September roundup: festival events, sponsored writes, and animal sidekicks

Hello friends. It looks as though my September mini-blog is very long this month, however, don’t be fooled. I am simply using a bigger font. Hope you enjoy all my news, writer life tidbits and cat pics. Onwards!

Storytale Festival

I’m so excited to be taking part in Storytale Festival again this year. Come and find me in Storysmith, Bristol on 23rd October 2022 for a free event where I’ll be helping you to dream up your own fantastical creatures like those in my book, Mountainfell. hope to see you there!

Meet the Sponsored Writers

I’m taking part in this year’s Sponsored Write in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support again this year in October, as I’ve mentioned, and would love it if you could support us with a few quid. In return for your generosity you’ll get our collection of short stories delivered to your inbox 48 hours later. Perfect! What’s more, you can now read Q&As with all of us Sponsored Writers who’re taking part this year, and learn the individual reasons why each of us are doing it, right here.

Mountainfell’s animal sidekick

I love animal sidekicks in stories. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing that an animal sidekick can’t massively improve (films, books, life… the list goes on). So of course I couldn’t wait to put one into Mountainfell.

Scrat is Erskin’s pet cat, but with a difference. Firstly, he’s a secret, because people in Erskin’s village of Lofotby do NOT keep pets. Secondly, he’s a bit… strange. He’s very big. His teeth are very long. And he has silver markings that seem to change (although surely that’s just a trick of the light…). Sometimes Erskin could swear he knows exactly what she’s thinking, too.

When I was writing about Scrat I took more than a little inspiration from a beloved pet I used to have. She was a rescue cat who we called Kitty Boobins, and she looked like this.

She was the quirkiest, most demanding cat who ever lived, and when she decided she was going to sit on your chest and purr in your face when you really ought to have been getting out of bed, there really was nothing else for it but to lie there. An electrician who was fixing our fuse box called her ‘the loudest cat I have heard in my life’. And she once shouted so much at a friend who’d been looking after her for the weekend, that she made him ill (don’t worry, he was fine after a rest).

A lot of my love for my legendary Kitty Boobins went into writing Scrat, and I hope you’ll love his funny little personality as much as I do – and as much as I loved Kitty Boobins.

Finally, I wanted to share this brilliant clip of a crab swimming that I found on the internet the other day. If ever you wondered where the ideas came from for Mountainfell’s weird and wonderful magical creatures, look no further than nature itself:

A crab runs across the sea bed, then begins to swim using little flippers on its back.