Cathy Cassidy talks to Nikki Gamble about her new book Lucky Star, her faith in individuals, triumph over adversity and the unexpected delight that can be found in grafitti art.

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I think I read that you live on a remote Scottish island. Is that right?

Yes, I grew up and was educated in Coventry and then I went to Art College in Liverpool. After that I lived in Dundee for a couple of years working on Jackie Magazine. And then I returned to Coventry and worked as an art teacher for four years, but we longed to go back to Scotland. So, about 16 years ago we just upped sticks and headed off, without a very clear idea of what we’d do or how things would turn out. But we absolutely love it and it’s a perfect place to write. I like to be quiet and shut away from things when I’m working, so it’s perfect.

Living in such a beautiful place, is it hard to write about urban street life? I know use your imagination but how easy is it to do that?

I did grow up in a city but now that I don’t live in a city any more, cities have become very exciting and thrilling. London has always been a magical place to me; I suppose I see it with the eyes of an outsider. It was especially fun researching going to the Savoy! I had to take my son in and they peered very carefully at the holes in his trousers, and then worked out that they weren’t jeans, so maybe he would be allowed in.

Yes, it’s a strange feeling walking into a place where you feel that at any moment you’re going to have to explain what you’re doing there…

Yes, I thought Cat from Lucky Star would have the courage and the cheek not to be bothered at all. When I first met my agent, he brought me down to meet the Puffin team and he  took me to lunch at the Savoy Hotel. I nearly fainted. I was so overwhelmed– almost horrified. So I thought it would be funny to include the Savoy scene in this book.

Is it  the first time that you’ve written from the male point of view?

It is. It has been a popular request from boys all around the country. They have kept asking me if I’m ever going to write anything from a boy’s point of view – and now I have. However, I don’t think of my books as being targeted at girls or boys, though some of them are packaged to look like a girl’s read. I think that makes it a little bit harder for a boy to pick them up.

The reason I wrote the book was because Mouse, who was a character from Dizzy, didn’t get a happy ending in that book. I thought he was a character that I could go back and look at again. I received a phenomenal amount of emails and letters from kids who’d read Dizzy and wanted a follow up or a sequel. They seemed to care about Mouse, and wanted more of him. I thought it was interesting to explore what his future might be and that it might be quite a good one, actually.

It’s a very warm picture of a teenage boy and they do get some bad press…

Oh, gosh, yes. It’s funny that people are scared of teenagers because they’re so unsure of themselves. Quite often they’ll put on a swagger, or act cool, but inside they are just kids. If you can see that, the scariness disappears.

The cover has a different feel to your other books, although it has the same brand look. Do you think it will have more boy appeal?

I love the black and silver. It’s quite cool and a little bit older than some of the covers have been.I know the girls are going to love the book because they’re endlessly fascinated with boys and are not going to have a problem reading something from a boy’s point of view. Whether boys will read it, I’ve no idea, but it doesn’t matter, it still had to be written from Mouse’s point of view.

How do you write about what seems to be a hopeless situation without writing a totally bleak or hopeless book?

 If you can picture the situation from the viewpoint of a teenager or a child, it doesn’t look quite as bleak. If you are living in this environment, you can find the magical things, or things that are good for you. Mouse finds all kinds of support from people that care about him. He has his own very strong moral code as well, even though he does attract trouble like a magnet. It was always going to be very difficult to write about his mum, because of her experience in Dizzy. But I wanted her to have a positive future, even though it would have been unrealistic to make everything perfect in her life. She had to have a struggle to be realistic. I think 90% of people in very rough areas make a great go of what they’re doing and find good ways of living their lives.

Your characters do more than live good lives on an individual basis; they actually make a stand for change.

There are  parts in this book where the actions of Cat and Mouse were heartstoppingly brave, almost suicidal.

I know; that’s Cat’s influence. Mouse really wouldn’t get involved in that way. Cat’s naïve, but well meaning so she just charges in where angels fear to tread, even if when it’s ill advised. She doesn’t see the consequences of what she does. She has confidence beyond her years and that obviously makes a big impression on Mouse.

You were an art teacher and I get the feeling that  you appreciate Mouse’s graffiti.

I really think that graffiti art is very maligned. Sometimes when you’re sitting on a train and shunting through some siding past the backend of some warehouses and you suddenly see a wall completely transformed with fantastic colour, and form, you can’t but think it’s fantastic. From Mouse’s point of view, he’s fighting back against grey concrete. There’s a world of difference between scrawling something nasty in a book or in a lift; that’s not the same as what Mouse does, and yet, he doesn’t realise that he is an artist.

Can you tell us something about your view of the professionals who have responsibility for Mouse?

In an earlier draft Dave’s warmth showed through but it’s less evident in the finished book. Dave is a character who cares a lot, but he’s so preoccupied by his own problems that he’s not very much use to anybody. He’s only really seeing the surface of Mouse’s problems. I don’t think that generally social workers left children down. In fact they are an important safety net.

The plot revolves around the idea that Dave, the social worker, is Cat’s dad and therefore he can’t get too involved with Mouse. He was more important in the early version but I had to play his role down otherwise the plot wouldn’t have worked. Nobody really lets Mouse down, except for his Dad, even his teachers try to help him in a limited way. It’s just that he really wants and needs his Mum; that’s the only thing that will fix things for him. In real life it’s not only the appointed ones that sort things out for us and that’s the case for Mouse.

Yes, Jake is a surrogate father, warm and caring… but fallible

Yes, kids often look at adults and assume that they’re all perfect. I think one of the insights that came from working on the agony column of a teenage magazine was that an awful lot of kids’ problems come from the adults in their lives, whether its families breaking up or parents who have problems of their own. I try to be realistic. Bad things happen sometimes, but there usually is a way through.

 And also I believe, though it sounds strange, that life has its own magic. Not the Harry Potter stuff that involves magic wands but the everyday magic that comes from friends or finding a dog called Lucky. These are the things that make your life special. Even if you do get hurt and feel let down, you can find it inside yourself to get up and have another go. The Eden Estate might look like hell on earth to outsiders, but it doesn’t have to be like that.

Mouse’s capacity for love is evident because he has Lucky and really cares for him. Was the dog a central part of the plot right from the beginning?

Yes - completely. One of the strongest relationships that Mouse had in Dizzy was with a dog, so I had to find a dog to fill that space for him. Lucky was important for the plot too, as he wasn’t really a stray and that brought all kinds of trouble. The thing about love is that you will do anything for those you love, even if it means leading you into a lot of trouble.

I actually came across that little dog later on, after I’d invented him. I saw him sitting outside Glasgow Station with a guy selling the Big Issue and I thought immediately…. Lucky.

There are several surprises in the book, which I won’t reveal here. Do you have to think carefully about how this information will be revealed to the reader?

 Usually I don’t have to worry too much about pace and surprise because those things are linked so closely. But it was more of a challenge with Lucky Star. The emotional plot and the physical plot are not the same thing. For one thing, there’s a big outside world plot over which the kids have no control but at the same time the story is about the kids’ emotional growth. So this wasn’t just a story of a boy who made a new friend, fell in love and then felt let down and so on. The big story was the drama going on around Mouse. I’ve never tried to handle that complexity before. I had to work hard this time to keep things rolling together.

Were you conscious of that as you were writing?

No, I don’t think so. The first draft came out the way it came out and then it was a matter of examining it to see what was working and trying to pull the plots together so they worked together more successfully.

Can you tell us something about why you chose to write in the present tense?

Well I have written stories in the past tense and survived. But I think these stories have to be immediate and they demand to be written in the present tense. I think that’s probably the easiest way to get into the mind of another character When I write it’s like a daydream. It starts as a fairly amorphous, loose idea and takes more shape as the characters become more focussed. By the end, I know so many things about these people and they’re very real to me. I may have been carrying them around for a year or more, before the point of writing about them. It’s almost like trying on somebody else’s clothes and becoming that person. Hopefully, if I feel that way then the reader will also believe in the characters.

 What are the similarities and differences in the processes of creating art and writing?

 I think they come from the same place; it’s either telling a story with words or with pictures. Certainly from a very early age the two things have been linked for me. Even before I knew what it involved, I would say, “I want to be an artist or a writer, or both”, you know. I went to Art College was taught how to be an Illustrator. I’ve learn how to work in that way, to follow a brief. But nobody ever has really told me what to do as far as writing is concerned. Although I worked for Jackie magazine in the 80s it was a much freer environment for me than illustrating. I learnt how to edit other people’s stories. I learnt a lot from reading other peoples’ work, by pulling it together and tightening it up. The feedback from readers helped me understand what teenagers wanted to read. I’ve never done a creative writing course in my life. So, for me, the writing is almost untouched and it felt like all the important stuff kind of came out through the writing. So although I will always love art, it’s the unspoilt writing that is such a joy to explore.

You’ve obviously learnt a lot from editing other people’s work. What have you learn from having you work edited?

 I have the most fantastic editor and she’s incredibly clever. For instance, after I’d finished writing the first draft of Scarlett, I sent it and my editor and she found a couple of threads that I hadn’t fully pulled out of the story, which were in my head but I hadn’t developed as I had intended. She was like an Archaeologist, gently scraping away, telling me what she had found and suggesting how it could be developed. A good editor has a great eye for the structure of the book and can spot anything that isn’t working.

You mentioned some changes you were making to Lucky Star at the proof stage…

Yes, I had some feedback from somebody who hadn’t read Dizzy and I think that I’m going to need to add a few sentences for readers who may not have read that book. I’ll have to be careful about what I say about Mouse’s back story and just make it clearer in places. And I think I want to say a little bit more about Cat at the end, but that will probably be just a paragraph.

Thank you Cathy Cassidy for talking to Write Away