Lighting a fire
Author of A Kind of Spark, and recent prequel Keedie, Elle McNicoll shares her journey as an author and screenwriter, drawing on her own neurodivergent experience.
A KIND OF SPARK tells the story of 11-year- old Addie and her quest to create a memorial in memory of the witch trials that took place in her Scottish hometown. Keedie is set five years before A Kind of Spark, and brings a coming of age story for twins Keedie and Nina – Addie’s big sisters. The new books looks at the relationship between Addie and Keedie as they discover they have much more in common that they first realise.
Elle says that Keedie’s story was something she was keen to tell, saying: “I knew when I was finished with A Kind of Spark that I wanted Keedie to have her own book. But COVID threw such obstacles at me, I ended up writing Show Us Who You Are instead. “While we were writing and shooting A Kind of Spark, Season One, I revisited the early manuscript and started again. It takes place five years before A Kind of Spark and is full of mischief, music and a girl finding out that taking care of someone you love can help you take care of yourself. Keedie sets up an anti-bullying agency at her school to deal with their lacklustre approach to tackling bullies. However, she has her work cut out for her when a student asks if Keedie can take on her twin sister Nina, and her nasty friends.”
Authenticity A Kind of Spark is Elle’s debut novel, having come out in 2020, and she says that the response to it – and particularly the main character Addie – has been hugely satisfying. She says: “I was never really
Spring-Summer 2024
an aspiring writer, I was a private writer who had no intention of approaching traditional publishing. I wanted to be an editor, so I was going to a lot of publishing houses in search of the perfect job and getting laughed out of rooms for talking about disability rep in children’s books.
“When I met Knights Of, I went to get my CV out of my bag only to find that my boyfriend had slipped the synopsis of the book I was privately writing into my files instead. I pitched it. It was picked up two weeks later. So, it all feels very serendipitous. I would probably say the global pandemic that arrived three months before publication, and hundreds of closed bookshops, was a bit of a challenge!” Despite the problems arising out of the pandemic, A Kind Of Spark was incredibly well received by both readers and critics, picking up awards from Waterstones and Blue Peter along the way. Elle says: “No book can be for every single reader, but many in publishing had assured me that there was no desire or interest in authentic neurodivergent writing. So, to have this massive community of people suddenly saying they had found what they had been looking or waiting for, it was validating.”
And because so much of Elle’s work is informed by her own experience, that validation and connection with her readers stretches beyond the writing. She says: “Whenever I write about neurodiversity, I’m writing from my own experience as a medically diagnosed autistic and dyspraxic person. I don’t deal in generalities because we’re all very different, but it’s been so rewarding and remarkable to see
PEN&INC. 21
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
