5 Things You (Probably) Don’t Know About Me

Welcome to my website and my first blog. In the future I plan to blog about my writing and books, as well as life in general and any odd questions or debates that bug me (there are always plenty of those - I’m fascinated by the little things in life). But just to get started, let me tell you some things about me that you probably don’t know.

1.     MY FIRST NOVEL. Like most authors “I’ve always wanted to be a writer”, and since childhood I started little stories that didn’t go anywhere. In 2017, aged 44, I wrote my first complete novel, which I called The Truth About Salt; I think of it as my “rude” book. A few of my friends read it and while they said they loved it, I also noticed they couldn’t quite look me in the eye for a while. After dabbling with the idea of trying to get it published, I ditched it when I had the idea for Space Hopper (not rude at all, by the way). I had about 17 agent rejections before landing Judith Murray at Greene and Heaton and then secured a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster.

2.     THE CRISP SANDWICH. These days I treat my body more as a temple - food-wise - and even my guilty pleasures are a bit boring. But when I was younger, I had plenty of them. My favourite foody guilty-pleasure used to be the crisp sandwich: preferably soft-white bread, buttered and, ideally, cheese and onion flavoured crisps (any will do). Occasionally I’d add some Branston Pickle. I don’t know why it matters, but it was important to flatten the thing with the palm of my hand before eating it. I’m salivating right now. The crisp sandwich (specifically Frazzles) features in Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life in an important scene between Mean Charlie and his dad. In fact, this scene caused a problem for the American editors because my American readers call them potato chips, not crisps, and they don’t have Frazzles, poor things. It caused more of an issue than you might think, simply because Americans are apparently not so familiar with the concept of a crisp-sandwich as we are in the UK.

3.     CATS AND DOGS, ETC. I had some strange ideas when I was a kid and occasionally, when I’ve had a drink or two, I like to ask people a series of questions to establish whether anyone else thought these things too. My top three questions under these conditions are: when you were a kid, did you think all cats were female and all dogs were male? No? Me neither! When you were a kid did you ever wonder if the moon was just the other side of the sun? No? Course not – ridiculous. When you were a kid, did you ever think Don Quixote was a donkey? No? I’ll get my coat.

4.     WHICH OF MY OWN CHARACTERS I AM MOST LIKE? Space Hopper is written in the first person from the point of view of Faye, and my friends and family say they can hear my voice when they read it. If you want to hear my voice for real, watch the Space Hopper trailer on this website, the team at Simon and Schuster decided to use me for the recording, which I did during lockdown in my makeshift studio – under an ironing board with a duvet thrown over the top. Faye has the same job I had when I worked at the RNIB and many of her thoughts and things (e.g. the stuff in her attic and toys she had as a child) are thoughts and things of mine. As for Joe in Joe Nuthin’s Guide for Life, almost everything he says and the little things he does are inspired by things that my children and I have talked about, or do. For example, the signals he gives to trees and his reasons for doing things. Many of the things he says are direct quotes from me or my kids.

5.     MOVIE PET HATES. I have three in particular, which I see a lot in films and which make me want to throw a cushion at the screen. Least annoying first, is the way phone calls are often ended in films without a proper goodbye, see you later, or equivalent; basic telephone sign-off is just nothing like the real world. I can forgive this, because films have restraints and all that “bye, b-bye, byeee, ok bye, see ya,’ which happens IRL is just too time-consuming for the movies. Secondly, and less forgivable, is the movie habit of having a woman run towards a man and jumping up to put her legs round his waist. I think I hate this so much because I imagine if I did this myself, I’d knock the guy over, or there’d be a lot of grunting associated with struggling to hold my weight. Whatever the reason, I hate it. Lastly, and least forgivable, is the number of times characters in films come down to breakfast and somebody has made eggs, bacon and toast, laid out cereal, fruit and made fresh coffee etc, and nobody sits to eat it, they all leave the house in a hurry. The person who made it all never even seems that bothered – I’d be furious! I promise that if my novels are ever made into movies, none of these things will ever happen, even if Steven Spielberg sulks about it.