Kerr is made of write stuff
Teacher releases book
An award-winning author from East Kilbride has this week released his second book for young people.
Hairmyres dad-of-two Kerr Thomson, a geography teacher at Cathkin High School, Cambuslang, gets to grips with wildlife in his new novel The Rise of Wolves.
An adventure story set on a small Scottish island, it sees three friends undertake a daring feat and save the land they love and the creatures which inhabit it.
The book follows Kerr’s first novel The Sound of Whales which is also set on the fictional island of Nin.
Kerr, 51, said: “It is a book written for young people, of course, but grown-ups will enjoy it as well.
“There is no one that doesn’t feel a shiver down their spine when they hear the howling of a wolf, especially when the howling happens in Scotland, a country where wolves are supposed to have been extinct for almost three hundred years.”
The Sound of Whales marked Kerr’s transition from amateur writer to professional author. It was published by Chicken House after winning the Times Children’s Book Award in 2015, beating hundreds of entries from around the world.
“Writing is a very solitary pursuit and now the fact that people are reading my writing that’s the greatest satisfaction,”Kerr said.
“To share it with other people and for them to enjoy it makes it worthwhile, to get that affirmation that you’re a reasonably good writer and that there’s an audience out there enjoying your books.”
Kerr’s love of writing flourished when he joined a writing group at East Kilbride Arts Centre. He will be in the town’s Waterstones book shop at 2pm on Saturday to sign copies of his new book.