Penstricken
Andrew Ferguson – Author
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I’m Not Just a Picture Book Author (Really!)
Posted on March 3, 2023 Leave a Comment
Here’s a wee update on my non-picture book related writing projects.
I’m Still Here
Posted on July 7, 2022 Leave a Comment
I haven’t posted in ages, so this is just a quick one to assure all four of you that I’ve not died and that I continue to work doggedly in the background.
Author Interview: Nancet Marques
Posted on March 8, 2021 Leave a Comment
With a little help from everyone’s new favourite video conferencing app, I am now pleased to present this little video of Nancet Marques and I shooting the breeze about Chino and the Boy Scouts, life in Scotland and the proper shape of sausages.
Book Review: Chino & The Boy Scouts by Nancet Marques
Posted on March 8, 2021 Leave a Comment
I consider Nancet Marques, author of Chino & the Boy Scouts, to be a personal friend… so I do hope you’ll bear with me as I share some of my thoughts and impressions on this debut novel.
Spotlight: Chino & The Boy Scouts by Nancet Marques
Posted on March 8, 2021 Leave a Comment
Chino and the Boy Scouts introduces the mysterious world of Summerhill, a western island state with high immigration from the world over and a mysterious connection to India…. What at first seems like a fun, if academically hazardous venture, spirals more and more into a world of danger and magic, as the school’s hidden past and depths reveal themselves to the ironically unprepared scouts
Spotlight: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Posted on September 1, 2020 Leave a Comment
oldier. Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold – a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed.
Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue as she trains with the Grisha, her country’s magical military elite – and falls under the spell of their notorious leader, the Darkling. He believes Alina can summon a force capable of destroying the Shadow Fold and reuniting their war-ravaged country, but only if she can master her untamed gift.
As the threat to the kingdom mounts and Alina unlocks the secrets of her past, she will make a dangerous discovery that could threaten all she loves and the very future of a nation.
Welcome to Ravka… a world of science and superstition where nothing is what it seems.
Spotlight: Magical Miri by Debra Kristi
Posted on August 4, 2020 Leave a Comment
There are the witches of the Quarter, and then there is the unwanted magical bloodline. The family so secret, even its youngest members are unaware. That would be mine.
“Magick runs in your bloodstream.”
Grandma always told us we came from a powerful bloodline. A bloodline derived from one of the strongest witches in New Orleans past.
Mom disagrees. Had us believing it was nothing but lies.
Wanting to get us away from grandma and her fanciful ideas, Mom moves us in with her boyfriend. Sticks us in the French Quarter. A place where my family isn’t welcome.
My new status quo: life in shambles.
Everything is changing. Mom is always working to pay the new, higher bills, my sister is experimenting with magick, and my brother, I think, maybe drugs. Forced to start at a new school and attempt to make new friends, I’m now having nightmares, seeing ghosts, getting teased as a witch, and preyed on by vampires. Plus, there’s the creepy, stalker ancestor in my head.
But to all my crazy, there’s a silver lining. I’m seeing a new, amazing guy, named Phillip… if Mom’s overbearing boyfriend doesn’t chase him away. Phillip doesn’t know about the supernatural world crashing in around me and I’d like to keep it that way. He is the calm to my chaos.
And my mom’s boyfriend, just may be the triggering cause of my surrounding storm. How do I straighten out my family and uncover my own personal truth, when the devil in the works might possibly be sleeping under the same roof?
Author Interview: Nancet Marques
Posted on June 14, 2020 Leave a Comment
With a little help from everyone’s new favourite video conferencing app, I am now pleased to present this little video of Nancet Marques and I shooting the breeze about Chino and the Boy Scouts, life in Scotland and the proper shape of sausages.
Spotlight: Daisy, Bold & Beautiful by Ellie Collins
Posted on June 2, 2020 Leave a Comment
D.J. and her dad moved far from the small town and only home she ever knew. Now she’s starting middle school in the city with kids she’s never met. She tries to make friends, but they all appear to be slaves to screen time. D.J. just likes to garden, nurturing plants, watching them grow and thrive. It seems she’ll never find a way to fit in, but then she awakens in a gorgeous garden where she meets Persephone, Goddess of Spring. She must be dreaming; her new friend can’t possibly be real—and what could she know about getting along with gamers? D.J. really needs some ideas, or she might never find her own place in a complicated world.
Spotlight: Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw
Posted on April 14, 2020 Leave a Comment
Be careful of the dark, dark wood… Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.
Rumoured to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.
But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realises she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.
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