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Abbey Elphinstone is a successful author of children's books.

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The first set of books I ever wrote was a trilogy.

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The Dream Snatcher came first, the sequel was The Shadow Keeper,

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and then the finale was The Night Spinner.

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After that, I wanted a change of format.

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I wanted to write a standalone book.

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So Sky Song exists as a story completely as a whole by itself.

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Now, though, I'm writing a brand new series called The Unmapped Chronicles,

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and that I think might be five books, which I think might be called a quintet, but I don't know.

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But we'll see. I've written two, and I hope to write three more.

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I write adventure books with a little bit of magic.

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So I straddle two genres, adventure and fantasy.

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My books are quite scary in parts, so readers as young as seven,

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sometimes read the books but get a little bit scared. So I write a different story with every

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book, obviously the plot is different, but the themes, the messages of every single book I write

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are the same. I believe that values of courage, kindness, hope and friendship are the cornerstones

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of what it means to be human. And we live in a world that is often politically, socially,

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morally very turbulent very difficult to understand and so i think now more than ever

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it is important to return to this idea of being tolerant being kind abby hasn't always been an

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author and her journey to getting her work published wasn't always easy i began working

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life as a teacher in a secondary school and I taught for five years English again and I tried

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to write books at the same time as teaching but if anyone has been a teacher they'll know that

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there is a lot of marking it's a very tiring job so the time I gave myself to write was a tiny bit

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you know two hours one hour every night after I'd finished marking so eventually on my fourth book

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my 97th try with a literary agent I got an email saying yes we love this and we would like to

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represent you so it took a long time but I think inside every person or maybe it's just some people

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who face ongoing rejection there grows a quiet grit a determination to succeed no matter what

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so I just kept holding on to the positive comments and tried to rework them into a book that was

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going to be perhaps marketable, successful, enjoyable for readers.