You can't do that !

John and I met with Declan Carville and he looked through all the artwork: sketches, photographs and details drawings. He liked the style and the sepia tones that made book look Victorian but it was the sketch of the Shimnavore that he said would catch a child's imagination the most. The eyes in the back of the head, fangs, tail, skin and size. It had that other-world quality.
My thoughts that having Cobs the bear confront this abomination would be like sending Andy Pandy to fight Freddie Cruger, you just couldn't do it.
The meeting went on for four hours in a relaxed coffee bar on the Lisburn road in Belfast and then afterwards in my best mate John's apartment across the road. I couldn't get over how generous Declan Carville was with his time and his thoughts were invaluable. He said he would take the manuscript away and we would meet up again in a month and he would have a detailed breakdown on his thoughts.

It was a long month for me but it soon came to meeting again. Another four hours went by and at the end Declan said he loved the concept but he didn't like the idea of Jack living in the Mourne Mountains and visting another world ( then Mulberry Forest, where the rain fell upwards etc, etc). He loved the idea of  the Mournes and my descriptions and that I should set the story there. The Mournes were worthy of being a character all of their own. He also felt 5600 words was too much for a child of 6 and I should  shrink it down to fit the attention span of its audience or turn it into a novel. He thought a novel would widen the audience and showcase the characters and storyline.
I was taken aback but decided that since Declan had successfully built a career writing children's books then I wasn't going to go against his experience. I went home and tried to shrink the story. The problem is trying to ' kill your babies ' as they put it. The more I took out of the story the more it didn't make sense to me and the less involved I felt. I was left with only one choice...