Ivybridge writer Jenny Moore is launching a new children’s series for 8–12-year-olds, ‘Dragon Girl and the Awakened Flames’.

The story follows Emba Oak, a girl born from a dragon’s egg, who must protect herself and those she loves from an evil sorcerer hunting her dragon blood.

She studied English at Selwyn College, Cambridge, before settling in Devon.

Jenny said: “I've always loved writing, and then when I was at home with my children, I started writing short stories for magazines and it just grew into writing books from there.

“I do write for adults as well and I've published a couple of books under the name Jennifer Moore.

Jenny explained about the new series: “It's a four-part fantasy series. The first book ends when you think everything’s come good, but then there’s an ‘except, dot, dot, dot’ moment. In each book she becomes a little more dragon and her powers grow.”

Jenny says ideas usually start from a single spark: “I usually get a sort of spark idea, which could be a sort of plot idea, or it might be a character's voice.

“I think, oh, I really want to write about this character and then I try and plot out a basic kind of structure, what's going to happen where, but inevitably it changes once I start writing because it will spark off other ideas.”

When asked about the difference between writing for children and adults, Jenny said the approach is more similar than many might expect: “I would say it's pretty much the same technique, actually.”

“Obviously there are differences in language and length.

“I tend to write funny books for children and my adult books have been psychological thrillers but you've still got to get that same tension, you still want to finish each chapter on a ‘I need to read on’ moment.”

“Even in the darkest books I think a little bit of humour can add some light relief, so I like to think that both things feed into each other actually rather than being very different.”

Jenny has written around 50 books in total, including reading scheme titles and phonics guides, which she says present their own unique challenges: “They will be used in schools or by libraries and are graded reading schemes, so you might start off at a very early stage, you've got pink phonics books, with say a cat, really easily decipherable things, but it can actually be quite challenging to make an interesting story with such a tiny amount of vocabulary and then it builds up through the different colour levels until it provides a link straight into reading proper novels by the time you get to the top colours.”

With this year marking the National Year of Reading, Jenny was asked how more people could be encouraged to pick up a book: “I think that call to read can come from all sorts of places.

“There's a lot of really good film and TV adaptations at the moment so maybe someone goes to see Hamlet, and that inspires them to read the book.”

“Encouraging people to share their own love of reading, that word of mouth thing is so important and for children to see their parents reading that's really encouraging for the children as well.”