It may be June 13, a day associated with bad luck and superstition for some, but for us it was a day filled with excitement. I’m not sure if we had ever been this excited in our lives.
Today, along with my friend Sharlize, we were off to a birthday party. Like any birthday party, we had a card for the birthday girl and had carefully washed and ironed our specially chosen outfits ready for the big day. However, while the birthday girl was someone that we felt we knew very well, because of her books which we had devoured from cover to cover, paradoxically, despite a treasured invite, we had never met her before. Today we were meeting Cathy Cassidy, author of the Chocolate Box Girls series and it was her birthday!
I would like to say that travelling from Sunderland to Puffin HQ was a piece of cake but as we walked along the Strand to our venue, our excitement built until we were two giggling wrecks!
At first glance, the building was extremely big and posh. The windows were gleaming with the reflection of sunbeams along the huge walls. After entering the spinning doors positioned like spinning wheels, we were met with an amazing sight; the white marbled floor was outspread beneath our tiny feet. We suddenly felt very small. Looking around, the number of children was increasing and a rush of panic flew over us; would we get to meet Cathy? Were we going to get to ask our questions?
But we need not have worried. Cathy was waiting at the entrance to the room and she was the perfect birthday party host, talking to everyone before allowing us to find a seat. There we found goody bags awaiting us, filled with Chocolate Box Girls books, fortune cookies , posters and bookmarks. It was as if it was our birthday and we felt like VIPs, our hearts swelling with pride.
Cathy made such an inspiring speech about her new book, Fortune Cookie, and about how she spends her days writing our books. The icing on the cake for us was when we were able to ice chocolates in the style of the iced truffles illustrated on the backs of her books, and the cherry on top was when we were able to devour our delicate, delicious concoctions.
Sadly the event came to an end and people started to head off after the winners of the My Best Friend Rocks competition had been announced, but we were able to present Cathy with a birthday card from our creative writing club, Whitburn’s Wonderful Writers. We ate more cake and sang happy birthday to Cathy before she was whisked away to another book signing.
This has been an incredible experience for us and one that we will never forget. We had a wonderful time and it was awe-inspiring to meet Cathy and see what a lovely person she is in real life. Meeting Cathy has been an experience that has inspired us to keep on writing our own creations… In many ways it has motivated us to think outside of the (chocolate) box!
Here are some of the questions we got to ask her:
Where do you get storyline ideas from?
Ideas are everywhere – things I see, hear, remember, imagine… then I will daydream, and if I am lucky a story unfolds. I’m a people watcher, and a bit of a magpie… always on the lookout for bright, shiny ideas that may come in handy for a story!
Which of the sisters relate most to you?
There’s a little bit of me that relates to them all! Cherry is very imaginative and lives in a fantasy world some of the time – most authors would identify with that! Skye is shy and daydreamy and loves vintage and history – I am very like her. Summer is a perfectionist, and I can be too, though in my case this has nothing to do with dance but relates to my writing. Coco is animal crazy, a bit of a tomboy and an eccentric and can also be quite feisty. She’d quite like to change the world, and I am very like her… we all need to speak up for the things we believe in. Coco’s a great role model. (And yes, I am animal crazy too!) Honey… well, she’s a drama queen and a rebel, and clearly I am not like her at ALL. Except for when I’m halfway through a book and the going gets tough, and suddenly I can be quite moody and over dramatic until the home-straits are in sight. I think Honey reacts strongly because she feels things very strongly, and I definitely relate to that!
Do you have a favourite place to write?
It used to be the little blue shed in the garden when I lived in Scotland, but now I’m down on Merseyside I have an indoor writing room with all my favourite things in it. On sunny days I push up the sash window and sit on the sill with my feet on the little balcony and the laptop on my knee, dreaming and gazing out over the park.
Do you prefer writing by hand or typing?
I write directly onto a laptop these days as it makes it so easy to edit and alter things as you go. When I started out, I wrote everything out in longhand in exercise books, then trained myself to type with two fingers on the ancient manual typewriter my dad used for typing invoices for his car repair business. These days I have a MacBook Air laptop and I love it.
Are the sisters based on people you know?
No, they’re fictional – but with little threads I relate to woven into their characters, as we’ve seen! They are my ideal dream-family, I think. I was an only child for six years growing up, and then my little brother came along and he was and is great, but I’d imagined a very different family by that point; a big sister I could look up up, who’d show me things… a little sister who would look up to ME… and a twin who would always be there for me and always understand. This blueprint eventually evolved into the Chocolate Box Girls sisters!
How old were you when your first book was published?
My first book, Dizzy, was published eleven years ago this summer, so I was clearly fairly ancient! My kids were aged nine and ten and I had decided to have a proper go at making my childhood writing dreams come true.
How many books did you write before one got published?
If story starts of two or three chapters count, then we’re talking hundreds… I always had the start of a novel on the go, but never got past the start until Dizzy, that was the book I pushed myself to carry on with, and the characters seemed to come to life and do things I hadn’t even expected… I finished the book and found I was now hooked on writing book-length stories. I was very, very lucky as Dizzy was published soon after – but all those years of writing story starts and short stories and working for teen mags were an important training ground in allowing all of that to happen!
Who is your favourite sister and why?
Honey is my favourite. She’s a drama queen and a trouble maker, but I love her because wherever Honey is, that’s where the story is too!
Which Chocolate Box Girls story is your favourite?
I have a soft spot for them all! Cherry’s bumpy arrival into the family, Skye’s crush on a ghostly dream-boy and the mystery she has to unravel, Summer’s battle against the perfectionist pressure that threatens to wreck everything and Honey’s eye-opening trip to Australia… Each story feels very real and emotional to me. My favourite is Jake’s story, and of course he is the Chocolate Box Boy who tells the series finale story in Fortune Cookie… it’s a lovely, bittersweet farewell to the series.
Out of all of your books, which is your favourite?
It’s usually the latest, because I still get stupidly excited when a daydream-story makes it into being a real book and is released into the wild, but this is a year of three books, Fortune Cookie, Chocolate Box Secrets and Looking Glass Girl. I’m going to pick Looking Glass Girl as it was inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, one of my favourite childhood reads, and is a little darker and more dramatic than my usual style, with lots of twists and turns. It was a challenge and a joy to write.
Do you ever find it difficult to come up with ideas for stories?
Ideas are never in short supply… time, discipline, organisation, yes… but never ideas! I love people watching and collecting ideas from the world around me, and there will never be quite enough time to write them all down in story form!
