Liz has received a number of very welcome letters from children who have read The Fizzing Stone and wanted to ask questions about it!
She tries to answer them here.

Where did you get the idea for the Grolchen from?

The idea of a creature that looked a bit like a cat but helped around the house came about when I was putting milk down for a friend's cat and I spilt a little on the floor. My friend looked round and said 'make sure you clear that up when you've finished.' to the cat. She meant of course that the cat should lick it up but it sounded to me like she was suggesting her cat did the housework and I suddenly thought what an ace idea that would be. Also the cat was a great singer and would set up making the most peculiar noises when anyone rang the doorbell. The working/singing cat then became the Grolchen, half-human and half animal and hopefully with some amusing characteristics as a sort of light relief and something to laugh at in a book which is otherwise quite serious and in some parts scary.

Do you think Dreamworld is really there or is it just invented?

We all go to some kind of 'Dreamworlds' in our sleep, but I don't think there is actually one place where all dreams happen. However I do think that it's possible there are dimensions which we know nothing about which are alongside the one we live in. I sometimes think that when we are living in human form on the earth it's like being on a train, and outside the train are other things happening, but we can only see where we are, speeding along into our own futures, our own destinations. So outside the train there may be a world like Dreamworld where the Keepers and Stealers can come and go from…who knows?

Is there a book that I can buy like Leo finds, called The Cauldron of the Undead?

Sorry to disappoint you. I made it up so there is no such book at the moment. The story existed long ago though and I plan to put a short edition of the legend at the end of the trilogy. So watch out for the third book and you will have the full Cauldron story.

If we went to the Preseli hills are we allowed to go near the stones or is it like Stonehenge and are people kept away?

No, it isn't like Stonehenge. Gors Fawr stone circle is nowhere near as big, nor as famous, so there is no need to stop people going near it. It can be reached very easily and just as in the book you can walk to it from a layby at the side of the road. The right hand stone of the two tall stones at the far side of the field is the one I called 'The Fizzing Stone'.