For many years, I was a teacher preparing students for university; my subjects were English, Film and Media Studies. Before that I had worked as an engineer and had actually completed an apprenticeship just like Tom Ward in The Last Apprentice series.

Whilst working full-time, I was also trying to write but failing again and again to get published. After 96 rejections, I stopped counting! But then my agent told me she knew a publisher who needed some children’s fantasy books. It was a real chance to get into print but I had only a few months to write one and I hadn’t got an idea that was good enough.

Needing to come up with an idea at short notice, I checked carefully back through my notebooks. This was the Year 2000 and I had to go back all the way to 1983 where I found I’d jotted down a story idea about a man who dealt with boggarts. That had come from jottings I’d made about the village in England where I still live. It has a boggart called the Hall-Knocker! I developed this into The Spook’s Apprentice, the first book in the UK series. From then on I drew upon the folklore of Lancashire which I tweaked and...

For many years, I was a teacher preparing students for university; my subjects were English, Film and Media Studies. Before that I had worked as an engineer and had actually completed an apprenticeship just like Tom Ward in The Last Apprentice series.

Whilst working full-time, I was also trying to write but failing again and again to get published. After 96 rejections, I stopped counting! But then my agent told me she knew a publisher who needed some children’s fantasy books. It was a real chance to get into print but I had only a few months to write one and I hadn’t got an idea that was good enough.

Needing to come up with an idea at short notice, I checked carefully back through my notebooks. This was the Year 2000 and I had to go back all the way to 1983 where I found I’d jotted down a story idea about a man who dealt with boggarts. That had come from jottings I’d made about the village in England where I still live. It has a boggart called the Hall-Knocker! I developed this into The Spook’s Apprentice, the first book in the UK series. From then on I drew upon the folklore of Lancashire which I tweaked and modified to create my fictional world.

Then in 2004, the year of the UK publication by Random House, the series was offered for sale to America. To my surprise, there was a bidding war which was won by the HarperCollins Greenwillow imprint. Subsequently, the books have been published in the US under the series name The Last Apprentice.

The success of the series wordwide took me completely by surprise. In addition to UK, US, Ireland, Australia, and South Africa, the books have sold in translation to 24 countries. It is particularly successful in France and Romania. I toured the latter country in 2008. After visiting bookshops there, I was driven to Transylvania to view the forest and two inspirational castles. I have done author tours in the US twice, the most recent visit being in 2008 when I visited six cities.

I expect that there will be a minimum of ten main Last Apprentice books with four or more spin-offs. At the moment, I am writing a full-length book about Grimalkin, the witch-assassin.