Mulcahy Associates

Dawn Finch

Dawn grew up on a London overspill council estate and spent much of her time in libraries. Books were important in her family and she used them as a means of escape and became an obsessive reader. The careers officer asked her, aged twelve, what future she would like. Dawn she said that she wanted to work as a writer and a librarian. She was told to "stop pointless dreaming or you'll only live to regret it". A typing course was recommended together with a future in a typing pool.

In an academic publishers in central London, while sorting the unsolicited submissions, Dawn learnt something about how not to prepare a manuscript. Later she worked at St Albans Cathedral as a Research Assistant for the Education Office. This essentially involved taking school children for tours of the Abbey whilst dressed as a Benedictine monk. Dawn later began working in public libraries and now is a School Librarian in a large and buzzy primary school taking care of 10,000 books and the children who love them. She also works as a library and reader development consultant.

Her first book, children's fantasy novel entitled Brotherhood of Shades was written entirely at night, but her Dark Ages dragon trilogy - Skies Of Fire - has allowed her some sleep despite travelling all over the UK in search of perfect locations.

Dawn does not believe in regrets, and is glad that she never stopped her pointless dreaming.




The Brotherhood of Shades

From the chaos of King Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries rises a secret order. Formed to protect the world of the living from the world of the dead, The Brotherhood of Shades keeps a watchful eye on the passage of the dead under the guard of the enigmatic head of Section One - Toby D'Scover.

The Brotherhood is not a simple religious monastic order; its members are all ghosts - Shades who remain trapped between life and the hereafter because they died alone and were not mourned.

Adam, a streetwise homeless boy in modern London, knows nothing of the fantastic and precarious world that exists just beyond his reality until he dies cold and alone on the streets of London, aged fourteen. But he is important and the Brotherhood needs him. His recruitment to their Order takes him on an adventure that spans the worlds of both the living and the dead, traversing time itself as he and a living girl (fourteen year old witch Edie Freedom) battle to solve a prophetic riddle and save the world. This thrilling and macabre fantasy is set in London, from Tudor times through the Great Fire of London to today. The story is filled with familiar landmarks and arcane objects, all of which exist in reality. Its climax occurs in the Great Court of the British Museum.

Age 11+.


Review

"A fascinating, intricate mythology of real depth and pathos, and an eerie adventure that builds, step by sinister step, to a thrilling, heart-stopping climax. A wonderful new fantasy. "
Jonathan Stroud