Sometimes a book just wants to rest awhile. The characters get grumpy and refuse to do anything on the page; my ideas are all unworkable; and shoveling compost suddenly seems, by comparison, a deeply attractive way to spend my time.

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat started as a picture book. I didn’t know all of the story, but I had a couple of scenes strongly in my mind, and I wrote towards those scenes. Oddly enough, I could not get to those scenes whatever I might do. There was always more to the story that had to be written first, and then more, and then still more after that. 

When I finally did get to the scene I had envisioned from the first (about three quarters of the way through the book), I came to a dead stop. I had no idea what to do next.

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