I
never set out to write a book. I had written screenplays for two
Irish films, and I was quite content to remain in screenwriting for
the foreseeable future.
It was the summer of '05 and I was in London to meet with various
film producers. I was in my hotel room--I can't remember what I
was thinking about--and suddenly the name popped into my head.
Skulduggery Pleasant.
"That's
an odd name," I thought to myself. "I wonder what I'm going to
do with that."
And
immediately, I knew who he was. A man called Skulduggery is obviously
a skeleton, and obviously a detective. And with the last name of
Pleasant, he's naturally urbane, well dressed, and sociable.
I
hadn't asked for it, I wasn't looking for it, but nevertheless, I
got it, and suddenly, without any idea how to go about it, I was
writing a book. And a children's book, at that.
Now,
in order to see if Skulduggery worked as a character, I had to write
a sample scene, so I needed someone for him to talk to. I needed a
character who was as smart and as witty and as thoroughly reckless as
Skulduggery himself, and that's when Stephanie stepped out of the
murky depths of my imagination and introduced herself.
When
I was teaching karate, I taught adults and I taught kids, and the
thing that struck me was how funny the kids were. Not just amusing,
but genuinely witty. There was a group of girls, and one or two of
them were pretty much how Stephanie is. Smart and strong, and they
had a most delightful distrust of authority.
So,
just like that, I had Stephanie. I knew who she was and what she was
like. In that hotel room, I wrote the exchange between Skulduggery
and Stephanie that occurs in the kitchen in Chapter Four. The voices
for both characters were immediate. For the first time, writing a
book seemed to not only be achievable, but also actually fun.
I
had tried to write a book a few years before all this. I got to page
30, and then my attention span (notoriously short and uncooperative)
realized
what was being asked of it, and promptly whirled around, let out an
anguished cry, and fell over and pretended to be dead. My attention
span is very theatrical.
But
the thing with Skulduggery was, I really liked the characters. I
really liked the fact that I could make them talk insanely fast; that
I could make them impossibly smart and witty. So I devised a way to
fool my attention span. I decided to approach every chapter with the
intention of making it my favourite chapter in the book--so
I threw in the jokes, the patter, the martial arts, the magic, the
mania, and the monsters. And when THAT chapter was written, I'd
approach the next one with the intention of making it even more
enjoyable than the one before. It was this little game that made sure
I stuck with the book, and my attention span never suspected a thing.
My attention span may be theatrical, but it's just not very bright.
For
the next few months, sitting at my desk in the Dublin countryside, I
wrote. I knew I was writing a book for children, but I didn't
change anything about my style or my approach. I put in all the
things I liked--martial arts, superpowers, action, magic, horror,
mystery, murder, and revenge--and I filled it with my type of
humour.
The
finished manuscript was delivered to my agent in January of 2006. She
waited a few weeks before sending it out, just to torture me.
The
first week of February--it was a Friday--I was driving my folks to
the airport (they were going over to London for a wedding). So we
picked my gran up, and we were driving along. And my mother casually
mentioned that she'd heard of a job opening up, and I said, I'm
not getting a job. And she said, just a part-time job, just to make a
little money. And I said no, something will happen, I have faith.
I'm
very, very lazy.
So,
I dropped them off at the airport, drove on into town, went to the
comic shop, and my phone rang. It was my agent, and she told me that
HarperCollins was interested in the book. Very
interested in the book.
I'm
happy to say that I didn't make a scene, but I may have squealed,
just a tiny bit.
Rest
assured, if I did in fact squeal, it undoubtedly would have been a
manly squeal. More of a roar, really.
So
I rang my mother, who was waiting to get onto the plane, and I told
her, and I could hear her smile over the phone. Standing there, in
that comic shop, I knew that my life had changed, and it was a rather
wonderful sensation.
About Playing with Fire
