I am the world’s laziest man. No…really. Not just a bit slack, really, truly, breathtakingly lazy. Which is why it’s taken me so long to get off my big, lazy rear end and get myself properly on-line. I’m the author of the HIVE series of books which I hope that some of the people who stumble across this might have read and enjoyed. Or read and hated… I am fortunate enough to live with the two most beautiful women on earth. And yes of course I’m hoping they’ll read that and forgive me for any one of the incredibly stupid things I’ll do this month. I have yet to hold down anything even vaguely approximating a proper job. I did help make video games a while ago but that was not the best environment for someone as lazy as me.

Joseph Delaney is a full time writer living in Lancashire, in the heart of Boggart territory. He is the author of Wardstone Chronicles, Starblade Chronicles, Arena 13, Aberrations and a new book came out in April 2020, Brother Wulf. This is a new spooks story featuring Tom and Alice, but introducing a new character, a young monk called Brother Wulf. He first got the idea for the Spooks series when he moved to the village where he lives now and discovered there was a local boggart - ‘a man like me needs boggarts around’. He made a note in his notebook ‘a story about a man who hunts boggarts’ and years later when he had to come up with an idea at short notice developed this into ‘The Spook’s Apprentice’, the first book in the series. He continues to draw upon the folklore of Lancashire and has acquired much local knowledge over the years which he tweaks and modifies to create his fictional world. Another source of inspiration has been Lancashire's varied and atmospheric landscape. Many of the locations in the County are based on actual places in Lancashire. In the early days of his writing career Joseph worked as a teacher at a Sixth Form College: his subjects were English, Film and Media Studies. He used to get up early and write every morning before work. That way he could write a book a year – which promptly got rejected! When the Americans bought the series he decided to give up teaching and write full time. Prior to teaching he worked as an engineer in his twenties, completing an apprenticeship just like Tom Ward in the spook’s books. Joseph describes his method of writing as a process of discovery. He doesn’t plot too far ahead and often doesn’t know what is going to happen until he writes it down. In other words he makes it up as he goes along. He prefers writing dialogue to description, in which he says he is a minimalist and leaves much to the reader’s imagination. Joseph has three children and nine grandchildren and is a wonderful public speaker available for conference, library and bookshop events. The Spook's Apprentice, The Spook's Curse and The Spook's Secret have all been shortlisted for the Lancashire children's Book for the Year Award. The Spook's Apprentice is the winner of both the Sefton Book Award and the Hampshire Book Award. www.josephdelaneyauthor.com from publisher's website