Who knew?

I wanted my story to be accurate in every way I could and, as I have already mentioned, research played and important part. I found a piece of information that staggered and astounded me; C S LEWIS based Naria on the Mournes. I felt as though I had missed a week off school when every one was learning their multiplication tables. I wondered how long had every one else known this fact but never told me. It was like a giant secret.

The one good thing that I love telling people is that a dandelion is the same yellow weed that turns into the delightful white puffball that you make a wish on. I'm still surprised  how many people don't know this. They are probably smirking on the inside at my ignorance of Narnia and the Mournes.

I had decided early on that the Mournes were going to be used in all their glory. I was not going to make up place names, I had no need to, as they were so inspiring anyway. The characters who dwell in the mountains were to come from reality as well. As I researched the flora and fauna of the hills I came across wonderful names e.g. Erica Tetralix, Erica Cinerea and Erica Ling. These three names are the species of heather that cover the mountains. In the story they became the Three Sisters of the Heather who hold the secrets of the Mournes and are unwilling to share them with anyone. Bannon and Veronica and legend in their own lifetimes as great walkers and mountaineers so they easily fell into the story. The Planda: the louseworts, milkworts, tormentils are more species in the hills. Pierce is a Samundine, a man of fire and water.There are Nairulis and Hornfels, Ousters and Lichens. There are Staghorns and Sylomes, Nieron and Usher. I would love to name them all. They only have small parts but a bigger part of the whole story.

I noticed on the Ordinance Survey map for Northern Ireland a place in Annalong called Springwell Port but when I asked anyone from the local area they said they'd never heard of it. That became an instant choice for Jack Turner's home. Jack is my son's name and Turner is my mother's maiden name and this trend continued in the book too. Martha is my wife's middle name. Jack's father Matthew fishes for mackrel and herring (McElherron), Old man Russell is a friend from Kilkeel who was an old fisherman.

So many truths were woven into fantasy.

What makes the book unusual, I think, is that it is geographically accurate but the magic of the Mournes is ever-present.

I was working happily away, and the story was complete, until I had another meeting with Declan Carville and John Farrelly in a nice restaurant in Newry. Declan handed me a leaflet and said that it was important I apply. It was for a chance to get my manuscript accepted by a programme called LitNetNI. I told him I would be wasting their time but he told me to get on with it.

I left it for a week or so then finally I Googled the address and I saw that the Shimna Rd was very close by. Of all the places on the planet the word Shimna had come up, since the evil creature in my story was a Shimnavore I took this as another omen. I rang and a very patient and charming lady called Catherine McInerney listened to my ramblings and said that it sounded original enough to send her the manuscript.

To cut a long story, and a good few months short, I was a accepted and I was paired up with a mentor in Scotland called Lindsey Fraser. The next 6 months plus was the steepest learning curve I have ever experienced.

Lindsey is so good at what she does. She is part of Fraser Ross Associates and knows her craft really well. She gave of her time and her knowledge and at the end I had a manuscript I felt a lot more proud of than when I had begun.

Now what?....

What choice do I have?

...days run into weeks and when you have three children in the house trying to get time to do anything would require a Tardis.

As I said in my last blog, I was given the choice to shrink or expand my story. I couldn't shrink it so I knew I had only one option; I had to write a novel. I had all the ideas in my head, I had a map drawn out and now all I needed was a new Cobs. Declan Carville had told me there were too many kid's books with bears in them and I needed something new. That is when you are glad you are friends with a very talented and imaginative artist. We chatted about a replacement who could become the new hero of the piece. Now Jack, the eleven year-old boy was firmly entrenched in my mythology, but a new Cobs that was a big ask.

I sat with John and talked about characters from Ireland and the subject of a Leprechaun came up but I thought, and he did too, that the idea was twee and overused. But a few nights later John presented my with a few sketches of a Leprechaun. They were a tad twee but then he gave me the picture you see posted here. The Leprechaun had become, in John's eyes, an almost post-apocolyptic character: a 21st Century Leprechaun. Then it struck me Cobs is a Clurichaun, a lesser known entity. From there the character grew, or should I say exploded.
I gave him a family of seven brothers and one sister, all named after the plants and trees that grew in the Mournes. Then the bug hit me...

... my degree (all those years ago and more recently) involved a lot of research, but the subject matter in the medical world can be a tad dry, so letting your creative juices to flow, or again, should I say, gush out over new subject matter delighted me greatly. I spent countless hours researching an area I had explored all my life ( that is, I walked over every mountain), but in an entirely new way. Paths in the Mourne Mountains became walkways for all kinds of creatures and place names leapt of the Ordinance Survey map. One place in particular, Springwell Port, just sounded perfect for Jack Turner's home.

I grew each character in my head and jotted down everything in my wee red notebook. I noted what clothes they would wear and what manerisms they might have. The research lead me to read more about the history of the Mournes and the geography. I knew the information was begging for a new interpretation.
Then I noticed something in my research to my shame I did not already know. That was an omen...

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...

Things never stay the same

It's funny how one thing morphs into another and keeps changing until it is so far removed from your original idea. That is what happened with MourneQuest. I had originally intended it to be a fantasy story for 6 year olds. In it Jack, the hero, had to call upon an evil creature for help. It was a creature from everyone's childhood. A being so evil that no good could come out of that meeting. But brave Jack found the creature, THE BIG BAD WOLF.
That wolf was about to devour Jack. He had him pinned down, teeth beared, saliva dripping into Jack's face. Jack had closed his eyes waiting to be eaten when he heard sobs and when he opened them again he could see the wolf crying. The wolf explained it couldn't eat him, it couldn't eat anyone, it didn't even eat meat. The Big Bad Wolf was a vegetarian called Francis who was framed for blowing down the Three Little Pig's houses. They had stolen the Wolf's mother's locket and all he wanted to do was get it back. But the cute little piggies called the police and by the time they got there the Wolf was trying to blow down the house of bricks and mortar. He was arrested and thrown into a magical prison. Who would believe in a vegetarian wolf.

So there you have a part of the original story. It was called Dandelion and the two heroes were Jack Turner and Cobs the Bear ( Cobs is short for Cornelius Otis Teddyus Bearus). But a few things happened to change all that....

I was at work one day, my alternate reality I like to think of it, where grown-ups act like grown-ups and work is serious because it needs to be. One of my colleagues, who I hadn't seen for some time asked me what I was up to. To try and look windswept and interesting (difficult to do when you've three young kids because washing, ironing, tidying up seem to take up a large part of your life). I told him I'd written a children's book. Instead of him laughing as I expected he told me that his brother-in-law's brother did that sort of thing  and he told me his name; Declan Carville and proceeded to give me his telephone number and advised me to give him a bell as he was very approachable and could be of help.

For those of you who don't know Declan Carville, he is a very prolific children's writer in Northern Ireland. He has written THE FAIRY GLEN, THE INCREDIBLE SISTER BRIDGET, THE MAGIC HARP and about 10 others. I rang the number and heard the most immortal words in the English language... The person you are calling cannot take your call at present. Please leave a message. So I did. I explained who I was and what I was up to and left it at that.
Two weeks later I was in Gosford park finding Fairy money with my children and my phone rang. It was Declan Carville and he asked if we could meet up that week in Belfast.

All this leads me to my best friend and painfully talented artist, John Farrelly. John and I had met in first year in grammar school and thirty odd years later are still great mates. We hadn't seen each other for a while and when we met up for a wee jar or two I told him what I was up to and proceeded to tell him about Cobs. Before I had finished telling him the tale he had sketched him out and presented him to me. It was as if someone had snuck into my thoughts and lifted him out. From then on John was to illustrate the book.
John and I met Declan in Belfast armed with the script and about 15 to 20 illustrations, one of which I was very unhappy about but that John insisted must be included. Out of all the pictures can you guess the one Declan liked the most?
I'll tell you more very soon, there's some ironing to be done and those non-iron shirts don't iron themselves.

Where do dandelion clocks go?

This is my son Jack, the inspiration for MourneQuest. He is nine now but in this photograph he's only four. I had just told him all about the power that is held inside a dandelion and that if he made a wish it's sure to come true. The belief in his eyes, I think, is palpable. He blew and blew until the dome of the dandelion was as bald as I am and that's BALD.

Little did I know what was going on in that tiny little mind of his. Four nights later when I was reading him his bedtime story (I still do) he asked me where the dandelion clocks ( the seed heads) went after they were released.

Then my tiny little mind went to work. Over the next few weeks a story began to grow and then I thought it might be an idea to put it down on paper. 'Dandelion' was born!

I spent all my free time, after work,after the dishes,washing,ironing, and all the chores that every man woman and child loves in getting the story together. I didn't tell anyone what I was up to. You have to experience first hand the look on people's faces when you tell them you're writing a book. From disbelief, though 'you'll never finish it' to arrive at all out laughter. So I kept it under wraps. That all changed when my best mate who I had not seen for quite some time came back into my life.

The inspiration

Life is a learning curve and just as you think you've figured it out your time is up. That's how I feel about learning to blog. I've seen the movies and read the books about blogging but it, in my experience, is hard to set up. Now that I have ( I hope) I can start to rant and rave about self-publishing, marketing, meeting new and infinitely more interesting people than I.
I started writing in primary school with the help of a catapillar whose name escapes me. Now it's all phonetics and shouting at my kids ah, buh, cuh,duh. We sound like neanderthals but it is progress I'm told.
My darling neanderthals are called Jack, Tess and Grace and they are 9, 6 and 3 respectively. They are a huge part of life now and when Jack was 4 he changed my world forever.
"Da." ( he calls me Da and I love it, not Dad or Daddy ( a pet hate) but DA. strong and forceful.
"Da, where do dandelion clocks go when you blow on them?"

AND THERE BEGINS THE OBSESSION.