Aah, ‘The Curtain Twitcher’s Handbook’ and the lovely Daisy. I miss Daisy. She was such fun to write...
I have no idea where this one came from (a common theme in my writing!). A girl whose curtains talk to her? Curtains? Really? When the God of Curtain-Twitching spoke to Daisy, nobody was more surprised than me! It soon became obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to shut the curtains up, or Daisy come to think of it.
Of her own accord, Daisy May started to rip her own life to shreds. I couldn’t stop her. She completely took over and I stood back and watched, and hoped she’d come through it all in one piece. The tinker’s curse didn’t help, but luckily the boy next door did.
This book is very much based around where I grew up, and Daisy’s school is my old school. Daisy’s mum’s cafe is the cafe I used to work in at weekends. It was fun revisiting old places in my head, and many of the locations are based on vague memories of the woodlands and weaver’s cottages of Yorkshire.
The first draft of The Curtain-Twitcher’s Handbook took only six weeks to belt out. The revisions another six months. It’s the fastest book I’ve ever written and the one that flows the best, in my opinion.
Some people ask if I’m like Daisy, or used to be. No. Definitely not. Unfortunately, I’m more like her mum 🙂
Jo Danilo | Writer 