S.P. Gates was born in Grimsby, England. Her dad is a musician and her mum was a tailor. Before she became a full-time writer she lived and worked in Malawi, Africa, then taught in schools in Coventry and County Durham in England.
She has written more than 100 books for children. Many of which have won prizes, including twice overall winner of the Sheffield Children's Book Award, commended for the Carnegie Medal and Highly Commended for the Nasen Special Educational Needs Award. She's diversified a lot in children's writing (she likes a new challenge) and has written plays, poems, picture books, books for reluctant readers, novels for teenagers, comedy, thrillers, comedy/thrillers, historical novels - and even once a series of books about grammar for schools.
If she hadn't been a writer, she'd like to have been a professional guitarist like her father, who is still gigging at 88 years old!

No-one the Croc King curses ever escapes Avenger . . . Avenger never gives up. It always tracks you down.
Frankie Sparks and her brother Jin are going about their lives as normal, when Mizz Z, the formidable secret agent, arrives in town on a mission. She's on the hunt for some ancient relics, relics that everybody thinks have lost their powers completely. Everybody is wrong . . .
The spirit of the tyrant Crocodile King has been lurking for years, waiting for his chance to return and release Avenger, his killing-machine tracker, once more . . .
Frankie and Jin find themselves caught up in a centuries-old curse. Can they help Mizz Z to break it, or will the evil Avenger claim another victim . . . ?