David Hall Interview Published on: 17, May 2021

I loved Dr Suess, and the crazy stories he created. His own journey to publishing his books is as fascinating as his ability to capture the minds of his readers. I remember as a young child sitting crossed legged on the floor of the spare room in my Grandparents’ Wimbledon mid terrace, reading the entire collection of Beatrix Potter books over and over, and Mary Tourtel’s & Alfred Bestall’s Rupert Bear comics.

I guess I wasn’t that focused as a child and literally fell into the career I’m in now. Although, in my teenage years I was desperate to become a dog handler in the RAF. But due to a permanent chest condition, the RAF wouldn’t recruit me. So, naturally I went to college to study photography. The two subjects couldn’t have been any further apart. I later became a dustman, for the local council, this kept me very fit and turned out to be extremely lucrative. It’s true what they say, “Where there’s muck, there’s money.” After three years of shifting peoples waste, I managed to gain employment with a construction company and after twenty three years of hard graft, I am now the head of the lifting department for a major rail project in the UK. So, if my twelve-year-old self could see me now, I think he’d be extremely impressed that I get to play with massive cranes on a daily basis.

I started writing in 2009 after a hard redundancy. Jamie Pond was actually James Pond double O frogspawn to start with. But that seemed quite a mouthful for the book titles.so I reduced his name to simply Jamie Pond. Back then I tended to write furiously not given much care to the finer touches until my first edit. That’s when the perfection and the magic really took off. These days, I’ll try to edit as I go, picking up on the punctuation, structure, and grammar. Of course, I send my attempt at the edit to my editor Sheryl Lee for the finer touches.

I used to be held up in various places in and around London waiting for meetings to start and found a suitable Nero’s coffee shop. It used to be an old bar, converted to serve caffeine enriched beverages. The décor was handpicked from antique shops local to the area. It had Chesterfield low backed armchairs, that had cracked leather surfaces hardened over the years, old highly polished tables, and oak clad walls creating the perfect atmosphere for me to concentrate on the foundation for Jamie’s adventures.

Jamie pond the world’s greatest amphibian super spy, started life as a simple sketch. I’m a lover of spy stories and a really enthusiastic artist, drawing such things as dragons, cartoon animals, amongst other things. Jamie actually started as a snake called Sid. I planned to create a range of children’s clothing featuring the snake in various action poses. However, the snake quickly developed into a frog. After a few weeks of developing the snake and the frog, it hit me. How about a frog, akin to James Bond 007, only slightly smaller and totally ridiculous? As I stated earlier and with pure dumb luck, the company I worked for dissolved sectional departments and rendered several of us redundant. Which actually gave me oodles of time to start planning Jamie’s adventures. I finished his first adventure when I started a new job, traveling by public transport from the south coast into London and back every day with the odd pit stop at Nero’s.

Difficult, to say the least. I went through several phases to get his pose right. I used 3D CAD software to create the Ripper Box Jamie is resting on, then rendered at a high resolution to get it exactly right. Jamie, and all of my digital art is created in a programme called Sketchbook Pro. The software works just as well on MS systems and IOS. Oh, in case you’re wondering, The Ripper is a deadly time weapon, something the Heron is desperate to own, so he can take over the world.

Yes, there are four books in the adventures of Jamie Pond series, and two spin offs starring Lola! Jamie’s trusty sidekick. In fact, she is actually the sensible one out of the two. Throughout the series you’ll meet Jamie’s best friend, a channel catfish called Red, and dastardly villains such as terrifying bugged eyed creatures, scaly aliens and possibly the worst of all, a foe so dangerous, so deadly, you’ll just have to read the stories to find out. You didn’t think I’d give it away, did you?

Yes. My Beautiful children have read the book. And even now they’ve grown up so much since the last book they’re desperate to clasp the next Jamie Pond adventure in their hands.

Pure imagination. Although wouldn’t it be great if the events did actually happen. Can you imagine a large grey Heron standing in front of a small army wielding a time vortex weapon? Or a common carp in charge of the CFIA (Carp & Frog Intelligence Agency) deep in a secret underground bunker. And a Canadian goose, leading the CGAF (Canadian Goose Airforce).

When reading a new book, what is one thing that is a surefire way to capture your attention? I guess the opening line has to be perfect. As a reader I need to feel what the protagonist is feeling. I want to see the hairs stand on end as a situation evolves.

Books can help to bond adults and kids when they read together. I believe books help to develop their basic language skills and profoundly expand their vocabularies—Let’s face it as authors we get the kids thinking about the worlds we create, heightening their own imagination, and the want to build imaginary play, centred around the characters they read about.

Anything to do with Dean Koontz. I read my first DK novel nineteen years ago, “By the Light of The Moon”. A tale of conspiracy, science fiction, and intrigue. I was hooked from the first line and it had such a profound effect on me that nearly twenty years later I can still picture the characters, plot twists, and the feeling I had when I turned the last page.

I use neither of these, however, I tried illustrator briefly and found this to be ok. I prefer Procreate and Sketchbook Pro.

The next book in the series—Jamie Pond in Rise of The Thunder Rabbit—is with literary agents for checking and hopefully acceptance for their listings. The illustrated cover is complete, although, I’m yet to complete the images for chapter pages.

I’ve started on the third in the series, which at the moment is Jamie’s darkest adventure yet.

I’m also working on a project for YA. With one book ready for my first edit and the second thundering away I should have these released soon. The series follows a police inspector from Whitechapel—her journey sees deep sorrow and a discovery that is sure to shake the foundations of east London.

I joined in 2016 on the release of the first Jamie Pond book. It’s a great network for authors and readers alike. I love the book mock-ups you send out to us on the Pro subscription. These have been used on all my social media campaigns.