The start of the Year of the Dragon has made me think about dragons. Though I don’t really need to be encouraged to think about dragons – the book I’m deep in the middle of editing has seven speaking dragon parts, and any number of minor spear-carrying dragons.  But this seems like a good time to celebrate other people’s dragons too!

My favourite dragon books include:

The wonderful heartrending dragon in CS Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is my earliest dragon memory.

The amazing How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell, the funniest, cleverest, most exciting series of dragon books ever.  Though I’m not sure I’d want Toothless under my helmet.

Philip Reeves’ No Such Thing As Dragons, which is dark, spiky, tantalisingly short, and a fabulous novel for slightly older readers.

And the very similarly titled, but for much smaller people: There’s No Such Thing As A Dragon by Jack Kent.

I also love the splendidly distant dragons in Vivien French’s Flight of Dragons.

I have mixed feelings about Eragon and its sequels, partly because they are almost too big to hold, but also because I thought I’d been really original, creating a friendly female dragon, making her blue and calling her Sapphire.  Then shortly after First Aid for Fairies was published, I read Eragon, and met his friendly blue female dragon, called Saphira.  I’m very relieved about that final vowel.

I have a couple of favourite dragon reference books too (I’m not sure if you can call them non-fiction!)

My first dragon collection was A Book of Dragons, edited by Roger Lancelyn Green (though I see it has my wee brother’s name on the first page, in pencil. Perhaps I could rub that out, because he’s not getting it back now!)

And more recently, I’ve loved the wonderful tactile Dragonology books by Dr Ernest Drake (which aren’t mine either – they belong to my kids.)

And finally, my favourite dragon myths.

I’ve enjoyed telling dragon myths for years, partly because they come with inbuilt excitement (a dragon! fire! teeth!), partly because they come from all over the world, and partly because it feels right to share dragon stories when I’m doing author sessions about the novels with Sapphire in them.

My favourite dragon stories to share include:

A seven-headed Chinese dragon

A Greek dragon who kept a shepherd boy company on the hills

A Viking dragon defeated by a sheepskin

A Polish dragon, also defeated by a sheepskin (some dragons are easily fooled)

A Persian dragon who teased a horse

A Georgian dragon who was sung to sleep

And an Irish dragon who lost his tongue

(If you want to find out more about these dragons, you’ll have to ask me to come and tell you the stories!)

Dragons are universal, appearing as the monster of choice in many cultures and countries, so I’m fascinated by theories about where our dragon stories come from.  Do we need monsters for our heroes to prove themselves against? Did our ancestors need explanations for those big fossilised bones and teeth? Or maybe, just maybe, these stories are about real dragons, and they’re still out there, somewhere…

What are your favourite dragon books and stories? Please let me know!

(And here is the dragon who sits beside my computer – hand made for me by a Sapphire fan!)

Today, I had an idea for a book.  I thought “What if…?” and sudddenly there was the idea.

And because I scribbled down what happened at the time, I thought I would share it with you, because one of the questions I get asked most often is ‘where do you get your ideas from?’

I was meant to be doing boring businessy stuff (it’s the tax return deadline at the end of the month) so I thought I’d take a break from adding up numbers and make a list of the books I’d like to write next.  Not the next book (that’s First Aid 4) and not the one after that (I’ve started researching it) but what will I write after that.  I started making a list of the ideas I’d had, to see which one seemed most fun.  And as I typed an idea I’d got from one line of a previous novel, and always meant to follow up…

…it suddenly happened.

I found myself typing a line which started “what if they all…” and then a whole sentence and a question mark.

And I felt it.  I actually FELT it.  An idea.

My pulse got faster.  My hands went a little bit cold.  I sat up straighter.

I felt physically quite strange.  Like I’d been running too fast, or just started a fever, or almost fallen over an edge but just caught myself in time.

My body actually reacted to this idea.

Then the idea took off.  I stopped writing a list and started writing a book.

I started thinking of characters (and here is one answer to where do ideas come from  – one of the characters seems to have leapt directly out of a nonfiction book I got for Christmas, so if I’d been reading a different book this week, this idea would have been different.)

Once I started thinking of characters, I started hearing their voices. I heard them talk to each other, insult each other, ask each other questions. They were meeting for the first time, and they didn’t really like each other.

Then I thought about names, because I can’t get to know characters until they have names.  But names are tough. Every name has to mean something. And all the names I wanted for these characters were great for them, but didn’t work in a cast of characters.  My first attempt all had Ss in them.  Every name started with S, ended with S or had S in the middle. Reading the book out loud would have sounded like snakes telling stories.  Then my next attempt had all the names ending in A.  That wasn’t any better. So I got distracted by looking up lists of names on the internet

Then I had to stop, to be a mum, and take my daughter up to her sports club. So I got a fresh notebook and a pen, and I scribbled all the way up the road and through the park.

By this time, I was seeing the characters, not just hearing them. Maybe getting out into the fresh air helped.  I could see a boy with long damp hair, a woman with a shivering animal in her arms.  Wooden desks, and a large creature with a stony face in the corner…

So now I have a first scene, I have a problem to be solved, I have characters I already feel a connection to.   I don’t have time to WRITE it yet, but never mind. It’s there. I’m excited about it, and I’ll write it soon!

So THAT is how I get ideas.  When I should be doing something else. From the magic words ‘What if…’ From passing thoughts I had when I was editing other books.  And from whatever is around me or rattling round my head at the time.

The fact that I had such a strong reaction to this idea, and got so involved with the characters and the story, gives me confidence that it’s a strong idea.  I have ideas every day, I scribble dozens down when I’m listening to the radio, or chatting, or reading, or cooking. But very few of them become books. But I think this one will.  I do hope so…

(This is a replacement post for one which went missing when my website crashed on Boxing Day – something very similar to this, but not exactly the same, was originally posted mid December)

I’ve finished First Aid Four!

Which sounds very impressive, but really, though I’ve typed the words “The End”, this is just the beginning.

I’ve reached the end of the STORY, I know what happens in the end, and how it happens, but now I have to go all the way back to Chapter 1 and make it work properly.  I always end up discovering new things about the characters and the plot on the way to the end, which means I have to go back and tweak things at the start and in the middle.

Also this draft is far too long, very repetitive and not very well written.  Nope.  It’s not very well written. Which is fine.  I never worry about the words when I’m writing a first draft, I just try to follow the story and hear the characters.  So now I need to take out the clichés and the long-winded sentences, and make the language sharper and stronger.  I really enjoy cutting and tidying a story.  The first draft is my way of discovering the story, and the editing brings it to .

So having rattled through writing the novel I will now spend several happy months editing it.

However, I wasn’t always happy when I was writing it (quite aside from nagging feelings of guilt about all those dreadful injuries and terrible dangers).  In the last week of writing, when I was working out how to defeat the baddie and trying to find a happy ending for anyone left standing, I was starting to feel quite strange.  Nervous.  Sad.  And I couldn’t work out why.  Until I realised that this is the last book in the series.  There were only ever meant to be four First Aid for Fairies books.  And this is the last one.

So this is the last book I will write with Helen, Yann, Lavender, all their friends and all their enemies.  And I’m going to miss them.

I know I’m going to spend the next few months editing this book. And probably the rest of my life reading bits of all the books in the series out loud in school halls.  But last week when I was able to see the end of the story, it was like I was reaching the end of a journey with these characters.  Editing is really just writing the postcards and tidying the photos.  We’ve already done the exciting bit.  So I feel like I’m already saying good bye to them.

Normally when I’m finishing a book, I find it fairly easy to say bye to the characters because I’m already making scribbly notes about a possible sequel.  But this time, I haven’t been doing that, and even though it was my decision to make this a series of four, because I have other books I want to write, I do feel very sad that I’m not going to spend more time with Helen and the fabled beasts.  I feel like I’m walking away from them!

So this time, the end really is the end.  But I still have all that editing to do, so I’d better get back to it…

I’ve now defeated baddies in four different novels. But that adds up to a lot more than four baddies.

I’m counting right now, and if you include minions, packs of slightly untrustworthy wolves, and creatures up to no good making the lives of my goodies more difficult, I think I’ve come up with ways of destroying, defeating, evading or embarrassing at least 13 different baddies or groups of baddies.

But when I started writing each book I didn’t know how I was how going to defeat any of them. I almost think that would be cheating, to have a baddie that I already knew how I was going to deal with.

Because the goodies don’t know. They don’t have any idea what they are going to do, and I like it like that. They are scared and nervous and confused and often don’t know what the baddie’s agenda is, or even all their powers. Usually, as the writer, I do at least have that information before them.

I can build the baddie to be as nasty or strong or clever or tricky as I like. But I certainly DON’T deliberately build in any weaknesses. I don’t have some kind of washing machine style built-in obsolescence.

Because I want a real baddie not a cardboard pushover.

When I’m writing, there comes a point about two thirds or three quarters of the way through the book when I start to see how the final battle or confrontation is going to happen. I call it the endgame, and when it slowly starts to form in my mind, that’s usually when I begin to see how to defeat the baddie.

In the book I’m writing now, the fourth First Aid for Fairies book, I knew who had to defeat the baddie (you’ll see who and I’m sure you’ll understand why when you read the book), I was starting to see where it had to happen, and once Helen made a very daft mistake, I even knew why it had to happen. But I didn’t know how. No idea. I have this great big clever powerful highly-armed baddie. And no idea how to defeat him.

This is ok. This has always happened to me. I’m starting to assume that it always will and that it’s just part of how I write.

But this time it was getting a bit worrying. I am now on chapter 26 of the book. There will only be about 30 chapters. I’m very nearly at the endgame. And last week, I had no idea how it was going to end. Not an inkling, not a tiny little clue. I’ve never taken so long to see how to defeat the baddie before… I was starting to wonder if this particular monster was too much for me.

But then I went back and reread the rest of the manuscript. I read the first trap, the four quests, the dragon riddles. I was actually rereading it to check I hadn’t left any silly loose ends. But while I was rereading, I suddenly realised how to defeat the baddie! It was there all along. It was in what I had already written. Everything I needed was already there!

This is why I have complete faith in the writing process, because whenever I have a big problem to solve, the answer is usually there in the small details of what I’ve already written.

A Scottish writer called Janet Paisley said pretty much the same thing at a workshop I went to years ago at the Edinburgh Book Festival: if you have a plot problem the answer is probably in what you’ve already written.

I’m pretty sure that doesn’t hold true for plot problems in the first two paragraphs, but if you’ve got thousands of words and a good knowledge of your characters, then you probably already have all the tools and weapons you need to defeat that baddie!

So, now I know what we’re going to do. Fabled beasts, let’s go get him!

The winner of the Set the Scene competition, to suggest a location for the fourth and final First Aid for Fairies book, is:

EMILY WRIGHT!

She suggested the gorgeous Traquair House and (this is what won it for her) Traquair House Maze….

Today I met Emily at the maze to present her prize, with various photographers and journalists there taking pictures and interviewing her.

Emily was fabulous. Really calm, patient and great at answering questions.

But it was one of the weirdest photo calls I’ve ever done…

Because we were presenting the prize in the maze. So a nice man showed my publisher the quick way to the middle, then he went off and left us.

But all the journalists and photographers turned up at different times, and once we’d taken the first journalist into the middle, all the press who arrived later got lost on their way in! We were in the middle getting our photo taken (which is my least favourite bit of being an author) and we kept hearing footsteps wandering around a few hedges away, so we’d have to shout: “Are you here for the photocall? Are you lost? Do you need us to come and find you?” The lady from Borders TV managed to fit herself and her camera through a little hole in the hedge, which was very impressive.

So it was quite spooky and very dramatic doing an interview in the middle of these high hedges, with lost people all around, and with my publisher shouting instructions like “left, no the next left, oh you’ve gone too far, go back…”

Then everyone else went away, leaving me and Emily in the middle of the maze on our own, so they could get a nice picture from high up on the terrace of Traquair House. They left us. In the maze. On our own.

And I wasn’t the one who’d been shown the way in or out!

So, has it taken me til this evening to escape?

No, it’s ok – they came to get us out eventually, but the feeling of being stuck in there was pretty good practice for imagining Helen and Yann trapped in there… which I should probably go off and write now!

So well done Emily, and well done the brilliant runners up, from Inverkip, Tain, Ullapool and Falkirk. And well done too to the other 250 kids who entered. It was very hard to choose a winner, because all the ideas were fabulous. I wish I could write a book about every single one of them. But I can’t, or not this year anyway! But you all have great imaginations and you all know your suggested locations really well, so why you don’t set an adventure there yourself and let me see what you come up with!

Here are some photos of me and Emily at the maze!

And please notice, I managed this whole blog without using the word “amazing” at any point. I wonder if the local press will be as be restrained.

Lari and Emily posing completely naturally

Lari being interviewed by an intrepid BBC reporter who found his way in

We escaped! And doesn't the maze look wonderful?

My writing is not a solitary occupation. I do imagine and scribble and type the stories on my own. But I often do it in busy noisy sociable places. Not sitting-in-a-café-nibbling-cake or gazing-at-inspiring-art sort of places. Even though that was what I’d hoped a writer’s life was like, I never seem to have time!

No, I do lots of writing on trains and buses on the way to book festivals or school visits. And I do a lot of writing outside my kids’ afterschool classes (I was writing a story about dancing giants outside my daughter’s ballet class recently, and I swear the cute little girls in the hall were making more noise than the giants in my head). So I’m often writing surrounded by people and noise.

And I like to involve other people in my writing. I work closely with various editors, and they sometimes point out plot problems and suggest solutions. (I then come up with my own completely different solutions, just to show that I’m my own person, but I always fix the problem.)

But all writers have to work with their editors. I often involve other people too. My own kids have been involved in brainstorming titles and character names (often at bus stops.) And I sometimes read whatever I’ve been writing on the train to whatever children I’m visiting: What do you think? I’ll ask. And I will listen to what they say, often scribbling it down on the ms. But what I’m really looking for is whether they gasp at the right bits… (because then I know it’s working!)

I’ve had research help from readers too: a class in Inverkip Primary did lots of selkie research for Storm Singing.

But this year, I’ve taken involving others in my writing a bit further. This year my publishers Floris ran a competition for readers to suggest a location for the fourth and final First Aid book. (I had already used most of the bits of Scotland that I knew, and I was hoping for new and exciting ideas.) So we offered as the prize the promise that whatever location won would definitely be in the finished book.

That promise was a HUGE risk!

What if everyone had suggested impossible, boring or clichéd places? What if I’d committed myself to setting the book in a supermarket car park?

I was putting the whole future of the book into the hands of the readers.

But I needn’t have worried. We got hundreds of ideas, and they were all FANTASTIC! I could write a lifetime’s worth of adventures based on all those wonderful locations.

So what location won? I’m not telling. Not yet. We’ll announce it on Wednesday. So watch this space!

I had an all-day adventure at the end of last week, researching a hill for the first quest in the Fourth First Aid book.

When I go to a location, I don’t just turn up thinking: oooh, I hope this is a pretty place! I put a lot of work into picking potential locations, so I will have read books of local legends, googled the area, and bought a really detailed Ordnance Survey map.

If I can find so much out without leaving my desk, why do I bother to go? Well, I realised when I was preparing for my trip on Thursday (no, I’m not telling you where I went – that would give too much away!) that I wanted to ask the landscape some questions. Like I was interviewing it, for the job of being my location.

My questions on Thursday included: Are there sheep nearby? Is there somewhere to park a dragon? And could a horse get up that hill?

The answers aren’t always what I’d expect. From the map, I thought a nearby quarry would be a good place to park a dragon. But when I got there, there was a farmhouse really close, which put me off poking about (I don’t like wandering into people’s gardens, especially if they have big dogs) and if it put me off, it would certainly be too close to human habitation for Sapphire. So I had to keep asking the landscape: is there ANYWHERE to park a dragon round here?

But it isn’t just parking spaces. I need to find the right places for escapes, fights, magic and chases. However, I never know exactly what I want to happen in a story , and I’m always open to the landscape inspiring me, so I have to look very hard at what’s there, not just at what I expected to be there.

I can take a very long time to walk up a hill when I’m researching, because I have to stop walking every time I want to scribble something, or else I might put my foot down a rabbit hole, or slip on some sheep jobbie. I found a lot of sheep jobbie on Thursday. I wonder if it might come in handy. As a weapon? Who knows…

And I try to go on the journey with the characters, seeing it the way they would. For example, a barbed wire fence along the path didn’t bother Helen or me, but it really bothered Lee, because faeries don’t like iron. So I had to see the landscape not just through my eyes, but theirs too.

So – that’s how I interview a landscape. Not the sanest thing to do on a sunny Thursday in October, but lots of fun, very muddy, and essential to the first quest. Now, where am I going for the second quest?