Simon who?
It was a dark and stormy night. The wind howled, lightning flashed, rain pounded the swirling trees. And then, just a few years later and a few hundred miles away, I was born. It was the mid-20th century, in the Midlands, in the middle of summer...
Questions I often get asked...
Favourite books?:
Far too many to mention, but some of my favourite writers (for grown-ups) include P.G.Wodehouse, George Orwell, Patrick Hamilton, Sarah Waters, Wilkie Collins, Donna Tartt, Richard Yates, Brian Aldiss, Margaret Atwood, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe.
Why do you write children's books?:
Because so many people say I have the mind of a ten-year-old. Besides, you can fill these stories with explosions, robot camels, alien invasions - all the fun stuff that you usually have to leave out of books for adults.
Do you have a special place to write in?:
I have a 3ft x 3ft wardrobe with a little desk in that I use as an office (no, honest, I do!). It's stuffed with papers and books and assorted rubbish, and I scribble away in there. It's where I pin up all the letters I get from readers.
Here's what the Walker Books website said about me...
As a child
Simon Cheshire grew up in Warwickshire, and absolutely hated school. On the whole, it wasn't too keen on him either. He was always the quiet kid at the back of the class, and spent a lot of time staring out of the window. From a young age, he was a dedicated reader and would spend many hours absorbed in books, happily dreaming of faraway places, and completely ignoring his mother's cries of "Go out and get some fresh air, for heaven's sake!"
As an adult
After graduating from university with a PhD in Spending-far-too-much-time-on-obscure-researches-and-not-enough-on-actual-assignments, Simon went to work in the only industry that would have him: the book trade. He spent over a decade in the marketing departments of various book-selling companies, until they'd finally had enough of his silliness and told him to go and do something more useful instead. So he became a full-time writer. His hobbies include movies, tinkering with old computers and wishing he had more hobbies. He lives in Warwick with his wife and children, although he spends most of his time in a world of his own.
As an artist
Simon was writing, with the intention of being published, from the age of sixteen or so. For fifteen years, he turned out novels, screenplays and stage plays, all of which were utter garbage. Then when he arrived at his thirtieth birthday, and finally accepted that his mental age would never exceed ten, he turned to children's books, and at last found his natural habitat. His first book appeared in 1997, and since then his books have been published in many countries around the world, and in several languages. He writes in a tiny room that used to be a walk-in cupboard, but which is now crammed with books, pieces of paper and empty chocolate bar wrappers.
Some things you didn't know about Simon Cheshire
• He is allergic to cats, horses and the entire city of Coventry.
• His favourite food is fish. Or possibly chocolate.
• He has no dress sense whatsoever, and usually goes around looking like a mobile rubbish tip.
• His favourite activity is reading late at night, when everyone else is asleep.
• He writes on a laptop computer, using OpenOffice to write his books, Sandvox to maintain his website and PacMan to waste his time.
• He hates gardening, swimming and Christmas.
• He believes in the existence of extra-terrestrials.
• When he was growing up, he wanted to be either an actor or a film director.
• He has travelled in China, India and Egypt and really, really wants to go to the Moon.
Here are some of my favourite quotations about writing...
“The creator is nothing, the work everything” - Gustave Flaubert
“If it reads easy, it was writ hard” - Ernest Hemingway
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness” - George Orwell
“I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at 9 o’clock every morning” - Peter de Vries
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force” - Dorothy Parker
“The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind” - Anthony Burgess
“We do not want literature, my friend. We want a bestseller” - Anthony Burgess
And here's an unrelated one that just makes me smile every time...
"I could have been somebody. I didn't feel like it, that's all" - Tony Hancock