Secret Serendipity Seven with Lara Williamson

I'm jumping around excitedly today as I have one of my favourite people on the blog - Lara Williamson. Lara's second book. The Boy Who Sailed The Ocean In An Armchair is published today and you will love it. I will be reviewing the book on the blog tomorrow, but for today, Lara is telling us some exclusive secrets.

Oh, I love a good secret. Even the word suggests some sort of magic is afoot. A secret is something special, something you keep to yourself or something someone else shares with you. If that’s the case you are the chosen one and have to guard that secret with your life. I’d like to think that I’m a very good secret-keeper but I’m also very good at sharing my own. So come closer and I will reveal seven secrets. But remember this, you are the chosen one and will need to guard these with your life.*

*Okay, I’m making that bit up.

• I’ve always been a bit obsessed with glitter and often wonder if it was sparked by my love of Dorothy’s ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz movie. In the absence of being able to own those slippers for myself I surround myself in glitter, sequins or rhinestones. Life is too short not to sparkle. 

• In A Boy Called Hope the dog, Charles Scallybones, chewed on everything he could get his canines on. Once I had this beautiful glittery (yes, glittery) super-bouncy super-ball and our real life dog, Ben, chewed it to bits. Although I wasn’t best pleased at the time, I look back now and smile thinking Ben and his chewing exploits have made it into a book. If you check out the acknowledgements in my first book, Ben gets his own mention. 

• Despite wishing I could swim, I can’t. However, I have this really strong pull to the water and used a watery-seaside-fish theme throughout The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair. Sometimes I look into the sea and it’s so beautiful, so sparkly and inviting that I feel like jumping in and then I think, ‘Hey, are you crazy, girl? You can’t swim!’ 

• I go through life with my own little belief system. If I see a white feather I immediately think angels. I used this in A Boy Called Hope. In The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair I have used butterflies in much the same way and also one thousand paper cranes because if you fold one thousand you get a wish. Part of me thinks these beliefs are the real magic in the books. 

• If I see a lone magpie I will salute. It doesn’t matter where I am or how many people are around me or how crazy I might look. In fact, it is in my plans to get a magpie into one of my books. Oh, and a robin at some point too. 

• At school I worked hard, particularly at exam time. In fact, I was so busy giving it my all in my Latin exam that I ignored the fact that I felt sick and in the end I threw up on my actual exam paper. It was completely ruined, a diced carrot disaster. Oh, and the horror on everyone else’s face is hard to forget. Anyway, I needed a mark of some sort so the teacher gave me 60%. That’s 60% for my sick, my friends. (If Becket had been there he would have probably explained the medical facts behind vomit.) 

• In my first book, Dan lived in a town called Paradise and in the second Becket lives in Eden. I chose those names because I always knew that no matter how far Dan and Becket might travel their home was their real Paradise. I was actually born in a town called Eden and the very thought of this makes me smile.

I love these secrets! Thank you Lara for sharing them with us. We cross our hearts and swear never to tell another soul... Only a few thousand people on the internet. 

The Boy Who Sailed The Ocean In An Armchair is published today by Usborne.

Summary

Becket has no idea why his dad takes him and his brother Billy to a new home in the middle of the night. But he's determined to find out.

So Becket sets out on a journey of discovery with Billy, a snail called Brian and a Jedi Knight. It's not plain sailing but then what journeys ever are?