Rain & Fire (3 page)

“What's that about?” chimed said colleague.

“I think it's about squirrels,” Chris replied, mystified.

Exit colleague, guffawing to all within earshot, “You won't believe this! He's writing about squirrels now!” Gales of laughter ensued.

By then, however, Chris was beginning to appreciate the importance of such inspirational moments and he followed up the idea. The story poured out in a phenomenal rush. He decided to take a break from
White Fire
when he realized that, at this speed, he could probably write the squirrel story as my Christmas present instead as, clearly, the polar bear one would not be finished in time.

Knowing nothing about this intended gift I snoozed on unawares while Chris got up extra early in the mornings, trogged across the local park to the university, wrote another chapter of the book, returned home, brought me a cup of tea (still with his outdoor coat
on — I assumed he was just off to the lab, rather than returning from it), had breakfast, and then went back to work for the normal start of the day. Bless him, he kept this up for over two months. And I got my story.

The inspiration for its setting was the Churchill Library Gardens in Bromley. Chris had always retrospectively felt guilty for gathering up all the acorns by the roadside on his way home that far-off day, as he later realized that although he had been helping the squirrels in the gardens, he had almost certainly also
been depriving those around the tree of their own “harvest.” He therefore wrote the story line the reverse way around — the acorns were stolen
from
the library gardens to be “donated” elsewhere, in fact to trap and subsequently aid an injured squirrel named Conker. Quite an ethical guy, then, after all.

The library gardens, Scrubbley — or should that be Bromley?

The story (entitled
The Adventures of Snigger the Squirrel
) begins with Snigger and the rest of the library gardens' squirrels waking up one morning expecting to find a huge nutfall, as it has been very windy the night before. However, upon reaching the clearing where the abundance of acorns should have been, it is obvious that something terrible has happened because there is not a sign of a single nut anywhere….

 

“But where are they all?” said Snigger, astonished to find that the ground was not carpeted with the fruit of the tree, as in previous years.

A female squirrel, Cherrylea, replied, “There was a nutfall. There was. I saw it…. Last night, the eve of nutfall, I lay tossing and turning in my drey, too
excited by the prospect of the forthcoming harvest to sleep. I'm sure many of you were the same way.” Several heads nodded in support. Cherrylea continued: “As you know, my drey overlooks the clearing. For much of the night I could hear the wind whistling through the branches, wrapping itself around them and shaking the acorns clear. Down they came like raindrops on the pond, plopping into the leaf-fall below in such numbers that I was tempted to leave the drey right then and begin the harvest by the beam of the lamplight that shines through the dark hours…. But knowing that would be unfair to those of you who drey over the hill, I resisted all such temptation.”

Cherrylea swallowed hard, her mouth dry with fear, her tail twitching nervously. “I did leave my drey last night,” she began, “but I only went as far as the old stump tree,” she added loudly, referring to a large sycamore that had had several branches sawn in half some years before to prevent them crashing through the windows of the library building. “I was so excited. I knew there would be nuts everywhere. Everywhere!” she
said, opening out her short front legs and doing a little turn to indicate the extent of the fall. “I was about to run back to my drey when suddenly a great dark shadow spread all across the ground where we are now standing.” The squirrels looked nervously about them, some moved closer to their friends. “I was very frightened…. The last thing I remember before fleeing to my drey was seeing a horrid black beast scuffling about among the leaves … collecting up our nutfall.”

 

The “horrid black beast,” or rather
nutbeast
, that Cherrylea refers to is, of course, a man, dressed in a long black coat … and this is the first appearance of the character who, much later, became David Rain, the hero of the Last Dragon Chronicles.

Over the next few years, Chris finished
White Fire
, and then found he could turn his hand to other genres and other lengths of story at will. He wrote short stories for adults and had some reasonable success, being published regularly in small-press magazines, and receiving excellent feedback from the writing competitions he entered, but few prizes.

One day, a friend at the local writers' group that he attended (and still does, nearly thirty years on) gave him a leaflet for a competition to write for children. It was to be a story of 3,000 words, the prize was £2,000 (just over $3,000 US dollars), and the winner and eleven runners-up were to be published in an anthology. Up
to this point, Chris had not tried his hand at writing for children at all. He thought he would give it a go. How hard could it be? Very, is the answer to that one. Very, very, very.

He was back to crumpling paper in frustration, though that was more difficult to do now that he had progressed to using a computer and printer (thus several rain forests' worth of paper were saved in the d'Lacey household by the advent of modern technology). He continued to struggle with writing (or rather,
not
writing) this story. He hemmed, he hawed, he pondered, he wailed. The deadline was looming; up popped an idea.

He had a story called
Ice
, written for adults, with an environmental theme: the hole in the ozone layer, which was very current at that time. But Chris had never been able to sell it. If he changed it around so that it was told through the eyes of a child, maybe it would work….

He rewrote the story. He entered the competition. He didn't win. Or get into the anthology.
Ah well,
that's me done with kids' stuff
, he thought, but he read it aloud to his writer friends and one of them suggested he send it to a publisher. He did some research and sent off his manuscript. A while later he received a phone call from a lovely lady saying she would like to buy his story. Knowing no better, he was very pleased, but that's all. If Chris had known then how incredibly difficult it is to get picked up off what is called the “slush pile” (that is the pile of unsolicited manuscripts sent in by hopeful would-be authors), he might have just decided to stay in bed. Or juggle with his socks.

Nevertheless, at thirty-nine-and-three-quarters years old, Chris became a published children's author with
A Hole at the Pole
, as it was subsequently named. One book does not a children's author make. However, on the strength of it, Chris managed to get a literary agent, and further children's books were written — and published. They were all for quite young children, but his agent suggested that he attempt a longer work, a novel, for a slightly older age group.

Chris suggested she look at
Snigger
. But “talking
animal” books were not in vogue, so that got a thumbs-down. Could he rework it? Turn it around so it was told from the viewpoint of humans? Would that help? Perhaps a character, let's call him David, could come to lodge with a mom-and-daughter single-parent family? The daughter would be squirrel-crazy and want him to help her save an injured one that was running around in the yard. David would be the “nutbeast” who “steals” the nutfall to attempt to catch — Conker, of course. The rewrite took place. Eventually Chris plucked up enough courage to show his editor the revised squirrel story, now renamed
Snigger and the Nutbeast
. Overall, she liked the story, but felt it was lacking in certain areas. Among many very good suggestions she offered was that of giving the mother in the story a job. Chris agreed, but was at a loss as to what Mrs. Pennykettle could do. He knew that he wanted it to be somewhat artistic or creative, and done from home. Nothing suggested itself, but there was no rush. The Universe would provide in its own good time.

The answer came from a cheery lady named Val Chivers. Val, along with her husband, Peter, has become a dear friend over the years, but we didn't know that on that chilly weekend so long ago. Chris and I had a rare day off, and we decided to go to a local craft fair at a place called Stoughton Farm Park. There were the usual stalls — lavender cushions, wheat bags, jewelry, wooden toys. And then there were dragons. Val's fabulous and wonderfully inventive clay dragons. They were green, mostly, a few bluer than green. Eight to ten inches tall,
gorgeous
. We couldn't take our eyes off them. But in those days we were broke most of the time, and although the dragons weren't expensive, we couldn't possibly afford one.

Val saw us looking longingly and started up a conversation during which we explained our plight. Perhaps she could put one aside for us until we could get enough money together to buy it? Instead, Val pointed us toward a corner of the stall we hadn't noticed:
CASUALTY CORNER
.

Val Chivers creating her amazing dragons

Here were dragons with slight imperfections — missing toes, chipped spines, streaky glaze. Each for the price of five pounds (about eight US dollars).
That
we could afford.

I raised my head in delight, only to lock eyes with the dragon we just knew was ours. We paid for him and said a happy good-bye to Val, never thinking that we would see her again. In the car on the way back home I held our new companion in my lap. Having been chatting about our day, we were stopped at a traffic light, when Chris suddenly yelled out, “She's a potter! Elizabeth Pennykettle is a potter, and she makes
clay dragons, which she sells at the local market. And she has them dotted all around the house as ornaments.” The small clay dragon twitched his tail on my knee, I swear it.

This minor revelation, among many other changes, was written into
Snigger
and duly sent back to Chris's editor for her approval. She definitely saw the potential in the story, but had one more comment to make: “Can we do something more with the dragons?” she said, quite innocently.
“Can they come to life?”

Chris began the mammoth task of a wholesale rewrite once more. It took months. But eventually the dragons were woven in throughout the whole manuscript. Once the concept of “living” dragons was accepted, they did indeed seem to have lives — and abilities — of their own. It helped that we remembered that Val had created different characters for her clay dragons. Ones with large ears: in Chris's mind they became listening dragons. One with a bunch of flowers became a potions dragon, able to influence people by getting them to sniff her bouquet. Another had overlarge paws — it now
became a wishing dragon, and so on. Other characters, created by us, have then inspired Val to create further varieties of dragons. Thus she has made Gollygosh Golightly, for instance, who carries a magical toolbox. (More of him later, in the “Who's Who” chapter.)

However, the most relevant dragon, the one we purchased initially and named Gadzooks (the best fiver we have
ever
spent), turned out to be the key to retaining the squirrels in the story in a very natural way. As we perceived him, he had a notepad and pencil in his paws — an inspirational writing dragon, obviously. So Chris had David write a story, within Chris's own story, for Lucy Pennykettle's eleventh birthday present, Gadzooks helping him when he gets stuck. David reads parts of it to Lucy throughout the latter part of Chris's book. Success at last! It was to be published.

Book covers are generally thought out and produced long before the book itself is published, or even finished
sometimes. Because Chris's book was originally conceived as a squirrel book, and also went through various changes of style, content, and approach, before settling on the dragon element as dominant, it was a long and tricky job to get the covers right. The accompanying illustrations demonstrate what I mean. They are just a selection of roughs that were suggested, mulled over, and eventually rejected as being unsuitable for one reason or another.

Early attempts at covers

A different approach …

Various ideas were tossed about until someone at the publisher came up with the genius idea of using a dragon's eye on the cover. A very rough illustration of this was produced and approved as a concept, and then an artist was hired to do justice to the suggested idea. The artist concerned did more than that. He created an exceptional and iconic cover painting — which became the precursor for the whole of the series. That phenomenally talented artist is named Angelo Rinaldi. He very generously contributed the following information about his work for the books.