The story so far…

 

…many years ago I worked with a Commissioning Editor on a book called Burning Issues…her name was Anne McNeil. Occasionally since then, I’ve met her at gatherings and parties and we’ve always talked of working together again. Well, late in 2007, I got a mysterious package from Anne. It included some artwork and the basis of a book series by an experienced illustrator called Gary Chalk. The Series was called The Sundered Lands. Her letter went thus:

 

…Gary Chalk is a terrific illustrator. Currently living in France – he was the original illustrator on Brian Jacques’ Redwall series. He has come up with some story proposals and black and white art for a new series for younger children called Sundered Lands. Now – I think he needs to collaborate with a writer. I also think the writer should have a level of freedom. I think you would like him. Would you mind taking a look at the material and then perhaps we could talk…

 

Well, I did and we did and then I called Gary in his rambling farmhouse in Normandy, France, and we agreed we’d meet up with Anne and see what would happen. What happened was that Gary and I got on really well and within a couple of months a plan for a six book series based on his original concept was put together.

 

We signed a contract for the series and Gary and I got down to plotting out the individual books. We quickly discovered that the best way of working together was in a room, face to face, bouncing ideas off one another. So, I took a trip over to Normandy in February 2008, and over a four-day period we plotted out two and a half books.

It was one of those times when you look across a table at the person you’re working with and you both think – are we really getting paid to have this much fun???

 

Anyway, I went home and put together what is called a “chapter breakdown” of the first book – Trundle’s Quest. This is done so that everyone knows pretty much what is intended to happen in the book. It means that Gary can start thinking of where he would like illustrations to go, and so the Publishers have the chance to say – hey, why not to that there instead, which can be helpful.

 

The overall “story-arc” of the series is that once, long ago, Sundered Lands, which is now a vast archipelago of islands floating in the sky, was a single round World, like our own, except that it was inhabited solely by talking animals. In the distant past, the world was destroyed by Badger Lords of great power, who spoke a terrible spell of Unbinding that shattered the planet to fragments.

 

In the aftermath of this catastrophe, the six Crowns of the Badger Lords were hidden among the shattered remnants of World – along with a prophecy that one day heroes would appear in Sundered Lands who would seek out the six crowns and bring them together again and unleash a Great Power.

 

Enter the very unheroic Trundle Boldoak, a hedgehog with a steady job and no desire for adventure, and the madcap Roamany Princess, Esmeralda Lightfoot, who is convinced he is the one person she needs to fulfil the prophecy and who is determined to drag him out of his quiet little home and introduce him to High Adventure!

 

Well, book one is written now, and fully illustrated, and as you will see if you go into the appropriate page in the Books section of this website – it even has a cover! The latest I have from the Publishers is that it is to be published in January 2010.

 

And so the quest for the crowns continues…

 

…more to come later…