Darcy Burdock, Book 2 Page 14
‘Good, Pops, well done, OK, they are not scared any more.’
Hector takes the pen back off Poppy and this annoys her and she goes to hit him but I say, ‘It’s Christmas, don’t fight.’
So Poppy fake smiles at him and Hector then decides to give the pen to me and says, ‘Can you write, they knowed Cookie is not a monster but a doggie now and he collects them and they all get inside and all the fairies have a most wonderful party with all the food?’ I write it and he smiles, Poppy rolls her eyes but Hector looks proud. He then takes the pen himself and writes:
‘The end.’
‘That’s not the end.’ Poppy scrunches her face up.
‘Oh, sorry. I forgotted. All the flies all come in too and ruin the fun time,’ Hector giggles.
‘No!’ Poppy screams. ‘No flies, just fairies.’
‘Fairies are for girls,’ Hector spits.
‘Flies are for boys,’ Poppy says through gritted teeth.
‘Fairies and flies are for both girls and boys, they are for everyone,’ I say, and both Poppy and Hector mumble, ‘See? See?’ under their breaths.
‘Now why isn’t the story finished?’ I ask Poppy.
‘Because I wanted to write about them eating the food inside the Igloo Palace,’ she says.
‘Well, why don’t we eat it now ourselves and write about it later?’
We agree on that one because the clock says 6.35 a.m.
It’s a bit of a rushed story, but it’s OK, we’ve passed the time and we’re nearly allowed to wake up Mum and Dad and be starting Christmas.
Having a whole lovely day with so much to look forward to, the end of another year and the beginning of a new one. We all stand up, with a juddery feeling in our tummies. So much has changed, so much is about to. What a life.
I put my hand on the doorknob and open it . . .
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my agents Cathryn Summerhayes and Becky Thomas. Becky, Darcy still belongs to you.
Thank you to WME in the UK and US offices, especially to Siobhan O’Neill, Katy Brace and Laura Bonner.
Everybody at the Random Towers: my editor Lauren Buckland who knows Darcy better than me some days, thank you for your wisdom, energy, playfulness, bravery and support. You are brilliant. Andrea Macdonald, for your wonderful ideas and, well, you made me an octopus out of crochet and posted it to my house – so obviously you are a good piece of work. My publicists, Lauren Bennett and Harriet Venn, who have now visited nearly all the train station coffee shops the UK has to offer with me in the last year. Thank you for the excellent excited flurry you form for me, you take care of me so well. Lauren Bennett - thanks for pushing boundaries with me and making all things impossible possible (like making me feel like I have a stunt double so I can be at two places at once!). Dom Clements: thank you, you have yet again created a thing out of the stuff I give you. You are so creative. Thank you to Annie Eaton and Philippa Dickinson for letting me get Darcy’s mum drunk quite a lot. I really appreciate that. You never put iron fences around my writing and I am grateful. Thank you to Alex Taylor for organizing me short-notice taxis – I just really need them. Charlotte Portman for all of your hard work and the yummy steak, thank you. All of Random House makes me feel very supported and taken care of.
Thank you to Sue Cook for the copy edit, I know it must be difficult agreeing to all that ‘worserest’ spelling.
Thank you to all at Booktrust for your support and encouragement.
Thank you to the special glittery teachers, librarians, bloggers, journalists, photographers, promoters, booksellers that LET me DO this.
Thank you to all the generous and supportive writers I’ve met.
Thank you to my old audience and thank you to my new one. You are all mad.
Thank you to Dhillon Shukla for his photography.
Thank you to my friends who have read the work, come to the readings with hundreds of kids at 11 a.m. with hangovers, let me ramble on in my ‘method-writing voice of a ten-year-old’. I love you.
Special thanks to Bobby Mac for pretending to be a child so I could try out all my ideas on his brain.
And thank you to Ricky Briggs for being the loyal staff and for driving me to loads of places that are far away.
. . . That’s a lot of thank yous but it’s so special to have your name in a book and this lot all deserve it! If you know me at all, you will understand this is true.
To my beautiful, colourful, enriching and INSPIRING family, thank you. I am OBSESSED with you, but you know that and it’s getting boring how much I love you (that’s a lie, it never gets boring.)
Daniel. You are blatantly the king of the palace in my head; the throne is yours and will always belong to you. I am a maniac. X
About the Author
“Wow, what a stormer! It’s wonderful to have the voice of someone as young and as funny in the children’s books world” Michael Rosen
“Everyone’s falling for Laura Dockrill” VOGUE
Named one of the top ten literary talents by The Times and one of the top twenty hot faces to watch by ELLE magazine, Laura is a young, talented writer/illustrator who is a graduate of the BRIT School of Performing Arts.
She has performed her work at the Edinburgh Fringe, Camp Bestival, Latitude, Bookslam and the Soho Theatre and on each of the BBC’s respective radio channels, 1-6. She has been a roaming reporter for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, run workshops at the Imagine Festival on the South Bank, and is on the advisory panel at the Ministry of Stories. She was the 2013 Writer in Residence at Booktrust.
DARCY BURDOCK: HI SO MUCH
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 11954 7
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