I thought as a way of promoting my new children's series The Rainbow School it would be good to post about the inspiration behind the stories. In Boring Billy, Billy likes literacy and making up stories but he can't tell them so they sound exciting enough. The inspiration behind this one is me, when I was at primary school. I loved English, as it was called back then, and I liked making up stories. I remember in secondary school that I used to get high marks for my writing in English, and the highest mark you could get was an A+. If you got three then you got a star.

I remember in one English lesson at primary school we had to write a story. Can't remember if it had to be on a theme or not. I wrote a true story about how I was coming down the stairs at home, heard a noise and thought it was a ghost or something scary. So I went faster, ending slipping down the stairs on my back, hurting myself. Turned out the noise was a pigeon. LOL. Wasn't funny at the time, but can laugh about it now. Anyway, my teacher liked my story enough to want me to read it out to the class. I said no, being shy with Asperger's (not that I knew it was that at the time). My teacher read it out herself in the end.

So, my liking for writing stories is what inspired me to write Billy and his love of literacy and making up stories. Because of his strange school socks taking him to a magical world where he sees himself as a confident storyteller, Billy turns into a great and funny storyteller himself, making his class laugh as he acts out his stories.

What inspiration is there behind your books?