Eight-year-old Zoe Clerkin and her father, Marc, an English teacher, were watching the 1985 film The Goonies which featured a boat in a bay, when Zoe, a lover of adventure stories and the Secret Seven books suggested: “Why don’t we do a book like that?” And so they decided to plan an adventure story, set in and around Rye and Camber, called The Adventures of Katy Krazzle: Secret of the Sea for 9 to 12 year olds.
Zoe decided on the two main characters, friends Katy Krazzle and Poppie O’Sullivan and with the help of her father, set to working out the plot. She took a large piece of paper and wrote on the main events and when characters would be introduced. Marc wrote early in the morning for a couple of hours each day for just over 2 weeks and the two talked about the story together as it progressed. “Once I started to write, the story came very quickly,” he says. “I want the reader to lose themselves, to be taken on an adventure trip with the characters.”
A keen reader, Zoe is obviously familiar with the themes and elements of a mystery adventure story and enjoys using her imagination. “In stories you can be creative and curious, you can be an explorer,“ she says. Her heroines are determined to find out the secrets hidden in an old shipwreck but have to use all their ingenuity and courage to find them out before the villains. There is a mysterious key, maps, secret hidden rooms and passages, riddles to solve and clues to follow. And true to so many children’s adventures, the girls solve the mystery without their parents’ help (they think that Katy and Poppie are at the cinema and not exploring the wreck as the tide comes in!).
The story is very exciting, full of twists and turns and likeable characters – the heroines are clever, brave and resourceful. The cliff-hangers at the end of the chapters keep the readers wanting to find out more. For lovers of mysteries and adventure, this is a must! In a world where phones and social media dominate, it is fantastic to find that good stories that take children into their imaginations are alive and kicking.
The pair are now planning a special launch event this autumn in Rye to celebrate the release of the book on Sunday October 19 at 4.30pm in their favourite place – The Old Borough Arms – and wish to see families and budding authors at a Q and A style setting. Marc will visit local schools to talk about storytelling, resilience and creativity — encouraging young readers to see themselves as writers too. On Monday October 21 he will be at Rye Community Primary School and at Peasmarsh Primary on Tuesday October 22.
The Adventures of Katy Krazzle: Secret of the Sea is available on in paperback and will be released as an e-book and audiobook in October.
Marc and Zoe obviously make a great team and have so many ideas that they are planning a second book titled The Adventures of Katy Krazzle: The Mystery of Tilgate Forest.
Image Credits: Juliet Duff .