When did you start writing?
I’ve always loved making up stories. When I was about ten, I used to invent all kinds of stories for my younger sister (one day, I really must break it to her that the animal figurines she found under her pillow weren’t really left there by the fairies that lived in our garden!). The farmhouse where we lived had big empty attics where I used to force invite my brother and sister and friends to dress up and stage elaborate plays based on my stories (and ones I’d borrowed from my Once Upon A Time comics). I was the director, of course, as well as the writer. And I usually gave myself the starring role too. Ooh, I was so bossy.But then I didn’t write stories again for many years. I was too busy with college and then with writing serious scientific articles for my job. But the story-writing bug hadn’t gone away completely: it had only lain dormant all those years, ready to pop up again some time around my fortieth birthday, yelling ‘Pay attention to me! I’m not going away!’ So I thought I’d better listen to it at last.
When and where do you write?
Most days I try to write all day while my sons are at school - after I’ve walked the dogs and fed the hens and tidied up and put a load of washing on. I sit down in my little office next to the front door with a big cup of tea (the first of many!) and get to work. When I’m writing, my office enters some kind of time warp; the hands of the clock whizz round in a speed-blur and it seems like only seconds later that the boys are home from school.Meanwhile my two dogs, Storm and Maia, lie under my desk and do a lot of eye-rolling and impatient sighing to express their displeasure that I am sitting around all day when I could be doing something they consider much more useful - like taking them for another walk.
But when my parents’ dog, Snowy, is staying with us for his holidays, he likes to be more hands-on (paws-on?) and help with the writing itself. He sits on my lap (and if you’ve ever tried to type with a fully grown Parson’s Russell on your knee, you’ll know that this is ‘helping’ in only the very loosest sense of the word!) and gives me his valuable opinions.
Here is Snowy reading over the first draft of The Mystery of The Whistling Caves. Drift is his favourite character of course!
Do you base the characters in Adventure Island on real people?
I know what you’re really asking! Is there a real Mrs Loveday walking around out there somewhere, and if so, how can we make sure we avoid her?Don’t worry, Mrs Loveday isn’t real!
But I do take little bits of people I know (or even just see in on a bus or a train), exaggerate them and mix them up in a sort of blender in my head. It’s like making a character smoothie really.
Mrs Loveday’s mix-ups, Old Bob’s bushy eyebrows, Pete Morley’s tattoos, Aunt Kate’s cakes, Sid Golding's shouting, Scott’s fear of cows, Mr Piggott’s lectures...they’re all bits of people that have gone into the smoothie maker!
But I have to admit that Scott and Jack do have some things in common with my two sons; one is cool and laid-back, the other brave and something of an expert on cake and ice-cream! I don’t have a daughter, but Emily is really the girl wish I’d been myself (I did go in for a lot of writing plans in notebooks, but I was nowhere near as clever or brave or resourceful as Em!).
Sadly, these days I’m probably more like Mrs Loveday! I’m a hopeless eavesdropper and I’ve even started getting my words mixed up now and then...if you catch me wearing a pink bicycle helmet and starting every sentence with “I’m not one to tittle-tattle...” you will tell me, won’t you?
Oh, and I did pinch Drift’s ears (one black, one white with brown spots) from a real person too (well, a real dog, of course!). You can’t really see Snowy’s ears in the photo above where he’s sitting on my knee, so here is a clearer view of those lovely ears.
Do you do the drawings in Adventure Island?
No. Because if I did, they would look like this!
I did offer to do the illustrations myself, but for some reason the publisher turned me down. Can’t think why, can you?
Is Castle Key a real island?
Like many of the best places, Castle Key only exists in our imaginations. You won’t find it on any maps (except the one in the Adventure Island books!) But if it did ever appear on a real map it would be somewhere off the coast of Cornwall.Cornwall is a beautiful place, full of adventure, and it is somewhere that reminds me of childhood holidays. In Castle Key island I’ve tried to capture all those things – and its own special magic too.
What were your favourite books when you were younger?
l adored Enid Blyton books - as you can probably guess! The Faraway Tree was a special favourite – in fact, I think I finally found the real Faraway Tree deep in the woods in Shropshire not long ago.
When I was a bit older, I loved My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, Watership Down by Richard Adams (Bright Eyes still makes me cry) and I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith. I remember The Owl Service by Alan Garner made a huge impression on me (which is code for saying it scared me silly – in a good way!).
If you have any more questions, do send them in and I’ll do my best to answer them!
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