| Robin
Jarvis.....Wyrd Mister
A
A
brief interview with Robin prior to publication of The Fatal
Strand
Where
did you get the idea for the Wyrd Museum series?
My
stories often come from drawings. This one started when
I drew my old Teddy bear and he came to life as a character
in my head. Then I had to find a setting for him. When I
moved house, I found a wacky building in South East London
covered in spikes and spires and I found myself imagining
it to be a Wyrd Museum. So I put the two together.
Have
you ever been to a weird museum?
There used to be a really
good one in Warrington, where I grew up.
It was always really empty and you could easily imagine
meeting the Webster sisters there.
Are
your characters based on real people?
Some of them. Veronica
and Ursula are - and they really looked and dressed the
way I've described them in the books. They were amazingly
eccentric too.
Do
you do a lot of research?
Sometimes. I often want
to know exactly what colour something was, or when it was
made, or where an actual street was. There are certain historical
eras I'm particularly interested in.
So,
when would you have liked to live?
The more you research,
the more you realise that you're better off now! You couldn't
drink the water then, and it smelled!
Your
books are very scary in places - do you ever get scared
when you're writing?
Yes! I try to think what
would scare me and I put that in. But you have to get caught
up in the mood of the story when you're writing it, otherwise
it wouldn't feel real.
Has
anything wierd or spooky ever happened to you?
Not directly to me, but
to my parents. When I was about two or three, I often used
to sleep-walk. One-night, they thought they heard a child
walking around on the landing - but, when they went to check
on me, they found me fast asleep in my cot. Spooky!
Why
did you write
Initiation
?
There are many tales
from the Wyrd Museum that are yet to be told. This is one
of them...
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