Books

Tuesday 9 June 2009

One of those "Oy, Jenkin - NO!" moments...

Evening folks and hope all is well?

I had a little incident the other day that made me squirm that I thought you might be interested in hearing about?
I was at the Hay Festival doing a little talk (well, more of a soliloquy considering the amount of people that were listening) and my editor from Honno had arrived to support me and try and look like an intrigued crowd.
I had recently done a great deal of changes to Eating Blakbirds in response to her comments and I was keen to know whether she had liked them or not. One of the problems that I had to look at was that one of my lesser characters was a little less-rounded than she needed to be. She needed more background and more of an explanation of her personality. I had spent a lot of time thinking about how I might make this happen: I wanted her to be a bit quirky, but likeable and someone that people could understand. I thought back to my old mate Tuckface and knew that that was the way forward...
So, I gave Lucy-Ann hamsters, gerbils, guinea-pigs and mice. She had chinchillas, rats and fur stuck to her skirt. It allowed her new boyfriend to step back on them, try and like them, not quite appreciate them and want them off his lap. Basically, all over this lady's house were these little critters in cages.
My "Oy, Jenkin" moment was when my editor said, "Was that some kind of joke? Did the others tell you or what?" I was confused, then the hideous reality hit when she said that she had been tempted to take a photograph of her front room and email it to me - showing me all of the hamster, gerbil and mouse cages on the shelves...