The Snow Merchant

“A delightful debut… full of action and invention.”Sunday Times

“An inventive and accomplished debut.”Independent on Sunday

“A germ of JK and a pinch of Pullman.”TES

“Full of fairytale and fun.”Daily Mail

One moonless night in Bath

I started writing The Snow Merchant in a town called Bath in the South-West of England. I lived in a little room with high ceilings and a sash window, and I sat up late eating hobnobs and tea and writing stories.

And one moonless night it snowed.

I sat there watching the flakes come down. They were thick, like sheep’s wool or God’s dandruff. I sat there watching the snow. Watching the snow.

And then an idea floated down in my mind.

Who knows where ideas come from. Looking back, lots of things connected then. I was on my own in a tiny little room that wasn’t home, while the wind howled outside. I was far away from my Mum and Dad. I was travelling from city to city carrying a big dark suitcase full of my stories. All these things had been drawing together in my head for a while I think, long before the snow came along.

I sipped my tea, nibbled another hobnob, and with the snow settling outside I started to write.

“On a winter’s night so cold and dark the fires froze in their hearth, snow came to Albion. It came packed up in the suitcase of a stranger. Lettie was the first to see him.”

That’s what I wrote. And that is the beginning to The Snow Merchant.

It was two more years before I had an ending.

I didn’t know who Lettie was, you see. I didn’t know who the stranger was either, or why he had come. It was a mystery. It took me two years to solve it.

Two years is a long time. Some days, I was frustrated and bored. Nothing I seemed to write made sense. But I learned some things writing The Snow Merchant.

It is okay to get things wrong.

I only ever wrote one beginning to The Snow Merchant. I must have written hundreds of middles and endings. But eventually, I found the beginning, middle and end I needed. I made them into a story. It’s here if you want to read it.

I wouldn’t have written The Snow Merchant if I hadn’t written all those mistakes first, though.

If you want to see an earlier version of the story, click here.

Snow in classrooms

Paintings, letters and library displays made by readers of The Snow Merchant.