Deleted Scenes

Despite my love of 'deleted scenes', I don't really have any this time around. The structure of the book didn't change much from first draft to finished product. This doesn't mean there was no editing, though. It doesn't mean that I didn't endlessly rework certain sections, particularly the beginning, as I wrote my way into the story.

I also made quite a few changes so that the book was 'less dangerous'. My publisher was concerned that some of the things I had the boys do were just too risky. If my brothers are anything to go by, I'm not sure that anything will stop boys doing crazy things, but my publisher was right that we have a responsibility not to actually promote reckless behaviour.

In the end, most of these changes were fairly minor: a few less spiky objects at the bike jump site, shorter and more realistic jumps in the rail slide, and the small matter of a lawnmower, on someone's lap, in a shopping trolley, heading downhill. In the end, all these elements are still in the book. They've just been toned down a bit; they've been made, as Nathan would say, with a sideways glance at Ronnie, "less death-defying, or whatever".