s. I love this story. So much so I have written Georgette Heyer fanfiction. 

As an older teen, my brother introduced me to the wonderful Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters. Looking back, it’s no surprise that my first novel should feature a fantasy version of a medieval healer. I didn’t realise at the time, but it’s clear to me now that all the stories I love have found their way into my ‘writer’s cauldron’. I’m sure you know what I mean. My cauldron is the place where all the stories swirl together, synthesising themselves into different shapes, ready for me to ladle out when I’m thinking up new ideas. 

Peering into my cauldron today, I can clearly see three stories that wormed their way into my imagination and wove themselves into The Last Spell Breather.

The first is a The Abhorsen Trilogy, by Garth Nix. I love everything about this story. I love its characters, its large-scale world building, and its unique ‘charter magic’. Reading this story was the first time I’d encountered a cast of creatures and characters perfectly set within their own myths and magic systems, and it lit my imagination like a firework. When I turned the last page, I wanted to carry on the adventure. 

The second is Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. When I was writing an early draft of Spell Breather, my friend Jacqui recommended this brilliant story. It reminded me that books are powerful objects. The words inside have a life of their own, and bad things happen when they’re not looked after properly. 

Spook’s Apprentice by Joseph Delaney tells a magical and medieval tale of a boy training to protect his home from witches. Witches so powerful they can outwit his every move. I love a good apprentice story. This one particularly resonates because his Mam has a dark secret. 

Putting these stories together, I can see they share a common theme. A warning about what happens when magic breaks or falls out of balance. This theme is something I wanted to explore in The Last Spell Breather and now I can see what drew me to it. 

Looking into my cauldron again, I’m wondering if every ‘original’ idea in my tale has come from other much-loved stories? Stories like, Magyk by Angie Sage, Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, Labyrinth, Dr Who, A Matter of Life and Death, and Sapphire & Steal. 

I think I’ll give my cauldron a good stir, so I can’t see the ingredients anymore. I prefer my idea ladles brimming with mixed magic. 

Writers often get asked: Where do your ideas come from? I’ve been wondering how I would answer that question. Writing this blog has given me my answer. Ideas come from all the stories that have gone before. We writers pass them on to each other in a glorious story continuum, from one cauldron to another.

If you’d like to write stories, then my advice is to ‘fill your story cauldron’. Fill it with Books, and TV and Films and Video Games – and keep stirring. That way, when you settle to write, the synthesis of all your favourite stories is guaranteed to deliver a ‘unique’ adventure, one that you want to follow and read yourself.

And then one day, YOUR story will be recommended to others. It will go on to fill their writer’s cauldron and take its place in the great continuum. 
Happy reading. Happy writing.

Julie Pike – Biography 
Julie grew up on a council estate, nestled between the forests and foothills of the Welsh Valleys. She is passionate about adventure stories, and volunteers in local schools and libraries in Dorset, helping children find stories that excite them. She is passionate about real-life adventures too, and has crawled inside the great pyramid of Giza, travelled to the peak of Kilimanjaro, and camped on the Great Wall of China in a lightning storm. Twitter: @juliepike

(The Last Spell Breather – Book Cover – illustrated by Dinara Mirtalipova)

The Last Spell Breather – Synopsis 
Enter the unique world of the Spell Breathers! Spell Breathing does not come naturally to Rayne - she loathes the hours of practice, the stacks of scrolls, and the snapping mud grotesques that cover her mother’s precious spell book. When she holds the spell book over a fire, it is only meant as an empty threat – until she feels the grotesque’s tiny teeth biting into her finger and lets go. In one clumsy move, her mother’s spells are broken, her village is plunged into danger, and an incredible adventure begins . . . 

Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books Book Review is HERE

Liz Flanagan (Dragon Daughter Blog Tour) - Top 5 Dragon Books - Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books

Good morning. All this week we are celebrating the paperback book release of Liz Flanagan's DRAGON DAUGHTER. There is a lot to get excited about as Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books is the fifth stop on this blog tour (please see the list for the other stops at the bottom of the page). All posts explore the ideas and inspiration behind this brilliant story. However, this particular post is focused around the authors top five dragon books and school visits. 

What would your favourite dragon books be? Please share your favourite on Twitter using #DragonDaughter. For me, the Eragon series by Christopher Paolini and Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke would be in my top five list. However, check out this fascinating post below. Hopefully, it will inspire you to pick up this amazing book or invite the author to your school for an author event. Enjoy the post.

Writers are often told to ‘write what you know’, but how do you write about mythical creatures like dragons–unless you do actually have a secret dragon at your house? Partly, my dragons are a combination of many different real animals I’ve known, and partly they’ reinspired by the dragons from books and films I’ve loved. 

In my school visits, we always have long chats about why we love dragons so much, why they hold an enduring fascination for us, in so many different times and cultures, and why people have imagined dragons in many varied ways. I really enjoy hearing all the different ideas children have on this subject!

Personally, I was drawn to the contrast between a tiny fragile scaly creature that’s just tapped its way out of an egg, and the massive, powerful firebreather with the capacity to destroy whole cities. I love the idea of an animal who can fly anywhere, but who chooses to seek out people. And I loved the idea of a unique bond between a dragon and a particular child, a bond that would last a lifetime and define both of them. My dragons can’t speak, but they can communicate via their calls and their gestures, and they can read the thoughts of people around them. 

In the past, I’ve loved the way different authors describe dragons –include the great Ursula Le Guin and Anne McCaffrey. But there are also some more recent middle-grade novels that are full of memorable dragons, so I’ve made a list of five that I’ve loved recently. 

All these authors have imagined dragons in different ways, but here are just a few of my middle-grade favourites. Some are very new; some are old friends:

• The Secret Dragonby Ed Clarke (Puffin) Eleven-year-old Mari Jones is a fossil-hunter, inspired by her hero Mary Anning, and she longs to be a real scientist. She thinks she’s found an amazing fossil on the beach one day and is shocked to realise it’s alive and is, in fact, a real Welsh dragon. I loved Mari, and her friendship with Dylan, the new boy at school. This story is so beautifully written, with deeper themes of loss and finding your courage and self-belief. The soft, sweet interior illustrations are by Simone Krüger.

• The Boy Who Grew Dragons by Andy Shepherd, illustrated by Sara Ogilvie (Piccadilly Press) At the heart of this book is a beautiful relationship between the main character Tomas and his grandad. Helping Grandad in the garden, Tomas discovers an incredible plant that actually grows dragons. Tomas bonds with a little dragon called Flicker, but soon learns that young dragons cause chaos –and that he is likely to be blamed for their destructive habits and incendiary poos. There's so much humour and fun, as well as real warmth and tenderness, in this book, and the illustrations by Sara Ogilvie are full of life and energy.

• How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell (Hodder Children’s Books) One of the most popular dragons of all! I’ve loved the film adaptations of this series too, although I find the books have more mud and snot and humour. I really love the relationship between Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third and his undersized dragon Toothless. The pair save all the Vikings on their island with their quick thinking and skill at speaking Dragonese.

 

• Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons by Dugald A. Steer, illustrated by Wayne Anderson, Douglas Carrel and Helen Ward (Templar) This book is like an encyclopedia of dragons! It covers many different species, habitats, and life-cycles. It also includes magical elements, offering some useful spells and charms. Stunningly illustrated, it blends real history and science with mythology in a truly bewitching way. For those who like their dragons grounded in lots of gorgeously presented ‘information’.

• The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart by Stephanie Burgis (Bloomsbury) Adventurine the young dragon is so impatient to start exploring that she ignores her family’s warnings about the danger of the outside world and those alarming creatures out there. A food-mage wizard turnsAdventurine into a girl and she must learn to survive in the human world. The book features friendship and chocolate, two of life’s most delightful things, and I couldn’t help falling in love with this charming story.

Dragon Daughter is published by David Fickling Books.

ISBN: 978-1-78845-021-8 - Priced £6.99

Cover art by Angelo Rinaldi

Interior art by Paul Duffield