When I finished writing The Outlaw Varjak Paw, I knew very little about my next book.  I was sure of only two things.  First, it would not be a Varjak Paw book; I wanted to do something completely different.  Second, I had an idea for a story about someone who goes on an epic journey to the end of the world.  But I had no idea who this person would be, or what it would feel like to do such a thing.

While writing my books, I’d also been working as a film journalist.  My favourite film of all time is Atanarjuat The Fast Runner.  That incredible image above is a still from it, and believe me, the film is even better than the still!  It was made in 2001 in the Canadian Arctic by Inuit film-makers, based on oral legends thousands of years of old, and it completely blew me away.  I got to know the makers when I interviewed them, and they kindly invited me to visit them the next time they made a film.

So in 2005, just after finishing Outlaw, I went up to the Arctic.  Specifically to a place called Igloolik, on the edge of the frozen sea, in the Baffin Island region of Canada.  That’s where they live, and I stayed with them while they shot their second film, The Journals Of Knud Rasmussen.

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It was 1975.  I was 8 years old, and I lived in the middle of London.  I’d never seen a rabbit in real life; I thought they were silly, to be honest, and I certainly didn’t care about them.  So when my mum gave me a book with a rabbit on the cover, I just laughed.  “I’m not reading that!” I said.  “Trust me,” she replied.  “I’ve read it myself, and it’s brilliant.  Read the first page.  If you don’t like it, you can stop, but try one page and see for yourself…”

So I did.  And from that first page, I was plunged into the world of those rabbits.  And their world was so much darker and scarier than I’d imagined.  Because everything in it was bigger than them, and it was all out to get them.  Just to survive, those rabbits had to be so much braver and stronger than they ever thought they could be…

Sometimes it was terrifying, sometimes it was sad, sometimes it was funny – but at all times, it was completely compelling.  I could not stop reading that book, and as I read it, I remember thinking, “I will never forget this, as long as I live…”  And I haven’t.  Read the rest of this entry »

Photography is my favourite hobby.  I love it because it doesn’t involve words.  When you spend every day writing words, it’s nice to get away from them sometimes!  And pictures can still tell a story.  Photography has helped me see so many strange and interesting things; things I would never have noticed otherwise.

I enjoy prowling around city streets at night with my camera, trying to see things from different points of view.  Sometimes I imagine them from a street cat’s point of view, as if I was Varjak Paw, or one of his friends.  What would the city really look like to them? Read the rest of this entry »