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Hello there.
My name's Michaela.
Hard to spell name.
Rhymes with sailor.
I like stories.
I think it's fun.
I've got a cat and a dog and I've got a son.
I like to rhyme and I like to rap.
But I never ever wear a baseball cap.
I come to schools and libraries to talk about writing.
To tell you all that it's exciting.
To start with scribbles, doodles and blots.
To dream up characters and make up plots.
To write it all down and to read it all through.
I say "Why don't you write something too?"
Let me tell you, if you do write something, you can enter the Surrey Libraries creative
writing competition. And I'm here today because of that competition.
This book of mine, "Night Flight" is shortlisted for the Surrey Libraries Book Award and I'm
going to tell you how I came to write it.
It started off like this.
As a daydream. I just daydreamed the story up. Then I wrote it down, quite roughly, then
I typed it all up. This book, at one point, looked like this. Then I edited it. I chopped
it down and made sure I selected the best words. I cut it down and made it into quite
a thin little book. Now, as well as writing stories, I write poems. So for me I like to
choose every single word and every make every word count. So though this is a thin book,
it's thin because I've written it in sort of a poetic way, really. It's not thin because
it's particularly for young children. On the back it's got an age, 7 plus. Well, nearly
everyone in the world is 7 plus. Seventeen year olds, seventy year olds, twenty year
olds, ten year olds, eleven year olds, twelve year olds, eight year olds, nine year olds.
I think they'd all like this book.
It's the story of a boy, whose name is Danny. And he's a refugee. Something has happened
in his country. Something so terrible that he's had to leave the country and go to live
in another one as a refugee. In the story I don't say exactly what's happened in his
country. I don't say exactly which country he's from. I leave gaps for your imagination.
This is a book that's about imagination. It's about the importance of dreaming.
Danny has reasons to be unhappy, but when he meets this horse, which he calls Moonlight,
his life changes. One day he goes home and he goes to sleep and he's surrounded, where
he lives, by noises in the street, breaking glass, shouting and screaming, arguing. And
also the light is he yellow sickly light you get from street lamps. Danny falls asleep,
but when he wakes, the yellow street light was gone.
The night sky was velvet black, scattered with tiny diamond splinters. The moon was
a sliver of silver. Danny knelt at the window to look. Moonbeams transformed everything
they touched. Railings glinted like angels spears. The walkways gleamed like rivers of
silver. Danny breathed in the peace and stillness. He could hear the sound of his own heart,
his breathing and throbbing, like a drum beat, running through everything.
Something was running along the walkways. Steadily, steadily it came. The faint sounds
growing louder and louder. Nearer and nearer. A clip clopping sound. A horse? Here? It came
into sight. Eerie, elegant, unexpected – it shone. Its hooves caught the moonlight,
its mane shone silver. It stood still, breathtaking in its beauty and Danny stared, dazzled by
its brilliance.
What was that on its head? A rope? A shell? A spear? It was then that Danny recognised
the creature as the one he'd seen in the pages of the library book. It was a unicorn. It
was Moonlight. But it was Moonlight transformed, touched by magic. She held her head high and
proud. She stepped lightly, almost gliding and with every movement her mane shimmered.
She came towards him. She was so close now, Danny could see her cloud forming breath.
He could smell the sweet breath. Wafts of warm hay, grass green fields and blue skies
drifted towards him. He could feel the soft breath warming him. He patted her head, warm
and soothing to the touch. He touched her back – soft, strong , warm and inviting.
And then he was on her back. A bare back rider with no sense of danger, no fear. He felt
the strength beneath him. He felt the muscles ripple as the unicorn started to move. A walk,
walk, trot, canter, gallop, gallop.