Meet the Allsorts (4): New Members

Today is a very exciting day – we are delighted to introduce you to our lovely new group members! Please give them a very warm welcome to Author Allsorts.

C.J. Daugherty
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Before giving fiction a shot, CJ wrote books about travel for publishers including Frommers and Time Out, worked as a journalist for Reuters, and as a crime and investigative reporter for newspapers in the US.
Over the years she’s also been a hostess at a Cajun restaurant, a researcher for a university, a receptionist for an oil company, a ham seller at a Honey Baked Ham store, and a civil servant. She quite liked selling hams.
She now writes thrillers. Night School was her first novel. The Night School series is being translated into 20 languages.

Laure Eve
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Laure Eve is a French British hybrid who grew up in Cornwall, a place saturated with myth and fantasy. Being a child of two cultures taught her everything she needed to know about trying to fit in at the same time as trying to stand out. She speaks English and French fluently and can hold a vague conversation, usually about food, in Greek.
Her debut novel is called FEARSOME DREAMER, and it’s out October 3rd, 2013.

Kate Kelly
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Kate Kelly is a marine scientist by day but by night she writes SF thrillers for kids. Her love of the sea inspires many of the themes in her writing. Kate’s debut novel Red Rock will be published by Curious Fox in September 2013.

 

Laura Lam
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Laura Lam was raised near San Francisco, California, by two former Haight-Ashbury hippies. Both of them encouraged her to finger-paint to her heart’s desire, colour outside of the lines, and consider the library a second home. This led to an overabundance of daydreams.
She relocated to Scotland to be with her husband, whom she met on the internet when he insulted her taste in books. She almost blocked him but is glad she didn’t. At times she misses the sunshine.
Her YA fantasy, Pantomime, debuted in February 2013 through Strange Chemistry Books, with the sequel, Shadowplay, following in January 2014. She can be found on www.lauralam.co.uk or on Twitter as @LR_Lam.

Kendra Leighton
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Kendra was born in Lincolnshire in the early ’80s. She spent most of her childhood wishing there were more books in her local library, and holding cucumber parties for snails in the back garden.
After university in Durham and Cambridge, she taught in China and Spain before returning to the UK to teach in middle schools. She discovered her love for YA fiction, and for Noyes’ poem ‘The Highwayman’ (which inspired her first novel), in the English classroom.
In 2008, she left teaching to start a chocolate company in Cambridge. These days, when she’s not making chocolate, she can usually be found writing, reading, taste-testing chocolate (far more than necessary), or trying to steal other people’s cats.
Kendra is represented by Jane Finigan at Lutyens & Rubinstein. Her debut novel, GLIMPSE, will be published by Much-in-Little in Autumn 2014.

Mo O’Hara
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Mo’s book for 7+, “My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish” is published with Macmillan in Feb 2013 in the UK and in July 2013 in the US. Her second book in that series( My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish The Sea-Quel) will come out in July 2013 in the UK and in winter 2013 in the US. She also wrote six books in the Ladybird series “Puddle the Naughtiest Puppy.” Mo worked as an actress and as a storyteller, touring theatres and schools all across the UK and Ireland. As well as her stories for children Mo has also writen for radio and theatre and has performed her own comedy material in London and Edinburgh.

Bryony Pearce
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Bryony Pearce lives in a village on the edge of the Peak District and is a full time mum to her two small children, husband and cat. She is vegetarian and loves chocolate, wine and writing. People are often surprised at how dark her writing is and since the publication, by Egmont, of the award-winning Angel’s Fury, have started looking at her as though worried she might start serial killing in her spare time. ‬‬
‪She enjoys doing school visits, festivals and events, when the children let her out of the house. ‬‬
‪Her new book The Weight of Souls is published by Strange Chemistry on 1st August 2013.‬‬
‪For more information on Bryony, please visit her website www.bryonypearce.co.uk follow her on Twitter @BryonyPearce or like her FaceBook author page BryonyPearceAuthor.‬‬

Non Pratt
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After playing with glitter, stickers and short sentences in the non-fiction side of Usborne Publishing (where they insisted on using her real name ‘Leonie’) Non Pratt moved to fiction as Commissioning Editor at Catnip Publishing, still playing with sentences, but not so much with the glitter and stickers.
She’s written a book called TROUBLE that will be published in 2014 by Walker Books in the UK and Simon and Schuster in the US. Non is currently enjoying having someone else tell her what to do with her sentences.
You can follow her on twitter @NonPratt

Isabel Thomas
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Isabel writes non-fiction for children and teenagers, published by DK, Pearson, Collins, Raintree, Wayland and Bloomsbury. She loves introducing young readers to awe-inspiring science. Before becoming a full-time writer, Isabel studied natural sciences and worked in journalism and children’s publishing. She is also zookeeper to three young sons.

Ruth Warburton
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Ruth Warburton grew up on the south coast of England in Lewes. She is the author of The Winter Trilogy, beginning with A Witch in Winter, and a publicist for adult fiction at Random House. Ruth lives in North London.

Rachel Ward
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Rachel Ward grew up in Bookham, Surrey. After school she studied Geography at Durham University and combined working for a number of local authorities with raising a family. She began writing in her 30’s, starting out with short stories. One of these short stories formed the first chapter of NUMBERS, which has been published in 26 countries and was the winner of several awards including the Flemish Children and Youth Literature Prize 2011, Angus Book Awards 2010 and the Salisbury Schools Book Award 2012, as well as being shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2009, the Branford Boase Award 2010 and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturepreis 2011.
The sequel to NUMBERS 2: THE CHAOS was released in June 2010 and the third and final book in the series, NUMBERS 3: INFINITY was released in June 2011.
THE DROWNING, the first book in a new series of gritty, paranormal thrillers was published in May.
Both NUMBERS and THE DROWNING have been optioned by film companies.
Rachel lives in Bath, Somerset with her husband, two children, dog and four chickens.