Vol 6 Issue 1.pub - Highcliffe School

Students at Highcliffe
School were privileged at
the end of
last term to
have a visit
from the author
Steve
Voake recently.
Steve, the
successful
author of
‘The Dreamwalker’s
Child’ and its
sequel ‘ The
Web of Fire’,
gave a series
of workshops
to
Year 7 throughout the day.
He also took time out of an
exhausting schedule to
meet with our in-house
book club ‘Bookies’. Members
were delighted to be
given the opportunity to
grill a contemporary novelist
and questions covered a
huge range from: How
many words do you write a
week, to how do you get
started? Steve’s advice is
don’t wait to be inspired
just write! When asked if
he ever suffered from
writer's
block
and if
so what
advice
could he
give on
how to
overcome
this,
Steve
answered,
“I do, but it is part
English
Faculty News
of the process. The trick is
to accept it and keep writing
anyway -
it eventually
disappears!”
Steve was
still holding
down a full
time teaching
post
whilst writing
the
novel: "It
took 18
months to
write the
book. With a
busy school
and family
life, to make the time to
write, I had to get up at
half past three and work
through until
dawn." He
aims to write
approximately
thirty chapters
per novel and
sets the pace
at 2000 words
per week. Each
chapter is written
to end on a
cliffhanger ensuring he
keeps the reader’s attention.Research
is an
essential
part of the
process as
readers
quickly lose
interest if
the facts are
inaccurate.
Insects
have always
fascinated Steve: "But it
wasn't until I was tracked
and bitten by a horsefly that
I got the idea for ‘The
Dreamwalker's Child.’ ‘The
Dreamwalker's Child’ is
about a child who becomes
lost in a different world following
an accident and how
he tries to find his way
home. Here’s a little taster:
"Ever since learning to
crawl, Sam had followed
woodlice to the cracks in the
skirting board, knelt by ants
as they cleaned up spilt
sugar and watched bumblebees
bouncing from foxglove
to forget-menot.
Where most children
ran away from wasps, Sam
ran after them, watching
them hunt among the long
grass and listening to the
faint scrape and scratch of
their jaws on the wooden
windowframe
as
they
chewed it
into a pulp
for their
papery
nests.
"But just
recently,
he had
noticed something else.
"At first he had thought that
it was just his imagination.
But the more he
looked around him, the
more he began to believe
that it was true.
"The insects were starting to
follow him..."
Steve’s book and the sequel
are available in all good
bookshops now.
For those of you who are
keen storywriters Steve believes
the main ingredients
for a successful and enter-
H2U, Vol 5 Issue 6, Humanities Special - June 2006 Page 8