I write in a very small room.  A box room with a window, really.  And most of the room is filled with bookshelves.  But the wall to the right of my desk doesn’t have shelves.  It’s just clear white wall.  And while I’ve been writing the last couple of novels, I’ve always put pictures up on the wall to inspire me, to keep my mind focussed on what I’m writing.  Pictures of mountains for Rocking Horse War.  And for Storm Singing – seals, waves, tents, a picture of a selkie drawn by a reader, various other things which I won’t mention in case they give too much away… (but if you look closely at the photo, who knows what clues you might see!)

Storm Singing wall

But I’ve just taken all those pictures down.  It was quite a sad moment.  Bye bye Storm Singing.  And a fairly scary moment too!  What do I do next?  I’ve discovered that it’s pretty much the hardest decision you make as a writer.  What do I write next?  It takes more than a year of my life to write a novel.  So I want to pick the right idea!  So – what’s gone up on my wall now?  A line from a Foo Fighters song – ‘Done, done, onto the next one.’  A beautiful picture of a well drawn by one of my daughters.  A photo of a Mexican buzzard.  A printout of a hero and a horse from a 1000 year old Persian epic.  And a picture of Loki from the film Thor.  What on EARTH am I writing next?  No, don’t try to work it out – because those pictures are to keep at least three different projects on track at the same time.  But soon, very soon, I’ll take them all down, and start building a wall of inspiration for the next year of writing…  Scary.  But very very exciting!

lari and heron

I’ve spent most of my kids’ Easter holidays doing events to promote How to Make a Heron Happy. But it wasn’t all bad – we went to some really fun places, like Pollok Park (see photo of me with stuffed, and therefore not too happy, heron), and Lochwinnoch Nature Reserve (where they have excellent pond-dipping – I found a caddis fly in its little house) and this past weekend, Kelvingrove Museum, where I worked with the RSPB’s fabulous staff and volunteers.

At the end of these events, once I’ve read the book and told some silly animal and bird stories, I always hang around to sign books for anyone who wants to take a book home (after buying it, of course!) On Saturday, I was signing a book for a very chatty 5 year old girl, and I wrote in it, “I hope this book makes you happy” (notice the clever link to the title – I try to come up with new stuff to write in each book…) and when I read that out to her, she grinned and said “THE WHOLE UNIVERSE MAKES ME HAPPY.” Then she trotted off to look round the Kelvingrove, which contains pretty much the whole universe.

But wasn’t that a wonderful thing to say. A fabulous thing to believe. And a brilliant way to look at life.

Yesterday I went to the ballet in Glasgow.  And I spent a lot of time thinking about defeating baddies.  It was Scottish Ballet’s Alice, which was weird and wonderful and daft and complete nonsense (entirely in keeping with the books).  But they added something new – they had the writer on stage, dancing with the characters, being part of the (almost) story.  Sometimes he would come and rescue Alice from the other characters, and I kept thinking, “There’s no point looking surprised and upset, mate, you created them, you can’t complain about how they act!”  But there was also a baddie, the Jabberwock, fabulous in silver and blood.  And it was the WRITER who fought with the baddie and persuaded him to mend his ways.  Which I suppose the writer always does in a story, though he doesn’t usually take personal credit for it.  And I spent most of the second half thinking about whose job it is to defeat the baddie.  Isn’t it the writer’s job to create CHARACTERS who defeat the baddie, rather then doing it him or herself?  But maybe that’s in books, not in dance… and that’s what I love about ballet, that you can enjoy the dance, and think about lots of other things at the same time, because there aren’t any words to miss.  What do you think?  Whose job is it to defeat the baddie?

When does a story become a book? Anyone who has come to my author events and seen one of my manuscripts will know just how MESSY they are, because I tend to write the story all in a rush of enthusiasm and excitement, and then I have to do a lot of work tidying it up. Turning the story, slowly, painstakingly, into a book. But when does the story actually become a book? For me, I think it’s when I’ve stopped being able to fiddle with it.

With Storm Singing, the third Fabled Beast book, that moment has just arrived. Right now I’m printing out the page layouts from the publisher. These aren’t pages of text covering whole sheets of A4 paper, but blocks of text the size of novel pages, with lots of white space round them. And they do look like real pages! Page numbers at the bottom, proper chapter breaks. It looks like a book! And I can’t fiddle with it any more. I can point out spelling mistakes or missing apostrophes (I can get quite passionate about apostrophes) but I can’t suddenly change the outcome of a fight, or introduce an entirely new character, or even decide that a line of dialogue doesn’t work. I can’t fiddle with it, it’s printing out looking like real pages from a real book, and I think it’s nearly ready!

But you can’t read it for another – let me count – nine and a bit weeks. Because it’s still got to go to the printers, then come back and get put on the bookshop or library shelves. But you can look at the cover on Floris’s website. I love the cover! (But don’t read the blurb under it – it gives away a LOT of the plot. Better wait til the story, which is now a book, comes out!)

Now I’m off to hunt down stray apostrophes …

It’s the official launch day for How to Make a Heron Happy! And it’s raining … Which isn’t usually a problem, but I’d been hoping to launch the book, which was inspired by my local park, IN THE PARK. With 50 Primary Ones from my local school, Hermitage Park Primary in Leith.

But to read a book to lots of infants in a park, you need a bit of luck with the weather.  And I kept waking up last night, hearing the wind howling round the house, thinking “Oh no! The books will blow away! The children will blow away!”

But I’m a natural optimist (you have to be, to write books when you’ve no idea whether anyone will ever publish them, or read them!)  So I got up this morning and put on thick jeans, fluffy wellies, lots of layers, and the raincoat I usually use for researching mountains and caves, and I went out.

In the pouring rain and driving wind.

Luckily the school staff have more sense than me, and cancelled the event.  So I ended up in the lovely school library, reading the book (and telling a monkey story) to all the P1s, some bonus nursery kids, as well as photographers, journalists and park rangers.

In my wellies, and my old jeans, and my lots of layers to keep me warm.

So if you do see any pictures of this launch in the Evening News, or on STV local, or anywhere else, that’s why I look such a mess!

But the kids were great, they seemed to enjoy the book, and guess what … I’ve just got home, just typed up this post, and the SUN HAS COME OUT. I bet the park is lovely now….

heron cover

How to make an author happy?  I don’t think there’s ANYTHING quite like seeing a new book (a new book which I’ve written!) for the very first time.  No book ever seems entirely real until I’m holding it, in its proper cover, with the pictures all shiny and bright.  

And I now have my own copy of How to Make a Heron Happy.  And it’s making me very happy!  It’s the shortest book I’ve written, with the simplest story (no minotaurs, no sea monsters, no slightly untrustworthy tall boys) but I LOVE the pictures of the heron (by illustrator Nicola O’Byrne), and I hope that anyone else who loves herons, or their local park, or cares about making animals and birds happy, will enjoy it too. 

Here’s the book (at the top of the post, I hope, I’m still struggling to get photos on the blog, so I hope you can see it!)  I took the photo just after the book arrived in the post, but not before I’d given it a cuddle.  Yes.  I do cuddle my books.  So, there you are: how to make an author happy?  Give them the very first copy of their new book!

(How to Make a Heron Happy comes out next week, and if you want to see me read from the book and tell a few connected stories, then check out my diary page.  And if you want to read some very silly heron jokes on my publisher’s website – here they are (thanks to Chani!) (There are big Bottom Hunt jokes there somewhere too!)

Silliest writer injury I’ve had yet… I was in Port Seton Library this morning talking to the P5/6s from Cockenzie Primary about First Aid for Fairies and Wolf Notes. I was telling them a Viking myth, and explaining why I mostly like telling this particular story on Thursday. Because it’s Thor’s Day! (I also tell it on Wednesdays and Tuesdays – does anyone know why?) And I decided to demonstrate Thor’s hammer creating thunder by thumping a desk with my fist. I do this a lot – pretty much every time I tell this story, and as it’s my favourite story, I probably thump desks at least three or four times a month. Usually I thump school desks, which aren’t very sturdy – they wobble and they rattle and they don’t hurt at all. But today, while momentarily pretending to be the Norse god of Thunder, I thumped a library desk. And it turns out that library desks (in East Lothian anyway) are a lot sturdier than school desks! My fist on the desk made an excellent thunder noise, and hurt a great deal. It was like punching a wall (or a superhero’s chin.) The edge of my hand is still (8 hours later) completely numb all the way from my wrist to my pinkie, and I am typing this very very slowly! So – a Viking hammer injury! (And proof that pretending to be a god is a dangerous hobby.) But I really enjoyed meeting the pupils from Cockenzie – they had great ideas for fabled beast adventures and they asked me lots of great questions. But if I visit them again, I’ll tell them a story with no hammers at all.

I’ve just about finished the very very final draft of Storm Singing, and in my final round of research, I had to find a boat expert willing to talk to me about the practicalities of getting a centaur across to an island.

My experience in boats consists of being in charge of a yacht twice at school – my physics teacher thought that as I was a whizz at vectors on paper, I’d be able to steer a yacht in Findhorn Bay.  In fact I need a diagram to work out my left and right, and as a teenager could crash a bike into a wall even if there wasn’t a wall there.  So the first time I was in charge of the wee boat it crashed into someone else’s boat (not even someone I knew), and the second time I sank it. So I’ve never been put in charge of a boat since.  Until now.  When I had to get Helen and the other fabled beasts round the north coast of Scotland. 

Left to myself I’d probably have drowned them all long before they even got to meet the rest of the characters, because until I spoke to Alec Jordan, a boat builder and boat expert in Fife, I was putting Yann right at the front of the tiny wee boat because I thought he would look good as a figurehead.  But I did, at the last minute, think, “oh, I wonder if that will make the boat unstable, seeing as he weighs the same as a HORSE.” So I did what I usually do, and I found an expert, and asked them lots of daft questions.  But this time, unlike calling people about selkies’ breathing patterns, and mermaids’ tails, and giving the impression that I was writing about seals and fish, I couldn’t really get away with saying, “so I’m planning to put this horse in a rowing boat…”  Because NOONE puts horses in rowing boats.  So I had to say, “this might be the daftest question you’ve ever been asked, but how can I get a centaur – yes a centaur, half man, half horse – how can I get a centaur in a rowing boat safely?”  And to his credit, Alec made himself a cup of tea, and chatted me through it.  We didn’t need ballast (which was a shame, cos I was quite proud of knowing the word ballast) all we needed was to put Yann in the middle of the boat, so that he didn’t tip it forward or back, and have Helen row from the front.  And, Alec suggested, the horse would need to be quite sensible and not rock the boat too much.  Do you think we can ask Yann to be sensible…?

Anyway, thanks very much to Alec Jordan, who I can thoroughly recommend for any queries about Greek mythological beasts in small vessels, or indeed the Scottish Coastal Rowing project, which looks great fun: jordanboats.co.uk

I’m doing the final research double-checking for Storm Singing (the third Fabled Beast book) this month, and I spent today calling serious proper academics at St Andrews University and Edinburgh University about selkies and mermaids! To be honest, that’s not what I said to them, not at the start. I began with perfectly sensible questions about how long grey seals can stay underwater, and about fish scales and tails. And only once they had told me what I needed to know, or confirmed what I already thought, did I admit that I was writing about magical creatures, so I thanked the seal researcher for helping me create the perfect selkie and the fish expert for helping me create the ideal mermaid! I do like to make sure that my fantasy is firmly fact-based and believable…

World Book Day is (and should be) a busy day for authors. I was in Bonnyrigg Library in the morning yesterday, and met a couple of very enthusiastic P6 classes from Bonnyrigg Primary, who asked some really excellent questions, and had a wonderfully gory collective imagination for inventing monsters. Then I hurtled into Edinburgh to meet more than 200 pupils at the lovely Flora Stevenson Primary School, and lots of them were dressed as their favourite book characters. Which gave me the wonderful opportunity to say things like “What do you think, Mr Gum?” and “Do you have an idea for defeating the monster, Fili and Kili?” (they’re experts at that sort of thing, being from the Hobbit) and “What’s your question, Pippi Longstocking?” There’s only one day a year you get to say things like that and not get very funny looks! There was also someone dressed as a faun from First Aid, with splendid furry shorts, which was the highlight of my day…

Hope you all had a great World Book Day, and if you want to tell me who you dressed up as, just get in touch!