Paul Magrs's Blog, page 12

An Interview with Julie Cohen

(image credit  - Ruth Ng)

An Interview with Julie Cohen

Please tell us everything we need to know about your most recent book!
THE TWO LIVES OF LOUIS & LOUISE is an alternate-reality book about gender. In one reality, Lou Alder is born female; in another, Lou is born male. Everything else about their life is the same—same parents, same best friends, same small working-class paper mill community. But because of the gender assigned at birth, everything is different.

It was longlisted for the Polari Prize for LGBTQ+ books and it was selected as a 2019 book of the year by The Reading Agency, Stylist, Woman & Home, and Fabulous Magazine. And it’s been optioned by Enderby Entertainment to be adapted into a feature film, directed by Oscar-nominated director Lisa James Larsson.
How did you get into writing in the first place, and how did you first get published..? Has it been a long and difficult road, or has it been straightforward?
I’ve been writing all my life and wrote my first ‘novel’ aged 11. But I didn’t start writing seriously for publication until I was in my 30s. My first three novels all got rejected, but I signed with an agent in 2004, and soon got a publishing contract for a completely different novel about a month later.
I think that my career since being first published has been more difficult than the many, many rejections before I was published. I’ve got more at stake now than when I was writing for fun, because my writing pays all of my bills. I probably have more self-doubt now than I did when I first started out, for the simple reason that I know more about all the things that can go wrong. But I still get a huge thrill from seeing my books on a shelf, and I still find writing itself to be one of the most difficult and fulfilling things that I have ever done.
How would you define the genre that your book falls into?
I think it’s literary/commercial crossover fiction, what’s often called a ‘book club book’. But it’s also feminist fiction, and it’s LGBTQ+ fiction, and it’s a love story. And because of the alternate reality ‘Sliding Doors’ structure, it’s been called science fiction too. It was definitely inspired by Virginia Woolf’s ORLANDO, but also by Ursula K LeGuin’s THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS.



Why did you fall in love with this genre in the first place, and which books / authors / series would you recommend?
Hmmmm well genre-bending literary/commercial feminist crossover fiction? Aside from LeGuin’s book, which I think everyone should read, I’ve recently loved THE SUMMER OF IMPOSSIBLE THINGS by Rowan Coleman (time travelling love story), THE POWER by Naomi Alderman (feminist science fiction dystopia), and one of my absolute favourites, the SAGA series by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples (space opera/family drama/intergalactic war graphic novel series). It’s one of my goals for this year to read more feminist science fiction, so hit me up with recommendations!
You’ve worked in all kinds of different genres. How important is it for you to take a zig-zag path, exploring all these various kinds of story-telling?
These days I write what I’d call literary/commercial crossover fiction, but I started out my career writing romantic comedy novels for Mills & Boon and later, Headline. I’ve written what’s called ‘chick-lit’, and I’ve written book club fiction, and I’ve written erotica, and erotic science fiction. I’ve dabbled in a bit of mystery. My next novel, SPIRITED, is a lesbian historical ghost story (out in July). I would love to write for comics, and I’m dying to write some feminist crime and some biting social satire. Until recently I was the official cartoonist for The Sherlock Holmes Journal (in spite of the fact that I really can’t draw).
I worry that it’s a problem, because I see that very successful authors are often writing the same sort of book over and over again, but making it fresh each time. Maybe I get bored easily, but I really like to change things up and try new types of story.
Is there a genre you couldn’t imagine ever writing in..?
I always said I could never write a historical novel, but then I went and wrote one! I would be pretty rubbish at writing a sports novel, because I hate sports. I love reading true crime but I hope I’m never close enough to a crime to write a book about it.
Do you take elements of characters or overheard phrases from people you’ve observed..?
I would love to say that I do this! But the truth is, I have a terrible memory. So while I think I am pretty observant, I most often forget things that I’ve observed. I guess these observations do filter into my subconscious, though, and become things that I later create.
What are you going to write next..? Are you going to be working in the same vein? What can we expect next..?
I’m working on another literary/commercial crossover novel with a science fiction premise, to be published in 2021. I’m hoping I can pull it off.
Finally… tell us something surprising about yourself that your readers might not already know..!
If you follow me on social media you already know that I love to dress in drag, that I’m a huge fan of the TV show Hannibal, that I post way too many Gillian Anderson gifs, that I came out as bisexual in my 40s, and that I have a Master’s degree in Victorian fairies. I’m not sure I have any secrets left!

Books of Christmas, the Year and the Decade...

More pictures than words on my blog today. Firstly... my pile of books representing the best of 2019. I read 106 books this past year, and the picture shows my faves.

Next... I was kind of challenged to make a top ten of my books of the past decade. Which took ages to do...



...but creating that heap of books made me want to reread the whole lot all over again.

Finally...  here's my pile of Christmas reading 2019. I love the holidays because I can put in even more time reading than I normally would. Everything this year was really well chosen - most of them were gifts and I had a lovely time.

Happy New Year!

'Serpent Crest' on the Radio at Christmas

Here’s something I’ve got on Radio 4Extra every evening this Christmas! It’s all the episodes of my Doctor Who series, ‘Serpent Crest’ starring Tom Baker and Susan Jameson. This wild and interconnected set of tales will take you from a futuristic reiteration of the Russian Revolution with robots into the heart of the Arabian Nights, and then to a village that gets flung out into a satellite in space. There’s lots of lovely guest stars in this – Michael Jayston, Richard Franklin Nerys Hughes, Joanna Tope, Simon Shepherd, Andrew Sachs (as the Doctor’s own multi-coloured scarf turned into an evil serpent…!) and David Troughton as a strange, twisted version of the Second Doctor.
There’s even a punch-up between two Doctor Who’s outside a pub.
These ten episodes are some of my favourite things I ever did under the Doctor Who banner – back in 2012 – and I hope you’ll enjoy them! 6pm from Monday on Radio 4Extra!

An Interview with Rowan Coleman

Please tell us everything we need to know about the new book!
The Vanished Bride imagines that before they were famous authors the Bronte sisters were amateur sleuths. In the first of the series they hear of the disappearance of a young wife and mother, who has vanished from her home, Chester Grange, leaving behind a room covered in blood. Naturally curious, intelligent and formidable, the sisters decide to become ‘detectors’ and discover what happened to Elizabeth Chester.


Is there going to be a lovely series of Bronte adventures, that will continue forever..?
I really hope so! I’d love that, because they are a joy to research and write. Book 2 is coming in 2020 and at present I have two more planned. Each book is interwoven with the real biographical facts, and takes place over a few days – so it is possible to fit in a lot of detecting into their all too short lives. 
How do you go about slotting these mysteries into what we know about the sisters’ real lives?
It not too difficult, we have a great archive of material, particularly Charlotte’s letters to her friend Ellen Nussey, the diary papers that Emily and Anne wrote, and a great number of other artefacts that give us a really good idea of who the sisters were, their voices and personalities, while still leaving open a lot to interpretation. There have also been some amazing finds, particularly the torn-up love letter that Charlotte sent to her unrequited love, Monsieur Héger, which his wife took out of the waste bin and stitched back together and kept! Even so we still only know about five percent of what they did on a day to day basis, so there is still plenty of room for detecting! 


Where did such a fantastic idea come from..? Did you have a single moment of inspiration?
I did, as it happens. I was spending a lot of time in Haworth and at Ponden Hall, where my contemporary ghost story The Girl at the Window is set. I was briefly considering a thread in that novel where the Bronte sisters investigated the same mystery my contemporary heroine does. But as soon as I thought of the Bronte Sisters investigating anything, I knew it was an idea that deserved its own novel!

Why do you enjoy the mystery genre, and which books / authors / series would you recommend?
 This is my first foray into mystery writing as an author, but I have loved it for a long time as a reader. Like many I love Christie, Du Maurier, Conan Doyle, all the classics! I love gothic fiction too, and most importantly I am devoted to the novels and poems of the Bronte Sisters, which all contain an element of mystery. For contemporary authors I have been reading Robin Stevens with my son, the Murder Most Unladylike series, and they are brilliant!

Tell us about the landscape and setting of your series. Where in the world are we, and why should everyone want to go there..?
We are in beautiful West Yorkshire, and the village of Haworth, though it was a good deal less picturesque in the Bronte’s time that it is now! Then the average life expectancy was 24, and the drinking water came right off the moor, got filtered through the putrid contents of the graveyard, flowed down the sewage strewn streets and into the town well. Typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera were rife, and infant mortality meant that on some headstones lost babies were numbered instead of names. It was a very hard life for most of the occupants of Haworth. The Parsonage at the top of the village was something of a beacon for the residents, and Patrick Bronte served his community well, eventually successfully lobbying for a series of fresh water reservoirs to be built. Today Haworth is a beautiful little village, surrounded by stunning countryside and it feels like my second home. If you want a wonderfully wild walk, at any time of year there is nothing to beat a good march up to Top Withens, the geographical location of Wuthering Heights, or my favourite (and Emily’s) spot Ponden Kirk, better known as Peniston Crag, where the view is astounding.  
How did you get into writing in the first place, and how did you first get published..?
I’d always written, but I never really tried to do anything with it. Then when I was 29 ½ and reading a magazine on my lunch break that had a young writers short story of the year competition. I realised the cut-off point was 30! Horrified I thought I better enter, and I wrote a story set in an alternative reality where all women aspired to be fat and single. Anyway, it won! That opened a lot of doors for me, and within in two years my first novel was published.
Why do you have different pen names, and do you see them as distinct personalities and types of writers?
Yes, basically. I write a wide range of contemporary fiction under my own name Rowan Coleman, sometimes emotional family stories, sometimes time-travel adventures, sometimes historical ghost stories. But when I write something that is more of a pure genre I write under a pen name to define that. Bella Ellis is also a little tribute to the Bronte Sister’s pens names they were first published under of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
What is your readership like..? Do you meet them, or get letters from them?
They are lovely, diverse, ever changing. There are a core of readers I have had now for nearly twenty years and they honestly feel like friends, even though I haven’t met them in real life! The great joy is every time I try something that is more genre fluid like The Summer of Impossible Things or The Girl at the Window, I meet new readers, and that’s always brilliant fun. I meet quite a few at book events, but I suppose mostly I talk to my readers online, we all love books and that’s great thing to have in common. 


What are you going to write next..? I’m just finishing Bronte Mysteries 2 and then I have a new idea for a Rowan book that I could tell you about, but then I’d have to kill you.
Finally… tell us something surprising about yourself that your readers might not already know..!
I am a chronic over sharer so there isn’t much mystery to me! I am dyslexic, I harbour a long held desire to write a vampire novel and I’m married to Rick Astley’s guitarist, who is also my childhood sweetheart, Adam.

Another Magical Bowie Story

The story goes like this. There was a young woman working for the film company in Soho, the year they made ‘The Snowman.’ She had a pretty lowly job in the office, but she could knit. It was she who had created the scarf prop for the filmed scene in the attic. She had knitted it so it looked exactly like the one in the cartoon, so that Bowie could pick it up and remember his magical adventure.
When Bowie was visiting the offices of the company to toast the success of the film, there was a great buzz in the building. Everyone wanted to see him, but he was whisked straight up to the top floor to meet the men in suits. The people in the humbler offices below barely got a glimpse of him. After his meeting he was hustled right out again to his waiting limo and everyone was disappointed. The young woman and her colleagues were hanging out of their window, watching his car zigzag away through the Soho streets.
She felt a particular attachment to that film because of the scarf she had knitted for it. She’d worked hard to get it right. It was an important prop because it was  the link between the everyday world and the world of magic.
On the day of Bowie’s fleeting visit, this young woman had come into work with one of her boyfriend’s favourite albums, ‘Hunky Dory’, on vinyl, in a brown paper bag. She’d carried it very carefully on the tube that morning, and she had set it on her desk while she got on with the day’s work, excitedly waiting for the moment when the Thin White Duke would pass through the office and she could jump up and get it signed.
But he never came by.
It was just a flying visit.
At the end of the day she went home disconsolately and told her boyfriend that she’d had no luck. He didn’t mind, but he wanted to know what she’d done with his favourite record. He’d had it since he was a kid.
‘Oh, I must have left it on my desk,’ she said. She had been so cheesed off about the whole business that she had put it out of her head. ‘I’ll bring it home tomorrow, promise.’
The next day she had wiped the whole saga from her mind. She went into work, the same as any other day. Into Central London, into Soho, into the office. She sat herself down at her desk.
And there it was, right in front of her. Her boyfriend’s beloved copy of Hunky Dory. But there were black scribbles all over the cover picture; all over Bowie’s soft focus beauty in black marker pen. It was signed with love, and dedicated to the girl who had knitted his scarf for him.
She sat staring at it for a while – at the lightning bolt of his signature – trying to figure out how he could have known. Also, how had he done it? She had seen him leave the building. She had hardly left her desk all day. He had no idea who she was…
She never found out the answer. Years later she was still telling the story and still trying to figure it out.
When Bowie died she told the story to one of the newspapers and that’s how I heard it. It was my favourite story of all the ones flying about that week. It was a story about that snowman magic creeping wonderfully, mysteriously, into real life, making a Christmassy story in the bleakest part of the year.

An Interview with Lesley Cookman

An Interview with Lesley Cookman

PM: Please tell us everything we need to know about the new book!
Lesley: It’s the 20th full length Libby Sarjeant Mystery, set in Steeple Martin and the nearby town of Felling. All the regular cast of characters are present, as well as some who’ve appeared as the series goes on. And, of course, some new ones!


PM:Can it be read as a standalone, or do we have to start at the beginning of the series?
Lesley: I always try to write them as standalones, and fill in as much detail at the beginning as I can without boring the pants off regular readers – who, I’m sure, would say you need to start at the beginning.
PM:How did you get into writing in the first place, and how did you first get published..?
Lesley: My first published writing was my regional RSPCA awards (two!) while I was at school. After that, although I always wrote privately, nothing happened until my late husband’s employer, Which Computer magazine, asked me to unpack a large cardboard box, unearth a little Apricot Desktop Computer, assemble it, then write a piece on it saying how easy it had been. This, obviously, was at the very beginning of the Desktop Publishing Revolution. I then became a staff writer, doing features on all sorts of things – Computers for Children, Science Parks, Computers in Schools. I then went on to write for Business Matters, Small Business Matters and various other rather boring publications. I edited Poultry Farmers’ Weekly (!) and The Call Boy, the house magazine of the British Music Hall Society, wrote pantomime scripts and short fiction and finally, went to do a Master’s Degree at the University if Wales, where I met Hazel Cushion, who went on to ask me if she could publish the embryo book which had appeared as my dissertation.
PM:Why do you love to write Crime fiction?
Lesley: I began reading my parents’ collection of Golden Age Detective Fiction when I was nine and fell in love with Ngaio Marsh, John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson and Rex Stout. So I feel I’m trying to carry on their traditions.
PM:I’ve heard that you don’t like the phrase ‘Cosy Crime’ – why’s that? And how would you define your genre..?
Lesley: When I started writing it, it wasn’t called that – it was a term that came over from the USA and to me, sounds twee and belittling, very like the dreaded “Chick Lit”. I write Mystery Fiction, or Detective Fiction, as the old publishers would have it.
PM:What is your readership like..? Do you meet them, or get letters from them?
Lesley: Oh, yes! I have a very active Reader Group, some of whom I have met, and all of whom I use as sounding boards. Sometimes we disagree – they have very strong views! – but mostly they are incredibly useful, and can be relied on to answer various research questions. For instance, one of my regular characters is a female vicar, so questions of church practice sometimes come up. Frances and Suzanne can always be relied on to provide the answers.
PM:I love the characters in your books. They’re like people I feel I’ve met. Do you take elements or overheard phrases from people you’ve observed..?
Lesley: Not consciously, but I think I cotton pick characteristics and traits from various people. When the books started, a group of young friends vied with each other to “recognise” the characters – and the places. They were never right, but I could see where they were coming from, as it were.
PM:Tell us about the landscapes and settings of your series. Where in the world are we, and why should everyone want to go there..?
Lesley: I always say I unzipped Kent, from the coast down between Deal and Folkestone, up to Canterbury. I moved other locations to suit me, so there is a Sandwich look-alike, and the other way, there is a marshy area just like Romney and Walland. The villages are all made up, but the general terrain is similar to the area running alongside the A2 from Canterbury to Dover.


PM:What are you going to write next..?
Lesley: The 21st in the Libby Sarjeant series!
PM:Finally… tell us something surprising about yourself that your readers might not already know..!
Lesley: I was once asked to become a “Bunny” at the Playboy Club in London by Victor Lownes, Hugh Hefner’s right hand man. Told you I was old...

*

Magrs Top Ten

1

The Phoenix Court Trilogy (1995 - 98) 
My magical realist trilogy! Published by Chatto and Windus back in the Nineties, now available again in fancy editions from Lethe Press


2

Doctor Who - The Scarlet Empress (1998)
My first fully-fledged foray into the world of Doctor Who. Magical and crazy times..! Long, long out of print from BBC Books.


3
STRANGE BOY (2002)
A kids' book with an LGBTQ hero is all the thing nowadays... but not in 2002. Lots of fuss at the time, back in 2002, but long out of print from Simon and Schuster.


4
THE BRENDA AND EFFIE MYSTERIES  (2006 - 2012)
Six novels from Headline about the Bride of Frankenstein's further adventures. All back in print in 2020 from Snow Books, and supplemented by a new book - 'A Game of Crones.'


5
DOCTOR WHO - THE NEST COTTAGE CHRONICLES (2009 - 2011)
Fifteen new audio adventures for my favourite Doctor, Tom Baker. Available in a boxed set from BBC Audio.


6
THE STORY OF FESTER CAT (2014)
Our lovely rescue cat narrated his memoirs posthumously, and Penguin US published them. Still available in paperback.


7
BAKER'S END (2015 - 2016)
A season of magical, funny stories starring Tom Baker dressed up as a giant cat. Available from Bafflegab


 8  
THE LOST ON MARS TRILOGY (2015 - 2018)
My Middle Grade Science Fiction Trilogy that I always wanted to write! Little House on the Prairie meets the Martian Chronicles. Available from Firefly Press



9
THE NOVEL INSIDE YOU  (2019)
My book on creativity and writing. Personal and practical and the result of many years of teaching and writing. Available from Snow Books.



10
STARDUST AND SNOW (2019)
I always wanted to write a Christmas Story. This one's about an autistic boy meeting David Bowie and learning about the art of magical disguise and courage from the master. Available from Obverse Books.

The Christmas Trilobite

Up at 5am writing this year's Christmas story. I was convinced that if I carried on sleeping I was going to forget it. Three hours scribbling by lamplight and I think I've written pages of crazy nonsense. It's called - get this - The Christmas Trilobite. Hurray! Coffee now.
*
Knock knock. Scritchy-scratch. Thump thump thump.             It’s 5.15 am – who is that?             Can’t be the cat. He’s already pushed his paws into my face and clicked his claws on my pillowcase. He’s already woken me up and made me go downstairs to feed him. So who is this, knocking on the bedroom door?            There’s a hard frost outside. The first dark morning of December. White Rabbits! Open the first little door on the calendar.             Oh no! It’s the Christmas Trilobite.             What? There’s no such thing.            Is there?            He comes skittering into the room on his long insect legs.            ‘Hey, Paul! Remember me? From when you were a kid? Wasn’t I your favourite? Get up out of that bed and talk to me!’            This is what it’s like when something takes hold of you before it’s even light. I go through to my study, pulling on my dressing gown. The house is chilly and I sit at my desk. He jumps onto my laptop and preens beneath the spotlight of my anglepoise.             There can be no doubt about it. He’s definitely a Trilobite.            He smells funny – crabsticks? Lobster bisque?             ‘Look, kidda,’ he says, being serious. ‘You remember me. Now I’m calling on a favour from you. I want my very own Christmas story. Make it happen, can’t you?’
*
As it happens, I do remember the Trilobite. He was in one of the first books I remember reading.            When I was very small we lived in Peterlee, in an estate of boxy houses set upon a hillside. Every time we went to the grocery shop my mam would buy me a new book. She couldn’t afford it, but we loved reading them together.            For some reason, the Trilobite stood out for me in the book about Prehistoric Life. There he was, back in the Early Cambrian period, 521 million years ago, when the sea was azure and gorgeous. All the other deep sea creatures looked like twirly sundaes and items of gaudy jewellery with tentacles and suckers. But down on the sandy sludge of the ocean bed was where the Trilobites were hanging out and flourishing in their own little way. Scuttling about in two dimensions only: back and forth, left to right.             They were around for quite a long time in the story of the Earth and, even as a small kid, I felt that they were written out of the narrative quite brutally. Flashy fish came along, and fangy sharks and then things with arms and legs. Amphibians went sashaying out of the water onto the beach and soon they grew scales and feathers and then they were dinosaurs.Later on they grew fur, etc. And what about the humble Trilobite then? Who cared about his trials and tribulations?
*
We know lots about them. That’s because they left lots of evidence about themselves with their Easily Fossilized Exoskeletons.             But, unlike many other creatures, even squishier ones, they didn’t have many adventures. There aren’t actually very many stories about Trilobites.             ‘That’s what I want putting to rights,’ he tells me, cavorting up and down my desk. ‘I’m bursting with ideas!’            How about Red Riding Hood and the conniving, vicious Trilobite who disguises himself as Grandma, having eaten her first? ‘Oh, Grandma! What great big feelers you have! And what a beautiful Easily Fossilized Exoskeleton you have!’But wouldn’t that only work if Grandma was plankton?             ‘I can act! I can be a villain! What do you think..?’            Or what about Beauty and the Trilobite?            Goldilocks and the Three Trilobites?             Snow White and the Seven Trilobites?            Ali Baba and the Forty Trilobites?
*

Could I really put him into a fairy tale?            Maybe he’s the son of a nobleman, the youngest of three Trilobites, who sets off to make his fortune? Or to slay a jellyfish?             Maybe he’s a venal, bossy character who gets his awful comeuppance at last?            Or perhaps he’s a princess and she’s waiting for a beautiful fate?             A Trilobite who’s been cursed by a goblin, an ogre, a wicked witch…            Or is it a fable in which he falls in love with some unsuitable creature? A Pteradactyl? They come from such different worlds…             The winged one has to resist dreadful hunger pangs in order not to devour his beloved. Snap snap. Love can be gone in a flash. Especially slippery seafood.             ‘Oh, come on,’ he groans. ‘There must be a fairy tale ideally suited to one with my talents…’            Three lobes, three segments, lots of spindly, waving legs and feelers. They dominated the seas for many millions of years. Not bad, considering.             Once upon a time…             But what did he do..?
*
‘I would love to be a figure in history, having adventures…’ he suggests. ‘And I could teach children all about the key roles I might have played in the past, perhaps?’            He taught primitive man how to make fire. He set off into the East with Alexander the Great and Richard the Lion Heart and Marco Polo. He was seduced by Cleopatra and he burned down the library at Alexandria. He was one of the few schoolmates who didn’t mock Napoleon, and was rewarded by the Emperor and attended his Coronation in Notre Dame. He was the only explorer to return from Scott’s expedition to the South Pole.            We could fake the fossilized record to say that he was there for all these things. We could say he was there when the atom was split, and the computer was created, and even when clocks and time were invented.             ‘All that’s great,’ he nods. ‘But what I really want to be in is my very own Christmas story…’
*
What generally happens in a Christmas story? Is there mystery and romance? Often there’s a great journey… and flying.             The Trilobite can’t fly, but he can scuttle, and he’s marvellous underwater. But that’s not very Christmassy, is it?             Well… let’s see. Maybe Santa has a disaster on Christmas Eve? He’s streaking through the night sky with his sleigh and all his reindeer, crossing the ocean, when he has a disaster…! And he has to be rescued by… a Trilobite..! An especially nimble, heroic and handsome Trilobite! One who fixes his sleigh and drags all the drowning reindeer back aboard. Santa is astonished and very grateful. ‘I’ve never met one of your kind before! Though I know all about you, of course, from your Excellent Fossil Record. How can I reward you? How about a trip to the North Pole..? Would that do..?’The Trilobite’s eyes widen at both Santa’s idea, and at my suggestion. ‘I think I like it. Suitably heroic. I like the Santa angle. Maybe there’s some magic..? Maybe I get to actually help pull Santa’s sleigh? And I have a marvellous time helping to deliver toys all over the world?’Then the Trilobite is picturing himself scuttling over snowy rooftops and squeezing himself down chimneys. Wouldn’t he love dashing around in strangers’ dark houses, filling up stockings... and occasionally giving early risers a wonderful surprise..! Could the Trilobite even become one of Santa’s little helpers on a permanent basis?Santa isn’t sure. His elves are quicker. They’ve got hands. They can carry things. The Trilobite isn’t such a great assistant. He drinks all the sherry left out for Santa and makes high-pitched excited noises. Maybe this isn’t the right story for him, after all?
*

Is this just evolution? A natural process of exclusion?There is no Christmas story about the Trilobite because he simply doesn’t fit in? He’s not the kind of creature who gets to be in such a tale?Santa and I have to break it to him gently…Look here, you’ve got a marvellous fossil record… Look at it! Not bad for one who’s been extinct for hundreds of millions of years! That brittle exo-skeleton of yours has stood you in good stead – and that’s why people remember who you were! How about that? They still remember you – up until this very day!The Trilobite looks forlorn. Then he turns peevish. No, it isn’t enough. He is ambitious. His feelers are restless. ‘I want a Christmassy story starring me! Something to teach everyone the true meaning of everything! Oh, do write it for me..!’
*
There were many different kinds of Trilobites. Twenty-five thousand different types. That’s diversity for you. And they never fought amongst themselves. They respected each other’s business and went about their prehistoric days very contentedly. Peace on Earth and good will to all invertebrates.Not much tension or conflict in that story. So they had the perfect society for millions of years…? Huh. But where’s the drama? Where’s the excitement? Where’s the sexy stuff?‘But we ruled the seas!’ the Trilobite gasps. ‘And in those days that meant we owned the whole world, because what else was happening on land but volcanoes going off and lava spurting everywhere? We were among the first living, sensible things on the Earth and we were the very first to realise that we were rocking it!’
*
The Russian Trilobite Asaphus Kowalewski had eyes perched on stalks that were two inches long.‘Is it that we just weren’t pretty enough, by your modern standards? We would never be chosen to star in a festive adventure of our own because we aren’t attractive to your human eyes? Is it true that when you see us you can’t identify with creatures who look like this? Are you having trouble relating to us?’
*


There was a Trilobite from Morocco – Walliserops Trifurcatus – who had a three-pronged fork – a trident! – coming out of his head. Right out of his cephalon! I’ve no idea why! ‘But maybe there’s a story in that, eh? Maybe?’The Asaphellus Cuervoca even had wings! He could guide himself better than most, cruising about on the ocean floor. ‘He also had very large eyes, and maybe you humans could identify with him and all his struggles?’And Dicranarus Monstrous had handlebar moustaches! As well as long, flowing, rather elegant legs. He went sweeping through the darkness of the ancient seas… What if Santa Claus was rescued by him?Santa, caught up in a turbulent time storm, with a blizzard raging all around, and only this Trilobite can lead him back to his own time and place?Santa glances at the picture of the moustached creature. ‘He’d give me the screaming ab-dabs.’
*
Strange-looking, funny-looking. Sinister, even. ‘We look like aliens now. Even to ourselves,’ the Trilobite laments. ‘Before coming out tonight I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror and thought: “Crikey! Is that really me..?!”‘You see humans everywhere, and you imagine fitting in… and then, all at once, you’re brought up short. When you notice your own mandibles. Catch a glimpse of your feelers. And you think: “Oh, yes. I’m a Trilobite, aren’t I? I’ll never blend in.’ ‘It’s not even that I want to pass by unnoticed. Not really.‘I was used to fitting in. I had two hundred million years of fitting in.‘It might be rather nice to stand out in the crowd. I’d love to be remembered as, say, The Trilobite Who Saved Christmas. Or the Miracle Trilobite. Or the Trilobite in a Trillion.
*
‘My story could be about my visiting a family of Flat-Earthers? A dynasty of dinosaur-deniers? I could slip down their chimney one Christmas Eve and terrify them at first? Then I could win them over and steal their hearts? The whole dopey, fundamentalist, bigoted lot of them could come to love me slavishly and believe every word I said! ‘I would teach them – with infinite care and patience, perhaps through the medium of song – all about the fossil record?’
*
‘I can’t be cute,’ says the Trilobite. ‘Not a flopsy bunny or a kitten or a dewy-eyed, lonesome pony. How would I make myself cute? ‘Fur. Big eyes. Helplessness. ‘All that mammal stuff. Urrggh.’ But what if you pushed the lonesome angle, eh? He’s the very last of his kind? And he’s somehow survived hundreds of millions of years and now he’s alone in a very strange land?‘Yes, I’m liking this,’ he says (using the continuous present, which is his favourite tense, being an immensely long-lived creature.) ‘Yes, yes, make me a miraculous survivor! People love those! A mysterious beast from antiquity! A lovely antediluvian animal!’
*
Santa glances at the top of the tree in his workshop. What’s that horrid-looking thing standing in for the fairy?It’s the Trilobite, feeling fantastic. ‘Look at me!’ Well, he’s happy. Who can argue with that? Mrs Claus rolls her eyes.  She’s seen it all before. A Trilobite at the top of the Christmas tree? A Trilobite helping with Santa’s Christmas deliveries? Well, whatever. These aren’t the craziest ideas Santa has ever had. Live and let live is Mrs Claus’s mantra.The fairy is livid, naturally. Supplanted and replaced. She’s plotting revenge on the creature from the dawn of time. It curdles her tiny, glittering heart, this furious resentment she feels, and it turns her to the bad. She gets her closest elvish friends to take the Trilobite captive. They sneak up on him and lash his feelers to his sides and though he struggles, he’s no good at fighting, and he can’t resist. They take him off to the kitchens and pop him in the pot! They cook him in a seafood stew, which Mrs Claus is brewing on the stove for Christmas Eve’s supper. Now it’s a prehistoric broth. A primordial bouillabaisse.Of course, the Trilobite was very old. Well past his sell-by date. And you have to be very careful with shellfish. Christmas Eve is the worst night in the year for everyone in Santa’s household to come down with food poisoning. What a to-do. It’s not a pleasant sight. All deliveries are cancelled. Christmas is called off, the whole world over. No presents for anyone, on account of the Christmas Trilobite in the pot. It’s not very festive at the North Pole this year, though the fairy is jubilant in her own bitter way. The Trilobite frowns. ‘I’m not exactly loving this story,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure I want to be eaten up, or to ruin Christmas for everyone! That’s not the kind of thing I want at all..! Try again!’Try and try and try again. It’s the writer’s eternal mantra. He snaps his mandibles at me and glares across the desk.‘I want a magical Christmas story! A lovely one! How hard can that be..?’
*
What about a kind of quest thing? They’re always popular. Something grand and sweeping and mythic. Perhaps set back in antiquity? ‘Everyone loves the dinosaurs!’ cries the Trilobite. ‘Perhaps I could crawl up onto land and warn the dinosaurs they’re about to be made extinct? I could lead them all to safety? It could even be a musical. Can I sing? Well, no. But I can hum. Is that no good?’I’m picturing Busby Berkeley routines on the ocean bed, with rudimentary life forms in frilly shells cavorting in formation. Even single-celled organisms joining the dance in geometrical displays, with lovely precision. ‘And I could be the glorious star in the centre of it all!’ trills the Trilobite. ‘Not tap-dancing exactly. More doing a soft-shoe shuffle. I could be twiddling my feelers elegantly…’
*


What about a disaster movie? An ocean cruise at Christmas time? A huge liner sinking to the bottom of the sea and everything looking hopeless. But look who comes leaping to help out the passengers! He’s saving the lives of the most interesting characters and leading them to safety (shirtless, six-pack on show, flexing his steely antennae.) A friend to all mankind!But I’m a feisty beast as well as a hero, he thinks. I can at times be filled with vengeful thoughts. All those years of neglect and obscurity…! I feel hard done by, if I’m honest…‘So, what if I was starring in a fantastic monster movie..?’Somehow blown up to ninety feet tall. Trashing the skyline of Tokyo and lashing about and stomping on humans. Reclaiming the earth for his own humble kind. Except… his arms, though numerous, are not particularly strong. They are frondlike and ineffectual. He can’t quite destroy the metropolis. He’s simply flapping around, stroking skyscrapers.His thoughts turn glumly to apocalyptic stories. Earth in ruins. Radioactive wilderness. Mutants and nuclear winter storms and sheer awfulness. And the only living creature is the earliest and hardiest of them all.There he is! With his proud and darkly-glittering exo-skeleton, dashing about on the dry-as-bone sea bed… Our friend the Trilobite! He’s celebrating Christmas all alone at the end of time.
*
What if he was a time-travelling crustacean? And he went back to witness the birth of Christ? ‘I could smuggle myself among the sheep on the hillside and gate crash along with those dopey shepherds. They’d never notice…’Or he could be with the oxen, lowing in the stall. ‘I could disguise myself as a tick, maybe. Shush, Mrs Moo. Or I’ll nip your udders. Don’t tell them I’m here. The Trilobite at the Nativity.’Or what if he was one of the gifts brought by the Wise Men? Gold, Frankincense and a Trilobite? That could work. ‘Then at least I’d have an excuse to be at the stable. I’d be a part of that most famous of tales. Kids in school plays would one day dress up as me! They’d be proud to be me! They’d be like – “I don’t want to be a shepherd or an angel! I don’t even want to be Mary! I want to be the Christmas Trilobite!”’
*
‘Oh, here’s a lovely thought!’ the Trilobite cries. ‘What if I was among a whole bunch of pop stars who get together to make a charity record for Christmas? We put aside our egos just for one day and create a festive classic? Maybe it was all my idea and I’m the hero for a day?’
*
He still likes the idea of flying to the North Pole, though. And he still thrills to think of himself scuttling about on the desert sands on the way to Bethlehem. Following that twinkling star. A star that glimmered its first, way back in the days when he lived underwater with all his trillions of chums. He’s hoping to get a ride on a camel. He’s hoping to make it in time.He’s thinking about sitting in Santa’s sleigh and saving Christmas for everyone and being a miraculous crustacean.             He knows he can do it. He can do anything.            He’s come this far, after all.
*
Couldn’t the Trilobite fall in love? ‘Love often features in Christmas stories!’ he points out, hopefully. ‘And learning a special lesson about selflessness and kindness to fellow creatures. Well, I can do that! I can do any of these things! I can be anything from any of these stories!’‘But… why?’ I ask him. ‘Why do you particularly want to be in a Christmas story?’‘Because… because… it will mean that you remember me. Paul, do you remember..? On Christmas Day, 1972? The year that you learned to read… do you recall? You were reading your book about Prehistoric Life. Volcanoes were erupting. Earth existed in a state of primordial soupiness and flux. It was cataclysmic and all history was beginning. You were three years old and the words and the pictures were starting to make sense to you. The book was in your Christmas stocking. Early in the morning. Reading by lamplight. In your own room, staring at pages.‘Staring at the page with the Trilobite on. You realised that you weren’t just staring at the lines of words. They were sweeping you along just like the grand surges of the tide. ‘The words were moving you to understand and you weren’t even trying. ‘As the Trilobite and all his friends flickered into life and danced on the seabed you realised that you were reading, and all these little creatures were going to leave their footprints - and an excellent fossil record - inside your head forever.’



           
           

The Girl in the Pink Coat

The Girl in the Pink Coat
Next week brings December and a new Doctor Who book from the BBC that I’ve got a story in. I was thinking about it being twenty-one years of doing these Doctor Who things – with lots of ups and downs and many memorable moments – some of them great, some of them dreadful...! When you write tie-in fiction you’re in a curious position – both on the fringes and in the very heart of the story. Many of the moments I laugh about and remember are to do with turning up at public events and *not* being someone off the telly…
The most touching moment, though, and the most important for me, was the Saturday in 2007 that Cardiff’s fancy new Waterstones store opened its doors for the first time and we did a signing. I was there with the two Marks (Morris and Michalowski) because we all had books out at the same time. The TARDIS was there, as well as people dressed as Cybermen, and two publicists from BBC Books. There might have even been Daleks.
The shop was busy, the queues were busy and people were swarming up the escalators to come and see the people from Doctor Who. We were wearing those grins that you do when you’re somewhere on behalf of somebody else, and fully prepared to be slightly disappointing… You’re not in attendance as yourself, exactly, but you’re preparing to do your very best.
Halfway through our event there was an old granddad – a very shabby, skinny old man – turning up with his granddaughter. She was about four, in a pink, ragged anorak. The sleeves were filthy and hanging in tatters. The two of them really stood out in that well-dressed crowd and that opulent new shop. The publicist nudged me and pointed them out. The girl was clutching an extremely worn copy of a Doctor Who novel – Jac Rayner’s ‘The Stone Rose.’ It was more like a bundle of worn, mucky paper, all balled up, that she was bringing to our table.
The shop staff and our helpers were clearly keen for people to be buying new books today, but the girl in the pink coat took her place in the queue and doggedly waited, hugging her favourite book to her. When it was her turn Grandad mumbled something about it being the only book she ever looked at. I thought it was probably the only book she owned.
She pushed it carefully onto the table in front of us three writers. Amongst our water bottles, pens, Dr Who memorabilia and shiny new books. She looked at us expectantly and someone – I think one of our publicists – tried to explain to her that this one wasn’t a book written by anyone here at the shop today. Wouldn’t she prefer to get a brand new one signed?
The girl blinked and stared at us. What did she care about any of these new books? How was she going to understand what the woman was saying to her? She had her Doctor Who book already. She already had the book she loved.
I took it and signed it for her, and passed it to the others to sign as well. I tried to chat with her and grin, and she just stared at me, and watched her book carefully, holding her breath until it was safely back in her grasp.
The old grandad was talking to her, standing at her back. He was very gruff and talking quite roughly, shoving her forward, telling her not to be shy, and not to be holding the queue up. She wasn’t quite on the point of tears, but her eyes were huge, staring at us. Then all of a sudden they were both gone, disappearing into the pushy crowd of shoppers and Cybermen. A Waterstones person said something about ‘Getting all sorts coming in here today,’ and about ‘Folk bussing in from the Sticks.’
And that was my moment. After all the fighting and vying for work, the commissions and the continuity and the brain-squishing effort and the imagination and the infighting and the bullying and drafting and editing and chasing and ambition and joyfulness and laughter and togetherness and friends and enemies and monsters… and the feeling of not really being part of it… and then the feeling of suddenly being right in the middle of it… After all that experience of whirling about in the Vortex of Doctor Who… that is still my most vivid moment of all.
Saying to that little girl in the mucky pink anorak: ‘Of course we’ll all sign your book. It’s all of ours and belongs to all of us. We all write the same stuff together and we’re glad you’ve brought your copy today. It’s the most wonderful storybook in the world, and it’ll be our honour to sign it for you.’

'Stardust and Snow' arrives in hardback

Finished hardback copies of 'Stardust and Snow' - my Christmas story about Bowie the Goblin King - have arrived at http://obversebooks.co.uk