But this was very, very terrifying and unexpected, too. I like to leave space where unexpected things can happen. It’s really one of the scariest characters you’ve ever written, in my opinion. I had to kind of leave off and think about this, because it altered the whole story as I’d conceived it, actually. I cannot tell you how the Lubbock came about, because just suddenly there it was, in a Gentian flower, and rising to an enormous height and being absolutely appalling! You know, I was quite shaken by this. Since he lays eggs, I suppose it’s a she! I love this, when this happens, actually. So it was all fresh and new and marvelous.īut I must say that a lot of things took me by surprise, when I was writing this book. I wanted a kind of Alpine place, because it was quite different from the kind of lowland country town. It wasn’t the same place, because I always feel, when I’m writing a book, which is set among the same people in the same world, that I’ve done what I’ve had to do in whatever place it was the first time, and I need another place. I mean, I really enjoyed writing that book. So what was it like for you to return to Howl’s world? Well, it means impatient with most of the way most people do things. In the letter to the reader at the beginning of the book you describe at Charmaine as being “cross-grained.” That’s not a term that we use much in the U.S. So many kids are so sheltered that I thought, you know, this is the opposite of the child who has had nothing but misfortunes and abuse, and I thought they are sufferers just as much.

You know a lot of people nowadays don’t allow their kids to do anything, because it’s dangerous. Someone who had a difficult upbringing of the kind that a lot of people do these days.

It’s just that I wanted someone who was not usual, shall we say. And eventually thought ah, this is it, this is how it comes, we need Charmaine in there. I’d always been intrigued by High Norland, and this king who was doing nothing except catalogue his books. I’ve had several tries at it, way back, soon after I wrote Castle in the Air. Well, I’d been sort of thinking about it for a long time, actually.

A house of many ways