A LAVERSTOCK author has released the final book in her series of time travelling adventures.

Julia Edward’s seventh book in the Scar Gatherer series is The Ring from the Ruins and is centred on the experiences faced by children during the Blitz.

Julia said: “I feel really proud to have completed the series, almost exactly as I planned right back at the start, seven years ago. The idea for The Scar Gatherer series came to me fully formed while I was walking my dog one day, and though I couldn’t imagine every detail at that stage, I knew which parts of history I wanted to take children back to. My characters were already waiting for me too, and from those first moments, I knew what would happen at the very end of the last book.”

On what is was like to write the final book, she said: “It was quite different from the others, because I wrote the end first. I’ve never done that before, but I knew how important it was to get it right. I was relieved that it worked as I’d envisaged so long ago. In fact, it turned out better than I could ever have hoped, partly as a result of a conversation I had with a boy from Winterbourne Earls, Toby Johnson. Toby has been enthusiastically reading the series ever since I worked at his school in 2015/16, and he told me what he was hoping would happen. There was one thing he said that I hadn’t thought of at all, but when I fed that into the plot I already had, it made it so much better.”

The Scar Gatherer series has spanned different sections of British history from Roman Times up to the Second World War.

Julia explains what readers can expect from the latest book. She said: “The hero of the series, Joe Hopkins, finds himself in Liverpool during the Blitz of the Second World War. Lucy and her family have survived the air raids of the past few months, but Christmas 1940 brings a fierce new wave of attacks by the German Luftwaffe. Joe starts to worry that this might be the end of his time-travelling, especially when he realises he knows everyone he meets from Lucy’s past worlds. Is this the curtain call? Worse still, will a bomb be the end of Lucy herself?”

Julia has her next project lined-up and plans to write a trilogy.

She said: “I’m hoping to write a trilogy next. It feels more manageable than another seven book marathon! It will definitely have a historical element to it, possibly time-travel with a crime element. I’ve had a whole host of ideas I find really exciting, but I realised the other day that not all of them can fit together. Some of them may have to be shelved for a future book or series. Still, better to have too many ideas than none at all."