Boomerangs, Snotgobblers and Oompa-Loompas

Biting off more than I can chew has always been a hobby of mine, but these days I seem to open my jaws a lot wider than I should to accommodate the writing projects that hurtle towards me. Some of these are boomerang projects – those books that have been tossed away, only to soar back into view with alarming regularity. The Secret War was a boomerang project, so I shouldn’t gripe about it, but it means new projects find themselves relegated or shelved because an old one is more attractive.

One such boomerang book is A World of Night, my first and only children’s book. A World of Night was written around the same time as my debut novel, yet while The Secret War did attract some interest from publishers and agents before I signed with Macmillan, A World of Night received naff all interest – that despite the enthusiastic response from all the kids (both big and small) who read it. I remember shelving the project with bewilderment, thinking “why aren’t agents taking the time to read this when everyone I know who has read it, enjoyed it thoroughly?” To be fair, I sent it to only three agents, but the replies were your typical bog-standard ‘couldn’t careless about what you sent’ replies, that I wondered if they had even bothered to read what I sent them. But that’s the sort of business we’re in.

And what a fickle business it is, especially children’s books. Being a published writer is difficult enough, but being a published children’s writer is nigh impossible! Since JK started writing about wizards, and P. Putnam started a trilogy about personal demons and compasses, it seems that everyone wants to be a children’s writer. The market is saturated, more so now that Harry Potter has shelved his spectacles. Everyone believes that they can replace Harry Potter, but I reckon we won’t see a phenomenon like this for another ten to fifteen years.
My excuse for dabbling in children’s books is not really commercial. Imaginative writing just feels purer when it’s written in a children’s book because you don’t have to put sex and violence in it to engage the reader. You don’t need baffling plot devices, you just need well drawn and exciting characters and have the same imagination as a child (which mine is - how else can I explain my World of Night creations, the Snotgobblers?). So it just seemed a natural progression to write a children’s book about all the things I loved as a kid.

It was the ‘biggest kid’ of all, Sarah, who finally persuaded me to tell my publishers, Macmillan, about A World of Night. I gave them a copy of the synopsis during my visit to London two weeks ago and they’ve asked for a final draft to send on to their children’s department (when they said that I got this technicolour image of the top floor at Macmillan Publishers on New Wharf Road, like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate factory but with books… kinda like Oompa-Loompas and humans creating everything from colourful singing and dancing books, to novels with arms that literally write themselves…).
So apart from writing the first draft of The Black Hours this year, I have to dust off A World of Night and give it a fine-tuning before I take it for a spin. I’m quite fortunate to have another potential novel on the go, but going back to the start of this blog entry, where do I find the time? My writing Other seems to be taking over my working Other, and my social Other, and try as I might, I just can’t occupy more than one space at any one time.

So Sarah is quite pleased Macmillan have taken an interest in A World of Night, but I’m not so sure she’ll be so pleased when I spend more and more time locked away in the study with two books on the go.

Hey, maybe I can find an Oompa-Loompa to help me…