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Read the extract on the right, then use these ideas for your writing.

Creepers spend a lot of their time racing through other people's back gardens, they don't have much time to hang around usually. But if they did, would they be able to guess anything about the Resie who lives there from what their garden looks like? For example, would a pop star's back garden have a gnome singing into a microphone and a goldfish pond in the shape of a guitar? Would a maths teacher's garden have incredibly neat and symmetrical flowers beds arranged in the shape of parallelograms and equilateral triangles? Would two roses plus three pansies add up to five daffodils?

Two titles by Neil Arksey

It sounds daft, but do people's back gardens reflect what kind of people they are?

Imagine a policeman, a film star and a murderer all live next door to one another and describe what their gardens might look like. Then give your descriptions to a friend and see if they can guess which garden is which.

Keith Gray - Biography

I always had plenty of ambitions when I was younger, including playing the guitar in a rock band, but writing was the thing I enjoyed most of all. When I was in the sixth-form at Lindsey School in Cleethorpes I would write a story, get my friend Steve to draw a front cover, and then we’d photocopy the ‘books’ and sell them round the school to raise money for the weekend. To our surprise we made a profit, and the experience gave me the courage to submit my stories to professional magazines, where I was lucky enough to have two or three accepted.

It was an exciting time. Much more exciting than worrying about A levels. I was forced into applying for a Business and Finance HND at Humberside Polytechnic after missing the grades for an English degree. I hated every minute of it, then decided to take my writing seriously after getting 0% in my Accounting exam. Since then I have worked as a waiter, a truck driver, behind a bar, in a record shop, and have even dressed up as Billy Bob the Bear at Pleasure Island Theme Park in Cleethorpes. During this time I was constantly writing, and my first novel was published when I was 24.

My seventh novel for young people will be published in March and is called ‘Ł10,000’.

Keith Gray

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