I’ve always lived near the sea, and seaside towns have always featured in my life, but it was only a few years ago that I finally came to live in one. Being a hundred paces from the beach, all year round, allowed me to discover the strangeness of coastal life for myself. Because there’s a secret life to seaside towns that you don’t discover if you only go there in the summer and sit in the sun — a secret life of weird weather and mysterious tides that is packed with potential for adventure.
Beach combing is a real joy, and the best season for that is winter, when storms and wild seas stir up things that have lain buried and forgotten beneath the sand, and throw them onto the beach for a brief moment before burying them again. If you’re lucky, and patient, you can find these things before that happens. Where I live, on England’s south coast, I find sea glass gems, strange pieces of driftwood, even the bones of prehistoric creatures. And while it’s endlessly fascinating to discover what those things are in reality, it’s also interesting to wonder what they might be in a story.
Malamander is in many ways the culmination of an ongoing project to turn beachcoming into books. It’s a project I didn’t even know I was pursuing until I was joined on my lonely foreshore walks by a boy called Herbert Lemon, Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel, and his curious friend Violet Parma. And with them came Lady Kraken, Mrs Fossil, Dr Thalassi, and all the quirky residents of a mysterious town called Eerie-on-Sea. And behind us all, lurking in the mists, keeping pace with us in the shallows just beyond view, we were followed by a creature out of legend – the unctuous and creeping malamander itself.
Malamander will be published by Walker on the 2ndof May, 2019, and is the start of a series. I recommend Hive.co.uk, where you can order the book online but support your local independent bookseller at the same time. Obviously, if you have an indy bookshop near you, then go there first (lucky you!). Malamander is also Waterstones Book of the Month for May, 2019. And if you’d like to know more, check out the website — with a book trailer and a brilliant interactive map — at www.eerie-on-sea.com.
I read a short excerpt from this in “Booktime” and was hooked. Am now engaged in reading it pretty much at a sitting. We lived by the sea at one time and when the tourists have gone it’s a completely different place usually much more exciting. Good luck with sales!
What a wonderful story! I love it and will be reading it again and again. I hope it is a first of more stories featuring the lovely Herbert Lemon in Eerie-on-Sea. Thank you very much!
We (my daughter and two grandsons aged 9 and 11) are absolutely enthralled by Malamander! Such flights of imagination, and we are wandering them all. I live in a seaside town of the far south coast of eastern Australia, and the boys have just been with me for two weeks so they love the echoes of Eerie-on-Sea at Bermagui, where we started reading it, around the fire. So thank you for this delicious and beautifully drawn and written book with its hints of Dickens and others. I see you did the drawings in the text and wondering why not the cover? Maybe for the reprint? Best wishes from us all. Jane, Rebecca, Daniel and Adam
where is the image of Dr..thalassis
in malamander in the website