One for Sorrow, Two for Joy by Clive Woodall

It really only started as a bedtime story and the boys wanting it night after night made it develop so much.' 'I don't think I could possibly get used to this, it's just skyrocketed beyond all expectations but it's wonderful,' he said.

Woodall admits he is overwhelmed by his new-found fame and fortune. It is generating the sort of hype normally reserved for big names like Harry Potter author JK Rowling. Even more remarkably, the rights to this novel were sold in twenty countries, and this extraordinary story is now loved the world over, from the USA to China, via Slovenia and Thailand.A British supermarket manager who wrote a fairytale as a bedtime story for his children has sold the film rights to the Walt Disney company for $1 million.Īfter 11 years of writing and more than 30 rejections from publishers, Clive Woodall's novel, One for Sorrow: Two for Joy, has been published in London. Not only that, but sensing the potential in the story, he manages to secure a $1 million movie deal from Disney – unprecedented for a first-time author. Within months, Franc had decided to publish the book himself, and Ziji Publishing was born. Ever grateful for his bank manager’s tolerance of his mortgage needs, Franc felt obliged to read it, but was soon engrossed by Clive’s dark storytelling and the incredibly real world he had created. The manuscript thudded through Franc Roddam’s letterbox one morning in 2003, having been forwarded by his bank manager, whose assistant was, in fact, Clive’s wife. Written by Clive Woodall, a former Sainsbury’s grocery manager, it is an allegorical tale of the struggle between good and evil. One for Sorrow, Two for Joy was Ziji Publishing’s first title. But what can one bird do, in the face of such evil? A bird to fight the darkness, and bring light back to the land. For small birds throughout the land, survival is everything.īirddom needs a hero.

The magpie has replaced the pigeon in the city and the starling in the garden. In Birddom, blackbird and sparrow have been exterminated. Dominance has been achieved by systematic genocide and slaughter. An evil intelligence is masterminding their inexorable rise. Welcome to Birddom – a land where magpies rule.

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy by Clive Woodall