Recently longlisted for a Yoto Carnegie award, Eve McDonnell tells us how determination and inspiration combined to produce her wonderful book, The Chestnut Roaster.
“An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward. When life writing is dragging you back with difficulties, it means it’s going to launch you into something great. So just focus, and keep aiming.” Apologies for the butchering of it, but boy, oh, boy, if I had a penny for every time I reminded myself of this quote by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. We all know how tricky writing life can be, so it won’t come as a surprise that, for a time, that quote was my phone’s home screen, it was a poster blue-tacked to my desk, and, during the multi-draft journey of my second children’s novel, The Chestnut Roaster, it was the ever-present footer on every page.
When the initial idea for The Chestnut Roaster came, I aimed that arrow with gusto. This story had to be written, and it would be easy – after all, Mother Nature herself put the idea into the palm of my hand. I’d found the skeleton of a leaf, its autumn brown long gone, leaving behind the tiniest golden veins, thinner than the thinnest thread. I held it up and squinted at its squirming, intricate lines – they were a thing of beauty, and as my eye followed the lines carefully, I wondered if I was really looking at a map to a mysterious world. An idea ignited.
Then came a dash of history. I was hooked by how the people of Paris celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution in 1889 by holding a world fair – the Exposition Universelle – and the preparation for it was fascinating. Paris was being transformed into a glittering spectacle, even the gateway to the fair’s entrance was wonderfully OTT – the Eiffel Tower. But what I loved most was how that fashionable city was in complete contrast to its dark and dangerous underground twin – the catacombs, with two-hundred miles of tunnels, some decorated with horrifying bone displays. Perfect! My leaf skeleton was clearly a map to that world! I had my setting!
For character, inspiration came from my son – when he was very young, I discovered he had a remarkable memory and would often be able to tell me what someone wore on a day of note months ago, or the colour of the car parked next to us yesterday. I soon discovered a rare condition called hyperthymesia – the ability to remember every event in your life, and Piaf, the main character of The Chestnut Roaster, was born. It was all coming together.
I brought the ideas and a few chapters to my writing group, a Big Smoke Writing Factory gang of brilliant children’s writers, and it soon became apparent that behind all my excitement, I had no clue where the story was going. Though I was enthralled by the leaf, the setting, the character, I was struggling to come up with story, and I was a fire-spitting dragon because of it. Keep aiming, they said, so I did. That push was soon followed by the news that I’d won an Arts Council Literature Bursary Award to research and write the story. There is nothing like it: the freedom to write, the push to do it, the sense of trust and belief that you have it in you.
I wrote a few more chapters, but I could feel my arrow being pulled backward. The story was missing direction. If I’m honest, it was a hot mess. Normally, this is where my agent would help, but my agent at the time was taking time out. I was in desperate need of guidance and it came in the form of the National Mentoring Programme (now run by the Irish Writers Centre) where I had the privilege of working with ER Murray. She had to put up with a lot of frustrated fire-spitting, but she held my hand, and by the time my agent returned, I had something solid to show them. We rolled up our sleeves, and structural edits began. I was getting somewhere.
And then the rug was pulled. My agent suddenly left the industry, and I was alone and agentless. I had lost my sounding board, my future-planner, my go-to person. The arrow was being dragged back until it pinched and it worried me, big time. Keep aiming, my writer friends said, this happens more than you know. Edited manuscript in hand, I went hell for leather searching for another agent, and it quickly hit me how much harder it had become in the few years since I had been querying. Ghosting was a thing back then, but by now it had grown horns. I appreciated the reason why – time pressures, et al – but the most frustrating part was the humongous amount of time-wasting and demotivation it caused. I soon realised I was pointing my arrow in the wrong direction. I discovered that my publisher, Everything With Words, who’d also published my debut children’s book Elsetime, were more than happy to read The Chestnut Roaster sans agent. I counted my blessings – I knew how lucky I was, and I also knew that all that agent-hunting energy would be better served writing something new.
The Chestnut Roaster’s publication was set for autumn 2022, at the time less than one year away, and Everything With Words were a dream to work with. I am incredibly proud of what we created: the stunning cover was designed and illustrated by Holly Ovenden, winning the Academy of British Cover Design Award and shortlisting for the Week Junior Awards. I had the immense pleasure of also working with artist Ewa Beniak-Haremska who brought the story to life with the most exquisite internal illustrations. The Chestnut Roaster went on to be chosen as a Guardian Book of the Year and Times Book of the Week, and, joy of all writer-dream joys, it was recently nominated for a Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing. And as for all that energy that I put into writing my something new? The Last Boy will be published in autumn 2024. It is a story I found written in the stars, and it secured me both an Arts Council Literature Bursary Award and an agent worth waiting for, the brilliant Faith O’Grady of the Lisa Richards Agency.
Goodness knows I’ll feel the drag of that arrow again and again – that’s how this writing game, not to mention life, works – but for now, I think my arrow is doing okay.
I’m glad I kept aiming.
(c) Eve McDonnell
Author photograph (c) Brownes Photography
Illustration of Piaf at he Roaster (c) Ewa Beniak-Haremska
About The Chestnut Roaster:
“Starting on All Fools Day, twelve years ago, I remember everything. EVERYTHING. That was a wet Saturday, and that was the day I was born.” 12-year-old Piaf has the ability to (and burden of) remembering everything that has happened since the day she was born. When she discovers everyone in Paris has forgotten the entire last year, 1887, including the disappearance of several gifted children, Piaf and her twin brother Luc embark on a dangerous journey that brings them to the depths of Paris’s underground twin, the Catacombs, to capture the memory thief and find the lost children.
Order your copy online here.
