I write for children aged 9 - 13 (deep down I'm still a 12 year-old). After a childhood spent in England and Germany, I worked in children's theatre, broadcasting and publishing before moving with my husband to Oxford, where we brought up our four children.
When my youngest reached 11, I began work on an idea bubbling in my head ever since university days: a children’s version of Dante's Inferno. Published in 2012, Ante’s Inferno won the Children’s People's Book Prize, a Silver Wishing Shelf Award and came runner-up in Writing Magazine's self-publishing competition. Caroline Lawrence, bestselling children's author of The Roman Mysteries, Roman Quests and P K Pinkerton Mysteries, said of Ante's Inferno, 'I see it as a movie!'. Her enthusiasm has inspired me to enter it for the Page Turner Screenplay award.
After Dante, where could I go but to the legend of Doctor Faustus? The result was a story in which a 13-year-old boy makes a pact with a demon, with predictably disastrous consequences. The Tragickall History of Henry Fowst came out with Troubador in 2015 and reached the finals of The People’s Book Prize.
In June 2021, I brought out my third book, a chilling ghost story for children called The Fall of a Sparrow. It reached the finals of the Page Turner 2021 Awards and won a Bronze in the Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards 2021.
I blog at www.griseldaheppel.wordpress.com and www.authorselectric.blogspot.com.
