While the world and possibly Patrick Ness wait for the witch to read The Ask and the Answer, she has read the short story that Patrick wrote as part of his agreement with Booktrust. It’s about what happened to Viola and her parents before The Knife of Never Letting Go begins.
I think it’s very sci-fi, and Patrick disagrees, but I’ll let him. Where The Knife is fairly down-to-earth, arriving in a spaceship is sci-fi as far as I’m concerned, but I don’t see anything negative in that.
Not surprisingly Patrick gets asked about Viola a lot, so he felt this was a good way of explaining her background. And he definitely felt it was preferable to writing about Manchee, although since he kills off Viola’s parents too, he feels he’s a bad person.
Not at all, Patrick.
You can find The New World here.
I just downloaded his story to read at my convenience.
Thank you for the link.
Wrong wrong wrong. He’s a very bad person to kill off that lovely doggie. And you can tell him I said so. Or I will.
OK, Meg, Patrick can be the bad boy for today. I’m sure he has some good sides. Manchee was very lovely, and I’m sure he has heard people say that quite a few times.
It’s probably only good people who ever feel bad, isn’t it? That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
I agree. But we need to keep sad dog stories away from Meg.