An Interview with Seth MacGregor - hero of Gillian Philip's Firebrand

Alright, so this may be a little unusual, but today I bring you a unique and rather special guest: one Seth MacGregor, a Sithe, the main character of a remarkable novel, and a right handful.

Seth’s "boss" is Gillian Philip, author of the amazing and epic Firebrand. Actually, I’m not sure if it’s fair to call Gillian Seth’s boss, as I get the distinct sense he does far more bossing about than she does. It can get like this when your characters take control… Seth, for goodness sake, even Tweets. I’ve yet to see him on Facebook, but I’ve no doubt he’ll make his presence felt there in due course.

I met Seth a few weeks ago, having heard so many people enthusiastically talking about him. He appeared from between the pages of his book and grabbed my attention. His story, as told in Firebrand, is one of the best stories I’ve read for a long time. You watch this space; Seth, Gillian Philip and Firebrand will be going on to great things yet, because Firebrand is the sort of novel that’s up there with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series. Yes, it’s that good. It has been said by Amanda Craig in her review for the Times, that Firebrand is the best children’s fantasy novel for 2010. I can’t disagree. It might even be the best fantasy novel of the decade.




But let’s not muck about, the Sithe hate to be kept waiting, especially this one, who’s a right hot-head…


So, Seth MacGregor, tell us about yourself, what it’s like to be a Sithe, and what the Sithe are like as a people. And how are you different from us, the full-mortals?

What’s it like to be a Sithe? Um… I dunno, what’s it like to be a full-mortal? Tell you what, though, we are allegedly not very nice. That’s full-mortals’ opinion, anyway. We’re supposed to be baby-stealers, for a start. As if we’d volunteer for all that squalling and shi… I mean, nappy changing. You’ve given us a very bad reputation over the years, you know.

Deep down we’re a lot like you. Except we live a lot longer. And we’re faster (in all sorts of ways). And for some weird evolutionary reason you can’t do the telepathy thing.

Seth MacGregor
(he's a dead ringer for one Billy Crudup, you'll notice, which means, of course, that Billy is probably a Sithe too...)

Now, you’ve said that you don’t have much of an opinion of full-mortals (for my readers – that’s you and me…) – why’s that?

Well… you know, I’ve mellowed a bit in my old age. (Not that I’m old old, you understand; I’m still looking pretty hot, if I do say so myself.) I used to hate full-mortals, but you know I had good reason, Nicky. There was all that witch-persecution business… but let’s call that water under the bridge. I’ve got to know a lot of you much better since then. Some of you are fine. One or two of you may have saved my life over the years. Actually, one of my best friends is a full-mortal (but that’s another story). And by the way, some of you are pretty hot yourselves. What are you doing Saturday night?


Have you found since you’ve been hanging out with the boss and her friends, that there’s any chance of hope for full-mortals or are we utterly doomed?

You’re probably less doomed than we are, but that’s not saying much. There are a lot more of you, for a start – is that why you’re inclined to try and wipe each other out? The Sithe do like a fight – nothing we like better (well, not much) – but we’re not trying to achieve mass extinction. (Except for one of us, but let’s not discuss her.)

I think you need to work on the telepathy, you know? Getting inside other people’s heads. It’s like, even if I want to kill another Sithe and she wants to kill me, we at least understand the way each other thinks, what it’s like to be the other person. Oh, and I think you need to look at the stars more. Good gods*, the chances of us and the planet existing at all are so infinitesimal, you’d think a bit of self-preservation would be in order.

*not that there are any


I notice, by the way, and not to put too fine a point on it, that despite your dim opinion of us, it didn’t stop you from falling in love with a full-mortal girl. Why Catriona, what made her so different from the rest?

You’re being tough on me, aren’t you? OK, so I wasn’t very nice to Catriona to start with, but you have to consider the circumstances. And believe me, I did not intend to fall in love with her. It was Catriona who made me realize I did like full-mortals.
Actually, can we not talk about this any more? It’s kind of a sore point.





So, given, that you’re not entirely averse to full-mortals, who, looking around you in the modern world, might take your fancy? (I do notice that from time to time you bat your eyelashes at Lucy Coats…) What characteristics make up your ideal lover, Seth? (Girls, will you please stop panting, you’re steaming up your screens.)

‘Not entirely averse’ – heh, that’s one way of putting it. There are some fabulous ladies on Twitter, and you’re right, that Lucy Coats is hot stuff. She knows her faeries, too.

I don’t really have an ‘ideal’ lover… I like somebody who can stand up to me, I guess, somebody with a sense of humour. I like smart women who can shoot and are good with horses. The ‘ideal’ person is one I’d want to bind to, I suppose, and I’ve never met anyone like that. I’m not keen on the idea, to be honest.

So anyway, you never answered my question about Saturday night…

We'll get to Saturday night, patience, boy!


Now, as I mentioned, you have your own Twitter account. How do you enjoy engaging with the full mortal world through it? And how did you persuade the boss to let you have a Twitter account?

I didn’t persuade her, I snuck onto her laptop when her back was turned. She’s kind of possessive and she was as mad as a demented kelpie when she found out. I’m really enjoying it, though. The Boss doesn’t actually interact with me as much as she should, so I used to get bored – it was seeing her on Twitter so much that gave me the idea. It’s fun. There are some great conversations going on; it’s almost like being in a bar with a bunch of Sithe pals. There’s an awful lot about Spooks and Doctor Who and Merlin, too, but that keeps the Boss happy.

By the way, when I call her ‘the Boss’ I want you to imagine a really sarcastic tone of voice.

The "Boss"...

Your world, behind the Veil, is like ours in many ways, and yet quite different. Do you think you could paint a picture of just what your world is like?

It’s incredibly like your world, but – how can I put this? – less spoiled. That’s not very fair of me, because the thing we do steal (not babies, I emphasise again) is bits and pieces of technology. You’re clever that way, and I’ll grant you’re a lot more advanced than us. So we take things through when we go home. I had to take some CDs for Eili last time (we can’t download tracks, for obvious reasons). Not just small things, though – I like your wind power technology, your plumbing gadgets. Yeah, you’re smart. But if we take those things from you, we don’t need the whole industrial-production thing ourselves.


You have a water horse, I don’t think many full-mortals know what a water horse is, can you tell us, and tell us what’s so special about having a water horse and how you come to “own” one another?

Our other word for them is kelpies. I think full-mortals call them that, too. Opinion’s divided among the Sithe, to be honest – I know people who think they shouldn’t be tamed (not that they ever really are) because they have essentially wicked natures. In the wild they’re famous for hanging around near water and enticing travellers to ride them – they’re very beautiful and they can be charming. Once a stranger’s on a kelpie’s back, though, he can’t get off, and the horse takes him underwater, drowns him and eats him. Pretty good hunting trick, when you think about it.

I wouldn’t be without mine, though, and neither would Conal or Sionnach. There’s nothing like riding a water horse because you have to get inside their mind, and let them get inside yours. And it’s strictly a one-on-one thing. There’s no way I could ride Conal’s horse, for instance, and no way Eili could ride mine.

Water horses in action...

In the course of your adventures, you have more than one encounter with a Lammyr. Without terrifying my readers too much, could you tell us what the Lammyr are, and why the Sithe hate them so?

Supposedly, we’re related. The Lammyr and the Sithe, that is. It’s hard to describe them: cadaverous creatures with papery skin and colourless blood. Translucent, in certain light. You could mistake one for a seriously underfed human, I suppose, but their aura of evil is so strong, just the word makes you feel sick if you’re not used to it. Having one around, that’s even worse. It’s not that they don’t have emotions, because they do – just not especially nice ones. They’re truly loathsome. The only thing they love is death, and they love it more even than their own life.

They do, however, have a pretty funny sense of humour.

I have to tell you, funny's not exactly what I'd call it... but still.


Your real name is Murlainn – a small, deadly falcon. That would seem pretty accurate… Do you feel the essence of the falcon in your veins – and especially when you take your sword or your dirk to your enemies?

Oh, my true name. It doesn’t half upset my brother, who got stuck with being ‘sheepdog’. It could have been better – I’m not especially keen on the ‘small’ part – but it could have been worse. I overheard somebody in the dun once, saying he’d no idea there was no Gaelic word for ‘snake’. Unkind, don’t you think? Anyway, his name is now ‘Nosebleed’.

As for feeling like a merlin-hawk? More like a wolf, but that’s because when I’m fighting I’m in Branndair’s head half the time, and he’s in mine. You can probably relate to that, Nicky. Nice fangs, by the way.

Ssh, not everyone knows I'm a werewolf, Seth. They think I'm a sweet, chocolate-drinking writer. Help me keep up the pretence, here, please.


You and your brother Conal were forced into exile, and it seems this is not entirely uncommon for Sithe who’ve peeved their queen. Are there others of your people in the full-mortal realm and how is that we seldom know you walk among us? On the flip side, how many full-mortals cross into the world of the Sithe and how do we get on once there?

Oh, all the time, all the time. There are Sithe who like being here, as well as the ones who have been sent over against their will. And there’s been a certain amount of – how can I put this? – inter-tribal breeding. The offspring tend to be sickly, though. That’s – look, that’s kind of a sore point too.

Full-mortals tend to get through to our world too, it’s true, but it’s never a good idea. There are lots of legends about this stuff, because it’s hard for full-mortals to get out unharmed. Our queen is a bit of a bitch about this: falls for a full-mortal, tires of them, and then… well. Your man Keats even wrote a poem about her.


Your world and mine are divided by the Veil. What is it, and why does it seem to me that it grows thinner during the hours of 2 and 4 in the morning? And what would happen if the Veil were to tear or dissolve?

Hah. That’s the big question, isn’t it? Our world is more fragile, and ours is the one that was made separate, so it wouldn’t survive the collision. And the Veil is what keeps our world in existence, so if it ever vanished, so would our world. We wouldn’t; we’d just be stuck with living in yours. Without the Veil’s protection, I might add, because it also acts as a filter, a kind of distorter of your perceptions. It’s why we’re not so noticeable in your world. The witch-queen has a beef with that, because she wants power in your world, and she can’t have it with the Veil there. So she’s got this mad idea of destroying it. Not that she has to, because it’s thinning anyway, and one day it’ll die of its own accord.

My stepmother has some mad idea about strengthening it, but she’s a witch too. Superstitious old bat. Talks to soothsayers too much. I’d rather just fight it out.

It’s perceptive of you to notice the Veil’s thinner in the small hours. That’s what I’ve always thought, too. If you see things in the corner of your eye at that time of the night, you’re probably seeing through the Veil.

You’ve given us, very kindly, the first years of your very long life in Firebrand, will we be seeing more of you – and when?

Ah, I’m working on it. There have been quite a few years since my Firebrand days, but things are starting to happen around here. Conal and I are still sneaking over the Veil, naturally – as if he could stay away from Eili – and we’ve got a feeling something bad’s going to happen quite soon. Kate the witch-queen seems to be making moves. At least we’ll see some action again. It’s time somebody put a stop to her.

On which note… Bloodstone is due out next August 2011 - if she gets her act together…


A huge thanks to both Seth and Gillian Philip for this interview – I look forward to meeting both of you, in person, really soon, when there will, I hope be wild tales, dancing, singing and whisky.

And thank you, Nicky. I’m sure there will be all those things, and as you know I get along great with wolves. In the meantime… about Saturday…?

Well, I do have a date with Dr Who to go time-travelling in the Tardis on Saturday, but I tell you what… whisper whisper whisper…


Follow Seth MacGregor on Twitter
Follow Gillian (and Seth) on Facebook
To read more about Gillian Philip, see her website
Follow Gillian Philip on Twitter
To order a copy of Firebrand go to Amazon.co.uk

Gillian Philip at a book signing

Images either courtesy of Gillian Philip, or nicked from the internet.

Happy Dance Time... and an award

I've been trying very hard to contain "happy dance" behaviour. I've not always been successful...

You may recall that a short while ago I posted about wanting to buy a particular plot of land and being thwarted. Well, never one to be put off if I really want something, I let it go and took the Taoist approach of "do nothing doing". And what do you know? The estate agents concerned sorted out their differences, I made an offer and after some negotiation, I am delighted to say, I own a piece of mountainside, and will, in due course, start building a house. How exciting is that?!

Okay, Happy Dance, Happy Dance, Happy Dance!!!

There are some who assure me that I'm totally insane. But I take the view that you should always do things in life that you've never done before - it keeps life interesting and keeps you young and adventurous. I'm mildly amused by those who insist I'm crazy (look, you really don't have to tell me) and who insist on relating their own horror stories. I am, however, far more pleased to hear others say, "That is so exciting!" I mean, really, what's not to get excited about? You get to dream and plan your space exactly the way you want it. You get, effectively, to build your own nest from scratch. How much more natural can it be? What's more special is that D's father is an architect and will be designing the house for us. He trained way back in the 50s as a student of the Frank Lloyd Wright school of architecture, which is my favourite forerunner of modern architectural design. Does it get any better than that? D will have a lasting legacy, a tribute to his father, I will have a house that I know I will love. I have to say, I feel blessed out of my little cotton socks.

I'm half tempted to start a blog - "This is the House that Nick Built" - but I suspect that may be one more displacement activity than I actually need. It will be quite enough working on the novel (and another in the pipeline) and seeing to the building, without needing to add to the load - given my already tardy approach with this blog...

For now, I leave you with the view - not from the plot, but from the top of the mountain. It gives you the same general idea. (Yes, I know, I should have taken the tripod up with me...)

(click image to enlarge)

And then, on another note. I recently received The Honest Scrap Award from Kim at Dragonfly Scrolls! Thanks Kim!

The Honest Scrap Award is about bloggers who post from their heart, who oftentimes put their heart on display as they write from the depths of their soul.

The Rules of this Award are to pass it on to 7 bloggers you admire and follow and then to share 10 honest things about yourself.

So firstly in the merits of Paying it Forward, here are the 7 bloggers I admire for always sharing their hearts on the written page (online and paper):

My lovely friend, Mandy, from FireByrd

Wonderful, beautiful and vibrant Tessa, from Aerial Armadillo

The inimitable Baino from Baino's Banter

Beautiful Kathryn from Crystal Jigsaw

Wise Rosaria from SixtyFive, What Now

Big hearted Geli from Letters from Usedom

Lovely Val, my Scrabble pal, from Monkeys on the Roof

and because I can never be doing with rules, No 8, Janet, the intrepid life adventurer, from Under a Blood Red Sky


So, ten honest things about myself... Hmmm...


1. I don't make it easy for you to get to know me.

2. What you see, is not always what you get, there is inevitably far more.

3. I love to cook (and I do it pretty well...)

4. Most days start with my special chocolately brew - and yet, I'm not actually a chocolate fiend, despite appearances.

5. Vanilla really is my favourite flavour of ice cream.

6. When I was young, I first wanted to be a ballet or jazz dancer, then an interior designer.

7. I wrote my first play when I was nine.

8. I love to make people laugh.

9. I believe the glass is always half full - even when it may appear half empty.

10. Courage and persistence, together with compassion and wisdom, are the cornerstones of my life. Humour makes up the roof.

Blog Action Day 2010 - Water

When Water Becomes a Commodity

It’s that time of year again – Blog Action Day - and the good folk at blogactionday.change.org have made this year’s the topic, water.

Water’s something most of us probably take for granted. We don’t think about it much, like the air we breathe, it’s just there. But what if there was no air. We’d suffocate. And what if there was no water. We’d die. Everything would die. The blue planet would cease to be.

If you live in a water-plenty country the concept of being without water may strike you as bizarre. But when you live in an arid place, you are acutely conscious of just how precious water is.

A few years ago we had a drought here. Two winters of little of no rain meant come the summer stringent water restrictions were applied. I learned to use dishwater and bathwater to water the garden, carrying out buckets of water to precious plants and watching as much of my garden wilted and died. We kept a nervous eye on the pool – we couldn’t do much to top it up and there was a danger it could pop right out of the ground. I learned to switch off the tap when brushing my teeth and to take short, three minute showers. For someone who views the shower as a writer’s psychic phonebooth for creative ideas, I was lost.




Yet this is nothing compared to what some have to endure. In Africa people die regularly as the result of water shortages – they have to compete with animals, who have as much right to the water as humans do, they have to live with water which is frequently contaminated or inaccessible – some walking miles each day to find water. Did you know that 2.6 billion people live without a safe toilet and 884 million people, across the globe, lack access to clean water?
When people talk about Africa being a “dark continent” mired in poverty and disease, stop to consider the very real reasons why this might be the case. A lack of water and sanitation combine with other issues to create a massive crisis which undermines health, education, economic and gender equality progress.

Children, every nation’s future, are often the worst affected. 4000 die from preventable water related diseases every day making it the biggest killer of young children, killing more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles combined every day. To make the point, let me put that to you another way, about 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year and 443 million school days are lost because of water and sanitation related diseases.

The issue of water is huge, and yet, because most of us take water so for granted we just don’t really stop to think of life without it. Consider this, not only do we need water in our daily personal lives to drink or bathe in, we need it to grow crops, to power industry. And more to the point, without water, we’d have practically no energy. Without energy—and therefore cars, planes, laptops, smartphones, and lighting—we wouldn’t be doing much. Human productivity as we’ve come to know it would grind to a halt. To highlight the point, did you know that your shiny new iPhone requires half a litre of water to charge? Okay, it may not seem like much, but with approximately 6.4 million active iPhones in the US, that’s 3.2 million litres to charge those alone. Or, did you know that in the in the United States alone, on just one average day, more than 500 billion litres of freshwater travel through the country’s power plants—more than twice what flows through the Nile? Or how about this - 10 litres of water go into the manufacture of a piece of A4 paper

As human civilization has progressed, so we’ve become even more dependent on water – forgetting, for the most part, that it is a finite resource.




It’s not surprising then that some of those who realised how precious water is, decided it was a highly tradable commodity. In the early to mid 2000’s, traders – hedge fund and investment managers – piled into water as a commodity set to become more precious than oil. In 2002 Fortune magazine predicted that water promised to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th: the precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations. A Bloomberg report in 2006 reported that “the world's biggest investors are choosing water as the commodity that may appreciate the most in the next several decades. The United Nations estimates that by 2050 more than 2 billion people in 48 countries will be short of water.”

But did anyone stop to think what happens if you commoditize and/or privatize something which is a basic human right? The right of access to clean and affordable water becomes severely threatened. Price and availability suddenly become dependent on the vagaries of domestic and international markets. Developing countries, in which there are already water shortages, are hit with a double whammy – not only do they not have it, but to get it they will have to pay more than they can afford. It has already been shown that the privatization of water resources, promoted as a means to bring business efficiency into water service management, has instead led to reduced access for the poor around the world as prices for these essential services have risen. And so we see an increased inequality to water access, as control of water sits in the hands of huge corporations and powerful governments.

Thank goodness then that in July 2010 the UN General Assembly declared that access to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights. The question is, will the UN’s declaration be enough to stop the march of commoditisation and the greed of commodity traders and their investors? Or, put another way, how much might access to this basic human right cost those who can’t afford it? Might one really hope for a true partnership and shared responsibility between all nations in alleviating water crises – given the UN have already acknowledged (in 2006) that what lies at the heart of the global water crisis is power, poverty and inequality. Same old, same old.

Until humans learn to value and respect each other, until we get past our innate greed and fear, bypass power struggles, and alleviate inequality and poverty, water will remain a very wet sort of battle ground. It will be, until then, yet another case of the haves vs. the have nots.




© Nicky Schmidt; October 2010

An interview with Nick Green, debut author of The Cat Kin

For thousands of years it has been a secret: the Ancient Egyptian art of moving and sensing like a cat. Now, for the first time, the hidden world of Pashki is revealed.
The Cat Kin tells its story.

I wasn’t sure that, as a dog lover, I was going to like Nick Green’s The Cat Kin, but The Cat Kin is a gripping story about children who learn to tap into their inner cat – their Mau power. It is a brilliant read for 9 – 12 year olds who’re looking for excitement, danger and adventure. In The Cat Kin, Nick Green has created a well-written and intriguing book that will hold your attention the whole way through – and asking if there’s to be a sequel.


Ben and Tiffany never expected their after-school gym class to be like this. For Mrs Powell teaches pashki, a lost art from an age when cats were worshipped as gods. But who is their eccentric old teacher? What does she really want with them? And why are they suddenly able to see in the dark? They are going to need all of their nine lives...


It’s my pleasure to interview Nick Green on Absolute Vanilla and learn more about The Cat Kin and writing.

Children's author, Nick Green and his cat, Red.


I heed no words nor walls

Through darkness I walk in day

And I do not fear the tyrant.

First off, Nick, the obvious question – why a book about cats and Pashki? Where did the inspiration come from, where did you learn about Pashki and, why Pashki in particular?

Well, I like cats, of course, except before 6am. Years ago I read something interesting. Domestic cats, even those that are kept indoors, rarely lose their extraordinary agility, no matter how sofa-bound they are. The theory is that all the stretching they do keeps them in shape – like a kind of natural yoga or Pilates. My wife’s into yoga, and I still have an old notebook with this note in it: ‘Cat yoga… what if humans did cat yoga? Would they become as agile as cats?’ Then asterisked: *A form of yoga that gives you cat-like powers.*

This idea languished for over a year in the notebook, because (perhaps absurdly) I couldn’t see where to take it. I didn’t want to write a ‘superhero’ story, I wanted to be a more literary author than that! Then, one evening, I was watching an overblown action movie on TV, and was forced to admit that I really liked this sort of stuff. I thought, ‘I should stop trying to be worthy, and write something like this.’ Then I remembered the old scribble in the notebook. Before long the ‘cat yoga’ had a name – pashki – and the story just caught fire.


Did you have to do much research in writing The Cat Kin and if so, in terms of which aspects of the story?

Pashki I decided would be Ancient Egyptian in origin (as cats were a sacred animal in that culture), so I did a fair bit of research there. The name takes ‘pash’ from the cat goddess Pasht or Bast and ‘ki’ from the word meaning ‘spiritual power’ or ‘life force’ in many cultures. In fact, in Ancient Egyptian this word is actually ‘ka’, but I presumed a certain evolution of the word over time. And pashki just sounded better.

I also read up a lot about cats, just trying to absorb any information that might help in developing pashki and the characters. I wanted pashki to seem as real as possible, and worked out complex systems for it, only a fraction of which make it into the first book (although more trickles out in the sequels). Research into real martial arts and also disciplines like yoga and tai chi helped to ground it in something that hopefully feels real.

Some other research was into muscular dystrophy (a disease which affects Tiffany’s brother in the book) and also into bear farming in China, a real-life atrocity on which I based something similar that features in the book. For obvious reasons I didn’t make it bears in my story, but this foul and pointless practice continues and makes me angry beyond belief.


You tie the Pashki theme into some fairly esoteric stuff – meditation, awareness, chakras, yoga, inner power – what is your view on alternative ways of being and experiencing the world?

Perhaps surprisingly, I’m a rationalist to the bone. I don’t have ‘spiritual’ beliefs myself, of any kind. However, I am fascinated by them. I think such things are our attempts to explore our own selves, the mystery of our own consciousness. I find it quite easy to reconcile a stunned awe and wonder at the world, with the underlying premise that it is rationally explicable. For example – I don’t believe that crystals are magical. But it fascinates me to ask why some people think they are! What is it about a transparent, angular mineral that fires our imaginations? What is going on there? Why is it beautiful? The questions that follow on from that are endless.


The adventure elements of the story notwithstanding, you actually tackle some pretty big issues, for example developers who literally get away with murder, animal abuse, domestic violence, divorce, chronic illness, shonky alternative medicine. Did you deliberately set out to cover so much or did the story just unfold like that?

‘Shonky’ – great word! And a new one on me. Let me see… I suppose it just turned out like that. I tend to plan my plots in advance, but since plot must be driven by character, this means I need the kind of characters who will deliver me that plot! But Ben and Tiffany aren’t heroic by nature, they’re just kids. So I had to throw a lot of problems and upheaval at them to make them get up and go. Why those problems in particular? I suppose they were things that either bothered or intrigued me. There are real landlords like John Stanford; animal cruelty like that really goes on. I suppose I was following one of the writer’s top tips: write everything you love, and everything you hate.

Nick Green

To what extent did your own personal life experiences inform the story?

My own parents did divorce, but the situation was nothing like Ben’s. I was at pains to point this out to my own mum, who on reading the book said to me, ‘You’ve made me really awful!’ There was one line, I think, which echoes a real-life incident in our lives! Everything else was entirely made up. But people will see themselves in books. Especially parents. I’m sure my own experiences do colour the story throughout, but in such tiny bits and pieces that no-one but me would ever notice.


Of the two main characters, Ben and Tiffany, who do you prefer more, which one resonates more for you and which one was easier to write – and why?

It’s hard to say. I’m writing book 3 now and I still don’t know. When I’m writing Tiffany I think, ‘She’s so much easier than Ben,’ and when I’m writing Ben I think, ‘He’s so much easier than Tiffany.’ They’re like different hemispheres of my brain. Tiffany shares my love of cats and is more middle-class, like me. Whereas Ben has something of my hot-headedness about him, and of course he’s a boy which might make it easier. But I must say I like writing girl parts – you can say more and be more open, and you don’t have to always mask emotions! That can be really tiring; boys don’t reveal as much, they tend to imply more.


You’ve created some spectacular villains in The Cat Kin – what was it like to create and write such ultimate baddies?

Glad you like them! I used a tip from Roald Dahl there. He once wrote that the trick to a good story is to have really detestable villains. John Stanford is the less evil of the two; once or twice he almost shows flickers of conscience. But I pulled out all the stops with Philip Cobb, to make him truly diabolic. He could be exhausting to write; trying to imagine what it’s like to be that person, with no empathy or morality at all. Sometimes you feel like you need a shower after being around him.




Mrs Powell, the Pashki teacher, is an elusive and mysterious character – quite catlike, one might say. Was her characterization a deliberate attempt to make her seem more cat than human?

Absolutely. She’s done pashki for so long that it’s fundamental to who she is. Also, without giving too much away, it might be all she has left now. By nature she is a very alone person, and it strikes me probably very lonely too; but she’s made her choices in life and has the courage to live with them.


Although he’s a secondary character, you create strong characterization in Tiffany’s brother, Stuart, a child with Muscular Dystrophy. Were you inspired by anyone in the creation of Stuart and what prompted you to choose MD as his illness?

I was approached recently by a muscular dystrophy charity, who assumed from my book that I had personal experience of the disease. I don’t, touch wood. I just researched it, like everything else. Reading about some young sufferers, I was struck by their courage at living with this debilitating condition, and how in their own way, they were heroes. If you have severe MD, picking up a book can feel like lifting a bookcase. MD seemed a poignant contrast to what happens to Ben and Tiffany, who develop superhuman physical prowess. Stuart is the flip side of Tiffany – his muscles are wasting away, but in many respects he’s every bit as heroic as her. I like him a lot; he has more to do in subsequent books, as he becomes the only non-Cat Kin person to learn Tiffany’s secret.


The Cat Kin is a brilliant adventure, is it the sort of book you would have read as a child? And what sort of books did you enjoy when you were younger, and did they, or any book in particular, inspire you to write for children?

The authors I read most as a child were Diana Wynne Jones, Susan Cooper, Nicholas Fisk, Robert Westall, Tolkien, C. S. Lewis… I don’t know if any of them are remotely similar. Perhaps Fisk. It could be that I’ve filled in a gap in my own reading, by writing the book I would have liked to discover back then. Who knows! I’m not sure why I chose to write for children. Maybe it was that I remembered my childhood reading so fondly. The books you read as a child can stay with you for life. That doesn’t seem to happen so much as an adult. There are books I read now and adore; but they don’t become part of me. I’ve lost that ability that children have to take something absolutely to heart.


The Cat Kin is your debut novel – what did it feel like when it was accepted for publication? And what has been the best and worst thing about being a published author?

The big ‘hooray’ moment was getting an agent. That felt like my big break. Then I waited a year with no news at all, officially ‘gave up’ and self-published. The self-published book caught the attention of Faber, but before long it became clear that they didn’t want to do the full trilogy, so I had to get the rights back in order to publish the sequels somewhere else. I’m now with Strident, who are great, so it’s now my ‘second debut’ if you will. I’m too wised-up now to feel more than cautious optimism. I just get my head down and write.


Finally – what next for Nick Green?

The rest of the Cat Kin trilogy will be out in due course. Book 2 (Cat’s Paw) was briefly available in self-published form, but the Strident version will be much better produced. Book 3 I’m halfway to finishing now. I also have two new, unrelated books currently looking for a publisher. I’m really pleased with them, but it’s now harder than ever to get publishers interested. But they’ll be out there sooner or later. Just you wait.

'Pashki awakens the part of yourself that is like a cat. For cats have much to teach us. They are proud spirits yet calm. They live in the present, without worries beyond it. Cats are pools of serenity that may surge up in storms. They are weightless clouds that can quicken to lightning.'

To find out more about the books, Nick and Pashki, visit Nick Green’s website .

To order a copy of The Cat Kin go to Amazon.co.uk or order directly from Strident Publishers.

Baaaad Vanilla!

Mea very very culpa. I have been a bad girl. I have become horribly behind in all sorts of things I undertook to do and I hereby beat my chest, tug my forelock and groveling-ly apologise to all those I have let down.

Yes, yes, it’s true. I am entirely behind all the author interviews and book reviews I promised to do. I owe Sarwat Chadda and Nick Green author interviews. I promised book reviews to Ellen Renner and Gillian Philip. And I’ve been so caught up in “life” that reading - and I regret to say, writing - have been cast aside.

In an effort to catch up, I am now reading Sarwat Chadda’s Dark Goddess and Nick Green’s The Cat Kin at the same time. It’s causing me no end of trouble… Sarwat’s Billi Sangreal keeps morphing into a cat, while Nick’s Ben and Tiffany keep getting chased by werewolves – and that’s just all so wrong – because it’s Billi who’s hunting down the werewolves who’ve abducted the Spring Child, while Nick’s Ben and Tiffany have the wondrous ability to draw on their inner Mau and morph into catlike beings in order to go after the bad guys.




Note to self: really, don’t try to read two books at once, you are simply not in any fit state to do so – go and eat chocolate instead.

At least, I’m not getting confused between Ellen and Gillian’s books, as I’ve not even started them yet (sorry, grovel, sorry). But what I will say is this: there is a smouldering burn on the carpet next to my bed - and it’s all that Seth’s fault – for those who don’t know, he’s the seriously hot half-feral son of a Sithe nobleman in Gillian’s YA novel, Firebrand. He’s so seriously hot that I think he’s sent Ellen’s Tobias running for a huge bucket of water in the City of Thieves. Good old Tobias – I’m hoping he’ll prevent my entire house from burning down – assuming his family don’t nick the house first...




Anyway, at least you know what will be forthcoming on the blog, if I ever manage to get my life sorted out. And…there will also be, when it arrives, an interview with Savita Kalhan about her debut YA novel, The Long Weekend.




Right, now I’d better get on with catching up on the critiques owed to three of my critique partners, Jackie Marchant, Candy Gourlay and Lynn Huggins-Cooper.

I may be a while – again.