Author burns original manuscripts

GP Taylor had to sell his motorbike to fund his first book

Best-selling children's novelist, GP Taylor has accidentally burnt three of his original manuscripts while clearing his house before moving.

Scarborough-based Graham Taylor was turning the embers on a bonfire when he noticed what was written on them.

One of the original manuscripts for Shadowmancer, one of two for Wormwood and the complete manuscript of his new book Tersias were lost.

The former vicar said the papers have become "a very expensive pile of ash."

Last year, Shadowmancer alone was valued by one collector as being worth £100,000.

Mr Taylor became a best selling author after selling his motorbike to fund his writing.

In November last year he was forced to relinquish his parish of St Mary's in Cloughton after a heart scare.

He hit the headlines in June when a publishing firm signed him up to a lucrative deal for his self-published good-versus-evil children's fantasy novel Shadowmancer.

The book has sold 250,000 copies and features in the top 10 of children's book in the UK, rivalled only by JK Rowling's Harry Potter stories.