Princess Marzipan - an introduction

Princess Marzipan arrived, fully-formed, in my head about five years ago. I'd come up with a setting for a series of stories for children in the form of 'Mountcastle' - which is basically a mountain that's been transformed into a castle. I just didn't know who lived there. Yet.

Around midnight one evening, the name 'Princess Marzipan' popped into my head. I knew immediately that this was the person who should live in 'Mountcastle.' I also had the idea of writing in the 'voice' of the princess - this proved surprisingly (if not worryingly) easy to do, and I'd soon filled a page with her ramblings.

At this time, I was working as a freelance illustrator and designer, mostly working on children's books and comics, and I happened to mention the princess to my then art agents, who took an interest and suggested I added pictures to what was, up til then, purely a written work. We then chased round for about two years at book fairs presenting various incarnations of the princess in numerous formats (comic book, novel, storybook), where the character attracted a lot of interest. Publication looked almost certain at one point, with various publishing houses expressing an interest: DC Thompson went as far as proposing a comic for girls based on the character. To this day, I have no idea why none of these ideas went any further.

By this stage, the text had been revised from its original, first-person narrative, into a more conventional third-person past tense story. I felt it lost something in the process - what it lost was the princess's unique voice and way of telling a story (from her own very biased and egotistical point of view). A complete, novel-length text was put into the hands of a literary agency who worked alongside my art agents in a search for a publisher. No takers, but a lot of rather nicely-worded and complimentary rejections.

By this time (2004) I'd started the first draft of a much darker and more serious project, this time aimed at teenage readers (Marzipan was pitched at 8-11 year olds), and sensing that the market for princess-based young fiction was somewhat oversubscribed, I put the princess aside to work on other things. I'd also drifted away from illustration into design, and the offer of a job working full-time designing DVD covers severely restricted the amount of time I had available to pursue writing projects.

Of course, I should have known that a character as headstrong as Princess Marzipan wasn't just going to sit back and accept her fate. About a year later I started on a new, third-person narrative featuring the princess, the first chapter of which you can read here. I'm also posting some of the princess' 'own' writing, which should give you a clear idea of who she is and where she's coming from.

Elsewhere on this blog, you'll find extracts from some of my other writing and character projects. Hope you enjoy them!

Martin Cater
September 2008