Welcome

Hi and welcome to my blog. This is my first post, so I thought I should introduce myself.

My name is Valinora Troy, I write fantasy books for 8-12 year olds, the age group sometimes called Middle Grade. I started writing when I was 5 or 6 years old. My sister told me the plot of ‘The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe’ and I immediately wanted to write a story of my own. I have no idea where a little girl and a magical diamond came from, but they popped into my head, and I spent the whole of the summer holidays filling out three or four pages in my copybook. I couldn’t read very well so every time I wanted to write the word ‘diamond’ I had to ask my mother to spell it! I spent the next few summers either restarting or continuing the story I called The Lucky Diamond, and my sister used to read excerpts to my brothers as their bedtime story (lucky fellows! ha!).

I eventually finished the book and put it aside, moving on to other stories. I still loved the tale of a magical diamond princess, and an orphan and her siblings agreeing to a perilous quest to help the diamond get home, so some years ago I returned to the story and completely rewrote it. It’s a much better book now, and I am delighted to say that The Lucky Diamond will be published this November.

My plan for this blog is to have a weekly post, where I will natter about writing, give updates on The Lucky Diamond, and review Middle Grade books. I also hope to interview some of their authors, if I can persuade them to spare the time! Middle Grade authors are known of course for their extreme generosity and kindness so I am bound to succeed in this!

Thank you for reading this post! I hope you will check in regularly, and I would love to hear what you think about my blog, my books, my website, or Middle Grade books in general!