Out of the Depths (16 page)

Tynecastle High School in Edinburgh asked me to give them the first line for a short story competition. The first line is really important because it has to draw the reader into the story straight away. The line I came up with was this one.

‘I saw my teacher in the supermarket last Christmas. I was surprised to see her. She'd been dead for six months.'

I thought it was a pretty good first line – it's intriguing, with lots of possibilities. Then I went back to the school after the competition and the pupils were all asking me whether I was going to write a book using this first line. Now that was a challenge I couldn't resist. I began to imagine that a girl comes into school one day and says she saw a teacher who had died the year before. Who would believe her? She'd be called a liar or they'd say she was going crazy. How would that make her feel?

Angry? Upset? Yes, both, but perhaps she'd also be determined to find out the truth. So the story began to grow.

When I get an idea for a story it's as if my brain is a magnet and it attracts other things I need to bring my story to life. I visited another school, an atmospheric old building with stone statues everywhere. The pupils thought their school would be the perfect background for a story and I thought they were right. I had my idea, I had my location and now all I needed was a name for my main character. I found it at another school I visited, where I met a bright-eyed girl who loved writing. As soon as she told me her name, I knew it was perfect for my story. Tyler Lawless was her name, and suddenly
Out of The Depths
was born.

At the beginning of
Out of The Depths
, Tyler has been practically expelled from her last school because of her story about seeing the dead teacher. She arrives at St. Anthony's College and finds herself drawn into a different mystery. I thought I had known how
Out of The Depths
ended the whole time I was writing it, and then I realised that if I'd known the ending, maybe all my readers would know too. So, I decided that there had to be something else, another twist to the story, and it was
then that Tyler Lawless acquired a very special gift. A gift that even I, the writer, hadn't known she had. A gift that she could use over and over again.

There are lots of little twists to the plot in
Out of The Depths
, things that lead the reader to question what they think is really happening – one of them is in the title. And there is a reason I named the school St. Anthony's College … I love concealing mysteries within mysteries. But if you think you're going to unravel the mystery of the dead teacher in this book, think again. For that, you will have to keep a close eye on forthcoming books featuring Tyler Lawless.

Cathy MacPhail was born and brought up in Greenock, Scotland, where she still lives. Before becoming a children's author, she wrote short stories for magazines and comedy programmes for radio. Cathy was inspired to write her first children's book after her daughter was bullied at school.

Cathy writes spooky thrillers for younger readers as well as teen novels. She has won the Royal Mail Book Award twice, along with lots of other awards. She loves to give her readers a ‘rattling good read' and has been called the Scottish Jacqueline Wilson.

One of Cathy's greatest fears would be to meet another version of herself, similar to the young girl in her bestselling novel
Another Me
. She is a big fan of
Doctor Who
and would love to write a scary monster episode for the series.

Cathy loves to hear from her fans, so visit
www.cathymacphail.com
and email her your thoughts.

What are your favourite things to do when you're not writing?

When I'm not writing, I'm usually reading or visiting family – I love spending time with my children, turning up on their doorsteps when they least expect me! I enjoy going on cruises too because it's the perfect way for me to visit new places. Like most people, I also love going to the cinema. I always have done.

What are your favourite films?

Oh, there are so many films I love.
It's a Wonderful Life
is one of them. The hero is an ordinary man with just a few problems that are getting him down. Then he is visited by an angel who shows him how life would have been if he had never been born and he realises that his life is worthwhile after all.

Another fantastic film is
The Searchers
. A story set in America in the mid nineteenth-century about a man's struggle to find his niece who has been kidnapped by the Sioux. It explores issues of racism that were common at the time.

But at the top of my list is
Some Like It Hot
. Two men
pretend to be female musicians to escape gangsters and one of them falls in love with Marilyn Monroe! It's so funny and it has the best last line of any film I've ever seen, ‘Oh well, nobody's perfect.'

If you could be a character from a book, who would you be?

I have thought and thought about this because most books I've read have at least one wonderful character that I'd like to be, but I think Elizabeth Bennet has to be my first pick. She is so bright. Then there's Cathy from
Wuthering Heights
. I like her passionate nature, and we share a first name! Also, both of them are admired by fantastic men. When I'm really old, I want to be Miss Marple. I will go around annoying people and solving murders.

Have you ever seen a ghost?

I've not actually seen a ghost, but I'm sure I have felt the presence of one. I was at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland, which I'd been told was haunted. I thought the haunted room was upstairs and so as I had a room on the ground floor, I assumed I was safe. Then I was woken in the night by something, or someone, sitting on my bed, moving closer. I was really scared. Finally I had the
courage to leap from the bed and turn the light on. There was nothing in the room to be frightened of, but when I looked at my door the keys were swinging as if someone had just left the room. The keys kept swinging all night. I know this because my eyes never left them. In the morning, I learned there was no particular haunted room, but instead the ghost chose a different room to haunt every year. I used this incident as material for
Out of The Depths
.

Dying to know what Cathy eats for breakfast or what her favourite book is? Email your question to
[email protected]
.

Five questions will be selected at random to be published in her next book,
Secret of the Shadows
.

It was my son, David, who read
The Falconer's Malteser
first. He loved it so much he wrote to the Children's Film and Television Foundation to tell them they had to make it into a film. When they did, he took all the credit! Then, to his delight, he received a letter from the author, Anthony Horowitz. While on the set of the film, Anthony had heard about David's enthusiasm for the book and so invited him, and me, to London for the film premiere. As you can see, I have many happy memories of this book. It's exciting and funny, and it has some great characters. What more can you ask for in a good book!

How can anyone not love
Millions
by Frank Cottrell Boyce? It's heart-warming and tear-jerking, often all on the same page. It's the story of what happens when a bag stuffed with money drops from the sky
and two boys find themselves very rich. Damian and Anthony are such lovely characters and their dialogue is perfect.
Millions
is one in a million – pure gold.

Sherlock Holmes is such a great character and an inspiration to many other detectives. There are so many wonderful Sherlock Holmes stories that I would be hard-pressed to pick a favourite.

If you loved
Out of The Depths,
dive into these books

COMING SOON

Seriously spooky stories, with punchy plots
and feisty characters, guaranteed to thrill
every reader

Catch up with Cathy at
www.cathymacphail.com

 

Tyler Lawless returns with more
nerve-tingling tales from the
unlawfully dead

Spooking readers from March 2012

To order direct from Bloomsbury Publishing visit
www.bloomsbury.com

A book is inspired by so many different things.
I was asked by Tynecastle High School in Edinburgh
to supply them with a first line for a story competition,
and they challenged me to write a story using that same first
line. Hadn't a clue what I was going to write. Until I visited
another school, St Joseph's College in Dumfries, and the
pupils there were so keen for me to use their wonderfully
atmospheric school in a book. And then, in another
school, I met the real Tyler Lawless, and it all came
together. Light-bulb moment.
Thank you all.