Stephen Davies

Welcome. My name is Stephen Davies and I am a children's author writing picture books, chapter books and teen novels. I have lived in Africa for ten years, working with World Horizons amongst Fulani cattle herders. My books are set in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.

Month: June, 2012

Hampshire Book Award 2012 Result

by Stephen Davies

Huge congratulations to Canadian author Kenneth Oppel for winning the 2012 Hampshire Book Award. His book HALF BROTHER is the story of Ben Tomlin, whose research-scientist parents bring home a baby chimp to raise as a human child. The final vote took place today, with dozens of Hampshire schools sending representatives from Year 8. Many [...]

Published: June 27, 2012 | Filed Under: Outlaw, School visits, YA books | Tags: : : : : :

Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God

by Stephen Davies

The composer Johann Sebastian Bach famously used to write the initials SDG (Soli Deo Gloria) at the beginning and end of many of his compositions. Where would we look for a modern equivalent of that brief but weighty eighteenth century inscription? The Oscar acceptance speech of a Best Supporting Actress (“I want to thank God [...]

Published: June 25, 2012 | Filed Under: Hacking Timbuktu, YA books | Tags: : : :

What do Julian Assange and Jason Bourne have in common?

by Stephen Davies

Today’s instalment of the Wikileaks true-life spy story saw Julian Assange take refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy. These events bring to my mind one of the strongest scenes in the Bourne Identity film (indeed, in the whole Bourne franchise to date) – the scene at the American Embassy in Paris. Bourne cluelessly seeks refuge there, [...]

Published: June 20, 2012 | Filed Under: Outlaw, Writing Tips | Tags: : : :

Present tense for novel writing

by Stephen Davies

So I’m reading Matt Haig’s wonderful novel The Radleys. I usually don’t like vampire stories but this is about a very English family of vampire ‘abstainers’ living in suburbia – it’s warm, sympathetic and very funny. Anyway, The Radleys has got me thinking about present tense narration, and even considering it as an option for [...]

Published: June 8, 2012 | Filed Under: Writing Tips, YA books | Tags: : : : : :