Look Out ... Sneaky Pirates on the Horizon!

‘Oi! What do you think you’re doing? Yes, I’m talking to you. Did I say you could read this book? No, I most certainly did not. So, get your grubby little nose out of other people’s business and stop reading RIGHT NOW!’

Those are the opening lines from Nora and the Map of Mayhem, which I started writing with no clue what the book was going to be about. I just had this voice in my head that was DEMANDING to be written. It was the voice of a sassy, no-nonsense great-grandmother who had much more important things to do (in her opinion) than telling stories to nosey children. That person turned out to be Nora, the 86-year-old, axe-wielding, monster-hunting narrator of Nora and the Map of Mayhem, and the brand new sequel, Nora and the Compass of Chaos. It wasn’t until I’d finished the first draft that I realised Nora been inspired by my grandma, Janice Smith.

My grandma is ninety-four and she is awesome. She’s sweet, kind, and generous, with a soft northern accent from spending most of her life living in a small village in West Yorkshire. I call her ‘Red Grandma’ because she always used to wear red (although these days she’s more of a purple or navy blue gal). She’s a great-grandmother to six great-grandchildren, who all call her “GG” for short, which is also what Nora’s great-grandkids call Nora. If you were to meet my grandma, you’d be instantly charmed and would probably come away thinking she’s absolutely nothing like the anarchic anti-hero of my books. HOWEVER, the older my grandma gets, the more rebellious she becomes. She makes sassy comments on the sly, and if someone tells her not to do something, it makes even more determined to do it. This cheeky side of her makes me howl with laughter, because it’s so unexpected, and I love my grandma even more as a result of it. It’s this mischievous side of her that I realised I’d exaggerated and expanded upon to create the character of Nora. When I started writing the book, my number one aim was for it to be as funny as it could possibly be, and having a wild octogenarian as a main character, immediately presents loads of opportunities for comedy.

Another of the main sources of inspiration for these books was my former life as a pirate. No, I wasn’t sailing the high seas dressed in pantaloons plundering ships, but I was a pirate on TV for the best part of a decade. As well as being an author, I’m also an actor, and my first big TV job saw me walking the plank, dashing around a soft play pirate ship and getting covered in slop (don’t ask) in the BAFTA-winning CBeebies gameshow, Swashbuckle. Altogether, we made over 150 episodes of the show, so pirates were a BIG part of my life for many years. During that time, I witnessed first-hand how obsessed kids are with pirates and loved that it was not age or gender-specific.

Everyone loves pirates! When I first started writing Nora, I knew she had a secret – a fantastical former life that she’d never told anyone about – and for a while, I wondered whether she might be a pirate. Ultimately, I decided I could have more fun if she was a Monster Hunter – especially since that meant I could populate the book with all sorts of weird and wonderful monsters – but I still wanted the book to have a pirate-y feel to it. That’s why I made Nora’s nemesis a pirate – a ruthless, vengeful woman called Ripclaw. And there are lots of other pirate-y elements in the books too: a magical map, a mythical compass, a hunt for buried treasure, a sea battle on warring ships… all the things I love most about pirates, lots of which was inspired by my time on Swashbuckle.

The sequel, Nora and the Compass of Chaos, was an absolute JOY to write, because I’d already created the characters and the world they inhabit, so it meant I could just sit down and play. Once again, Nora and her great-grandkids, Atticus and Autumn, are off on an adventure, this time in pursuit of a rogue Monster Hunter called Nightblade who’s intent on carrying out a dastardly plan. There are secret underground lairs, a robbery on a high-speed train, and a tonne of new monsters, including flying jujugars that shoot ice out of their mouths, gelatinous wetlicks that have long, deadly tongues, and frog-like quigsloppers which smell so bad that if you get even the faintest whiff of one, you’ll immediately fall unconscious. Without giving too much away, this book has more of a mystery element to it as Nora, Atticus and Autumn try to work out who Nightblade is and stop them committing the biggest robbery of all time. It’s definitely been inspired by my love of reading thriller novels, as well as some of my favourite TV programmes including Traitors and Money Heist.

When I start writing a novel, I dive straight in with no real idea of where it’s going to go, fuelled by the creative potential of the unknown. Consequently, I never know where my inspiration is going to come from; it’s never a conscious decision. Inspiration sneaks in from all sorts of places – people I know, characters I’ve played, books I’ve read, TV shows I’ve seen – but I’m always proud of the end result, as it’s inevitably a mix of the things I care about and love the most. So, if you’d like an insight into the crazy workings of my mind, check out the Nora books today!

Both books are available from all good bookshops, see my Book O' the Week feature on Armadillo's website for reviews of both books. My thanks to Joseph Elliott for this brilliant insight and to Pippa Poole at Bonnier Books for making it possible!