Patricia Elliott writes novels for older children and young adults. Some of them are fantasies and some are thrillers with a historical setting, mixed with suspense and romance. Patricia has recently turned her hand to writing for a younger audience with her new series The Connie Carew Mysteries. The books are aimed at middle grade readers and the first in the series is The House of Eyes.  It’s funny, exciting and with a loveable heroine, Connie Carew.

Welcome to GHB, Patricia. Thanks for dropping in to talk to us. 

The House of Eyes.

It’s a funny thing about damp houses. The patches spread and darken and take on strange shapes. Like faces, with eyes, looking out at you. Especially if it’s on your bedroom walls.

An eye looking at you

When I was very small, we lived in an old, decaying house in Germany. There were patches of damp in every room. They scared me so much that after a while I ran away to live in the empty hen house in the garden (true, I promise!). My poor mother despaired and took me to the doctor, whose diagnosis was that I was ‘over-imaginative’. An excellent trait in a potential writer!

I remembered this when I began to write The House of Eyes.

Connie’s bedroom has a giant damp patch, like an ogre’s head, on the walls. She’s a practical person (she wants to be an anthropologist when she grows up and study the peoples of the world), but all the same she feels it’s watching her. As it happens, there are other eyes (belonging to human baddies) in the house watching her, too, but she doesn’t find out why and who exactly they are, until later in the story.

Help! A Monster’s trying to burst out!

You can find out as well, if you enter my competition and win a copy of The House of Eyes, the first of The Connie Carew Mysteries. Just go to the competitions page for details.