SPUD: THE MAGIC CONTINUES

John van de Ruit tells us why he decided to write a sequel - and shares how his first book helped him find enduring love

- JANE VORSTER

H IS readers constantly surprise him. It doesn’t matter where he is – at a wedding, in the supermarket, walking down the street minding his own business, someone will come up to tell him how his novels changed their lives. Sometimes it can get a bit awkward for John van de Ruit, like when people assume he and his much-loved character, schoolboy John “Spud” Milton, are one and the same person.

They’ll yell, “Spud! Spud!” and ask him embarrassing questions such as, “Have your balls dropped yet?”

But he’s able to take it all with good humour because he knows how lucky he is – there aren’t many South African authors who generate this level of excitement. His series of Spud books, set at an elite KwaZulu-Natal boarding school, smashed local publishing records, selling well over 600 000 copies.

And right now fans are over the moon because – after swearing he’d never write another Spud book – John (49) has had a change of heart. After a 12-year silence he’s back with a surprise sequel, Spud: The Reunion.

It’s weird being back on “the Spud roller-coaster” again, John admits as he arrives for our interview at a Cape Town restaurant. He’d forgotten what the hectic publicity roadshow was like, all the weeks of book signings and events.

He really was dead serious when he told us back in 2012 that he was done with Spud, he insists.

“I’d been on the rollercoaster for too long, since 2002 when I started writing the series. Four books and three movies – it was 10 years of my life and I felt it was too much.”

Over the past decade he acted in theatre productions, wrote scripts, tried writing a novel that was totally different to anything he’s written before. But during lockdown in 2020, while he was holed up at home in Glenwood, Durban, he started thinking about Spud again.

John says he was initially worried he’d struggle to reconnect with the character because so much time had passed.