Look to the right on the sofa and you'll see my COMICS. I loved comics, I loved playing games, drawing making things, music, basically all the things I now put in the Tom Gates books.
I went to Brookfield Primary School in London, then to St Augustines Secondary school in Kilburn. I spent two years at Kingsway Princeton in Kings Cross (which I LOVED!) then finally off to study graphic design at Camberwell School of Art.
One of the first jobs I had after college was working for Jive Records in Willesden.
I would design album covers for bands and artists and I organised lots of photo sessions. It's sounds fancy - but I worked in a portacabin and it wasn't glamorous at all!
I decided to go freelance and began putting my designs onto lots of different products, like T-shirts, stationery, towels and greeting cards. That was when publishers began to ask me to illustrate other people's books.
One of the first books I wrote and illustrated myself was called My Big Brother Boris, which won The Smarties Silver prize in 2004. It was THRILLING! It gave me the confidence to keep writing and illustrating.
I wrote the first TOM GATES book in an school excersise book and my agent Caroline sent copies around to different publishers. We got seven offers in two weeks to publish it which was also exciting. The first Tom Gates book was published in 2011 and won the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, The Red House Book Award Best Book for Young Readers and the Waterstone¹s Best Fiction for 5-12 year olds Prize.
The fourth book in the series TOM GATES: GENIUS IDEAS MOSTLY won the Blue Peter Award for Best Story.
In 2013, I was a World Book Day author with TOM GATES: BEST BOOK DAY EVER (SO FAR).
The series has been translated into 46 languages and sold over 16.5 million copies world wide.
I had lots of fun co-writing the Tom Gates play (with Neal Foster from The Birmingham Stage company) that toured the UK in 2019. And now The Brilliant World Of Tom Gates is a TV series as well. I co-write the scripts with the Ben Ward (from Horrible Histories) and the songs for the show with my super talented husband Mark. He also wrote the theme tune for the TV series as well.
My book Shoe Wars was my first stand alone novel and I have lots more ideas for those characters so watch this space!
I was a proud owner of a Guiness World Record for LARGEST DISCO DANCE along with Horsenden Primary School in 2017 which was amazing.
I'm not going to bore you any more with all the other things I've been up to, but if you have a question do contact me on the form and I'll do my best to answer.
