AXMINSTER’S specialist Harry Potter shop Swish & Flick is staging a Harry Potter day honouring a new local writer who is following in the steps of J.K. Rowling.

Swish & Flick will be hosting the Potterhead party day on Saturday, November 2 and the star of the event will be Lyme Regis writer Rachel Brooker, who will doing a reading and signing of her Potter-style children’s fantasy novel Will Worthington and The Black Rainbow.

Rachel, who grew up hooked on Harry Potter, is publishing her book for the children of the original generation of fans of J.K. Rowling’s best-selling stories.

Writing as R.E. Brooker, 36-year-old Rachel is hoping that her new book may enchant Generation Alpha boys and girls as much as the Potter books did their Millennial mums and dads.

Her dream may indeed come true, as pre-launch previews of the book have caused "rave reviews" from both ten-year-olds and Potterheads alike.

Rachel has also gone slightly viral online with more than 5,000 people watching the launch video of her children’s novel - which will be published on October 31.

The book tells the story of 13-year-old Will who goes to Austria on a school trip, gets lost in a blizzard and finds himself in Austassa, a quirky, floating land where his nightmares become a reality.

Tasked with killing The Black Rainbow, a monstrous molten-lava invention which threatens to destroy all of Austassa, Will also fights to evade the clutches of his piano-playing mastermind foster brother, Kazamir Kirrolivitch, who aims to destroy Will.

After a chance meeting in Lyme with a teacher visiting from Hampshire, Rachel sent her the first few chapters of the book to read to her 10 and 11-year-old pupils to gauge their reactions.

The teacher, Ms Cooper from Talavera Junior School in Aldershot, reported back to Rachel and said: “They love it! One pupil is not speaking to me as he cannot believe I would start reading them a book but not be able to tell them how it ends.

“They were really intrigued after chapter one; they all have come up with predictions and want to hear more.

“What was really nice is a child not in my groups has asked about it, which means the pupils are talking about it to their friends. This is no small triumph, I spend a lot of time creating hype around new books we are getting in, so to hear them discussing your book without a prompt from me is great.”

Rachel said: “I was thrilled to learn that children love my book, it took me sixteen years to write it so this is a great reward.”

But what has also delighted Rachel is that the Will Worthington book is also loved by hardcore Harry Potter fans who, like her, first became devoted to J.K. Rowling’s books when they were children.

Swish & Flick shop staffer Chessie Dowdeswell, who blogs as Potterhead blogger Echo Millay, said: “This is a great story for young readers. It is packed with action, emotions, gadgets and craziness.

"It’s Lemony Snicket’s wit mixed with the suspense of Alex Rider. It’s quirky and creepy, perfectly blending humour with deep conflicts. After reading the book in one sitting, I was desperate to learn more about Will and his world.”

Chessie added the first review of the book on Amazon’s Good Reads website, which said: “Read this book and you will be transported to an insanely creative world full of magical wit and whimsy. I couldn’t put this down. I had a good laugh, and totally left our world for 250 pages. Everything about this book is special.”

Rachel, who is diagnosed with A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) added: “I am proud to be a neurodivergent writer”.

Prior to writing her own novel, Rachel spent 10 years writing 50 Harry Potter fan fictions and has a fanbase of 31,600 followers on X [Twitter], including children’s fiction superstars Anthony Horowitz and Darren O'Shaughnessy [aka Darren Shan] and the publisher who discovered Harry Potter, Barry Cunningham.

Like her literary heroine J.K. Rowling did, Rachel wrote much of Will Worthington and The Black Rainbow in a café, in her case The Galley Café in Lyme Regis.

She said: “I’m a big Potterhead, besides writing Harry Potter fan fiction I was an extra in the film of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince and I worked as a tour guide at the Harry Potter studios. But what I’ve always wanted the most is to write my own book.

“I didn’t go into this thinking I was going to write a children’s book. I went with the idea that I’m going to write a book that I would love to read and hopefully you can tell the passion that I have for it. I just wanted everything that I loved to read when I was younger; personal conflict, quirkiness and gadgets.”

The magical book, which will be appropriately published on Halloween, is already stirring much interest on social media, where Rachel’s offbeat launch video has had more than 5,000 views on X, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook.

Traditional local bookshops are also stocking the fantasy novel, which Rachel will launch with a signing session at The Lyme Regis Bookshop on Halloween.

Her book will also be available from The Bookshop, Bridport; The Archway, Axminster; and Swish & Flick, Axminster.

Will Worthington and The Black Rainbow is available for pre-order now on just about every online bookstore in the world; Blackwells, Waterstones, Foyles, Barnes Nobel and, of course, Amazon.