Merryn Threadgould
As a child
I grew up in Newquay, Cornwall - me, my mum and brother - in a tiny chalet, which didn't have a bathroom, so we all had baths at my grandmother's house. My mum was a single mum but when I was eight she re-married and we left Cornwall and the blue, blue sea and moved to Clevedon by the muddy Bristol Channel. Mum told me I'd love it because you could see whales from the window. I was SO excited. I looked out of the window at that Channel for a week before being told she meant Wales, the country. A year later we went to live in Jamaica. We travelled on a Spanish ship for three weeks and ate horse meat and noodle soup. My first sight as we docked in Kingston Harbour, was of pelicans and a donkey and cart. Right then, I knew I'd entered a different world. Changing homes and schools when you're young makes you see things differently and learn to adapt, while never quite fitting in. Books were my constant companions.
As an adult
I didn't settle down for an awfully long time. I travelled round the world twice, doing loads of different jobs. My best one was as a cook on a helicopter station in Australia, where we shot our own meat and I learned to corn beef with a giant syringe. Eventually I stopped batting about and came home. Now I live in Bristol with my partner and teenage son, working in television and writing. I think documentaries and books have a lot in common - it's all about telling stories.
As an artist
Ronny Rock is my first book. It's based on lots of different things; cake, mayhem, reality and fun. I wrote it one jobless winter, when I stayed in bed, with gloves on it was so cold. It's about a funny, imaginative, ambitious boy living in a lovely warm bakery (wishful thinking) who makes a mad cake that smells of fish. I sent it off to Walker Books and still remember the magic moment - a week later - when the editor rang me up and said he loved it. I floated into a nearby café and had a brandy and just sat there for an hour, grinning. Since then, I've written two other books ... I'm still grinning.