The Spitting Cobra: Egyptian Chronicles book 1

About Gill Harvey

Photograph copyright © Gillian Doherty

Gill grew up in Warwickshire until the age of seven, when her family moved to a derelict railway station in mid-Wales. By the age of eighteen her only aim in life was to escape the Welsh hills, so off she went to explore. After an enlightening gap year, she ducked out of a law degree and studied French and Philosophy at University College, Oxford. Then she tried mental health work, environmental work, life in a VW van in the Outer Hebrides, busking, turning pigsties into craft workshops and working on an antiques stall... all fun, but none of them quite right.

Meanwhile she discovered writing and completed a first novel, which no one wanted to publish. But it did help her get a job as writer/editor at Usborne Publishing in 1994. This introduced her to the world of children's writing and she hasn't looked back.

Gill went freelance in 2000. It has involved all sorts of writing — commissioned fiction, non-fiction, film reviews and even a software manual. Then a year in Egypt resulted in both Orphan of the Sun, set in ancient Egypt, and Love in Luxor, a modern teenage love story (Piccadilly, 2005). Further travel led to journalism, and she now writes travel features, too.

The Spitting Cobra, published by Bloomsbury in August 2009, is the first in a new series of four books set in Ancient Egypt. The Horned Viper, the second Egyptian Chronicle, will be published in October 2009 and two further thrilling installments will be released in 2010. Each book is a fantastically atmospheric evocation of Egyptian life encased in an exciting adventure story. The boy and girl characters Isis and Hopi feature throughout and readers will follow with intrigue their struggles for existence and adventures in Egypt circa 1150 BC. Set in the legendary Valley of the Kings, The Spitting Cobra opens the series with a gripping adventure of royal proportions, as Isis and Hopi try to solve the mystery of who is stealing sacred treasures from the heavily guarded Pharaoh’s tombs.

Gill lives in London but is always itching to spend more time in Africa, her favourite continent.