The lone wolf…and the prickly fox
“Leave me alone!”
A lone wolf. A wolf that was lonely – but disguising it well with harrumphs and snarls. Living in a tangle of trees, well away from everyone and everything else. Time had put frost on his whiskers and ice in his heart. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I was writing during the pandemic, so there was a lot of alone-ness going on. I wanted to write a proper adventure for this wolf, that thawed his heart and found him love.
But I wasn’t quite sure who else was there or what happened. Sometimes stories start like that – with just one character. It might be simply an image, or a phrase. And sometimes they remain just that – a phrase in a notebook with potential but no story. I’ve got many notebooks with potential stories that haven’t made it through! It can be hard work and frustrating, finding the story that wakes everything up, but it’s also very exciting, too. You have to persist in the blank space of unknowing, asking questions. Who is this? Where are they? And, most importantly, what is going on?!
Initially, I decide, this wolf is called Frederic. Frustratingly for him, he lives next door to a very noisy, cheerful family of foxes. Frederic is very grumpy about the family, until the day a storm hits them all, hard. Pip, the littlest, cutest fox, stumbles and falls as the family flees – and Frederic finds her. She warms his heart by telling him jokes and finding him nuts, and he tells her a bit of his own history:
‘a tale of times long ago –
of a fire…
and a family.’
(This was all before I wrote and researched my novel Will Wolfheart, and the importance of pack to wolves, so I’m glad I had some notion of wolf packs, although I’m not too sure about how they made the fire!)
The story ended with Frederic becoming friends with the fox family – ‘and he found that it liked it. He liked it a lot.’
At some point, Frederic became Growl, with an enormous growl that terrified Pip. I’ve since done research into wolf growls, and they do sound truly terrifying – like a dreadful, thudding engine roaring into life.
But the story still didn’t hang together. In particular, I didn’t quite buy the idea of this wolf ending up living with a family of foxes. And I didn’t quite buy the idea of Growl simply softening because of jokes and nuts. And if you, the author, don’t buy it, then who – quite literally! – will? The principle of saying yes to the blank page had got me to Growl, but it hadn’t quite got me the adventure or the ending I yearned for him.
And then one day, I clearly remember realising that I didn’t need a whole family of foxes – I just needed one other character. And that character didn’t have to be sweet or cute. She could be fiery and difficult. She might not like Growl.
That was the turning point.
The fox in the book is called Ruby, but she was originally called Prickle, and she’s truly prickly. I really enjoyed writing the argument at the start of the story, where Ruby and Growl hurl insults at each other! Both characters hating the other at the start gave them a clear arc, where they had to earn the other’s trust. Suddenly the storm became the third character. As it threatened them both, the adventure took hold, with proper peril and danger. Ruby saves Growl, twice. And then comes the point where Growl could leave her behind – but he chooses to save her, with a big hug.
It had to be a hug. Remember how precious hugs seemed, for two whole years, in the pandemic?
Kate Read’s illustrations bring the story to life so beautifully, from the violent black and greys of the storm, to the beautiful soft purples of a new dawn, and the explosion of colour in the tree to which Ruby and Growl come back, to live together at the end. Kate has also added the perfect details to the beginning and end of the story in the endpapers. We start with leaves whirling in the wind…and we end with flowers blooming.
I couldn’t wish better for that lonely, lone wolf.
The Heart of the Storm is published by Otter-Barry Books on 5 March – available in bookshops and online everywhere.
