Since the advent of digital photography I’ve been an addict –
and I’ve used a lot of the photographs I’ve taken in different books. Here are
a few, with extracts from the book concerned.
I decided to open this
book in the most magical place I had ever visited, which was the humming bird
garden in Monteverde, Costa Rica.
…the humming birds returned to the sugar-water feeders that
were hung around the outside of the Study Centre. They used their beaks as
rapiers, fencing in mid-air as they tried to knock one another away from the
rim. The ones that won looked smug, and the ones that lost zoomed around the
garden pretending they didn’t want a drink after all.
Although this
description comes from The Divide, lot of the action in the second book is set in the
library of my alternative world. I based it on a café in Bristol.
This one was made of wood, with asymmetrical window-frames
and doorways. Pear-shaped windows, kidney-shaped windows, twisted beams,
sloping walls, an undulating roof. It was almost as though the place had grown
there, like a tree. The wood went from cream to chocolate, with every shade of
coffee and caramel and butterscotch between. Each piece of timber was as smooth
as a polished pebble, though whether it had become like that through
craftsmanship or weathering was difficult to say. The structure was very big,
although it was only one storey tall.
The jinx box, the
shape-changing villain of the book, takes on the guise of the biggest pitcher plant
in the world, which I photographed in Borneo.
“Look at that pitcher, over there,”
said Betony. “It’s absolutely enormous.”
Felix looked. It was so huge it
had to rest on the ground. “What do you think it eats?” he asked.
Betony looked shocked. “Eats?
What do you mean?”
“Pitcher plants are carnivorous.
At least, they are in my world. Ours are much smaller than these; they catch
flies, which drown and then get digested.”
Betony made a face, which quickly
turned into an expression of horror as the implications hit home. “What do you
think these ones eat, then?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Felix. “Some
pitcher plants have been known to eat frogs. Perhaps this one’s big enough to
tackle small birds?”
“And not necessarily that small,”
said Betony, backing away. “I think you’re right about Rhino not being here.
Let’s go.”
But Felix was overcome with
curiosity. Although physics and chemistry were his favourite subjects at
school, biology came a very close third. Insectivorous plants fascinated him,
they were just so weird. Despite the lid of the pitcher plant being
firmly shut, he couldn’t resist going over to peek inside.
“I wouldn’t,” said Betony, but it
was too late.
As Felix lifted the oval green
lid a voice said, “Well hello.” It was so sudden and so unexpected that he
nearly jumped out of his skin.
This wasn’t the
biggest elephant I saw in Kenya, but it had attitude…
There, blocking the path, stood
the biggest elephant I had ever seen. Its tusks almost swept the ground.
“Out of the way!” yelled Snyman,
raising his rifle.
No-one moved.
Snyman made an angry noise, and
pushed me out of the way. Because the track
was going uphill the poachers were right in his line of fire. Changa started
to take off the heavy backpack. The eyes of the other two stayed fixed on the
elephant as, very slowly, they put the tusks on the ground. I was quite sure
that the huge grey beast in front of me knew very well how the poachers had got
their ivory.
This eleven-year-old
Mongolian girl was the best rider I have ever seen, and out to prove she was at
least as good as the men.
“My name is Zul,” she said. “What
is your name?”
“Max. How come you speak such good English?”
“I go to
school, of course,” she said. “I love school. We get people from other
countries who come to teach us, and then go home again. Chinese. Russian. And
for the last three years, English. Can you ride?”
I realised
she had her hand looped through the reins of a grey horse. “Of course I can,” I
said. I’d only had a few lessons, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Get up
behind me, then,” she said.
She swung
herself up into the horse’s saddle. It took me three goes to climb up behind
her. The reins were really long, and she whirled them round her head like a
lasso to get the goats to go where she wanted. There were about twenty of them,
all different colours and sizes. We set off after them, but as soon as the
horse started to trot I fell off.
“I thought
you said you could ride?” she said.
This is the Castle in
Prague.
“This is very famous room,” said
Svetlana. “When Mongol Hordes bring Black Death to Karetsefia, king and his
family leave city and seek refuge here. Then they catch the plague anyway.
Mongol Hordes take over castle, but they do everything on horseback, so they
build audience hall for men on horses.”
“You mean they rode right into
the castle?” said Julie.
“Yes. When Mongol Hordes leave,
new king turns it into room for dancing. There is painting of him on wall at
end. There are many paintings here, including very famous one of poet being
shot by firing squad.”
The scenery in Iceland
is truly inspirational.
It was Plume who noticed the
change in the weather first, prancing sideways and clacking his beak. The
blizzard that had reduced visibility to porridge had stopped as abruptly as it
had started – and there they were, on the other side of the pass, and their
track was about to split into two. The sky was a brilliant cloudless blue, and
a delicate patchwork view was laid out below them like a chieftain’s carpet. It
took a moment or two for Kura to really grasp what was odd about it, but it was
Joeli who put it into words.
“It’s deepest winter out there,”
he said, in an incredulous voice. “The colours – they’re all pastel blues and
greys and white. There’s nothing but snow and ice. But on our side of
the mountains the leaves are still red and gold and only just beginning to
fall.”
And last but not least – Grimspite, my favourite character
from the Divide Trilogy. Hyenas are
terrifying. I once had one padding around outside my tent, and I didn’t dare go
outside to the loo until daybreak, when I heard the cooks start to prepare
breakfast…
