About the author

Cliff McNish

<p>Cliff McNish has written numerous novels for teenagers and children. His debut fantasy series &ndash; &#39;The Doomspell Trilogy&#39; &ndash; hailed him as a &lsquo;great new voice in writing for children&rsquo; (The Bookseller), and has been published in twenty-six languages worldwide. His multiple-award winning &#39;Breathe: A Ghost Story&#39; was voted in May 2013 as one of the top 100 adult and children&rsquo;s novels of all time by The Schools Network of British Librarians.</p> <p><br /> Cliff actively works to promote creative writing, performing a variety of talks and workshops in schools, libraries, reading clubs and book festivals.<br /> &nbsp;</p> <p>&quot;I was born in Sunderland, a city in the north-east of England.<br /> I don&#39;t recall too much about my first 8 years of life other than I loved being outdoors especially in the woods near our house. I came home every night covered in scratches.<br /> My first real book memory is being given C.S. Lewis&#39;s The Magician&#39;s Nephew by my English teacher, Mrs Baldwin. I loved that, and all the other Narnia books.<br /> <br /> So how did I become an author?<br /> As a parent I was used to making up short and funny stories for my daughter, Rachel. When she was about ten, however, she wanted a story about a really, really nasty witch. This time I put pen to paper and what started off as a tiny scrap of an idea got bigger and bigger and BIGGER. It became &#39;The Doomspell&#39;.<br /> After I finished it, I continued my love affair with fantasy by creating&nbsp;The Silver Sequence which I still think is probably my best and definitely my most original work. Following that, I tried to scare everyone half to death with a couple of ghost novels - &#39;Breathe&#39; and &#39;The Hunting Ground&#39;.<br /> &nbsp;<br /> I could tell you more about myself, but the truth is that perhaps the biggest gift we can give anyone is our imagination and everything important I have to offer you about that is in the novels&quot;.</p>