An unlikely hero

Between sips of his near pint-sized stoup of tea, the Bord Gáis Energy Irish 'Children's Book of the Year' award winner launches into discussing what in pop parlance is that difficult second album. Such burden has seemingly eluded Dave Rudden, with Eason on Grafton Street and other booksellers all reporting sell outs in rapid quick time.

After all, publishers Puffin don't dish out six-figure sterling sums for just anything. It was an investment well made, with Dave repaying in part by becoming one of the UK's biggest selling debut children's authors in 2016.
With one book behind him, Dave knew his latest had to be 'bigger, better, weirder', yet still inherently connected to what came before. The challenge of a sequel he explains, in his naturally colourful and energetic way, is to avoid success-driven fan service, focusing instead on delivering a product of pure and innovative entertainment. 'It was a lot of fun but also a massive challenge. It boils down to this. Kids will give you a polite five minutes before they start banging their heads off the wall, wishing for you to stop talking.
'I've an awful lot of respect for young people, from teaching and doing performance, so I know how sharp and canny they are. I fully believe therefore you can tell a story as literary and complex as anything you'd write for adults for that age group.'
'Forever Court' continues to follow the journey of demurring protagonist, 13-year-old orphan Denzien Hardwick who, despite desperately trying to lead a normal life, is thrust into a secret society of magical warriors battling with an underworld of shadow creatures.
'I'm a big fan of putting dark things in children's literature because people forget kids' lives are dark anyway. As adults, we often have a sanitised view of our own childhoods and forget what it was like when we thought everything you believed could eat you!
'Plus people love being scared and kids are no different. Being scared of a book, or film or TV show is survivable horror, it's horror you can switch off, or put down, it's horror you can walk up to your parents are say 'I want to talk about this because it frightened me', and that's important. Kids know there's darkness out there, they understand good and bad, right and wrong. My feeling on it is that, by putting darkness into kids' novels, it tells them they can be heroes and that's an important message,' adds Dave with a rueful shrug.

Bullies
His narrative of one kid against the world facing up to challenges is instantly relatable, with Dave freely admitting his own character and that of hero Denizen are intertwined. The author speaks openly about being bullied as a teenager and those difficulties have shaped aspects of his writing.
In 'Borrowed Dark' for instance The Clockwork Three essentially form three aspects of a childhood bully, with the first monster relying on verbal abuse, the second relishing physical torture and the third a scapegoat for the misery they’ve inflicted.
On Dave's wrist, tattooed are the words: 'Quantum Mutatus Ab Illo', or 'how changed from what he once was'. Asked if there was therapeutic them killing them off, he quickly replies: 'I don’t demonise a kid who picks on other kids because there’s a situation there as well. For me it was less about killing them off and more about pinning them to the page and confronting the why. To actually walk around in their skin and think what makes them tick was more cathartic than actually murdering them.'
If anything faces assassination in Dave's books then it's the permissive tropes of a well-worn fantasy genre. While in part a loving homage, Dave subverts regular design by applying liberal amounts of his own love for horror and the bombastic nature of comic book story-telling.
'It all features into my work, the big features of comics and the nastiness of horror and I'm a big Terry Pratchett fan, so his form of word play. It all goes in there. Even a little bit of cheesiness, but it's self-aware cheese. There's a bit in book one where Denzien defeats one of the characters and delivers this one-liner and I had it written even before I knew it, but it stuck.'
In book two, launched last Friday, the reader meets the Forever Court, considered the Dread nobility of the Tenebris, or the monsters others are afraid of. The reader meets the family Croit as well, of whom Dave is so proud of creating.
Believing themselves to be 'chosen' and otherwise the architects of destiny, interestingly Dave bases their fanaticism having read accounts of people escaping from cults, including that of a former poster boy of a mid-American white supremacist movement.
'All of the Croit family doctrine comes from the patriarch, it's controlled and that, as it turns out, now has become strangely relevant in the current climate of fake news,' Dave muses.

Third in the triology

By all accounts, Dave confesses some disappointment at having completed his trilogy of Denzien adventures. Book one had been written when the local author first signed his publishing deal, while 'Forever Court' was written in the interim. Book three meanwhile has gotten the 'A-okay', moving on to edit stage, with a shelf date of early next year. He denies any temptation therefore to extend the tale, but reveals that plans to bring Denzien's story to the big screen continue to 'tick along'.
'The trilogy all comes down to one line, which I'm not telling you what it is. It'll make no sense unless you read the books. But it was weird bringing it all to an end. Denizen's story is three books, I'm not going to tackle a fourth or fifth and, while I've always known where it was going, I was still very sad when I finished it.'

What next?

With eight or nine different ideas for novels, graphic novels and scripts rubix-cubing around his head, whatever happens Dave plans to continue writing for children and young adults. A massive comic book fan, confesses with fan-boy fluster: 'Marvel if you're reading, I'd love to come on board and write for something.' In the meantime, his success to date continues opening all manner of interesting doors, through which Dave delightedly trundles. From preparing a musical retelling of Gulliver's Travels with musician Jerry Fish next month to writing two episodes of a Finnish TV show about penguins, the former English teacher is loving life.
'This is one of the best things about being where I am. Doors are open to me, and people generally know, or they do after they've met me, that I'm generally up for the craic. They'll say 'do you want to do that?' and I'll more often than not go 'yep' and we'll figure out if I can or not along the way.'
Four jokes for every piece of seriousness, that's Dave's rule of thumb. 'It's no longer enough just to write a book, hand it out, especially when it comes to young people. You have to do events, maybe some TV, but I'm lucky because I love it, I want to try everything.
'For me my background is performance and story-telling, acting and being a big ridiculous yeti-man, and that's what work's for me. For me it's about the enjoyment kids get out of it all and quietly educate them too along the way.'
As the cafe interview ends, Dave and the Celt wander into nearby Hodges Figgis, where he immediately strikes up a fond and familiar conversation about the latest children's literature with section curator Mary Bridget. Afterwards, having asked first, Dave delightedly pulls a stack of his novels from the shelf and a marker pen from his bag, adding a unique and impromptu personal touch to each book. 'It has happened a few times where I've had kids come up to me and tell me, because Denizen has a lot of anxiety, as I would have had when I was younger, that they appreciated my depiction of that. That means a lot to me. If I can make things easier for a young person, or do something, even small like this that will add to it for them then I'm absolutely delighted to do it. Success is a finite resource, so when its there its almost you're duty to use it in a positive way, to inspire others if you can. I got a lot of help starting off, so it's only fair I pass it on too.'