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This section is all about writing. Each month I will (try) to add a short piece on the experiences I have at writing and my journey so far. I can't promise it will be inspirational but it will certainly be honest!

Where it all began: I have never aspired to be an author. As a teacher, there is an element of writing and being creative but I never expected it to lead anywhere.But when both my girls were little we went on our first family holiday. As both the girls were small, their attention span was significantly lacking. This lead to a lot of "I'm bored moments," especially when walking to dinner. We were very lucky as we were able to walk down the beach all the way to the restaurant. And this is where Esmerelda was born. The girls would ask me to tell them a story and I instantly took in my surroundings of the beach, the lapping waves, the shimmering moonlight and the first Esmerelda story was born. I used the names of the surrounding islands and changed them slightly to create the characters and of course there needed to be some sort of moral lesson in the story- I am a teacher and a mum, every moment is a teachable moment. The first story transported the girls into an imaginative land and the next night there was a demand for another story. Luckily for me, we were only on a short trip so the pressure was off and the first three short stories were born. The next year, we were on another holiday and as children typically do, they don't forget and the girls demanded another Esmerelda story. This time we were in Thailand and I again used the surroundings to create a new family to meet Esmerelda. Finally we went on a Stay-K in the UAE and I thought, 'why can't Esmerelda come to our home?'. This lead to the final two stories being created. At this point all these stories were just spoken. Nothing had been typed, no emails had been sent, no pictures had been illustrated. Next time I will tell you about how there stories turned from little bedtime stories to a published book.

Then Covid happened... I am sure many people have had a similar journey to me during 2020-21. We were all living in Dubai and life was normal, I may even say boring. How wrong I was. March 2020, all our lives were turned upside down. As a teacher, I was conducting online lessons and trying to teacher my own children. This is a familiar story across the world. Our lives did begin to return to a sense of normality but unfortunately, Dubai was on the red list for travellers. This meant that we would have to quarantine before arriving in England in the summer of 2021. This was a really hard decision. The girls had not seen their family for over a year and we were all missing our connections in the UK. So we decided to brave the quarantine and fly to Ireland (a green country). However this meant I was trapped in a hotel room in Dublin with a four year old and a seven year old. I feel any parents reading this won't need me to go into too much detail about this. Teaching Lucia how to play Uno was an 'interesting' experience and the girls ran up and down the corridor to try and get rid of some energy. As we were in one room, I went to bed when the girls did. This meant no TV after 7pm. This left me with a lot of time with my laptop on silence. A thought entered my head. Why don't I write down the Esmerelda stories? As I had been repeating these stories over and over in the hotel room, they were fresh in my mind. And this is where I started my writing journey and I really loved it. I found one story was completed in one night and I was eager to continue. By the time I was back safely in England, I had completed the first draft of the book. At this point I still didn't have the vision to publish the book. My idea was to print them off and keep them in a box. Next time I will go into the unknown world of publishing and how Esmerelda made it to the shelves.

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FIONA COLLINS BOOKS