Monday 9 February 2015

School Visits: Mercenfeld Primary

I'd like to say a very big thank you to Amber Rao and everyone I met at Mercenfeld Primary School for the fantastic welcome they gave me when I visited last week!


I met so many brilliant readers and writers from Years 6, 5, 4 and 3.  It was wonderful to see such enthusiasm for reading, to hear about everyone's favourite books, and to answer some really interesting questions about writing Varjak Paw and Phoenix.


We didn't have quite enough time to answer all the questions, so if anyone has more questions, or would like to say anything about the visit or my books, just leave me a comment below. But I was very glad to be able to sign books for everyone who wanted one – so thank you all again for a fantastic visit!


PS!  Here's a lovely article from the Leicester Mercury about my visit to Mercenfeld!


4 comments:

Class 7 said...

Dear SF Said,
Thank you so much for coming to Mercenfeld to see us all. We really enjoyed it, it was amazing to have a real author in our assembly. Thank you for signing all of our books, we are sorry you had to stay so late! It was really kind of you to talk to us all even though the queue was really massive. We appreciated it very much. We really hope that you liked our Varjak Paw display, we worked very hard on it. We are now reading Outlaw and we think it's even better than the first Varjak book! From Class 7

SF Said said...

Dear Class 7,

Thank you so much for your fantastic comment! It was a real pleasure to meet you all. I loved your Varjak Paw display; it was amazing to see and hear about all the brilliant work you've done. And I'm so glad to hear you're enjoying Outlaw too!

Keep the Way alive,
SF

Ryan said...

I am reading vajak paw but i am really looking forward to reading your other to books. How long have you been an author. How long did it take you to make all three books. Why did you choose to make Phoenix longer than the Varjak paw books. How many schools have you been to. What made you decide you wanted to be an author. How many books are you hopping to make. Do you have a wife. How popular do you think your books are.

I love your books from Ryan!

SF Said said...

Dear Ryan,

Thank you very much for your comment, and for all your questions! I can't answer all of them, but I will answer some of them:

How long did it take you to make all three books?
Varjak Paw took me 5 years to write. The Outlaw Varjak Paw took 3 years. Phoenix took 7 years. So those 3 books took 15 years in total!

How many schools have you been to?
That's a great question! I honestly don't know how many schools I've visited in total now – I lost count a long time ago. I did my first school visit in 2003. Last year, I visited about one school a week on average, during term-time. So it's definitely a lot, anyway!

How many books are you hoping to make?
As many as I can. But I want each of my books to be as good as it can possibly be. And that always takes a lot of time and hard work. That's why Phoenix took 7 years: because before then, it just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. So the quality of the books is more important to me than the quantity. I'd rather write a few really great books than lots of not-very-good ones!

Thanks again, and keep the Way alive,
SF