Mr Toppit by Charles Elton Signed Doodled First Edition Book

‘Charles Elton’s humour is as pitch-black and merciless as Darkwood itself… This is an extraordinary debut, not only for its confident storytelling but for its nerdish familiarity with such an eclectic range of subjects: the costume melodramas of Gainsborough film studios in the early 1950s, contemporary Los Angeles, publishing contracts and even Mexican cuisine. The author details on the book jacket don’t reveal whether he’s working on his second novel; I hope that he is’ — The Sunday Times

Q & A with Charles Elton, Author of Mr Toppit

Where did the idea for Mr Toppit first come from?

When I was a literary agent, I worked with the Estate of A.A.Milne and had always been struck by the level of unwanted fame that was foisted on his son Christopher Robin Milne by being a character in Winnie The Pooh. He – and the books – were a global phenomenon in the 1920’s and I wondered what would happen today when the outlets of fame – movies, TV, merchandising, the internet – are so much more numerous than they were. That was the only idea I started with. Everything else came as I wrote.

It took you a long time to write – why was this?

The book took an embarrassingly long time to write – 15 years. You can put that down to laziness, or – if you’re generous – the fact that I was a TV producer with a very busy life. I didn’t have a deadline and in a strange way I wasn’t writing it to be published – I just wanted to see if I could do it. It was my hobby, like a train set in the attic that I could retreat to when I had time.

Did it change a lot during that time?

I wrote so slowly that I didn’t need to do a lot of rewriting. I never planned anything or made notes. Most of the best things in the book came as I went along. I cut about 25000 words from the first half, not plot – just things I had overwritten. The second half is more or less unchanged from when I first wrote it.

The Hayseed Chronicles feel very real; could you see a day when these might actually be written and published?

Some people have thought that the ‘Hayseed’ excerpts in the book are like the tip of the iceberg and that I wrote much more. In fact, the bits in my book are all there ever were. I thought that the less I put in, the more enigmatic it would be. I suppose it’s in my head somewhere – as an exercise I wrote jacket copy for the five Hayseed books, and found that there was more of a plot than I thought. Luke Hayseed’s mother turns out to be in league with Mr Toppit.

What are you working on now?

I’m writing another book about a dysfunctional family – this time a strange dynasty of folk singers and political activists. I’ve written about 20000 words and have no idea what happens next.