Charlie Nutbrown
Charlie Nutbrown is a children’s writer from Bristol. He has worked as a musician, a newspaper subeditor, and a ghostwriter. He lives in Bristol with his wife and two children.
His debut novel, “The Feathered Book”, is published by Everything With Words on 11 September. A locked-room mystery, it sees Monty the Fox attempt to solve the baffling theft of a cursed work of alchemy from a labyrinthine library.
Charlie can be found at:
Bluesky: @charlienutbrown.bsky.social
Tell me what inspired you to write your debut novel?
The Feathered Book is both a children’s novel and a detective story. Monty the Fox, a detective, hopes to solve the theft of a book from a locked room beneath a library in a humungous oak tree. Setting out to crack the case with his friend Nettle the Rabbit, he is pitched into a terrifying adventure, facing pirates, booby traps and mazes – and the many nefarious characters they meet along the way, including otter pirates, sinister toads, and knife-wielding rats.
So it’s a blend of two genres I’ve always loved: animal stories in the tradition of classic British children’s literature – Watership Down, say, or the Redwall books – but also classic detective fiction. My hope was to write something akin to Sherlock Holmes meets The Wind in the Willows – with a big dollop of Joan Aiken thrown in.
What came first the characters or the world?
From the very beginning the book was about a fox attempting to solve a mystery on a world known as the Lake – an archipelago of little wooded islands, with pirate lairs and labyrinths and talking animals. But both the fox’s personality and the world shifted as I tried to wrestle the plot into shape, often futilely.
How long did it take to write?
It took an embarrassing number of years to write, more than I want to count. Partly because I had lots of other things to juggle – including a job, young children, and other writing work – but mainly because I kept on changing the plot and starting again. In fact, I wrote quite a few entirely different books, with different plots and different characters, before I (hopefully) got it right.
How many publishers turned you down?
The Feathered Book was turned down or ignored by every literary agent in the country, before managing to get it to my publisher, Everything With Words. But, over my writing career, I’ve received many, many hundreds of rejections from agents and publishers. For some reason, rejections have never bothered me.
The Feathered Book
What can you tell us about your next book?
I’m hoping that the two main characters from The Feathered Book – Monty the Fox and Nettle the Rabbit – can become a series. There are definitely more adventures for them to have, more villains for them to battle, more crimes for them to solve. However, that of course depends on the first book doing well enough to merit a sequel.
If not, I have plenty of other ideas.
Would you ever consider writing outside your current genre?
Broadly speaking, I’d consider myself a fantasy writer. I’d love to write a fantasy book for older children. And there’s a literary fantasy novel for adults that has been brewing for a few years. I definitely hope to write that one day.
However, I don’t think I’ll ever write a book that’s not speculative fiction in some way. I love reading literary fiction, but when it comes to writing, my mind just doesn’t work that way. I wouldn’t know how to do it.
What did you do before you became a writer?
I spent quite a few years working as a musician (or, more accurately, trying to work as a musician). Now I work part-time as a subeditor for a newspaper and as a freelance writer. I’ve done a fair bit of ghost-writing (mainly picture books) and work-for-hire, and I have a couple of books being published under a pen name.
Which authors inspire you?
Detective fiction was a big influence on The Feathered Book, particularly Edmund Crispin, John Dickson Carr, and the Sherlock Holmes stories. In children’s literature, I love Lewis Carroll, Joan Aiken, Tove Jansson, Alan Garner, Philip Pullman, and Ursula K. Le Guin. I also love the more literary side of fantasy writing, including Russell Hoban, John Crowley, M. John Harrison and Jorge Luis Borges.
Were you a big reader as a child?
I was a massive reader, completely obsessed. I was also rather a competitive reader and wanted to have read everything, so I read a lot of literary fiction very young – before I really understood half of it.
What were your favourite childhood books?
The books that made the biggest impact on me as a child – and which I still love to this day – were probably Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books. I also loved Robin Jarvis, The Wind in the Willows, and The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban.
Do you have a favourite bookshop? If so, which?
My local bookshop, Gloucester Road Books in Bristol, is a wonderful independent bookshop. Max Minerva’s, also in Bristol, is great too.
How many books are in your own physical TBR pile?
I don’t really believe in a TBR pile. To me, that suggests it’s a chore, or at least an obligation, to read those books. I just like having lots of books in my house so I can choose to read whatever I feel like at any given moment. So I have hundreds and hundreds of books on my shelves that I haven’t read – I’ll get around to them one day.
What is your current or latest read?
I’m reading a lot of books about faeries and folklore for a project I’m working on, particularly Katharine Briggs’ A Dictionary of Fairies, which is a masterpiece.
Any books that you’re looking forward to in the next 12 months?
Like everyone else in the world, I’m looking forward to Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field. And M. John Harrison’s new novel, The End of Everything, comes out next summer and is guaranteed to be brilliant.
