Barrington Stoke Teen: Crow Girl by Kate Cann (author) (UK edition)

When Kate was a child, she wanted to be a witch. Her first foray into writing was a collection of spells full of rats’ tails and bats’ wings. Kate says, “At thirteen, I began keeping a lurid diary, full of adoration or loathing, depending on who I was writing about. I used my later diaries for the DIVING IN trilogy.

I never thought ‘I want to be a writer’, but I loved books and writing. When my two kids came along I set up as a freelance copy-editor and worked from home. By chance I got given some teenage books to edit, and I hated the way they treated sexual relationships: they were either full of gloom and doom, or were gushy, unrealistic candyfloss. So I got bitten by the ‘I can do better than this’ bug, and started writing. About a year after that, DIVING IN was accepted for publication.”

When I ran out of material from my diaries and memories, I realized my daughter and son were teenagers, and started eavesdropping on them. “