The backstory:
About Tamsin
Hello! This is the bit where I tell you a bit about me.
So, let's start where any good story starts - at the beginning!
How to get along with sheep
I was born in Paris, on a road called Rude Plants
(Rue des Plantes if you’re French and say it properly). The French think that cold is to be avoided at all costs, so I spent much of my baby years wrapped in a giant puffy duvet suit, topped with a bobble hat.
When I was three, we moved to a log cabin up in Scotland, near Loch Torridon. There, I made the important discovery that sheep don’t like it when you moo at them and that jet planes flying low through the valleys sound like the sky falling
Searching for selkies
We moved a lot after that, but the place we always returned to was Shetland – my mum’s homeland, and my favourite place in the world. Shetland is a collection of teeny tiny islands, so far north they had to fight to fit on the map. Growing up, I was happiest on the beach, whispering spells into sea shells and singing to the seals.
What's your brain stuffed with?
At university, keen to study something magical and mysterious, I chose the human brain. I did a degree in Neuroscience (new-row-science). Unfortunately, having spent a long time wearing a white lab coat and goggles, and practising my Serious Scientist face, I realised that my brain was stuffed to bursting point with stories.
To avoid a messy explosion, writing was the only option. To begin with, I tried writing lots of different types of stories, but children's stories were by far my favourite. So, I decided to do a Masters Degree in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. There, I encountered a rebel band of peacocks, a magic writing attic, and a timewarp toilet - but perhaps that's a tale for another time?
Dreaming and scribbling
I now live in Bath with my husband, two children, a cat, a rabbit, several crows, and a very inquisitive badger.
I still fly home to Shetland whenever I can. If you go there in the summer, you’ll probably spot me, striding about with the wind in my hair, chasing wild stories.
