AUTHOR

A R Hetherington

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I was born quite a long time ago, right back in the last century and at the age of 6 my family moved from England to a country in West Africa called Ghana. We lived in a remote jungle area with no school, no television and no other children to play with. Once a week we visited a city called Takoradi, which had lots of vultures, but also a library. My big sister and I borrowed stacks of books and read them all each week. As there was no school, my mum taught us which I didn’t always like. But when I was 8, and my sister 10, the education authorities thought it would be a good idea if we actually went to school again. My mum has a big family in Northern Ireland, so off we went to boarding school in Belfast. It turned out I liked that even less! It was a bit of a shock after the freedom we had had in Africa and not at all like Malory Towers or St Clares by Enid Blyton; I had read every single book in both series. There was definitely no ginger beer or pillow fights and we had a particularly formidable boarding mistress. Fortunately we got to visit our lovely aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins every other weekend and had a lot of fun with them. So, there followed ten years in Belfast interspersed with tropical trips to visit our parents in Africa. My dad’s job took him from West Africa to South to East and back West again. Finally my mum wanted to come back to the UK, by which time I had moved to Manchester university and was just finishing my joint honours degree in Spanish and French. I topped up my qualifications as I went along, including horticulture and design and teaching. I have been teaching primary children for 5 or so years now and I really love how children have the immense capacity to immerse themselves in books of all different genres but in particular fantasy. They have the superb ability to suspend disbelief in an instant. In spare moments I make up ‘magic carpet’ stories off the top of my head, complete with magic words which they seem to love. I now live in a tiny Surrey village in the UK where there is a church, a pub (no mobile signal) and quite a lot of pheasants. I live with my husband, my lively Springer spaniel, Rosie, and I keep a small flock of Peking bantams and other fancy hens – each named after inspirational women. I have 2 children, a boy and a girl, who are both young adults now pursuing their own adventures. I am still an avid reader and have been influenced by many fantastic authors since childhood. I teach part time now so that I can concentrate more on my writing. I really want to share with you my characters; their exciting and unique personalities and their imaginative adventures. Let me know what you think! I hope you like my first series, Below the Green. I am lucky enough to have a fabulous view from my writing room, which looks across our village cricket green, to fields and woods beyond. This simple setting is what inspired the beginning of Underground Adventure.
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