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“I always used to write little short stories or ideas and had sent away to Private Eye and the Onion but they don’t really accept submission so when Newsbiscuit came along and it gave me an outlet to see if what i thought was funny was funny. I got a few front pages and headlines and the pride in someone thinking that your idea was the funniest of the day and posting a full article of it was fantastic.After a while I had a few front pages and NewsBiscuit’s editor said I should try writing for some of the BBC radio comedy shows that accept submissions like Recorded for training Purposes, Look Away Now and Newsjack.Hearing people laugh to something you’ve written read out on the radio is a wonderful feeling. From that it gave me confidence that the story writing i had been doing might be good enough for submission so i started to concentrate on my novel which got picked up and released.I still submit now and again when I have a good idea that  think would work on Newsbiscuit.What I think Newsbiscuit taught me is how to hone an idea, how to get better at writing and re-writing ideas, and the joy in people enjoying your work.”

“I started submitting stuff to the Newsbiscuit Writers’ Room because having your jokes die horribly on the internet is much better than having it happen at a comedy club’s try-out night, where you can see everyone not laughing.

Then something cool happened. As I ploughed away, wondering if a wacky user name might make me sound funnier, complete strangers started leaving me stars, and even better, started chipping in (helpfully…) with ways to make the stories funnier. Then some of the ideas started working, and I learned that honest accounts of personal awkwardness and humiliation could get laughs if you pretended they were made up.

With help from the credits I had from NewsBiscuit, I was able to get some jokes on BBC Radio (the chat room’s a great spot to pick up on opportunities) and I got the chance to pitch in at a real life writers’ room for Radio 4’s The Now Show. I even have an email from the BBC asking how to pronounce my surname for the credits. For a few minutes I sat and wondered if pronouncing it Dor-RAN made me sound more showbiz…

At some point, I also realised that I’d written more than 40,000 words of ticker jokes and longer subs — half a book! So I sat down with a fresh Word document, and a bit of confidence that I could churn out enough pages, to have a proper go at writing a full-blown romantic comedy novel. While the laptop’s cursor flashed blankly at me, I wondered for a few minutes whether changing my surname to d’Oran would make me sound more authorly…”

Maz’s debut children’s novel Who Let the Gods Out was published by Chicken House in February 2017 and was selected as the Waterstone’s Children’s Book of the Month. It entered the bestseller charts on its first week on sale, has sold to 17 countries worldwide and has received 20 award nominations, including the Carnegie Medal, Branford Boase, Books Are My Bag and Waterstone’s Children’s Book of the Year.Maz is much in demand as a comedy book and lyrics writer for the stage. Her original musical H. R. HAITCH, with composer Luke Bateman, is being produced by Iris Theatre at the Union Theatre, London in 2018. She has previously had shows produced at the Actors’ Church Covent Garden, Southend Palace Theatre and Bryanston Arts Centre. Her cabaret songs are regularly performed in the West End and beyond.As a songwriter, Maz has won the Iris Theatre Work in Process songwriting award three years in succession (with composer Luke Bateman). As a scriptwriter, she won thescriptwriter.co.uk scriptwriting competition and a place in Philip Shelley’s Advanced Mentoring Lab at the London Screenwriters’ Festival. She was also shortlisted for the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum and the Scriptangel contest. As an author, she has won the hearts of thousands of children and as a nuclear physicist, she has been completely rubbish.

Civil War 1640-1672