GERI HALLIWELL - HALLIWELL TURNS BRATTY FOR BOOKS

HALLIWELL TURNS BRATTY FOR BOOKS

Pop star GERI HALLIWELL loved writing for her new series of children's books - because the "therapeutic" experience allowed her to express her inner "brat".
The mother-of-one, 35, admits she was transformed into another world when she was penning the kids' fiction, allowing her to tap into the realm of her feisty eight-year-old alter ego, Ugenia Lavender.
She says, "One of the things I liked about writing the books was that it was almost like I got to exercise that brat-child that I am not allowed to be in real life.
"All the things I can't do in real life - like sulking or stamping my feet or being rude to someone - Ugenia can do in the book."
And the former Spice Girl, who came up with the character of Ugenia a year before her daughter Bluebell Madonna was born in 2006, insists her sassy heroine was inspired by her fellow bandmates.
She adds, "I wrote these books before I had any inclination that the Spice Girls reunion would ever happen, and part of the motivation for creating this character was that I wanted to find a new medium for Girl Power. Ugenia is like all the Spice Girls rolled into one."
Halliwell's set of six stories, entitled Ugenia, will be published monthly in the U.K. between May and October (08).