Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m 23 years old and have just finished my BA in English Literature. I love music, travel, cooking, writing and snowboarding, among other things. Mard is my first book, which I also illustrated. I wrote it with my younger brother, Joe, over a weekend or so – the illustrations took a bit longer!
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My book is called Mard, which in the simplest sense was a name that came about from Joe’s illegible hand writing.
My brother and I were inspired to write it initially as a surprise for our friend Max’s 21st birthday – we’ve had a running joke between us for years linking Max to this idea of Mard as a clumsy but well-meaning polar bear. This came about when we all went bowling together, quite a few years back, and Joe wrote our names down to be put into the score-screen thing. His writing was so hard to read that Max’s name somehow became Mard on the scoreboard. Our imaginations ran on from there. Mard was a name that seemed to need to be spoken in a low, slightly sad, Eeyore-esque voice – like a forlorn polar bear. From then, and over the years, funny or ridiculous things that have happened to Max we imagine to have somehow involved an input from Mard. We had this imaginative formula and the story just ran from it, and old jokes between two brothers.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Not sure how unusual this is, but we basically wrote the story by speaking it to each other over the course of a couple of days. As Mard is a children’s book we really wanted to capture the story in language that was at its best when read aloud. We wanted the language to be soft and rhythmic and so telling the story to each other, over and over, and writing it down as we went, seemed the best way to capture this.
It was also important to us that the illustrations resonated with the language in the book. We had the text almost completely done before we sat down and planned the illustrations – they needed to be inspired by the language so that they worked best with it.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
In the case of writing Mard we looked back to the picture books that were most memorable to us from when we were kids. The two that really stood out were Little Bear’s Trousers by Jane Hissey, and Let’s Go Home Little Bear by Martin Waddell.
Let’s Go Home was probably our biggest influence. The language and illustrations in it are quite delicate and sparse, they leave room for imagination to transform. It’s about a little bear walking through the woods with his dad, big bear, and how the sounds he hears transform into creatures – the plods of their feet become the sounds of Plodder, and so on – it’s got a really simple premise but it becomes really comforting and magical. It’s such a favourite that everyone in the family just knows the book as ‘Plodder’.
We tried to capture some of this magic of imagination in Mard. We have this simple premise that repeats itself: that Max is unaware of Mard who is doing something to try to help and get a cuddle, the outcome for Mard is a clumsy one but somehow Max comes out being celebrated by his friends. We wanted to have that same gap between the real events with Max, and the imagination taking hold with Mard, and to make them come closer and closer together.
What are you working on now?
We have some plans for a few more Mard books as we think that clumsy polar bear has more stories to move around in, plus, we had so much fun writing the first.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
We’re pretty new to this, so couldn’t really say at this stage. I’ve been getting the hang of Twitter, which seems like it could be a great way to promote as we build more followers and I get better at resisting the urge to tweet really obscure jokes, links to weird music and Bob Dylan references.
If you enjoy any or all of those mentioned above, though, check out our Twitter while I’m still learning to control myself!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I’m still a pretty new author too, but I’d probably say keep returning to the essence of what your story is – the spark that began it, like the moment bad handwriting turned Max into Mard.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I really can’t think of any, though perhaps there’s a lesson in there, something like: always listen to advice, even if you don’t decide to follow it.
What are you reading now?
I’ve just finished rereading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and have just begun Moby Dick.
What’s next for you as a writer?
It’s far too early to tell – I’ll just keep on writing things. More Mards, maybe a novel or some such thing one day.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Blood Meridian – mentioned it above I know, but its still fresh and I think it’s one of the most amazing pieces of writing I’ve read in ages.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason – a book full of short reworkings of pieces of the Odyssey myth. It’s endlessly intriguing and puzzling and really beautiful at the same time.
Collected Raymond Chandler – Chandler writes really fast paced, witty and sharp detective stories. Also, because they’re not really about finding out whodunit in the end, they have great reread value.
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