Love, Peace & Chocolate

Want to get your hands on a free Cathy Cassidy mini-book?

All you have to do is reserve a copy of April 19th issue of Mizz magazine at your local newsagents! The April 19th issue of Mizz will have a copy of an exclusive new mini-book, Love, Peace & Chocolate, for free – plus news of a fantastic new competition!

So what is Love, Peace & Chocolate? It’s a story of friendship – and what can happen when a boy gets in the way. It’s got a rock-band theme, plus lashings of love, peace and chocolate, of course! What more could you want?

Copies of April 19th Mizz mag will be disappearing fast, so ask your newsagent to reserve you a copy – this book won’t be on sale in the shops, so don’t miss out!

So… where do the names come from when I’m writing a story? Well, often, they come from you! If I see or hear a cool name, I write in my notebook… and sometimes, it becomes a name in a story.

In Love, Peace & Chocolate, the two main characters are called Jess and Kady. I’ve met/emailed lots of Jess’s, so I knew that was a popular name, but Kady is very unusual, and I remembered exactly where it came from!

Here’s the real Kady’s story…

Kady, age 14
When I learnt that the author Cathy Cassidy would be at the Young Librarian Awards in Hartlepool a couple of years ago, I thought I would contact her. I emailed her she emailed me back.

When I got to the awards and went on stage to shake her hand, she remembered me! I went to get her autograph at the end – she was lovely and said she liked my name because it was unusual. She was interested in using it for a book, and I was very flattered! I never thought it would really happen, though!

The Two Ellies…

In Love, Peace & Chocolate, Jess loses her best friend Kady and has to rely on a new friend. The name of this new friend is Ellie Bennetts – and Ellie is a real girl, who won the prize of being a character in my book in a Children in Need competition run by reader Ellie Galloway. This is how it happened…

Ellie Galloway, Age 10
I first met Cathy at school, when she came to do a talk about being an author. Soon after, we were raising money for Children in Need. The theme that year was “Be Who You Want To Be” so I asked the teachers what they wanted to be when they were little, then asked the children to guess what the teachers wanted to be.

I decided to get Cathy involved because when she came in she seemed really interesting. She said if you really wanted to be something then never give up and follow your dreams, and this fitted in nicely with the theme of children in need. I asked if she would use the winners name in her new book – being a character in her story was going to be the prize.
Cathy said she would be glad to help. We started e-mailing each other and when Ellie Bennets won I sent Cathy her details so she could include Ellie in the book.

It surpised me to see how long the book took to be printed, but now I am really excited to be able to read it! I’m proud that Ellie’s name is in the book because of my competition!

Ellie Bennetts
I entered Ellie’s competition because it was fun.
When I won, I felt excited, amazed and pleased!
It feels really cool to be a character in Cathy Cassidy’s new book Love, Peace & Chocolate!! It will be fun to read a book about a character like me!

Here are photos of the 2 Ellies and Kady, click to see a bigger version!