Throughout my childhood, and especially during my teens, I had been struggling with feeling like an alien trapped on somebody else’s world. At school I often found the speech and conduct of my peers illogical and puzzling. I wasn’t great at socialising with other kids, and was prone to panic and anxiety. To escape I indulged my obsessions with cult TV series, in particular Doctor Who, and identified with characters such as Will Parker in The Tripods, David Banner in The Incredible Hulk, and Mr Spock in Star Trek. This obsessive interest in turn alienated me from my peers even more. All of this led to feelings of paranoia, and ultimately very dark depressions.
It wasn’t until 2003 that I finally found out what had been ‘wrong’ all these years. I discovered that I have a subtle form of a condition called Asperger Syndrome. It isn’t a disease that can be passed on to other people, it’s just something that is happening in the brain which makes the sufferer look at the world a bit differently.
After reading Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome by 14-year-old Luke Jackson, I decided to send a copy of Anne Droyd and Century Lodge to his publishers, a company called Jessica Kingsley Publishers, since I believed that Anne Droyd herself is like a youngster with the syndrome.
Thankfully, Jessica Kingsley saw exactly what I was getting at, and on the 16th of December 2003 she commissioned a new edition of the book. I then re-read the original in order to remove some of the errors I had noticed since its publication in 2002, and also to improve the way it ‘sounds’ in certain areas, and make it a better read. I also updated the Acknowledgements page to include those who had helped promote the first edition, as well as the names of those young people who had gone out of their way to tell me how much they had enjoyed it.
It was decided by the editorial team that the new edition needed a fresh back cover blurb, that is, the piece of writing on the back that tells the would-be reader what the book is about. Calum Kerr had written the original blurb. This was adapted and modified by the JKP team.
In the meantime, company’s designer CP Ranger set to work on a new cover. I suggested keeping the “Anne Droyd” part of the title in silver, with the “and Century Lodge” in a regular font underneath. After a few weeks I was sent the new cover, which took the form of a photograph montage. Three junior school children stood with their arms across one another’s shoulders while a silver-purple Anne Droyd with a bob haircut smiled down from the top. I was very excited by the image – but there were problems with it: In the story the children are Years 7s (11-year-olds) starting secondary school; none of them are black or oriental; Anne doesn’t have a bob, she has a blond fringe and a pony tail, and she certainly doesn’t smile! So it was back to the drawing board for another attempt.
CP Ranger’s next cover was closer to Jim Whittaker’s original, a painting of the three human characters and Anne with a half metal, half human face. After a few weeks it was decided that this wasn’t really good enough either, and so I sent in some photographs of the real Century Lodge and Mill. The final version of the cover came back to me as a montage of images from the photos I’d sent, warped and blurred with a dark, threatening cloud overhead. We all loved this cover and it was prepared to go on the new book.
The new edition of Anne Droyd and Century Lodge was published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers of London and Philadelphia on the 30th of September 2004.
Below, for all you fact fans, is a list of the changes I made to the text before the book was republished;
* Most changes were just little things, odd words, but changing them made all the difference to the quality of the writing. For example, I had referred to the prickles on the railway embankment as “brambles” far too often, and so in preparing the new version of the book, I took the opportunity to find alternative words. I’d also had it pointed out to me by a very astute young reader that a number of my characters have the habit of tapping their bottom lips with their fingers (!), so I removed these references in every case with the exception of Professor Droyd, who is the first to demonstrate the mannerism. Finally, older readers had advised that I alter the bits where I refer to the characters as “the lad” or “the girl”. An author’s voice should not be heard in the narrative, and so lines like “said the lad” were altered to “said Luke” or “said Malcolm”.
* The first major alteration was the removal of the author blurb on the inside cover. This decision was made by JKP, as a new much shorter author blurb had been written for the back. The old author blurb, which I had written myself, went like this: “Will Hadcroft was born in Greater Manchester in 1970. At the age of 10, he won first prize for his research in a school project. Around the same time, he wrote his first fictional trilogy Tales From the Shatm, which won him great recognition from his classmates, and so the writing bug set in. While working as a quality controller for a soft drinks firm, Will pursued his dream of writing what he calls ‘pseudo-science-fiction’ for young people. During the 1990s he was published in a number of sci-fi related fanzines and anthologies, and conducted interviews for magazines and the Internet. Anne Droyd and Century Lodge is his first novel. Will Hadcroft is married and lives in Worsley.”
* Page 7. “Deduction: I am in a box”. The word ‘deduction’ did not appear in the original.
* Page 11. The reference to Jodie Hill was added to the text to honour a promise made to Craig Hill, who bid a sum of money for the book on radio station Key 103, to raise cash for the charity Manchester Kids. The prize was a signed copy of the book and the inclusion of his daughter’s name in the sequel. When Century Lodge was republished two years later, I put Jodie into that instead. They had waited long enough!
* Page 19. “Your father can’t say grace.” This originally read “Your father can’t ask the blessing.” I decided to change the word to ‘grace’ after a reader had asked what was meant by ‘a blessing’. I was, of course, referring to Mr Atkinson’s prayer over the meal. ‘Saying grace’ sounds better.
* Page 35. After “Malcolm backing away looking worried”, in the original, Luke says, comparing his mother with Malcolm’s, “‘At least she’s not out all day drinking beer in the pub. At least she doesn’t have to go to hospital every six months because she’s always drinking in pubs!’” I decided to remove this because Malcolm’s parents’ drinking habits had already been mentioned earlier on.
* Page 140. “Your lungs and those of people nearby…” originally read “The lungs of smokers and of…” It didn’t sound right, so I changed it.
* Page 178. “…glued to the Saturday morning entertainment.” Originally this read “…glued to Live and Kicking.” This was a reference to the BBC Saturday morning series which ran during the time I was writing the first edition of Century Lodge. It later occurred to me that the BBC may in the future reinvent the programme (as they had already done numerous times in the past, it having been produced as Swap Shop, Saturday Superstore and Going Live), which would then make Century Lodge out dated. Amazingly, just prior to the book’s publication, Live and Kicking was reinvented as The Saturday Show! I think I was quite wise in not naming the programme in the new edition of the book.
In the same paragraph, the record shop is called Jackie’s Spin-a-Disc. This wasn’t in the original book. Later I regretted not putting it in because Jackie’s Spin-a-Disc really existed in Walkden and was where I bought all my early singles (the first of which was This Ole House by Shakin’ Stevens in 1981!). I rectified it with the new edition.
* Page 223. The rats in the cellar were mice in the original. A reader pointed out to me that they would more likely be rats, and all the more frightening for it! I agreed and changed it.
* Page 224. “Gezz, Malcolm and Luke screwed up their faces…” It was suggested to me before the original was published that Anne’s eyes would glow when she emitted her high pitched whistle. So I wrote it in. Then, when it came to the rewrite for the new edition, I changed my mind and took it out again!
* Page 226. Classic Doctor Who. At the time of writing, no such programme existed. When I wrote the original Century Lodge, the only version of Doctor Who being broadcast was the old series which ran on the BBC between 1963 and 1989. There had been a one-off TV movie in 1996, but the show was no longer in production as an ongoing series and only existed as repeats on UK Gold. So in the first edition of my book it wasn’t necessary to make a distinction between the old Doctor Who show and the modern one. However in 2005 the BBC launched a brand new updated version of the series, and so I invented the title Classic Doctor Who, so that readers would know I was referring to the original programme.
* Page 263. ‘We’ll Never Get Out!’ This was the title for Chapter 33 when I was dividing the 12 big chapters into 35 smaller ones. Then I noticed that the line ‘We’ll never get out!’ is actually spoken near the end of the previous chapter. This bothered me so much I changed the title to ‘Tidal Wave!’ and it was published as that in the CK Publishing version. When it came to the rewrite for the Jessica Kingsley Publishers version, I decided I didn’t care that ‘We’ll never get out!’ was in the previous chapter, and that it was actually the better title of the two – and so I took the opportunity to switch the chapter title back.
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