The Author Hotline
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being developed by CW4K, or Creative Writing 4 Kids. They are the company behind a website that enables children to create and publish their own stories online. In its first year it has signed up over 2000 members and has been enthusiastically received by children, parents and teachers. In fact the response has been so encouraging that they are planning a huge expansion of its services. Embedding The Author Hotline into the site is part of that expansion...
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Brian Moses
http://www.brianmoses.co.ukbmredsea@googlemail.com
To download this profile page, click HERE
Q: What were you like at school?
Quiet, bookish, not very confident. Content to keep my head down and just get by!
Q: What did you want to be when you were a child?
To play for Tottenham in my last years of primary school, and then to be a rock star once the Beatles came along. But there were two drawbacks to both these ambitions, I wasn't that great at football and I couldn't sing!
Q: Which three words describe you best?
Can I have four? Untidy, enthusiastic, idealistic, impulsive
Q: What is your favourite word?
Winnebago - heaven knows why, it just conjures up dreams of driving the American highways!
Q: What makes you cringe?
Bad manners and Simon Cowell.
Q: What are you afraid of?
Old age, running out of ideas for writing, having to go on a sea journey that's longer than the Isle of Wight ferry crossing.
Q: When did you last have a really good laugh?
Recently when I was performing my poetry and percussion show in a school. I held an air guitar contest and one lad played so enthusiastically that he split his trousers. Everyone - staff, pupils and me, shared a really good laugh.
Q: What is your most treasured possession?
A rather battered copy of Palgrave's Golden Treasury (a poetry anthology) inscribed Pte. H. Moses 7389233, R.A.M.C. This book accompanied my father during the North Africa and Italian battles of World War Two and owes its appearance to a dip in the Mediterranean Sea when my father's kitbag fell from the quayside.
Q: What do you do as a hobby?
I go hang-gliding over active volcanoes, and I tell big fibs! Seriously, I keep chickens, I walk my dog over the hills and fields around my village, I collect books and I like to travel.
Q: What strange habits do you have?
I'm superstitious. I won't go anywhere without a St. Christopher chain that my parents bought me when I passed my driving test.
Q: What’s your favourite food?
A recipe of my wife's - a fish dish with tomato, basil, rice and lots of garlic.
Q: What do you day dream about?
Being as rich as J.K. Rowling. Don't we all?
Q: What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve done?
Some things must remain secret. Maybe I'll write about it someday!
Q: What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
I have no desire to to anything other than be a professional writer, something that I have been fortunate and privileged to be for the past 22 years.
Q: Do you feel younger or older than your current age?
Younger, most definitely.
Q: If you could meet one person, dead or alive, who would it be?
Bob Dylan
Q: What quality do you most admire in a person?
Honesty.
Q: What is the most interesting place you have ever visited?
The Grand Canyon in Arizona. It is mind-blowing.
Q: What is the best advice anyone has ever given you?
If you want to be a writer, write.
Q: What would you most like to change about yourself?
I'd like to be more tidy so I didn't waste so much time trying to find things.
Q: What has life taught you?
To value each day, especially now I'm getting older.
Q: How long have you been a writer?
22 years as a professional writer.
Q: Was there a specific moment in your life when you decide to become a writer?
I was a teacher in 1986 and I had my first book published. I held it in my hands and thought, maybe......
Q: Where do you do your writing?
I have a stone building in my garden that used to be a double garage but I had it converted into an office. So I can go out of the house across the garden and into the office. It feels more like going to work.
Q: What are the best and worst things about being an author?
The best things are when projects are completed and I think, yes, this will make a book. Also when I hold the first copy of a book in my hands - I never lose that excitement. I also love performing my poems in front of an audience. The worst thing is probably the nagging worry that I'll run out of ideas and there won't be enough money coming in to pay the Sainsbury's bill!
Q: Where do you get your greatest ideas from?
Writers are ideas detectives. Everywhere they go they are on the look out for ideas. Things people say and do, old buildings, newspaper, TV- anything can throw up an idea and it is the writer's job to pursue it.
Q: What do you do to combat “writers’ block”?
I'm good at realising when it is coming on. I stop before I get too deep into it and clean out my chickens or walk the dog. Dog walking is a rhythmical activity and before I know it sentences spring into my head and I'm reaching for my dictaphone.
Q: What was your favourite book as a child?
Anything by Enid Blyton. She hooked me onto reading and I've read enthusiastically ever since.
Q: What book do you wish you had written?
Harry Potter, of course!
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Keep a writer's notebook. It becomes a treasure chest of ideas and memories that can be dipped into whenever you have a free moment. And don't let anyone destroy your ambition.
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