The Lord of the Rings, Dirty Dancing, why it takes so long to write a story, and Mali.

Aged thirteen I would spend Sunday evenings... 

doing what? To find out, pay a visit to Vamps, Weres and Cassay to read the GUEST POST I WROTE...

Alternatively you can read about Mali.

Mali
i
/ˈmɑːli/, officially the  Republic of Mali  (French:  République du Mali,  French pronunciation: [maˈli]), is a
landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the
Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over
1,240,000 km² with a population of 14.5 million. Its capital is Bamako. Mali consists of eight regions and its borders
on the north reach deep into the middle of the  Sahara, while the country's southern part, where the majority of
inhabitants live, features the Niger and Sénégal rivers. The country's economic structure centers around agriculture
and fishing. Some of Mali's natural resources are gold, uranium, livestock, and salt. About half the population live
below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.
[5]
Present-day Mali was once part of three West African empires that controlled  trans-Saharan trade: the  Ghana
Empire, the Mali Empire (from which Mali is named), and the Songhai Empire. In the late 19th century, during the
Scramble for Africa, France seized control of Mali making it a part of French Sudan. French Sudan (then known as
the Sudanese Republic) joined with Senegal in 1959, achieving independence in 1960 as the  Mali Federation.
Shortly thereafter, following Senegal's withdrawal from the federation, the Sudanese Republic declared itself the
independent Republic of Mali. After a long period of one-party rule, a 1991 coup led to the writing of a new
constitution and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali

I wanted to study at Hogwarts and live in the Lord of the Rings, It's not how you tell it but WHERE you tell it.

Location Location Location.
Not just about the house you buy, maybe, but also about the books you read. Every story I loved as a child had something about the setting.
For a while I was obsessed with Brendon Chase, by 'BB.' I tried to find it on maps, and the place names and their descriptions enchanted me so much that I remember them easily now. The town of Martyr Bar, Blind Pool, deep in the forest.

I stared at maps from the Lord of the Rings until my eyes bugged out. I was seriously disappointed that I could never actually go there. The writing of Laurie Lee had the same effect, apart from I COULD go there, and so the first holiday I went on by myself was a bike tour of Northern Spain, visiting Burgos and Leon, and other destinations he passed through in the beautifully written, wonderfully titled 'As I walked out One Midsummer Morning.'

And now I write myself, and magical, real life places are where I try my hardest to set my work. There are several, but the most important is Glastonbury and the Somerset Levels, where I lived for two years, where I set 'Song to Wake to' and th source of the name for the characters school and the entire series itself.
Truth is stranger than fiction, and why make somewhere up, when there is a real place as wonderful as the Levels?