I am currently writing another hedgehog book, while I wait for the revision for Beauty in the Beast to appear. This time I am doing it for love – I am pretty much paying the publishers for the pleasure. But I love the series it will be part of from Reaktion Books and really could not contend with anyone else writing it! It is far more about the iconography of the hedgehog and the way we relate to it – and not about my personal ramblings … though hopefully it will not be without humour. And today, after hitting a low in discovering that my ‘A Prickly Affair’ contains a mistake (I suggested that Nungunungu was Swahili for hedgehog when in fact it means porcupine – and the real word is Kalunguyeye) I found this amazing website – The Cursing Hedgehog – from Finland. I have written to the artist, Milla Paloniemi, for permission to use images in the book – these two in particular:

I am finding it fascinating how the hedgehog takes on so many different characters around the world – which is good news for the book!