SAvAgE DAys

the first volume of 

the Savages of Kipper Street series

A MeSsy Family having MaSses of FuN


Spoiler Alert:
this post contains details which reveal plot elements of Savage Days

SAvAgE DAys: the navenchas (adventures) of Sadie Savage, her Sensitive New Age Grandma Angie, her parental units Delia and Phil and her snotty-nosed, squabbling twin brothers Peas and Mash, who get into some a-m-a-zing scrapes, plus last but not least: Toddy the bounding Irish wolfhound and Splendour the splendid cat. 



Sometimes ideas for writing come from nowhere. Of course they never come from nowhere but sometimes it's tricky to pinpoint where they do come from...

Sadie's escapades have an echo of A Bear called Paddington without the (inimitable) Bear; a dash of Max and Moritz, those 19th century German rapscallions; possibly a trace of Pippi Longstocking and that wacky cartoon series from the 1990s, Bangers and Mash. Some of these 'influences' only occurred to me while writing this presentation, for when I started SAvAgE DAys I wished merely to portray, in a purely comic light, a quirky, unruly family.

 

The family sprang to life as 21st century Londoners, living in a terrace house next door to grumpy neighbours. The narrator, Sadie, is an outspoken, individualistic teen, her father a keen Green, her mother a frustrated actor, her grandmother not the conventional 'nan', and her twin brothers as wicked as possible without being hooligans. There is also a gorgeous cat and a bounding hound.

 

From a chocolate cake disaster to a Komodo dragon and liquorice allsorts, pogo sticks to paragliding cats, a night at the Nopera to ice-cream bashing: there is chaos and confusion for everyone in SAvAgE DAys.

The main difficulty in writing this story, or series of episodes, was the language, the children's slang. I am still not sure I got it right: it's hard to be in touch with the way English kids talk these days, specially when writing in another country.


My hope is that the reader will find the Savages funny, if at times horrifying, and that despite the absurd scrapes they get into, s/he will nevertheless be caught up in their lives.

As Sadie says: The Savage family is good value for money. Everyone’s a bit nutty but fun at the same time, which makes for some priceless situations. Like the day we took the cat to the beach, or when the twins short-circuited a shopping centre, or made an earthquake, or…Well, you really have to read it to believe it.
SAvAgE DAys was ridiculously fun to write; I hope it will be equally fun to read.