Clovenhoof 02 Pigeonwings
by Heide Goody
As punishment for his part in an attempted coup in Heaven, the Archangel Michael is banished to Earth. The holiest of the angelic host has to learn to live as a mortal, not an easy job when you’ve got Satan as a next-door neighbour. Michael soon finds that being a good person involves more than helping out at Sunday school and attending church coffee mornings. He has to find his purpose in life, deal with earthly temptations and solve a mystery involving some unusual monks and a jar of very dangerous jam. Heide Goody and Iain Grant have written a wild comedy that features spear-wielding cub scouts, accidental transvestites, King Arthur, a super-intelligent sheepdog, hallucinogenic snacks, evil peacocks, old ladies with biscuits, naked paintball, stolen tractors, clairvoyant computers, the Women’s Institute, and way too much alcohol.**From the AuthorWe had a lot of fun writing Pigeonwings together, and hopeyou have fun reading it.
We get a lot of questions about the process that we followfor collaborative writing. Here's a brief taster of how we wrote this novel:
We had already written Clovenhoof, so we knew a lot about our fictional world, and most of the characters. The end of Clovenhoof saw Archangel Michael banished to earth. It added a nice finish to that novel, and gave us the jumping-off point that we needed for this one. Having said that, it was really important to us that this novel stands alone, so a top priority for this book was to make sure that people who haven't read Clovenhoof are not short-changed in any way.
Pigeonwings is partially set in Wales. We went for a road trip to go and research some locations, with permission from our respective families! It's about a 4 hour drive from Birmingham to the Llyn peninsula, so we had a great opportunity to discuss our characters and plot on the way. The locations in the book are all real, although the monastery that we use is sadly now a ruin.
While we were writing Pigeonwings we attended a course run by veteran sitcom writer, Keith Lindsay. It was good to see how much we were doing right, and it helped us to tweak a few things to make the most of the comedy.
We worked through the chapters likethis - Heide plotted a chapter for Iain to write while Iain plotted a chapterfor Heide to write. Then we wrote those chapters, and swapped back to the otherperson to do an edit. This helped to smooth out any stylistic differences.
Leap-frogging like this, we were able to write the first draft of Pigeonwings in around nine months.
We get a lot of questions about the process that we followfor collaborative writing. Here's a brief taster of how we wrote this novel:
We had already written Clovenhoof, so we knew a lot about our fictional world, and most of the characters. The end of Clovenhoof saw Archangel Michael banished to earth. It added a nice finish to that novel, and gave us the jumping-off point that we needed for this one. Having said that, it was really important to us that this novel stands alone, so a top priority for this book was to make sure that people who haven't read Clovenhoof are not short-changed in any way.
Pigeonwings is partially set in Wales. We went for a road trip to go and research some locations, with permission from our respective families! It's about a 4 hour drive from Birmingham to the Llyn peninsula, so we had a great opportunity to discuss our characters and plot on the way. The locations in the book are all real, although the monastery that we use is sadly now a ruin.
While we were writing Pigeonwings we attended a course run by veteran sitcom writer, Keith Lindsay. It was good to see how much we were doing right, and it helped us to tweak a few things to make the most of the comedy.
We worked through the chapters likethis - Heide plotted a chapter for Iain to write while Iain plotted a chapterfor Heide to write. Then we wrote those chapters, and swapped back to the otherperson to do an edit. This helped to smooth out any stylistic differences.
Leap-frogging like this, we were able to write the first draft of Pigeonwings in around nine months.