Why Victorian?

A couple of You Write On reviewers suggested that I should update Monster to the present day. Others just thought I didn't do Victorian very well, which is another matter.

Cobble says: I thought, maybe it would be better if you could bring this story into the modern era. He doesn't explain why though. Another earlier reviewer thought the same but I have long deleted his review...nowadays I keep a copy, but then I just got rid of them.

So why 19th Century?

Well it was partly the Gothic feel of the time and partly it was the last time that intelligent people believed in fairies. Think of the Cottingley Fairies championed by the likes of Conan Doyle. There could be a good fairy story written in the days of mobile phones, bluetooth and Stealth Bombers, but I could more easily imagine my protoganist in a Dickensian world, a world where Jack the Ripper walked in Whitechapel pea-soupers and Sir Richard Burton disguised himself as an Arab to infiltrate the stronghold of Mecca, and visited fantastic Araby in his translation of the Arabian Nights. I wanted Dickens and Mr Hyde, Sherlock Holmes and Dracula. In fact, I wanted to inhabit the World of Story, not the real place where fairies turn out to be cutouts from a magazine.

I was also inspired by Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Here was a world where Mr Hyde, The Invisible Man and Dracula actually co-existed with Sherlock Holmes and, well, with practically every other fictional character from Victorian times. Even Fu Manchu popped up.

My idea was that as Thomas Grimes started to seek his fairy he would have to go further and further into the World of Story, the unreal world where Fairyland exists, to find her. And in that world he could also find everyone from the Wandering Jew to Father Christmas. If I wanted.

My favourite review of all from You Write On begins: "A Monster in the Mirror is a magical feast."

Which is what I set out to dish up.