Lucy Courtenay

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Lucy Courtenay was born in Northern Ireland, went to school in Dorset and studied history at Bristol. After stints as a tea lady, press officer, antique porcelain dealer, teacher, student and book editor at HarperCollins, Lucy saw sense and began writing children's fiction. She started work on The Sleepover Club in 1999, before joining Working Partners to work on such series as Animal Ark, Dolphin Diaries and The Pet Finders Club.

She also wrote Naughty Fairies for Hodder Children's Books, as an antidote to all things pink and glittery. The series of six books was launched in 2006, with a further six published in 2007. Her next series, Scarlet Silver, was published by Hodder Children’s Books in 2009, with Animal Antics for Stripes following in 2010. Her latest children's fiction series is Wild and centres on animal-loving twins Tori and Taya Wild.

Lucy lives in Farnham with her husband, two sons and a cat called Crumble.

Author's Comment: All libraries should come with a cat... I was working in my local library the other day when a lovely ginger and white cat walked in like he owned the place. He just wandered by the gawping library users, past the newspapers, through the Biographies section and disappeared. I didn’t see him again. I don’t think he was a ghost, but nothing is impossible.

Seeing this cat made me think about how cool it would be to have cats in more unexpected places. You’d enjoy going to school much more if a fat black cat sat on the reception desk and miaowed at you every morning. You could have cats for warming your hands on at the bus stop, or sitting at each till in the supermarket in a lovely row of different colours. Quite frankly, it’s a book waiting to happen.

Nationality: British