“I shelved it for about a year. I eventually realised that the reason the short story didn’t work was because it was the last act of a novel, and needed the rest of the story for it to make any emotional sense. And so I wrote the novel and reunited the short story with its history.”
– Tom North 30 August 2011
The Back Flap
Toby has shut himself off from the world. Since the accident which killed his mother he has spent every waking moment simply waiting until he can return to bed, and sleep. But one night he is woken by an immense, yowling tabby cat which tears his room apart, searching for its missing ‘mousey’. And Toby knows from that moment that life is only going to get stranger.
‘Puttypaw’ is a book about cats; man-sized, talking cats. (One of which specialises in casual malevolence and unspeakable sarcasm.) It is also about gods and their slippers. It is about growing up and friendship and loss and adventure. It is about rats and blood. It is about mirrors and deserts and fighting. It is about death – but then all stories are, in the end. Most of all, though, it is a book about Toby and his dreams.
About the Book
What is the book about?
The book is about an early teenage boy called Toby who is having a pretty bad time of things. His mother had recently died and he’s living with his step-family. He’s also having a bad time at school. As a result Toby has shut himself away, retreating to a place where people can’t reach him and where life simply slides off his shoulders. Nobody, however, can live that way for long without life eventually coming to get them. In Toby’s case life comes in the form of a gigantic talking cat, called ‘Puttypaw’, who rips his bedroom apart looking for a mouse. Puttypaw takes him off for a series of adventures which involve reanimated rat corpses, self-indulgent peacocks, unnecessary sarcasm and a never-ending desert. Over the course of the book Toby learns to accept mortality and to start to live.
I know, I know: it sounds a bit grim and weird, right? Rest assured that it isn’t as grim as it sounds. It is as weird as it sounds, though.
When did you start writing the book?
I began in March 2009. I had recently taken the decision that I wanted to write a novel but hadn’t actually managed to start. I was sitting in my girlfriend’s bedroom with my laptop propped up on the bed, playing chess or something, and on a whim opened a word document and rattled off what is now the second passage in the book. After that I couldn’t seem to stop.
How long did it take you to write it?
I had a full, and readable, first draft in eight months flat, working in the evenings and weekends around my day job. I used to come home, switch on the laptop and try to do a couple of hours at least four or five times a week. Once it was largely there I spent an interesting (or obsessive, depending on your viewpoint) four months editing and tweaking.
Where did you get the idea from?
The original idea for a talking cat called Puttypaw came (and this is entirely true, by the way) in a dream I had about a schoolboy and a cat. The cat was in a blanket and for some reason they were in a cellar and the cat was eating something horrible. In my dream the boy very clearly said, “That’s filth, Puttypaw.” And that was it. Although these words didn’t make it into the book, they set the scene. I woke up feeling odd about the dream and wrote a short story exploring it. I showed the story to my mother who told me that it didn’t work. So I shelved it for about a year. I eventually realised that the reason the short story didn’t work was because it was the last act of a novel, and needed the rest of the story for it to make any emotional sense. And so I wrote the novel and reunited the short story with its history.
Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?
Sure! Not whole sections but certainly odd passages here and there. I haven’t had writers’ block or anything like that, but some, relatively short, sections were a real swine. It’s very strange to me that some passages come out fully fledged the first time they’re written and subsequently require only very cosmetic alteration, whereas others just won’t work no matter how big the mallet you beat them with. The passage where Toby wakes up after his first visit from Puttypaw was rewritten about five million times. At least. I simply couldn’t get it to fit in with the rest of the book. I knew that I’d finally arrived when I re-read the section and it seemed to flow naturally, as if it had just sauntered onto the page with the rest. The difference is that I, and now you, know that it took a hell of a lot of work to get it to look that way, whereas some other passages simply sprang out fully formed.
What came easily?
Theroros came easily. He’s easily my favourite character because he’s purpose built to be unpleasant, sarcastic and funny. I loved writing him simply because he gets to say all the things that I’d want to say to people but can never allow myself – largely because it’s quite nice to have friends. I don’t think many people realise quite how much of my innate sarcasm I have to swallow in order to prevent utter social exclusion. Even so one of my friends, having read the book, said that every time Theroros spoke she heard my voice. Worrying, worrying….
Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?
Nearly all of the characters in the book are an extension of my own personality traits, the above being a case in point. The only exception is Mitchell, who is based on nobody specifically but most resembles a kid who I didn’t like very much at my secondary school. I never had a lot of problems with the kid in question but knew people who did. I think it’s fair to say that a few of Mitchell’s more beautiful tendencies come from that source.
We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?
I’m a sucker for any book with a fantastical element which uses that element to make an intelligent comment on society or human relationships. Writers as diverse as Terry Pratchett, Haruki Murakami, Neil Gaiman and Mikhail Bulgakov all do this. The result for me is a comical situation with deeper undertones in which you learn about humanity without being preached at. I acknowledge that this might land me in pseuds’ corner, but once you get past the weirdness of, for example, a talking frog which battles a giant earthworm to prevent Tokyo’s earthquakes (Murakami) or a man demanding a receipt for having been turned into a pig and ridden to the witches ball (Bulgakov), or have simply had a chuckle at a character’s expense, then with a clever writer it begins to dawn on you that there’s a small catch there. It’s that feeling you get when you think, “Hang on; there’s more here than meets the eye.” It makes you think. This is what I tried to do in Puttypaw. Whether I succeeded or not is another matter, but that was certainly the intention.
Do you have a target reader?
Yes: me. This has caused a lot of problems and taught me a lesson or two. I wrote Puttypaw for me, and so wrote about the things that make me laugh and the things that make me sad and wrote in the style I’d like to read. The problem is, as my girlfriend will attest, that I’m essentially a thirty-five year old, precocious and gobby small child. The resulting book is slightly juvenile – I hope in a fun way – but with underlying adult themes and language. It’s not that this odd combination has put people off at all – people genuinely seem to enjoy it – but it has still caused me problems. (See the “agents” question below.)
About Writing
Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?
It depends. If I’m “blue sky” writing to fill a page with words where none previously existed, then I need to be tired enough for my conscious brain to have given up but not so tired that I want to sleep. In this mood I can easily write two thousand words in a few hours. But then the two thousand words will need trimming and reconsidering and sorting and generally making it “not atrocious”. For this I need to be pretty awake and in a finicky mood. My stories tend to progress, therefore, by alternating splurges of words onto page followed by trimming these up into usable prose. But each section appears and is processed at its own rate; at any one time there might be finished sections and terrible sections and completely non-existent sections from all different bits of the book.
Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just Chapter headings and a couple of sentences?
No. I have tried many times and it doesn’t work for me. I don’t outline except by holding a vague feeling about where things are going in my head. What I do instead is to start by writing the last major scene of the book and ask myself, “How did these characters end up here.” Then everything grows from one scene to the next, with ideas coming as I write. But because I know where everything is heading, everything grows in the right direction. Kind of.
Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?
Both. I edit as I go as a natural part of how I write. But once the whole book is assembled I then edit it en masse. It’s like making a table out of lots of component parts. Each component is nearly finished but when the whole thing is assembled it’ll still need sanding down and bits chipping off and varnishing so that it looks like a single unit.
Did you hire a professional editor?
Yes, I did and am EXTREMELY glad. She did a great job and highlighted some particularly bad writing habits which I would never have spotted on my own. One habit, for example, was a tendency to begin sentences with “There is…” or “There was…” when trying for a particular effect. I’d end up with some paragraphs where two of three of these would crop up. In general, I think, any pattern like that in your writing detracts from the story because it catches the readers’ eye. It’s like spotting an actor actually doing acting rather than inhabiting the role. All of those There was’s were me doing writing rather than telling the story. As I say, I’d never have noticed on my own because that was just how I wrote. Now I’m more aware of these things and stamp on their little heads if I see them.
Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?
Oddly I can never, ever work and listen to music but it’s almost mandatory when I’m writing. I think it keeps my conscious mind occupied so the rest of the dark things which lurk beneath can get on with their job. I listen to a lot of Stornoway and Elbow, and much less frequently bands like Pink Floyd. For me the music has to have emotional content when I’m writing and only certain types will do it. This can mean that I listen to one album on repeat for days if I’m writing a passage in a certain mood. I’m assured by my girlfriend that this isn’t at all irritating that doesn’t make her want to kill me.
About Publishing
Did you submit your work to Agents?
I did indeed. And the minority who bothered to read beyond the covering letter or synopsis (I mean honestly; what a terrible process it is: horrific levels of stone-walling and general disinterest) said some very nice things about my writing. But none took the book up. One agent very kindly wrote to me saying that she kept coming back to it because thought that my writing was so strong but the subject of Puttypaw was too weird for her in the end. She also added that if I wrote anything else I should send it to her. That was great but I imagine that my next book will also be too weird for her because ‘weird’ is kind of what happens when I write. The others have tended to agree that I’ve (and I paraphrase) managed to create a well written [excellent!], interesting [great!] book which, however, [uh-oh] is extremely difficult to place [ah…bum], and so we won’t be taking it up [poo]. But do keep at it [right]. So I’ve had some encouragement along the way. Here’s where having written a too-adult-for-mainstream-fantastical-juvenile book hasn’t helped, I think.
What made you decide to go Indie? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?
It was a realisation that my book would probably never see the light of day if I kept sending it to agents without getting it out there. It had already been a year, and at the same time there was an emerging acceptance that Indie publishing was different to vanity publishing. (As an aside I abhor vanity publishing. I’d rather not publish.) The other contributing factor was that I broke my arm through being not very good at snowboarding. As a result I abruptly had lots of time on my hands. So I took the opportunity to get into self-publishing and am glad that I did. It made me take myself more seriously as a writer, and the feedback I’ve been getting has largely (the provider of my only one star review / character assassination notwithstanding) been very supportive and encouraging.
Did you get your book cover professionally done or did it you do it yourself?
I got it professionally done by a lovely lady called Tania at Designarchy. It was a very fun process. All of my other covers – for short stories etc. – have been home-made and aren’t nearly as good.
Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?
Winging it entirely. I’m probably not organised enough for a marketing plan. This may well be my Achilles heel in the Indie world, but I’m absolutely terrible at self-promotion. That said I have learned a large amount along the way. Since April, when I first went ‘live’, I’ve had well over 2500 downloads of my various stories, which is, ooh, about 2497 more readers than I’d have ever had if I hadn’t been dabbling with Smashwords and self promotion. At this stage of my writing career this, and the accompanying positive reviews, are making me very happy.
Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?
The initial downloads you get when you upload a free book on Smashwords convince you that your books are going to be huge. The supervening (word for the day) slump in downloads – to zero in most cases – is massively dispiriting. Neither represents reality. The reality, I think, is that it’s a long game and you probably will have to stick at it for years to build up a group of people who want to read your stuff. And this means getting your name out there. (I’m just speculating about this last bit, of course, having only been doing it for four months, but it’s easier than telling myself I’ve blown it this early on.) My tactic, and I stand by it, is that if you want downloads, you have to give away freebies. Each of my free short stories ends with an excerpt from Puttypaw, links back to where to find it, and some of the reviews I’ve had. Each download of a free story is, therefore, a seed waiting to grow into a bought book. Hopefully they’ll soon be a nice forest. Or at least a lawn.
About You
I’m really, really bad at snowboarding. I’m adequate at rock climbing. I used to be good at fencing, but I’m not any more.
Where did you grow up?
I’m from a small market town in the north east of England and sound way too posh to have come from there. This was a source of much hilarity when I was at primary school…for the other kids, anyway.
Where do you live now?
Oxford. This is why I still sound way too posh.
What would you like readers to know about you?
I spend most of my time cracking terrible jokes and trying to make people laugh. It tends, instead, merely to make them glad when I stop talking. I absolutely adore writing. It’s similar trying to make people laugh, but under circumstances where you have all the time in the world to get the phrasing just right before you open your mouth. Most of my friends probably still wish I’d take that time in conversation.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on novel number two. As usual with me it involves some very odd things happening which are a counterpoint to the emotional state of the main character. I probably can’t go into it too much right now but it involves a terribly feeble pun, being hunted by a strange, dark beast, a wound that won’t close, a man traveling the world escaping from precisely nothing, and ultimately a realisation that it’s never too late to let go and accept things as they are. I think that this has probably been sufficiently vague a description that you’ll never want to read it.
End of Interview
Tom’s website is here and you can buy Puttypaw here
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