Posted by: Mark Haddon - Author, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, A Spot of Bother

It began at the Edinburgh book festival.

In the Author’s Yurt there is a guest book for visiting authors. Being an artist of sorts, and having been looked after very well, it seemed only proper that I illustrate my signature. By the time I got around to doing it, however, the stakes had been raised by another writer (I didn’t recognise the name) who had decorated an entire page with a meticulous and terrifyingly proficient life-drawing of the yurt’s interior. Realistic figures. Rigorous perspective. The lot.

Clearly I had to go for simplicity.

For the previous three years when signing copies of Curious Incident for friends I would add a drawing of a dead dog beneath a cloud of flies (it was more charming than it sounds). I wondered if I could concoct a similar drawing for A Spot of Bother. I decided eventually on a simplified graphic illustration of a central scene in the novel:

I did a large version in the guest book and some smaller versions in copies of the novel. I was growing rather fond of my little, bleeding man and found myself taking him on further adventures over the following weeks.

I began adding the pictures to the bottom of e-mails and one of my (nameless) respondents said how much she enjoyed my drawings. I explained that my aim was to proceed from amusing and relatively minor wounds to more graphic traumas that no-one could possibly find funny:

Our exchange ended with one of the most memorable e-mails I have ever received. BRING ON THE ANAL BLEEDING. Like that. In caps.

I brought it on.

Though it is the nipples that remain my favourite:

The sheer volume of blood. The mildly pissed off expression. The arms inexplicably raised. The intangible and almost certainly offensive religious symbolism that I can’t quite put my fingers on.

It seems to demand something more than a pen drawing. A T-shirt? A book cover? An edition of two-colour lino prints, perhaps…