Nik Perring is a friend I’ve never met. A friend of six,
seven, eight years? I can’t be sure but, for as long as I’ve been blogging (since
2006), I’ve known Nik. I’ve spoken to him on the phone, we’ve sent each other
mixed CDs (we have a similar fondness for quirky female singer-songwriters), I
made him cry when he read my first novel HEAVEN CAN WAIT and I fell in love
with his story ‘Shark Boy’ in his wonderful book of flash fiction NOT
SO PERFECT, but we’ve never met in person. Maybe we never will but that’s
okay – ours is a friendship we dip in and out of depending on how hectic life
is, but it’s always there, in the background.


And talking of things you can dip in and out of (nice segue,
Cally!), Nik has a wonderful new book out called ‘BEAUTIFUL WORDS’.
It’s hard to describe to describe the book and do it justice. It’s not a short
story book, it’s not a book of flash fiction and it’s definitely not a
dictionary – what it is is a collection of words that Nik finds beautiful and,
running through the book, is a narrative about a man called Alexander and his
search for love. 




BEAUTIFUL WORDS would make a wonderful gift for anyone who
loves words – who loves discovering new ones, who loves reading them aloud to
hear how they sound, who loves saying them over and over again until they make
sense, or stop making sense at all. It’s quirky and different and resonant and
thought-provoking. It’s like no little book you’ve ever read before and the
illustrations are beautiful too. I’ve got a copy to give away but first, some
questions for the Word Master himself…

So, Nik. Tell me how
BEAUTIFUL WORDS came about? What gave you the idea?

Thanks for having me here. It's a lovely place! How did it
start? A couple of years ago I started collecting words that I liked, that
interested me. I bought a little orange notebook and when I found one I thought
interesting or one I liked saying, or one that I liked what it stood for or
represented I'd scribble it down in there. The initial plan was write a book
that would be a celebration of words. Something I thought word lovers might
like. The sort of thing that I thought I'd like to be given as a gift. But I
thought, quite quickly, that a list of words that some chap you've probably
never heard of wouldn't excite people. So I made it into a part story, part
fact thing. With beautiful illustrations. I think it works.

There are two more
books in the series – BEAUTIFUL SHAPES and BEAUTIFUL TREES – that continue
Alexander’s story but also explore the shapes and trees you find beautiful. Did
you always plan on a series of books or did the idea for two more come to you
after you’d finished BEAUTIFUL WORDS?

That came about while I was writing it. It was a chance
comment I'd made to my publisher. I said something like, 'It could be cool to
do this as a series.' My publisher agreed it could be and that phone call was
where we came up with the ideas for the next two.

Our relationship with
words is such a personal thing. In your book I fell in love with the word
WHIFFLE because of the way it sounds when I say it but also because of the
meaning but I wasn’t so keen on the word EFFLEURAGE because it made me think of
sewage (sorry!) although it actually has a lovely meaning. When you wrote the
book did you give any thought to how other people might respond to your choice
of words or were you solely driven by your own favourites?

Ha! Sorry about the sewage. I think when we write anything
that's going to be (hopefully) read by anyone we have to think of that audience
to some degree. My angle was, and still is: these are some words that I like, and that mean something to the
characters in the book but it's not, by any means, definitive. I think I say in
the introduction that I hope people find some they like, but half the fun's
people disagreeing. If I get people thinking about the words that they like then I'm happy.

Which words nearly
made the grade but were dropped in favour of your final choices?

There were loads! Flicking through my notebook... Doe,
gnome, astral, book, chignon, crackle, doodlebug, elk, ermine, fiddle,
fenberry, galloon, hexad, imp, junco, knobble, lasque, mist, nimble,
obsequious, pirouette, quiver, scrim, tinsel. I'll stop there.

And here are a couple of early entries that didn't make the
final draft:

Obsequious: If you are obsequious you are super-obedient, to
the point of being servile. As nice as it is to be helpful, do remember that
no-one likes a doormat. And if they do, you’re probably best steering clear of
them.

and

Lover: Lover has been with us since the 12th century. More
recently, I had a lover. I loved this lover. She was beautiful, and her lips
were two halves of perfect. But this lover was allergic to me. I think I made
her sick. I don’t see that lover any more.

Have you always been
a fan of words? Do you know what your first word was? Any words you particular
loved (and over-used) as a child?

Yeah, I think I have. Can't think of many specific examples,
although I do remember loving 'diorama' when I was in high school.

Do you think our
taste in favourite words change over time? Have yours?

That's a really interesting question, and one I'd not really
thought about. I think the answer's most definitely a yes. Vocabulary does
change. Just look at how many words get added to the OED (and taken out) every
year. Twerk, anyone? And I think that we're probably getting more new words and
at a faster rate because of the internet and technology. It's a good thing, I
think.

A bit of a morbid
question here (sorry, it’s the crime writer in me!) but, imagine you’re on your
deathbed…what would you want the final word you breathe to be?

Ha! Oh I don't know. I'd like it to be something like
'goodbye', or 'thanks', but knowing me it's more likely to be 'Oops.'

Are there any words
you actively dislike? Not because of their meanings (racism, homophobia etc)
but because you don’t like the sound they make?

Dumbbell. Mulch.

You really enjoy
writing short stories and flash fiction but you haven’t written a novel yet. Is
that because words hold more power in the short form, or some other reason?

Nah, I think words hold the same amount of power regardless
of the story length. There's an argument that they stick out more in shorter
stuff but every story/novel/whatever needs to use the right ones.

I’ve recently been
thinking about my writerly bucket list. It includes: ‘See a poster of one of my books in a train station' ‘Win an award’, ‘Make the
Richard and Judy Book Club selection’ and ‘Become a Sunday Times Bestseller’. What’s
on your writerly bucket list?

And I'm sure you'll get all of them! I guess mine are pretty
similar to yours. What would be really cool, I think, would be if someone
animated one of my stories. That I'd like to see. But, really, as long as
people keep on enjoying what I put out there then that's me happy.
Beautiful Words: Some Meanings and Some Fictions Too


Thanks Nik! I can’t
wait to read the next two books in the series and wish you every success with
BEAUTIFUL WORDS.



So for anyone who’s desperate to find out what WHIFFLE and
EFFLEURAGE mean do get yourself along to Nik’s publisher’s website and get
yourself a copy: http://www.roastbooks.org/beautiful-words.html



Or you could enter my competition to win yourself a copy.
All you need to do is leave a comment letting us know which is your favourite
word and why and Nik will pick his favourite. The competition closes on Friday 6th June 2014 at midnight and I’ll announce the winner within a week of the
closing date. 





Bio

Nik Perring
is a short story writer and author from the UK. His stories have been published
in many fine places both in the UK and abroad, in print and online. They’ve
been used on High School distance learning courses in the US, printed on
fliers, and recorded for radio. Nik is the author of the children’s book, I Met
a Roman Last Night, What Did You Do? (EPS, 2006); the short story collection,
Not So Perfect (Roastbooks 2010); and he’s the co-author of Freaks! (The Friday
Project/HarperCollins, 2012). His online home is www.nikperring.com and he’s on Twitter as @nikperring Beautiful
Words is out now and available from all good book retailers.