So, who is T M Jorden?
I was born in the centre of Birmingham, England in the early 1960’s. I never met my father but had a happy childhood with my elder brother, mum, stepfather and of course my grandparents. I decided to use my birth name as the pen name for the book.
School years were uneventful really. I played rugby, which I still love to this day, although my playing days are now a distant memory. I joined the Boy Scouts where my love for the outdoors flourished and common sense developed quickly and I had a great set of friends, many of which I still see today. My working life was dominated by the brewing industry followed by technology.
I have 3 children, all boys, who I am very proud of and 4 grandchildren – Poppy, James, Ollie, and Charlie and a fabulous set of caring and reliable friends.
In my middle years I managed to connect with my father, although I never managed to actually meet with him before he died. I found out we had 2 brothers and 2 sisters we knew nothing about, all living in Australia at that time. Over the last, nearly 30 years or so we have travelled the world together and connected as a wider family – this, along with meeting my partner Rachel has given me the most pleasure in life.
That’s a book within itself.
A children’s book – who’d have thought it? Certainly not my English teachers at school. Apparently everyone has a book in them. I’ve thought about writing a book before all about the brothers and sisters, how we met and the antics of my real father but it’s so implausible that no one would believe a word of it. So instead I ended up writing a fantasy story for kids for my grandchildren.
I wanted to spend time with my grandchildren and found out I could do that with words on a page – we could be anyone, go anywhere and do anything we wanted in a story book. I was not too bothered about getting all the grammatical stuff done at first, I just wanted to let it flow, and flow it did. An initial 10 page idea was soon 30 and then 60 pages. It soon needed to have more of a structure – a start, middle and end. I began thinking more deeply about characters, linking elements together, introducing ideas that would be seen and make sense later and how it would all materialise in a sequel.
Then along came Covid-19 and time was now something I had on my hands. From being very busy and active, I suddenly had plenty of spare time so put this time to good use, and I hope you like the result.
The Adventures of Poppy and Lord Ted; The first Summer is a children’s book designed for 7-12 year olds. It describes adventures which a remarkable granddaughter has with her grandparents when she stays at their house and spends time with them. She meets magical fairies, solves a theft of the crown jewels, and meets grateful royalty. Poppy learns life skills and has extraordinary experiences with an amazing Teddy Bear along the way.
I hope that Grandparents will relate to the joy of sharing bedtime stories with their grandchildren and in taking pride in what their grandchildren can achieve.
It’s amazing what you can achieve if you put your mind to it.
T.M Jorden