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Secrets to success

Last Monday, Stacy Gregg called her agent in London and, at both ends of the call, champagne corks popped. They were celebrating another milestone in Gregg’s professional life – the first day of production in Auckland of the TV series Mystic, based on Gregg’s Pony Club Secrets books. They’re beloved by pony-mad girls aged from eight to 12 years and have sold more than two million copies.

Now, the books are being adapted, with Gregg’s involvement, into an “environmental drama” in a co-production by UK-based Slim Film and Television and local producer Libertine Pictures for CBBC, the BBC children’s television channel, Australia’s Seven Network and TVNZ.

Gregg, who is working on her 26th novel, set in London, Paris and the south of France – “I set my novels in places where I want to go on holiday” – is thrilled and relieved that filming of is under way. Despite working in the tough worlds of journalism and publishing all her life, she was nervous until the cameras started rolling in West Auckland. Her 20-year-old daughter, Issie, who shares her love of horses, works in

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