My name is Ann Marie O’Sullivan and I am the writer and illustrator of Pimlicat and the Midnight Explorers.
Before I started to write children’s books I was a journalist who worte for national newspapers in Ireland and the UK.
I was inspired to write Pimlicat and the Midnight Explorers when I visited London with my family. I hadn’t been there in over a decade and instantly felt the fuzzy buzz of the excitement of the city.
London is so filled with people that they are pumped around in tubes under the city popping up, back above ground, as if by magic.
Those underground train tunnels call for a children’s adventure story. So when I got home I started to dream up my book about a lost cat in the underground. A friend said that wasn’t very realisitic and so I started to research the idea. To my surprise there was a brave cat called Pimlicat who lived underground for two weeks!
Inspired I started to create my own Pimlicat with their own story and created a whole new story around them.
Fuelled by my excitement for the idea I wrote Pimlicat and the Midnight Explorers very quickly. Illustrating the book, and learning to draw again after many years of not drawing anything at all, took a bit more time but together the words and pictures tell the full story.
I’m certain there is more I’d like to write about in London and I suspect that Pimlicat and the Midnight Explorers will have plenty more adventures in London. But I would love too for Conor, Oscar and Mia to visit to Cork, Ireland where I live and uncover some of the magic I see in Cork.
Maybe one day they will.
Leave a Reply