Where did the ideas for Seal/Girl come from?

I’ve loved seals since I was a kid. I used to keep a scrapbook about them. I was aware of selkies and I definitely remember reading a fictional story about them that fascinated me. I think there may even have been a children’s TV drama series about them in the 1980’s. The coastline around me was a big influence, as I sometimes encounter seals in the wild when sea swimming or paddle-boarding. Once, on the Isles of Scilly during a sunset paddle, one plopped into the water off a rock right next to me. It was so well-camouflaged I hadn’t even seen it. I nearly fell off my board in shock. They always look so clever and seem genuinely curious about humans but are wild and strong at the same time.

We have a seal sanctuary near us where we can see seals that have been rescued up close, and it was while walking around it one day that the story idea started to form. That place inspired the Marine Rescue Centre in the book. Like most people, I’m very upset by plastic pollution in the oceans. It’s a menace to marine life, and I had to bring it into a modern version of a selkie story, although I didn’t know at the start how just important it would be.

There are lots of great stories that depict a relationship between a girl from the sea and a boy on land, from The Little Mermaid to the recent brilliant Chinese film Big Fish and Begonia, but I didn’t want the connection between Sylvie and Gorran to be romantic. I was pleased with the way their friendship grew quite naturally and that they had such a special connection despite coming from different worlds. Sylvie is a bit alien, but then Gorran doesn’t always fit in that well with the modern world either. By the end of the book, we have an inkling of why.

Who is your favourite character in the book?

Although he’s a secondary character, I have a soft spot for Tick. He struggles a bit at school, which I can identify with because I’m also a teacher. I see lots of pupils who have great qualities, but for one reason or another just haven’t been able to match their skills yet to the school curriculum. He has a lot of natural ingenuity and sometimes sees things in different ways from the other characters. They all assume Gorran will go through the portal when they find it with Sylvie, but Tick is the only one who asks if it’s really necessary. He’s not totally satisfied with Gorran’s answer and keeps worrying for him so he’s also a good friend. His interests are more typical for a 12-year-old than Gorran, who’s a bit other-worldly, and absorbed by nature and science. Tick gets pulled different ways by his family, and his sense that he has to look out for Gorran. He sometimes brings a bit of comic relief, but he isn’t just a clown.

How and when do you write?

I write when I can, because I have another job. I usually find that ideas come quickly once they’ve taken root, and I feel compelled to fill any spare time I can with it, which must be very annoying sometimes for my family. Editing and developing my writing happens piecemeal when I feel motivated to do it. Seal/Girl was physically written on an iPad (with a separate keyboard) in a novel-style template. Because I hadn’t written a chapter book before, I wanted to see roughly how long the chapters felt, simple things like how long the paragraphs were and whether dialogue exchanges looked too long or short.

I planned much of the story outline on what I called the ‘plot spine’, a loose timeline of events and settings crammed onto a single piece of A4 paper that became very tatty. But lots of changes happened as I wrote, because the story comes through you rather than from you. For me, the planning stage is just coaxing the story to show itself, but lots of writers would have different views about this and possibly a less haphazard approach!

What were you like as a kid?

I lived on a smallholding in the fens and spent a lot of time outdoors with animals and nature. I was usually to be found wandering around with a duck or a chicken under my arm. I’m told I wrote a lot from a young age, and I drew and made things all the time.

My teachers complained I was a daydreamer, and my Mum actually arranged for me to have a hearing test when I was at primary school. This was because I never answered her when I had my head stuck in a book or a creative idea rattling about. I wasn’t always well-behaved, although not really deliberately. I think I was just a bit different and sometimes struggled to stay aware of the rules in school and watch properly what was going on around me.

I had a teacher in Years 5 and 6 at my village school who used to set us weird essays if we were naughty, which we had to go and sit in the library to write. Heaven! I can still remember some of the titles I was set. ‘The Second World War from the point of view of a piece of cracked concrete on a Japanese airstrip’ was one. Another was ‘Weetabix-making in the Sahara Desert.’ I’d love to see now what I wrote for him. By the way, parents, sending your child to their room is never a very effective punishment if they love reading and they have books in there.

What did you like reading when you were young?

Anything I could get my hands on! Going to the library and being able to choose books was a real treat to me as a kid. It really did seem like a door to other worlds to me. We had shelves of children’s books at home too, many of them passed on to us by family friends or picked up in charity shops. There were lots and lots of grown-up books too, and my dad used to pick things for me he thought I’d like from those as I got older. I realise now how lucky I was, even though many of these books were old and tatty. It didn’t affect what was inside. I loved receiving book tokens at birthday or Christmas and being able to choose my own books.

I enjoyed fairy tales and folk stories and remember lapping up traditional tales from other places too. We had two books of Greek myths that I read until I knew them almost off by heart. I read all the Roald Dahls, the Biggles books (which are about a pilot in the two World Wars) The Animals of Farthing Wood series, and the Enid Blyton Adventure series. I also liked some fantasy books, The Hobbit and the Narnia series.

I read some adult classics like Far From the Madding Crowd and Jane Eyre when I was quite young, and I really loved John Wyndham’s science fiction. I also liked factual books about nature.

Is there going to be a sequel to Seal/Girl?

Yes! The whole story is mapped out this time in the form of what writers call a ‘technical synopsis’. This is a detailed plan of what will happen chapter by chapter -this was more important this time as the sequel is going to be a longer book. The follow-on is called Blue/Green Rift, and as the title suggests there is trouble ahead for the friends – in fact everything we took for granted in the first book is thrown up into the air within the first couple of chapters. But the characters have survived a storm before – you’ll have to see what’s in store for them this time when it comes out!

What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a writer?

Read lots. Read things you enjoy, and things that stretch you. Lots of people want to be writers, but very few have the perseverance to sit down and complete projects. I know this because this was me for years. Read lots about writing too, but don’t feel as though you always have to follow the rules– although it does help to know what they are. It also saves a lot of wasted time and heartache realising that you’re making a lot of basic errors in style or content. Keeping a journal is the best tip I ever had– I wish I was more disciplined in using a single space to contain all my ideas, but often they’re spread across more than one place and more of a scrapbook.

Writing down any idea, no matter how fleeting and simple, provides you with a mine full of gems when you want to sit down and develop something. And don’t give up or get dispirited by negative feedback. Some of it might be deserved and will help you grow if you let it, sometimes maybe you just gave what you wrote to the wrong person. Give yourself time to reflect on it, do what needs to doing to respond to it, and move on.