| Robin
Jarvis.....Wyrd Mister A
A
brief interview with Robin prior to publication of The Fatal Strand
Where did
you get the idea for the Wyrd Museum series?
My stories
often come from drawings. This one started when I drew my old Teddy
bear and he came to life as a character in my head. Then I had to
find a setting for him. When I moved house, I found a wacky building
in South East London covered in spikes and spires and I found myself
imagining it to be a Wyrd Museum. So I put the two together.
Have
you ever been to a weird museum?
There used to be a really good
one in Warrington, where I grew up.
It was always really empty and you could easily imagine meeting
the Webster sisters there.
Are
your characters based on real people?
Some of them. Veronica and Ursula
are - and they really looked and dressed the way I've described
them in the books. They were amazingly eccentric too.
Do
you do a lot of research?
Sometimes. I often want to know
exactly what colour something was, or when it was made, or where
an actual street was. There are certain historical eras I'm particularly
interested in.
So,
when would you have liked to live?
The more you research, the more
you realise that you're better off now! You couldn't drink the water
then, and it smelled!
Your
books are very scary in places - do you ever get scared when you're
writing?
Yes! I try to think what would
scare me and I put that in. But you have to get caught up in the
mood of the story when you're writing it, otherwise it wouldn't
feel real.
Has
anything wierd or spooky ever happened to you?
Not directly to me, but to my
parents. When I was about two or three, I often used to sleep-walk.
One-night, they thought they heard a child walking around on the
landing - but, when they went to check on me, they found me fast
asleep in my cot. Spooky!
Why
did you write
Initiation
?
There are many tales from the
Wyrd Museum that are yet to be told. This is one of them...
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