'I felt like Charlie Bucket after he'd found the Golden Ticket'

Author Kieran Larwood tells us the story behind his first book Freaks, which won the Times/Chicken House fiction competition for 2011

This month sees the release of my first children's book, Freaks: a story about a group of Victorian sideshow exhibits with a sideline in solving crimes. The thought of seeing my shiny, new paperback sitting on the bookshop shelf is incredible, but it's been a long, hard road to get it there.

I first had the idea nearly five years ago. I'd been writing for a few years, mostly short stories and children's picture books, with the odd attempts at novels that only ever seemed to get as far as the third chapter before fizzling out into unimpressive lumps of scribbled-on paper. One of those lumps was a story about the crew of a spaceship. All bizarre aliens, they bickered and fought lots. Whilst the story hadn't gone anywhere, I really liked writing the interactions of a mismatched group, and I realised that if I could find a better setting for them, it might work.

All this was churning around in my head one night, like a kind of cement-mixer for ideas, when suddenly the thought of a Victorian freakshow popped out. By morning I'd already thought of my characters, and a few months later I had the first draft of an actual novel.

Once it was written, I started on the soul-destroying task of sending it off to agents. For those that don't know, this consists of a cycle of re-writing, sending off, getting rejected, crying, re-writing, sending off; over and over until you feel like crawling into a little hole and never writing anything ever again.

I was almost reaching desperation point when I thought of trying the Times/Chicken House fiction competition for 2011. I knew my story must be OK, as it had gained a few nibbles of interest from agents, so I figured that getting on the shortlist might be possible. If I could do that, then it would look really good in my letter when I sent the manuscript off again for the bazillionth time. So I was delighted when I had an email to say I was on the longlist, and even more delighted when I got a call from Barry Cunningham to say I was on the shortlist. When the next call came, the day after the judging, I was all ready to be a gracious loser. I was so ready, in fact, that when Barry said I'd won, I almost told him he'd made some kind of mistake, except I was too busy blubbering like an idiot.

For a few weeks after that I walked around feeling like Charlie Bucket after he'd found the Golden Ticket. I got interviewed for the paper and someone came to take my photo and everything was lovely. Then the hard work started.

Being an unpublished writer, tinkering away at your own pace, is relatively peaceful and stress-free. Suddenly I found myself with deadlines, huge chunks of writing to fit around my day job and pressure to come with ideas on tap.

I also had editors for the first time ever, and was forced to watch in horror as they took a machete to my lovingly crafted book, carving out great chunks of plot and description as they cackled with evil laughter.

Actually, they didn't do that at all. They were brilliant and really supportive as they helped me take the jumbly mess I'd built up over the years and sort it into a decent, streamlined plot. There were a lot of big changes, and it went from being a supernatural action-horror into a gothic mystery. Seeing as all I knew about mystery plotting was from watching old episodes of Quincy and Diagnosis Murder when I was a student, my editors were invaluable in helping me structure the clues, the reveals and the tension. I worked all through my holidays and did not one, but two complete rewrites. Strange and amazing things appeared in the book and disappeared again. There were flying clockwork contraptions, zombie monkeys, tattooed Mayan villains, Victorian computers and crooked politicians; all of which have now vanished into the aether. I had to make some hard decisions, including cutting out my favourite character, and lots of bits of description I had spent hours and hours carefully crafting.

But it was all worth it, as the thing that came out at the end was more coherent and polished than anything I could have done on my own. It seemed even more worth it when I received an actual copy of my book in the post a few months later. One of those moments when you wonder if you're still dreaming or not.

Since then I have been to a school to promote and sign copies of my book, and have also been up to London to meet lots of exciting publishing people, including some of the other Chicken House authors. By the time this blog is published, the book will actually be out, and I'll finally be able to see it sitting on that shop shelf. I wouldn't have thought it possible five years ago, but it just goes to show…