Teresa Flavin: The Blackhope Enigma

Teresa Flavin' s The Blackhope Enigma is released this week on July the 1st. To celebrate the launch of the new title we invited Teresa along to the blog spot to talk about writing her new book and her life as an author.

A few years ago, author and poet Magi Gibson serendipitously found my website and invited me to collaborate with her on some summer workshops for children. After a successful week of working together with kids on writing stories, illustrating them and making them into books, Magi asked me if I knew about the Scottish Book Trust. I did not, but at her urging, I soon found out – and it changed my creative life.

By the following January I became part of the Scottish Book Trust’s Live Literature Scotland programme and by February, I was accepted into the Words @ Work mentoring scheme. I spent the next nine months working on developing my stories for picture books with literary agent Kathryn Ross of Fraser Ross Associates. 

Somewhere near the end of my mentorship in early 2006, after a sudden and unexpected bolt from the blue, I veered off-piste and began writing a children’s novel. Novel? Where did that come from, I thought, and what makes me think I can actually do this? An inner voice said, just go and write it. What have you got to lose?

Happily, Kathryn agreed that I should go and write it, and so did the Scottish Arts Council, which awarded me a New Writer’s Bursary later that year. At the risk of sounding like someone at a cocktail party in a Woody Allen film, I started mentioning it to people when they asked what I was up to. I’m writing a children’s novel.

Their responses usually included some reference to JK Rowling and becoming a millionaire. I can’t blame people for thinking that money might be a motivating reason for writing a children’s novel (though most authors earn a tiny fraction of what Ms Rowling does), but when I explained that I wrote The Blackhope Enigma because the story turned up in my head one day and demanded to be told, they sometimes looked at me a bit oddly.

I announced to the whole world that I was writing a novel on a video pod cast for the Scottish Book Trust and wondered at the time whether that had been wise. Inevitably someone would ask me, years later, what had happened to that book I said I was writing.

Well, it is years later, and I am ready with an answer. I hold in my hands a copy of The Blackhope Enigma, published by the superb Templar Publishing. Serendipity decreed that Templar, a publisher I had long admired, would be the one to acquire the manuscript.

And I am proud that the Scottish Book Trust chose The Blackhope Enigma as its July Book of the Month. What started out as a dream in 2006 has been fulfilled in 2010.

The Blackhope Enigma is a piece of me, in the form of a small rectangular book. It contains many ideas that I am drawn to: the passionate love of art, unexplained mysteries, heroic quests, unrequited love, family and belonging, the magic of the cosmos and of the world around us. I feel honoured and humbled that my book has been brought to life.

Every day I look at the towering pile of papers that comprises the drafts I wrote over several years and feel slightly boggled. If I deconstructed the pile I would probably find at least one old skin I shed along the way. My creative life has shifted in a way I could never have foretold: I make words as well as the pictures to go with them, and it is a great joy to me.

So when I trace this odyssey back to “Conversation Zero” with Magi, I give thanks to her for pointing me towards the Scottish Book Trust, the first stop on my new path.

To find out more about Teresa you can visit her website!

You can also win a signed copy of The Blackhope Enigma by entering our book of the month competition.

Other News:

Sir Terry Pratchett and Transworld Publishers have launched an award for aspiring debut novelists, the prize of which is a publishing contract with a £20,000 advance.The ward will be judged by the Discworld author alongside actor and 'Time Team' presenter Tony Robinson, Mike Rowley from Waterstone’s and two members of the editorial team at Transworld Publishers.

For more information about submissions click here!

Our Online Teacher in Residence Michael Stephenson has produced some excellent new resources using film and computer game adaptations for developing critical literacy. This is in addition to his earlier unit on graphic modules. You can download the resources from our website here

Recently we delivered a CPD on Storyboarding and Filmmaking for primary teachers. You can download both CPD notes and classroom resources for conducting your own in-class storyboarding and film session from our Online Teachers in Residence section.

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