Summer of Secrets

About Rosie Rushton

Rosie Rushton can’t quite believe she is a proper author. Proper authors get up in the morning, cry "Eureka!" and rush to their word processors to bash out three chapters of erudite prose before leaving to address an up-market seminar on The Value of the Sub- clause.

Rosie Rushton gets up in the morning, eats too much muesli, indulges in a little light foot-stamping because she can’t think of any good ideas and goes shopping to escape the rigours of Chapter Four. On a good day, she writes for six hours – that is if you don’t count the breaks for long emails to her friends, panic-stricken phone calls to publishers and a quick visit to see her grandchildren and get a go with the Bionic Lego. On even better days, she hurtles round the country visiting schools to run creative writing workshops which are a jolly good idea because the pupils come up with far better ideas for her books than she ever could.

Rosie Rushton began her career as a feature writer for a local paper. Staying Cool, Surviving School was her first book, published by Piccadilly Press in 1993. After writing another non-fiction title, You’re My Best Friend, I Hate You! (available from Puffin), Rosie turned to fiction. A conversation with Piccadilly turned to embarrassing parents and The Leehampton Quartet was born.

Rosie lives in Moulton, Northamptonshire. She is a school governor of a new secondary school and in May 2005 will be licensed as a Reader in the Church of England. Her hobbies (aside from the Lego) are: tracing her family history to see who she can blame for her dottiness, fine wine and food – an interest to which her buttocks bear evidence – travelling the world, being with her grandchildren, walking, theatre, reading and all things Indian. In the future she wants to write a TV drama for teenage audiences, visit Kathmandu, write the novel that has been pounding in her brain for years but has never quite got to the keyboard, and learn to slow down and smell the roses.