Geoffrey McSkimming

Geoffrey McSkimming, author

Geoffrey McSkimming (born 1 January 1962) is a children's novelist and poet. He is the author of the 19 volume Cairo Jim chronicles and Jocelyn Osgood jaunts and the new Phyllis Wong series of mystery novels.

McSkimming was born in Sydney, Australia. To write his Cairo Jim stories, he travelled to Egypt, Peru, Tanzania (including Zanzibar), Greece, Mexico, Turkey, Italy and Singapore and other locations. He is much in demand for author talks, and appears with his wife, the magician Sue-Anne Webster, to promote the Phyllis Wong mysteries series.

Geoffrey McSkimming has contributed to magazines and poetry anthologies and he has also narrated the Cairo Jim chronicles as audio books for Bolinda Publishing. He wrote five character tours which were performed in the galleries at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, Australia, from 2000 through 2013. In June 2006 Geoffrey McSkimming undertook an author tour of the UK for Walker Books, who released ten titles in the Cairo Jim series in the UK. In 2007, Scholastic published Geoffrey McSkimming's book of verse, Ogre in a Toga and Other Perverse Verses. The audio version of this title, narrated by McSkimming, was shortlisted in the Audie Awards (US) in 2008.

Geoffrey McSkimming's 23rd book, "Phyllis Wong and the Waking of the Wizard", is published in 2015 by Allen & Unwin. He is currently writing the fourth story in the Phyllis Wong mysteries series.

Geoffrey McSkimming is represented by Curtis Brown Literary Agency, Sydney and London.

Books

His Cairo Jim and Jocelyn Osgood books are published in many different languages in Australia, United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Hungary, and New Zealand.

Inspiration

"When Geoffrey McSkimming was a boy he found an old motion-picture projector and a tin containing a dusty home movie in his grandmother's attic. He screened the film and was transfixed by the flickering image of a man in a jaunty pith helmet, baggy Sahara shorts and special desert sun-spectacles. The man had an imposing macaw and a clever looking camel, and Geoffrey Mcskimming was mesmerised by their activities in black-and-white Egypt, Peru, Greece, Mexico, Sumatra, Turkey, Italy and other exotic locations.

Years later he discovered the identities of the trio, and has spent much of his time since then retracing their footsteps, interviewing surviving members of the Old Relics Society, and gradually reconstructing the lost true tales of Cairo Jim, which have become the enormously successful Cairo Jim chronicles."[1]

References

  1. ↑ Text taken from Cairo Jim and the Sumptuous Stash of Silenus, published in Australia and New Zealand in 2005 by Hachette Children's Books Australia, an imprint of Hachette Livre Australia Pty Ltd. Copyright (C) Geoffrey McSkimming 2005

External links