John Brindley, author of 'Rule of Claw', 'City of Screams', 'Legend' and other top children’s sci-fi novels, transfixed his Y8 audience with stories of how his ideas germinate. ‘The Rule of Claw’ happened because John had been reading Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’. He loved the thought of writing about a world where nearly everyone has died because the natural process of evolution had speeded up and people have become allergic to themselves. The only survivors are a group of children on a desert island. Great starting point! A stimulus for another book, ‘Blood Crime’, was John’s fascination with the human body. ‘It’s so fantastic,’ he said, ‘the way it all fits together!’ Joe takes a terrifying journey round his own anatomy, fighting time and the meningitis virus that has locked him in a coma.

Sometimes John takes years of drafting and re-drafting; the starting point for ‘Rhino Boy’ came suddenly, pinched from his step-son’s homework! John re-worked the original idea that a boy develops antlers and turned it into a boy with rhino’s horn. Budding writers take note: you can be a magpie and steal the sparkling ideas you find!

It might take you 10 years to get a book published and it could take 4 books before you can make a living. Having left school early, been a brickie and a shelf-stacker, and drifted through jobs, John offered a final piece of advice: ‘If you don’t know what you want to do when you leave school, don’t leave. Stay in education until you find what excites you.’