By: Blonde Two

I have been working, over the last few weeks, on the next Blonde publication. A slight departure from the norm (can you have a norm based on two?) Our next children’s book will have more words and fewer pictures. At the current count, that is 49,000 words and 5 pictures; it will also have some maps (something we and hopefully Ordnance Survey will be very happy about). 49,000 words sounds like a lot, but compared to other children’s literature it is a comparatively scanty count; Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for example has 76,944 words and some of them are magic ones!

I have (so far) done all of the right things. I wrote the story months ago and hid it away on a dusty top shelf (well a rather more prosaic Apple hard drive); I am now revisiting my creation and am happy to report that I still like it, that it still makes me chuckle and that the end once again moved me to tears (the first time tears might just have been relief at finishing the writing). Now I am prone to both chuckling and tears, and so must be careful not to assume that the story will induce the same reaction in other readers. I am also approximately thirty years older than the intended audience, but I still like pretending that Jelly Babies are real, reading ‘What Katy Did’ stories and eating snow, so maybe I have a valid opinion.

Would you like to read an extract? If you answer to this question is ‘no’ then stop reading now. If your answer is ‘yes’ then read on, but please be kind, Thomas (our hero) is an interesting lad …

The Non-Story of Ignatius Bowerman

“Now you might think I’m writing a story; but I’m not, these words are about things that actually happened. This is my non-story; I know it’s a non-story because:

1) I was there when the things actually happened.

2) I can’t do imagining.

As I walked up the drive that dimpsy morning, I saw some odd grey shapes but didn’t imagine they were something else. I walked past a grey car shape with windows, and then some grey sheep shapes with eyes. When I got to the end of the drive, I could see a grey Ignatius Bowerman shape.

(This first time that I crept out of my house, I didn’t know his name was Ignatius Bowerman, I just thought he was a tall man-shaped rock) …”