Annie Dalton grew up in Suffolk during the Nineteen Fifties. From the age of six, she escaped into reading whenever she could. In her imagination, the characters came totally alive and made up for having no brothers and sisters. Throughout her childhood, the local library was her favourite hang out. Annie didn’t know it, but she was discovering the power and magic of stories...
But it wasn’t till she had children of her own, that Annie actually began to write seriously herself. She started off keeping a diary, and writing poems and magazine articles, then eventually began a novel. She didn’t have a computer so she had to type the book on an old typewriter at the kitchen table while her children were at school. They still remember coming home to find the chicken that was intended for their tea frozen solid in the fridge, and their mum typing away like a crazy woman.
Fortunately, her children survived, and eventually all the hard work began to pay off. Annie’s first book was published and she gradually established herself as a children’s author. Her second teenage book, NIGHT MAZE, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and a book for younger children, THE REAL TILLY BEANY was commended for the same medal. THE AFTERDARK PRINCESS won the Nottinghamshire Book Award and both NAMING THE DARK, and SWAN SISTER were shortlisted for the Sheffield Children’s Book Award.
In 1999, Annie was asked to contribute a story to an anthology for the millennium, CENTURIES OF STORIES, complied by Wendy Cooling and published by Harper Collins Children’s Books. The heroine of this one-off story was a teenage angel called Melanie Beeby. This sassy, style-conscious character captured readers’ hearts and became the basis of the internationally best-selling Agent Angel series which has now been optioned by Disney for a feature length film.
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