Jill MacLean

“It’s never too late to try something new…” and I’m the grey-haired proof.

If you’d said seven or eight years ago that I’d have three children’s books published in as many years, I’d have replied, “Oh yeah, and I’ll run the Boston Marathon a couple of times as well.”

If you’d said I’d spend a week visiting schools and libraries the width of Newfoundland – schools? – I’d have told you your imagination was way out of whack.

If you’d said I’d find myself at an award ceremony at Toronto’s Harbourfront along with 1500 screaming kids desperate to find out if their favourite book had been chosen, I’d have sent you to the Yellow Pages to look for a good psychiatrist.

I’d have been wrong on all three counts.

In 2003, my nine-year-old grandson asked me to write him a book with hockey and snowmobiles in it. Yes, I said, of course I will.

By the time I got home, I knew I was in trouble. Serious trouble. There’s a blue line and something called icing, but I’m not sure of the connection. And I don’t even like snowmobiles.

But a promise is a promise.

Five years later, The Nine Lives of Travis Keating was published. I dedicated it to my grandson. It's sequel, The Present Tense of Prinny Murphy, followed a year later. Home Truths, my first young adult novel, came out in the fall of 2010. In the spring of 2013 came Nix Minus One, a darker more thought provoking book on bullying. Then in the fall of the same year came the finish to the trilogy of Travis Keating, The Secret Agenda of Singrid Sungdun. I have been busy!!

Read more in my profile, published on the Canadian Children’s Book News website.