When Lola met Chocolate Bunny - A Hop Lola Hop Easter Special
Not everything you write will see the day of light on #publicationday - a lot - you find - will fall victim to the ‘Delete’ Button.
Hop Lola Hop went through several rounds of edits, with every new version seeing new ideas added and others removed.
Some ideas didn’t make the final cut, simply because they were terrible. Others I had to loose to reduce word count. And some definitely felt harder to let go off than others. Which is why I didn’t delete them all and instead saved them somewhere else - a small ‘sanctuary’ folder on my laptop for all those nearly lost snippets of writing I consider valuable in Lola’s publishing journey.
With Easter Sunday just around the corner, I decided to share one of them with you!
The following is an extract from one of my very early Lola manuscripts. It includes a chance encounter between Lola and a chocolate bunny.
‘ Bunnies ... a shelf full of bunnies, right in the middle of the supermarket!
"I wonder what they’re doing here?" Lola thought.
– HOP! -
... she hurried down the shopping cart to take a closer look at these long-eared relatives.
"Hello, what’s your name?" Lola said, nudging one of the rabbits.
But the animal showed no emotion. Lola went up to another one, but he too remained silent.
"You are not very talkative, are you?" Lola began to feel a little annoyed.
The bunnies did look a little odd, Lola found.
Each one of them stood completely still and silent.
Their fur felt rather cold and slick too, unlike Lola’s which was soft and fluffy.
But then something happened, and it made Lola dug her head at once!
When she looked up again, the place next to her was empty with one of the silent bunnies gone!
Then the hand returned a second time ... and another of the rabbits disappeared!
This was certainly not a safe place for any kind of bunny!
Before long, a rattling noise went through the shelf and made some customers nearby turn around in surprise.
What a sight!
All bunnies had fallen off the shelf and lay scattered across the floor.
All but one.
