Inspired by Paris, zombies and 1920’s slang

We start our ‘Inspired by’ blog series with two zany middle-grade stories from John Gilmore and Megan Wheeler. The authors fill us in on the source of their ideas and give you an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at their stories’ creation.

Ziggy Peanut and the Crime Scene Time Machine, by John Gilmore

A lower MG comedic detective adventure. The Muppets meets Sherlock Holmes meets Dr Who — with peanut heads.

Ziggy Peanut, like most of his family before him, had a head shaped like a peanut. Not the deeply-dimply-dry shell but the little brown nut inside.

When his Papa goes missing, the bank wants to repossess their ancestral home, Peanut Manor. The clock is ticking and 9-year-old Ziggy from 1925, must go on a time travelling adventure to investigate the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa — with Uncle Quentin and his cat butler in their Crime Scene Time Machine. Will Ziggy find his Papa and stop the sale of Peanut Manor in the process? Only time will tell… 

John: I had mostly written comedic rhyming verse before I started the MA. I was keen to embrace the course ethos of experimentation, and so my very first workshop submission was a prose idea. Something which had simmered for years in the darkest dottiest recesses of my mind —partly inspired by a trip to Paris many years ago.

The story started back then with Quentin Peanut (who is basically a much slimmer, exaggerated and erudite version of me). Once the name arrived, I decided he should actually have a head shaped like a peanut… everything just expanded from there… The name embodied a 1920’s aristocrat, and of course he should have a cat-butler, so Montague Le Bigpuss was born.

They had an eccentric Holmes and Watson vibe in my mind, thus they naturally became a detective duo. Given the aristocratic notion, they fitted into the 1920’s and the concept of investigating famous historical crimes around that era. Then I thought, what if they could go anywhere in history to do it… and solve mistakes made in the original investigations — the Crime Scene Time Machine was born. My Paris trip had seeded the 1911 Mona Lisa theft in my mind as their first case — within a Pink Panther-esque plot. The story fizzed away until I eventually started the MA.

Not long into the course I realised the story needed tweaking to include a child protagonist and Ziggy came along. Being an uncle myself, it felt natural to make him Quentin’s similarly peanut-headed nephew. It soon became apparent how much fun I was going to have writing these characters and their story, so it felt right to choose it as my manuscript.

My love of rhyming verse led to a rapping rat antagonist and several musical ensembles. A research article I wrote for the MA on verse and reluctant/struggling readers inspired me to use onomatopoeic language and alliteration, as well as playing with typography, using almost graphic novel style font sprinkled within the text.  

 I wanted to fill the pages with warmth, kindness and heart as well adventure and humour. Ziggy’s father is missing, and his side-kick Fifi’s mother has died. I tapped into my own maternal bereavement to express the characters' loss, grief and internal emotional journeys. It was a hard process, but I hope it has imbued the characters with emotional authenticity and may provide comfort to a young reader experiencing similar.

I think one of the most fun things about writing Ziggy’s story was using 1920’s slang diction. I think it sounds even more comical in a modern text, and has often made me chuckle whilst writing this noodle-boggling ripsnorter.

Shiloh James is Completely (Para)Normal, by Megan Wheeler

Fourteen-year-old Shiloh James is completely normal, and only wants to eat his friends some of the time. While balancing his hunger for raw flesh with a desire to fit in and keep his zombie identity hidden, Shiloh dreams of a normal teenage life. When grisly deaths at his new school threaten to expose the existence of zombies and endanger his friends, Shiloh must find the killer and stop them before anyone else is hurt – living, or… less so. 

‘Highly Commended’ in Edinburgh Young Adult Novel Award 2025, this teen mystery, with #ownvoices neurodivergent representation, blends the light-hearted zombie gore of Santa Clarita Diet with the humour of Apocalypse Cow. Perfect for fans of the Little Badman series moving on from middle grade.

Megan: My manuscript began life as the creative part of my undergraduate dissertation in 2022. I was studying reader engagement – a topic that still interests me – and I wanted to understand how children’s books work. Why did the inciting incident have to be in certain places for certain aged readers? How does pacing impact the way a younger reader enjoys a story? I was hooked on plotting methods and reader journeys, and from that came my dissertation. I worked out how the first three chapters of a teen novel should look on paper: what happens when, and why. Then I began writing and fell completely in love with the characters and their stories, and my manuscript began to take shape. 

When I joined Bath Spa’s MA Writing For Young People, I had some solid characters and a general idea for where I wanted the novel to go: it was going to be a murder mystery – I’d always wanted to write one – and I wanted to make it funny like the Louise Rennison books I loved as a young teen. I was a reluctant reader until reading those, and I wanted to feel that in my own work. I’d also read Warm Bodies and loved the take on zombie-as-protagonist while maintaining a lot of traditional zombie lore, and as a huge lover of zombie media, it felt natural that my own protagonist would be a zombie. And so, Shiloh was born.

Based on feedback from my amazing Bath Spa peers, Shiloh became more and more zombified. As he did so, and he had to work harder to hide his true identity, I related with him even more strongly: with undiagnosed autism, I’d spent so much of high school trying to fit in and be more like my classmates even though I didn’t feel like I belonged with them. That’s when my manuscript really started to work – I suddenly realised what I was writing and why I was writing it. I’m a zombie, too!