Over the next few weeks, my regular Q&A posts will be all about my new book, Swallow Me, NOW! We are aiming for a launch at the end of October. You can pre-order your copy here.
Swallow Me, NOW! started out as a snippet in the middle of the story. In 2012, I wrote a picture book called My Mummy Is Evil, and I was using the inspiration for that in a piece of flash fiction where a girl called Sam was telling kids at school that her mother was an evil genius, and the story grew from there. That scene is still in the book.
Shortly before writing Swallow Me, NOW!, my then nine year old had been bullied and got in trouble for hitting the kid who had bullied him. He got in trouble and the bully didn’t. I wanted to write a story that would help kids in his situation to speak up about bullying before it got to that stage, as well as having a realistic ending. Not all bullies and victims end up friends, and not all bullies end up in trouble.
I also drew heavily on my own experiences of being a missionary kid, struggling to fit in, and being bullied.
During the Chapter Book Challenge in 2013, I wrote the first draft in 2 weeks! Using these different influences, the story just flowed.
