Cliff McNish

Cliff was born in Sunderland but has spent most of his life in the southeast of England. He recently gave up his IT career to concentrate on writing full-time.

His Doomspell trilogy - The Doomspell, The Scent of Magic and The Wizard's Promise - originally started as a way of keeping in touch with his daughter Rachel when he split up with her mother. It has since become a huge success and is published internationally in 16 languages.

The first book Cliff read was The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis and he was also a huge fan of the Famous Five adventure books by Enid Blyton.

Cliff spends time touring schools, libraries, reading clubs and book festivals giving talks and performing workshops.