There are currently six authors at Candyfloss Press.
Between them, they have populated a seaside holiday park, a South London pub, several decades of Anglo-Irish family history, a Kentish seaside town full of monsters, a school gate, a secret society and the former members of an eighties pop band.
Where the Stories Begin
Sometimes a book begins with a character. Sometimes it’s a place, an object, a conversation or one of those ideas that arrives while you’re supposed to be doing something else.
Life at Paradise Park grew from the world of British holiday parks and the people who make a temporary place their home.
Monsters of Margate takes the real Margate, already colourful enough in its own right, and adds gargoyles, demons, vampires and a few other residents you won’t find on the electoral roll.
Kitty Brookstone’s Fame & Fortune Mysteries began with the idea of a faded eighties pop star returning to television and discovering that nostalgia isn’t always quite as harmless as it looks.
Then there are the ideas that sit quietly for months before suddenly finding the book they belong in.
Building the Worlds
Once a series starts taking shape, so does everything around it.
There are maps and timelines. Character histories. Family relationships. Houses, pubs, workplaces and favourite cafés. Songs that never existed. Bands that never toured. Secret societies with considerably more history than is strictly necessary.
Some details will eventually make it into a book.
Others exist simply because we needed to know them.
That’s how Silk Purse ended up with a back catalogue and Gold in the Gutter became an actual song you can listen to.
Then Comes the Book
Ideas are the easy bit.
Eventually somebody has to turn them into chapters.
Stories are drafted, read, edited, changed, read again and occasionally returned to something remarkably similar to the version we started with.
Characters misbehave. Plots develop holes. Excellent scenes turn out to be in completely the wrong book.
Then, eventually, it works.
A cover goes on the front, the final checks are made and another Candyfloss book heads out into the world.
Meanwhile, there is almost certainly another idea waiting in the wings.