About Tom and Chloe
Tom and Chloe are . . .
a happy-clappy christians, married, parents to two giant boys, Londoners born and bred, an author of children’s books and an illustrator, in their 20s, quite tall and quite short, partial to a good cup of tea and a slice of cake, runners, not keen on pets, fond of cooking and eating, wearers of slippers, living in North London.
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Below are two interviews conducted with Tom for two very different purposes.
Hopefully they will tell you all that you want to know about Tom. If not, Tom is more than happy to answer any questions related to his work, writing, schools etc. Just pop your question in the form at the bottom of the page and he will get back to you asap.
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This first interview is the most recent, it took place in March 2011, the interviewer was a primary aged pupil who asked Tom the questions to help him with a school project in which he was asked to study an author.
Where and how do you get your ideas for stories.
As well as being a writer I also work as a teacher in a great primary school in London. I draw a lot of my characters from the children that I teach or have taught. I don’t write about any one pupil but take one characteristic from one pupil another from another and so on, everyone is so interesting and excitingly different, there is so much to write about.
Aside from that, my first novel, Too Much Trouble which, comes out in June, has two main influences. The initial idea came about when I heard the real-life story of a boy who was living in England without his mum and dad, with just his sisters. I couldn’t stop thinking about what that responsibility must be like and so the characters of Emmanuel and Prince were born, they are two boys who have to fend for themselves. The book is also a modern re-imagining of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. I loved the idea of a gang of street urchins and what that would look like in the world today.
Why do you write stories?
Firstly and most importantly I love writing; it makes me happier than anything else I’ve ever done. Secondly, it has always been my ambition to see my name in print. And finally, I think stories are a very important way that children engage with the the world, they allow you to experience new things, see from another perspective and be inspired without even leaving your front door.
What made you decide to be an author?
As, I said, I’ve always wanted to be an author, however what made me finally sit down and write my first book was my son. When he was born I realised that I wanted him to succeed in whatever made him most happy. That in turn made me realise that I wasn’t doing what made me most happy, so I’d better get on with it!
Another thing that made me write was the children I teach. I always write with them in mind. Too Much Trouble was written with a particular group of year seven boys at Queensbridge School in Moseley in mind. I hope that they get to read it.
When did you start writing and at what age?
I’ve written for as long as I can remember. I love reading and writing. My first story, that I made into a little book, was called the red planet it was about a boy who went on a trip to a completely red planet, it wasn’t very good. I think I was about eight when I wrote that.
Were you a good learner at school?
I think that I was quite good at learning and I had a few wonderful teachers (and a few horrible ones) but I was actually a bit naughty. I got in a lot of trouble at secondary school because I was quite bored. I became a teacher because I like to try to make learning as fun as possible, hopefully I do that sometimes!
Do you keep an note book of ideas?
I have several notebooks full of ideas, some good ideas, some rubbish ideas. I write down every idea that I have, whenever I have it. then I go back to my ideas and work on them, play with them and see if they’ll make a story that I’d want to write and more importantly a story that I think would be interesting to read.
Strangely, my best ideas seem to come to me when I don’t have a notebook with me, so I also have lots of scraps of paper floating around with ideas for characters or a way of describing somthing or a snippet of dialogue; it drives my wife mad.
Do you have a special place where you write?
The short answer is no. I usually write at home at my dinner table. Sometimes I take my laptop out and write in a cafe or in the park if the weather’s nice.
Who is your favourite character so far?
My favourite character so far is probably Abdi. He isn’t in Too Much Trouble but he might have a small part in the sequel and I am writing a series of stories just about him.
He is the cheekiest, smiliest, sometimes naughtiest boy that you can imagine. All his friends love him but his teachers and parents find him a bit infuriating. He spends all his time making people laugh.
What’s your favourite book?
My favourite book is a far too difficult question Charlie! I love so many, let me tell you about a few of my favourite children’s books.
Holes by Louis Sacher: An amazing book with beautiful interweaving strands of story and a very happy ending.
The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder: Funny at times, very mysterious, as the title suggests, and wonderful characters. Like Holes it is a story that spans over several generations of a family.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin: Brilliantly written fantasy. One reason 
that I like it is that it is not straight forward good against evil, like most fantasy is, it is more subtle about the good and evil that resides in all of us.
Millions by Frank Cottrell-Boyce: I think it writes lead characters better than anyone and Damian in this story is very involving.
The Iron-Man by Ted Hughes: Breath-takingly described sci-fi adventure.
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The second interview below took place in mid 2010 and the interviewer was Geraldine Brennan, a judge of the The Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award. She spoke to Tom, winner of the 2010 Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award, about what inspired him to write Too Much Trouble.
How did you start to write and what helped you?
I have wanted to be a writer since the end of primary school but I always lacked the confidence to get beyond the first few chapters. My wife Chloe encouraged me to stop talking about the story that was in my head and put something on paper around the time we had our son, who is now 15 months old. She is a freelance fashion designer and we both have to wait until Caleb is in bed to focus on our own work.
I wrote most of the book that became Too Much Trouble and various friends and colleagues commented on it as well as Chloe and my mum, a midwife who is a prodigious reader. I redrafted it several times and the Diverse Voices competition gave me a deadline to finish it and make it slightly shorter and more compact.
How did you come to focus on the issues of gun crime and unaccompanied refugee children?
In the places I’ve lived in and know about – Lewisham, Hackney and inner-city Birmingham – I became aware that these issues affected the lives of the young people I was meeting and I couldn’t ignore them. Like Emmanuel in Too Much Trouble, there are so many young people taking on responsibility that they shouldn’t have to deal with.
What did you enjoy reading as a child and what do you like to read now?
There were lots of books at home and I got lots more out of the school library. I remember Roald Dahl, Michael Morpurgo and the Allan Ahlberg poetry anthology I Heard it in the Playground. Later, I got into fantasy and enjoyed Ursula LeGuin and Jostein Gaarder. As an adult, I love Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns) and all Nick Hornby’s books because his characters always seem real, tangible and organic: you aren’t aware of them having been written.
As a teacher, I love exploring books with pupils and I’ve enjoyed reading Louis Sachar’s Holes and Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Millions to classes.
What else do you enjoy about teaching?
I like encouraging children in whatever their passion is and getting them to think about the world we live in. I thought about being an architect when I was in sixth form but I spent my gap year running youth groups for my church – my dad, a maths teacher, had run the children’s group when I was younger and I had helped with that and enjoyed it – and I realised then that I loved working with young people. I trained as a primary teacher and spent two years teaching Year 4 and 5 in south-east London before my current job at Queensbridge. It’s a very diverse school: half the children do not speak English as a first language and there are 17 languages spoken in the school.
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