Wow. This just gets better and better. I am sure that having Oprah choose Attica for her book discussion is great news, but I'll bet we enjoy our discussion more.

Ooops. I should have egg on my face for thinking of her first over us. I am so used to calling us Noodlemantras that I forget the Oprah part.

From the Author
This novel represents a departure from my previous juvenile fantasies which were, in the main, animal fantasies. I conceived Attica while actually working in an attic - it was where I wrote my books and shared my day with my cat Dylan, who often slept in my desk drawer. I used to stare into the blackness of the attic around me and wonder about what was actually in there. Every Friday night my wife and I go for a curry with Andrew and Cheryl, our good friends, to wind down the week. One curry night I talked with Andrew about the attic and the thoughts I had about writing a novel based on an attic as large as a continent: Andrew added some interesting avenues to explore. And this is a novel about exploration, of fantasy places and of the mind. I suppose the attic represents my head in which I take these strange journeys, attics and heads being at the top of their respective bodies, being both full of junk and seeming both to be infinite. Some of the characters in the book have been drawn from real life - another departure for me - the children are my grandchildren of the same names, the parents are a young married couple we are very fond of, the three-legged cat Nelson was the pet of a friend in Hong Kong where we used to live and Mr Grantham is probably me. I am talking about the 'characters' of these people and cats here, not about their situations in life, nor their physical appearance. Jordy, for example, is a very sporty grandson. Alex likes engineering. Chloe likes books, and so on. And Nelson wasn't ginger at all, but a big fluffy beast who looked as if his fur was unravelling.

gemini, how did you know that tomorrow's question uses this quote?