The Story Behind The Story
There’s a real story behind Snail Trail, a real-life story that was born out of a series of events all coming together at the right time. This is what happened.
- We moved into a village with our 6-month old baby (Amy) and were given a baby African Land Snail as a welcoming present
- Amy became a toddler and she loved the snail, so we got another one
- We began to make up stories about the snails
- We had another baby (George) and along came another snail
- By this time our three snails had names: Sticky, Tricky and Ricky
- Amy started school and I joined the fundraising committee who were trying to raise money for a school building project
- Our snails had babies – first 17 of them, then over 100!
- We gave some away to friends and family. People began to joke that whenever a new family came to the village they would find a special present on their doorstep – a little fish tank with a bag of peat, a cuttlefish, one large cucumber and two baby African land snails in it
- Then people began to say that if that happened, the village could hold its own Snail Race to raise money for the Church and how much fun it would be
- I got involved in running events to raise money for the Village Hall and the local Church, using my writing skills to promote them
- My husband has always read to the children at bedtime and they began to demand more stories about the snails. That’s when I started to write Snail Trail – or The Mysterious Case of the Newton Valence Snail Trail as it was first called - with the plot already having been inside my head for ages
- Amy, who was by this time six, offered to do some drawings – so she did
- The first edition was thus written to be read by parents, grandparents and carers and sent to family and friends for testing! People seemed to like it so we put copies up for sale one December to raise money for the local Church.
- People began to ask when the follow-up book was coming out so I started to write Snails Don’t Burp!, its sequel, followed by Snail Park and Snail Movie
If these events had never happened in the sequence they did, then Snail Trail and the follow-on books would never have been written.
We’re mad about snails in this house. We’re mad about reading and writing and illustrating. We hope you catch a bit of that madness when you read the snail books, or listen to them being read!
