About Julia
This is where I get to step out of the shadows of this official website, and tell you a few things you might want to know about me, and several more that you probably don't.
Welcome to Julia Edwards Books!
​​Full name: Julia Edwards
My parents deprived me of a middle name, much to my regret as a child. On the other hand, one of my husband's middle names is Kirby, so maybe not having one isn't all bad.
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Age: 40 something
I always have to work it out, so you can do the legwork if you care - I was born in February 1977.
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Sex: female
I'm from that under-represented group of women who hate shopping and have no capacity to show interest in shoes, handbags or nails. Sorry.
Welcome to Julia Edwards Books!
This is me.
Marital status: married ...
... slightly surprisingly, to the same man for over 20 years. We've got pretty good at putting up with each other.
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​Children: three boys
Their ages keep on changing, but I'm slightly shocked to find that none of them are at primary school any more. The youngest is currently king of the emoji, the middle one shows me endless clips of him dunking basketballs through hoops, and the eldest baffles me by insistently trying to explain imaginary numbers to me. I lost the thread a very long time ago!
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Pets: [coughs plaintively ...]
... none that I wanted to own. However, we have two cats who turned up as irritatingly cute kittens, abandoned in our garden last summer. We also continue to be blessed with a variable number of chickens, depending on how many have hatched lately, how many of those have turned out to be cockerels, and whether any of them have been brutally murdered. The most recent tally is around about 8, down from a peak of 20 something, largely due to an impressive variety of predators (stoats, buzzards, foxes, rats - nice!). Oh, and my husband recently acquired some lovebirds, some fancy pheasants, and a Himalayan Monal (think Kevin from 'Up'). So much for my pet-free household!
This picture of me was taken to go with a very serious magazine article. My mother encouragingly said, "Why on earth are you looking like that?"
Books: currently the 9 you've seen on here
- plus one for YA readers which has been renamed 'Hunting the Butterfly' and gets other changes ever time I look at it - it's been a work in progress since 2020 and I'm still not happy with it!
- the first draft of another one for kids about a girl, a ghost, and a guardian angel (I hope you appreciate my alliteration!), called 'An Idiot's Guide to Grave Robbing'. I'm halfway through a structural edit at the moment, and then there will probably be several more drafts before it can be read by anyone else;
- the first two stories of a second volume of Unlucky for Some, this one aimed at secondary school kids;
- a full first draft of a novel for adults that's been in my head for the last fifteen years, called 'Waltzing in the Shadows'. Getting that out onto paper was excruciating!
- and one more in the attic which will never see the light of day, which was how I learnt to write!
I'm also mulling over a Scar Gatherer spin-off series starting with a novel set in ancient Maya. Maybe 2026 will take Joe and Lucy to Tikal! After that, I'm wondering about taking them to ancient Egypt, since that's a question I've been asked on almost every school visit I've ever done. One of my sons has been badgering me for years to write a story called 'Mining for Pharaohs', so perhaps his wish will come true.
Education: University of Cambridge
I read Modern and Medieval Languages, specifically French and German. That's not usually relevant to my job, but it did help me enormously when I did the research for 'Waltzing in the Shadows'.
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Best compliment ever received:
'Some people have a nasty streak. Julia's got a nice streak.'
That was said about me many years ago, and I still treasure it! As a writer, however, I've been hiding my light under a bushel, and all of my books have been broadly nice ... until I let the real Julia step forward and wrote Unlucky for Some.
If there's anything else you want to know, you can email me and ask. If it's a reasonable question, I'll answer. Oh, and you can follow me on two different Facebook pages, if that sort of thing interests you: one for The Scar Gatherer, the other for Unlucky for Some.
