Damian Woods

I'm a lover of cinema, theatre and reading and have been for as long as I can remember. I grew up in the 80's which, for me, was a formative decade when it came to imaginative blockbuster movies like Indiana Jones, The Goonies, the Star Wars sequels... and those films certainly had an effect when it came to developing my own imagination. I was always (and still am) an avid reader and have been encouraged to read all kinds of books - my favourites growing up included a lot of Roald Dahl, J.R.R. Tolkien and a lot of classic stories, introduced to me first through the world of Ladybird books, included Dracula, Frankenstein and A Christmas Carol.

I have used this, along with a love of writing and occasionally even performing, to start writing plays - more for my own pleasure than anyone else's, but, thanks to some encouragement from friends and family, I have published online at www.lazybeescripts.co.uk 5 one-act plays, 1 full-length play and a comedy sketch.

I have worked for the past 14 years in education and have seen first hand how much children - especially those from deprived backgrounds, have great issues with reading and some of the books they are given to read are either too difficult or not interesting enough. With that in mind, I decided to try my hand at writing a book for children that would be interesting, entertaining, compelling but easy to understand and short - short chapters that hopefully will encourage the child to read more OR feel that they don't have to wade through pages and pages before making it to the end!