fantasy

Make way for The 13th Horseman

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One of my favourite authors, Barry Hutchison, has a new book coming out in NZ later this month (Friday 18th May to be precise) called The 13th Horseman and it’s absolutely hilarious.  Here’s the blurb:

Drake is surprised to find three horsemen of the apocalypse playing snakes and ladders in his garden shed. He’s even more surprised when they insist that he is one of them. They’re missing a Horseman, having gone through several Deaths and they think that Drake is the boy for the job. At first he’s reluctant to usher in Armageddon but does being in charge of Armageddon have to spell the end of the world?

I’m really excited about this book so I’m holding a special NZ launch for The 13th Horseman at the Shirley Library in Christchurch on Friday 25 May, at 4pm.  Barry will be joining us (virtually from the UK) to talk about his book.  We’ll have giveaways as well as drinks and snacks fit for a Horseman of the Apocalypse.  For those of you who can’t be there I’ll also be doing a virtual launch here on My Best Friends Are Books, with a chance to win a copy of The 13th Horseman.

While you’re waiting for the book to arrive in NZ you should check out the short story that Barry wrote, featuring the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, called The Missing Remote of the Apocalypse.  You can read it for FREE on Barry’s website.  I highly recommend it (I had tears running down my face from laughing so hard while reading it)!

Meet the Apocalypsies #4: Laurisa White Reyes

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Today I’m joined by debut author and member of The Apocalypsies, Laurisa White Reyes.  Laurisa is the author of The Rock of Ivanore, book one in the new middle grade fantasy series The Celestine Chronicles, due out in May 2012. Laurisa lives in Southern California with her husband and five children. Publishing her first novel is a life-long dream come true.  Here’s the blurb for The Rock of Ivanore:

The annual Great Quest is about to be announced in Quendel, a task that will determine the future of Marcus and the other boys from the village who are coming of age. The wizard Zyll commands them to find the Rock of Ivanore, but he doesn’t tell them what the Rock is exactly or where it can be found. Marcus must reach deep within himself to develop new powers of magic and find the strength to survive the wild lands and fierce enemies he encounters as he searches for the illusive Rock. If he succeeds, he will live a life of honor; if he fails, he will live a life of menial labor in shame. With more twists and turns than a labyrinth, and a story in which nothing is at it seems, this tale of deception and discovery keeps readers in suspense until the end.

Now, it’s over to Laurisa to tell you about magic, impossible feats, and how The Rock of Ivanore came to be.  Thanks Laurisa for your wonderful post.

“Magic is believing in yourself. If you can do that, you can make anything happen.” – JohannWolfgang Von Goethe

I love magic. I am not ashamed to admit that I am a big fan of Harry Potter, Bartimaeus, and Eragon. As a kid, I devoured The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Narnia Series by C.S. Lewis. I watched the Disney fairytales a hundred times over because for Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid magic always saved the day.

Magic’s Long History

Magic has been around for as long as human kind has existed. Ancient civilizations such as the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians used rites and rituals to gain the favor of their Gods who in turn used their magical powers to intervene in human affairs.

During the late middle ages, people were often fascinated by magic, but they feared it, too. Joan of Arc (1412-1431) was accused of being a witch and burned at the stake. In 1692-1693 in Salem, Massachussetts, 200 people were accused of practicing magic, or what they called witchcraft. Twenty were executed.

Magic eventually became a form of entertainment. In the early twentieth century, Harry Houdini captured the world’s attention with his death-defying escapes and feats of magic. Today magic is as popular as ever with live stage shows, movies and television, and books attracting audiences all over the world.

Why We Love Magic

Why this ongoing fascination with magic? Could it be that deep down in the human psyche we long for the ability to change the world around us, to manipulate things to our liking? We want to defeat evil, to beat the odds, to overcome seemingly impossible challenges. Magic enables us to reach beyond the mundane and even negative aspects of our lives and to visualize what could be.

When Harry Potter, an otherwise average boy, destroys the ultimate evil villain Voldemort, we can imagine destroying whatever bad things are in our lives. When Eragon flies on his dragon across the mountains of Alagaesia, we are, in a sense, flying with him, achieving the impossible.

Magic is, of course, not real. As much as we love it, none of us will cast spells or tame dragons. But magic does allow us to dream and to discover ways to achieve the impossible that are within our means.

Reaching Beyond the Possible

On October 31, 2003 thirteen-year-old Bethany Hamilton was attacked by a 15 foot shark while surfing off the coast of Kauai in Hawaii. Bethany lost her left arm and, many believed, her future as a professional surfer. But Bethany did what seemed impossible: she taught herself to surf again with one arm and returned to the world of competitive surfing. Her story was made famous in a book and the recent film Soul Surfer.

Bethany’s courage and determination are not unusual. These are the very traits that have motivated individuals throughout history to achieve the impossible.

At the turn of the twentieth century, flying was nothing but a dream, something magical that had only been explored in fiction novels. Man could not fly. Everyone who had tried had failed. But Orville and Wilbur Wright dreamed big. They reached beyond human limitations and did the impossible. They flew.

How The Rock of Ivanore Came To Be

For me, writing and publishing my first novel was an act of achieving the impossible. Six years ago, my son and I often read stories together at bedtime. One night, he asked me to make up a story instead. I told him a story about Marcus, an enchanter’s apprentice who was a failure at magic. Every time he tried to cast a spell, it backfired. Each night, I’d ask my son what he wanted to hear about, be it dragons, or magic, or sword fighting, and I’d weave those elements into the story. Over the course of time, Marcus learned how to master his abilities to do what he never thought he could do before.

I have always wanted to be an author, but although I spent many years writing for newspapers and magazines, I thought I could never publish a book. Like Marcus, I was afraid that if I tried, I would fail. But telling those stories to my son gave me courage. I spent a year writing the first draft of The Rock of Ivanore. I received dozens of rejections and there were times I almost gave up.  But instead, I kept telling myself, “If someone else has done it, I can do it, too.” Eventually, Tanglewood Press offered me a contract and my dream of being a published author became real.

Aim High. Dream Big.

So what can magic do for you? It might propel you to climb Mount Everest or discover the cure to cancer or invent something that’s never existed before. It might motivate you to master a musical instrument, to paint a masterpiece, or win the next big football game. Or it might help you become the next New York Times bestselling author. Remember, magic is really nothing more than reaching beyond the possible to achieve the impossible. And in that case, there is at least a little magic in all of us.

Links:

My website  –  http://www.laurisawhitereyes.com

My blog – http://1000wrongs.blogspot.com

Joan of Arc – http://archive.joan-of-arc.org/joanofarc_short_biography.html

Bethany Hamilton – http://soulsurfer.com/

Harry Houdini – http://www.apl.org/history/houdini/biography.html

Meet the Apocalypsies #3: Leah Bobet

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Today I’m joined by debut author and member of the Apocalypsies, Leah Bobet.  Leah is the author of Above, an amazing new Young Adult urban fantasy novel.  Leah drinks tea, wears feathers in her hair, and plants gardens in back alleys. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.   Here’s the blurb for Above:

Matthew has loved Ariel from the moment he found her in the tunnels, her bee’s wings falling away. They live in Safe, an underground refuge for those fleeing the city Above–like Whisper, who speaks to ghosts, and Jack Flash, who can shoot lightning from his fingers.

But one terrifying night, an old enemy invades Safe with an army of shadows, and only Matthew, Ariel, and a few friends escape Above. As Matthew unravels the mystery of Safe’s history and the shadows’ attack, he realizes he must find a way to remake his home–not just for himself, but for Ariel, who needs him more than ever before.

Now it’s over to Leah to tell us about her writing and Above.  Thanks Leah for your wonderful post.

My writerbrain’s a bit like a game of Katamari Damacy; I read and putter and roll the little ball around, picking up things, and eventually it gets big enough that I become a star have something to write. Here are a few of the things it picked up:

The first was a detail, actually, from an essay I was reading for a third-year philosophy course: where the author described having to stand in his underwear in an examination room under bright lights because his doctors were using the diagnosis of his disability to teach student doctors. I can actually viscerally remember leaning back on my (crappy student) couch when I read it: all this emotion, shame and display and anger, bleeds right through the page. It hit me right between the eyes, and I knew I had to use it for something, somewhere.

The second thing was, well, picking a fight. I used to watch the Ron Perlman Beauty and the Beast TV show back when I was a kid, and I used to watch Futurama, and I have this pickily annoying practical streak that used to do things like correct people when they had song lyrics wrong. So part of my head, for a long time, has been going but it wouldn’t be like that! You get this whole Secret Society of Mutants Living Underground thing, suspicious and insular and ready to set you on fire and hiding in life-and-death ways, but nobody ever talks about how they got that way or the long-term emotional consequences of being locked up down there with the same five people all the time. They live underground in sewers or the like, but they’re always these suspiciously comfortable, all-the-amenities, Hollywood kinds of sewers, not what you’d actually get if a half-dozen people with various mental and physical issues went down into the actual sewer and tried to rough out something to live in. In real life, it’d probably be cold. You’d spend all your time figuring out how to get enough water, power, and canned food to just survive. So, says I, picking a fight with a whole bunch of books and movies, all happy with how smart I was. I’ll show them what it’s really like.

The third thing? A question I’ve been picking at for years, and still haven’t found a great answer to: When someone you care about is in trouble, when do you work like hell to save them, to try to pull them out of the hole they’re falling into – and when do you realize they’re just going to pull you in after them, and let go, and walk away?

I still have no idea about that: Where the line is between being right and safe, and wrong and cruel, or the other way around, lies. But I had enough to say about it, trying to find that line, that a whole book came out: about a boy who grew up underground and a girl who can turn into a bee.

ABOVE (Arthur A. Levine Books, April 2012)

http://www.leahbobet.com

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

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My first book of 2012 is one that’s been calling me from my ‘to-be-read’ pile since it was published in September last year.  Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone is of those books where, as soon as I saw the front cover, I knew it was going to be good.  After finishing it today I wonder why it took me so long to get around to reading this beautiful story.

Karou is a seventeen-year-old at student living in Prague.  With her attitude, blue hair and tattoos, she stands out from the crowd. Her sketches of mysterious and beautiful creatures are the envy of her fellow students, including her best friend Zuzana.  No one knows about her other life, as the errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to a family.  Karou knows nothing of her real family, only Brimstone and the other chimaera who have raised her.  She has been raised half in our world, half in ‘Elsewhere,’ the dark world which she knows little about.  As Brimstone’s errand girl, she travels the world buying teeth from murderers and hunters, trading them for wishes of various denominations.  Karou soon finds her world turned upside down when the seraphim destroy the portals back to Elsewhere, trapping her in our world, not knowing whether her family are alive or dead.  When one of the seraphim attacks her a train of events is set in motion that will lead her back to Elsewhere and the truth about who she is.

From the first chapter, Daughter of Smoke and Bone cast a spell on me and I was totally immersed in the story for days.  I felt like I was right there beside Karou and Akiva, from the streets of Prague and Marrakesh, to Brimstone’s shop and the caged city of Loramendi.  The sights and smells of these places were so vivid that, even when I wasn’t reading the book I was thinking about them.  Laini Taylor’s writing is absolutely beautiful and so full of emotion.  I wanted to keep reading particular sentences just to taste them.  Karou is a character that I really connected with because you could really get inside her head and know what she was feeling.  I felt her heartache, love, longing, loyalty and fear.  The thing I loved the most about the story was the creatures and places that Laini created.  The chimaera, which are made up of different animals and humans, reminded me of the mysterious creatures from Guillermo del Toro’s films, including Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy (especially the scene in Hellboy: The Golden Army at the troll market).

Daughter of Smoke and Bone ends on a cliff-hanger, with a heart-wrenching discovery so I will be eagerly awaiting the next book.  Until then, I’ll savour this beautiful story.

5 out of 5

The Extraordinaires: The Extinction Gambit by Michael Pryor

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I’ve been a fan of Michael Pryor’s ever since I first picked up Blaze of Glory, the first book in his Laws of Magic series.  I was captured by the old-style covers and as soon as I started reading I was transported to a world very similar to ours.  The series was full of magic, politics, intrigue, espionage and brilliantly witty characters.  When I found out that Michael had started a new series I was eager to delve into his new story and meet new characters.  His new series is called The Extraordinaires and the first book, The Extinction Gambit, introduces us to a shadowy London where dark creatures lurk just below the surface.

Kingsley Ward knows nothing of his parents.  His foster father, Dr Ward, refuses to tell him how he came to be looking after Kingsley.  On the night that he is to make his professional debut on stage with his death-defying escapology, his performance ends in disaster.  Kingsley has a wolfish nature that bursts free at the most inappropriate times, especially in the middle of his performance in front of hundreds of people.  A strange albino girl called Evadne comes to his rescue and takes him back to his foster father’s house, only to find his father is missing, the house keeper has been murdered, and two abnormally large, very ugly men are ransacking Dr Ward’s library.  Kingsley has no idea who these men or what they have done to Dr Ward.  Evadne takes Kingsley to her secret hideaway and explains that she is part of the Demimonde, the ‘world of the dispossessed and the fugitive, of outlaws, thieves and cutthroats, of the lost and abandoned, of the strange and uncanny.’  Through alternate chapters Michael Pryor introduces us to other members of the Demimonde: Jabez Soames, the human inside the Demimonde who wheels and deals and knows just how to bargain with the various groups in the Demimonde; the True Humans or Neanderthals (depending on whether you’re one of them or not) who want to wipe out the Invaders (Homo sapiens) by travelling back in time and killing them; and the Immortals, a group of immortal sorcerers who need to inhabit the bodies of children to live the longest.  As the story progresses the paths of these various groups cross and it’s up to Kingsley and Evadne to disrupt their plans before it’s too late.

Michael Pryor has once again created a story filled with action, suspense, mystery and fantastic characters.  I loved the idea of this group of shady characters lurking underneath London and having a group of Neanderthals that didn’t die out is brilliant.  The Immortals at first sounded a little like vampires, but I think they’re far creepier.  There’s also a slight hint of the Frankenstein story creeping into this story, as the Immortals create their minions, the Spawn, from their own body parts that they cut off.  Like Aubrey in The Laws of Magic, Kingsley is a fantastic character who is intelligent and witty.  At first I thought Kingsley’s wolfish nature might be hinting at him being a werewolf, but the true is much more exciting, and is linked with Rudyard Kipling who is also a minor character.  Evadne is a girl who can look after herself (and Kingsley at times) and is also incredibly intelligent.  There is a sense that there are many layers of Evadne that Kingsley, and the reader, hasn’t been introduced to yet.   The Extinction Gambit is the perfect book for anyone who likes their supernatural/fantasy stories without the gushy romance.  I can’t wait to see what Michael Pryor has in store for Kingsley and Evadne next.

Chronicles of Harris Burdick – 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales

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I’ve been reading lots of short stories lately because we’ve been getting some cool collections of short stories for children and young adults in our library.  The Chronicles of Harris Burdick is a collection of short stories written by 14 amazing authors, including Kate DiCamillo, Louis Sachar,  Jon Scieszka and Lois Lowry.  The stories are based on the original illustrations from the book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, in which there are only illustrations with a title and caption.  I got introduced to this book about 8 years ago when I was at Teacher’s College and have loved it ever since.  There’s a whole mystery to the book and where the illustrations have come from.  Who was Harris Burdick and why did he disappear after dropping off his illustrations?  If you’ve never seen it you should definitely get this from the library to have a go at making up your own stories to go with the pictures.

I love this book!  Not only are there so many great stories by some of the best children’s authors, but the book is beautifully designed too.  There are stories for everyone in this book, from the magical and funny to the strange and unsettling.  There are naughty children, different dimensions, a wizard, floating nuns, aliens, ghosts, and a horrible stepfather who gets his comeuppance.  All of the illustrations are amazing and you could make up all sorts of stories about them.  I liked some of the stories more than others.  Some of them are really strange and others just left me thinking ‘what just happened?’  My favourite story is The Harp by Linda Sue Park, about two sisters who are always bickering and get a spell put on them by a wizard.  Get a copy of The Chronicles of Harris Burdick and discover this strange collection of stories from some of your favourite authors.

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure

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What happens when some of the coolest children’s book authors and illustrators play a writing game that starts with one person’s ideas and ends with a novel of 27 episodes?  You get The Exquisite Corpse Adventure.  The title makes it sound like it should be a horror story, but it’s actually a weird, crazy, funny, out-of-control story put together by some of the coolest authors around.  If you’ve read or participated in the FaBo story that Kyle Mewburn started, The Exquisite Corpse is the same idea.

The story starts with twins Nancy and Joe escaping from the circus, where they have lived since they were babies.  With the help of different clues, Nancy and Joe search to piece together the Exquisite Corpse and find their parents.  Each chapter is written by a different author, so just when you think you know what’s going to happen next, the story can go off in a completely different direction.  The story is a little bit like Alice in Wonderland and The Phantom Tollbooth because they meet lots of weird and wonderful characters and get into some tricky situations.  The first chapter hooks you in by imagining what could happen in the rest of the story:

“…there is a good chance that Nancy and Joe will have to deal with werewolves and mad scientists, real ninjas and fake vampires, one roller-skating baby, a talking pig, creatures from another planet…plenty of explosions, a monkey disguised as a pirate, two meatballs…and not just one bad guy but a whole army of villains.”

Pick up The Exquisite Corpse Adventure if you dare and be prepared to be taken on a wild ride.

Guest Author: Michael Pryor on The Extinction Gambit

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It’s exciting to begin a new series. It’s like taking a first step through a secret door leading to places unknown with tantalising prospect of adventure awaiting. The release of ‘The Extinction Gambit’, the first book of ‘The Extraordinaires’, is just like that.

I also have a strange sensation that comes from leaving a series behind. In May 2011, ‘Hour of Need’ – the last book of ‘The Laws of Magic’ – was published. I’d worked on this series for more than eight years, and having it finally coming to an end was most peculiar. I’d lived with those characters for a long time, after all. I’d worked with them, I’d known their hopes, their dreams, their fears – and they’d been very patient with me as I subjected them to the bizarre, the dangerous and the embarrassing. Waving goodbye to them was sad. It was as if they were leaving home, going off and having more adventures and I wouldn’t be there to write about them.

And so, to ‘The Extinction Gambit’. Like ‘The Laws of Magic’, this new series is set in a world that is delightfully old-fashioned. It’s a world of manners and decorum, of society and class, of being dreadfully proper – and of some of the most stylish clothes you’re ever likely to see. Top hats anyone? Gorgeous lace? Silk capes and gloves?

Unlike ‘The Laws of Magic’, ‘The Extinction Gambit’ isn’t set in an alternative Edwardian world. It’s set fairly and squarely in London in 1908 – the time of the first London Olympic Games. The Olympics form the backdrop to a dizzying adventure that mostly takes place in the Demimonde, mysterious world that lies side by side with the ordinary world. The Demimonde is a world of magic, of lost legends and of sinister plots, of inhabitants who are startling, shadowy and highly unpredictable.

The main characters in ‘The Extinction Gambit’ are Kingsley Ward and Evadne Stephens. Kingsley is a young man, seventeen years old, who has decided to put his studies to one side and pursue a life in the theatre. He has always had a dream to be a stage magician. More than that, he wants to be an escapologist, one of that special breed of magician who escapes from handcuffs, from locked trunks, from straitjackets suspended over a pit of crocodiles. At his first ever professional engagement he meets Evadne Stephens, an astonishingly beautiful, outstandingly talented juggler, who also happens to be an albino and an inventor who delights in building frighteningly lethal weapons and other machines of destruction. She also makes an excellent cup of tea.

When Kingsley’s foster father is abducted, Kingsley hurries to find him. Evadne insists on coming along and soon proves her worth as they plunge into the Demimonde. They flee through drains, tunnels and along London’s long lost underground rivers. They battle ancient magic and strange devices. They encounter the last surviving Neanderthals who are fanatically determined to wipe out the human race. They are assaulted by a trio of immortal magicians who want Kingsley as part of their plan to enslave the world. They are assisted by a famous author who seems to have an agenda of his own.

None of this was what Kingsley had been imagining when he stepped onto the stage of the Alexandra Theatre, and it’s made more difficult for him as he constantly has to struggle with a side of him that is wild, uncontrollable and undeniably wolfish. This is only natural, of course, since he was raised by wolves as a young child.

In short, ‘The Extinction Gambit’ is a helter-skelter fantasy comedy adventure with sandwiches, at the appropriate time.

I’ve had a wonderful time writing ‘The Extinction Gambit’. As usual, I’ve had to undertake mountains of research, but this is almost as much fun as writing the actual story. I’ve uncovered surprising details about the underground geography of London, about the organisation of the Olympic Games and about the nature of Homo Neanderthalis. Much of this didn’t end up in the book, but nothing is ever wasted. After all, we have another two books to come in the series!

Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver

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Imagine living in a world where the sun hasn’t shone for many months.  Because there is no sun, the colour has gone out of the world so everything is grey and gloomy, plants and trees have withered and everyone is miserable.  There is still magic in the world though and this magic has the power to change everything.

Liesl hasn’t left her house in several months.  After her father died, her cruel stepmother locked her in the tiny bedroom in the attic and she’s never allowed out.  Her only friends are the shadows and the mice, until one night a ghost appears.  His name is Po and he comes from a place called the Other Side. Will is an alchemist’s apprentice, helping his mean master gather the ingredients for his strange magical experiments.  One night Will makes a dangerous mistake when he accidentally switches a box containing the most powerful magic in the world with one containing Liesl’s father’s ashes. Will’s mistake has tremendous consequences for Liesl and Po, and it draws them together on an extraordinary journey.

Liesl and Po is one of the most unique and magical books I’ve read. Lauren Oliver’s writing is amazing and she transports you to this weird and wonderful world where the sun hasn’t shone for years and the colour has gone out of the world.  She writes in such a way that it makes you think she must have gone through the whole story picking out the perfect words to describe her characters and the world they live in.  Here’s her description of Will,

“He was wearing a large lumpy coat that came that came well past his knees and had, in fact, most recently belonged to someone twice his age and size.  He carried a wooden box – about the size of a loaf of bread – under one arm, and his hair was sticking up from his head at various odd angles and had in it the remains of hay and dried leaves…”

Lauren Oliver says in the authors note that she wrote Liesl and Po after the death of her best friend, so it is a bit dark in places.  She wrote it in two months and didn’t think it would be published, but I’m certainly glad it was.  If you like Kate DiCamillo’s books, like The Magician’s Elephant and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, you’ll love Liesl and Po.

Interview with Charlie Fletcher

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Charlie Fletcher is the author of one of my favourite reads of 2011, Far Rockaway (you can read my review on the blog).  I caught up with Charlie to ask him a few questions about Far Rockaway, classic characters and writing.

  • Cat and her grandfather Victor, plan to go to Far Rockaway at the end of the subway line.  Is Far Rockaway based on an actual place?

Absolutely, Far Rockaway is based on an actual place. If you’re in New York you can jump on the subway, and take the A-line train all the way eastwards, under the river, through Brooklyn and across Queens on to a long sand spit sticking out into the Atlantic and then you’re on The Rockaways (and if you – like me – have a guilty secret and used to love the Ramones, you’ll recognize the name of the sand you’re now running alongside as Rockaway Beach, the title of one of their fine 3 chord musical wonderments). Then you just stay on the train until it literally runs out of track and America too, and that’s Far Rockaway.The very few trainspotters who will read the book will notice that the A-line begins at the northern tip of Manhattan at a station called Inwood, and that Cat’s journey to the ‘other’ Far Rockaway in the parallel story-world of her coma begins when she wakes up in a wood in a chapter called, er, Inwood. Quite a coincidence, eh?

Of course the other Far Rockaway in the book is an imaginary place, but it’s based on two very real landscapes, Solas Beach on the island of North Uist, and the uninhabited island of Mingulay, both in the Outer Hebrides where we go every summer to recharge the batteries. They’re among my favorite places in the world, and I think even people used to the natural wonders of NZ might find them quite beautiful too.

  • Cat meets some of the best characters from classic adventure stories in Far Rockaway.  Was it difficult to make those characters sound authentic?

If I did get the voices of say, Long John Silver or Alan Breck right, it’s entirely because I’m a writer, and thus a thief, and I stole from the best, for example,  Robert Louis Stevenson. He’s such a tremendously good story-teller and  he created magnificent heroes and anti-heroes in such a well-crafted and distinctive way that their voices just can’t help but live on in your head. And if their voices live in your head, you can then imagine how they might say things the original author never made them say, which makes reviving them such a pleasure.Of course the other thing about writing fiction in general is that you have to be quite a good mimic anyway, remembering both what people say and how they talk: very sadly I can often be found striding up and down my office having imaginary conversations with myself in the guise of my characters, and doing the voices at the same time. It’s a lot less dangerous than the other times when I’m acting out sword fights or bits of action in order to be able to describe them accurately, but it’s MUCH more embarrassing if any of my family walk in and catch me at it. That said, I now do a very good Ray Winstone impression that I perfected while doing the gruff voice of The Gunner in my Stoneheart books , and in Far Rockaway Alan Breck shometimes shounded shtrangely like the younger Sean Connery, though I did try to shtop myshelf before it got sherioushly out of hand…

  • The main character in Far Rockaway, Cat, is a strong, independent girl who doesn’t need anyone to save her.  Is Cat based on someone in particular?

My daughter thinks I was inspired to write the book FOR her, which is generally true, because I write books for both my kids first. And it’s specifically true in this case because when she was about 12 she fell for a certain series of vampire related books but then suddenly un-fell for them a year later (admittedly on a second reading, itself a testament to their great power).  When I asked her why, she said well, she’d kinda liked the girly romance thing and everything first time round, but on a re-read realized that the heroine was always hanging about moping and waiting for the glamorous guys to rescue her. She  – at the ripe old age of 13 – thought that on reflection this was ‘a bit wimpy and old-fashioned’, and that she wanted books with stronger heroines…I could have stood up and cheered.

I didn’t.

I wrote Far Rockaway for her instead.

I did also remember to thank my wife for reading her a great and funny book called The Paper Bag Princess many years before, which put the right foundations in. In my humble opinion, every parent should read The PBP to their daughters (AND sons) if they can find a copy….

What she doesn’t know, and probably shouldn’t, is that Cat’s also inspired BY her, and all the other Real Girls I’m lucky enough to have known, especially that one who married me. I’m not going to drop a Spoiler Bomb on my own book here, but if you want to know how a Real Girl defines herself, there’s a big clue in the last four words on p.403.

  • If you could meet one book character in real life who would you choose?

If it was a female character, it’d be Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. Or Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. Or any or all of Terry Pratchett’s witches – Granny Weatherwax, Magrat or Nanny Ogg.  Or Eowyn from Lord of the Rings. Or Sara Paretsky’s great female detective, V.I. Warshawski.If it was a male character, then it’s Long John Silver from Treasure Island or Alan Breck Stuart from Kidnapped. Or  Mahbub Ali from Kim. I was going to say Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, but then I thought that Merlin from The Sword in the Stone might be more fun, since he’s not only a wizard, but is also living backwards in time. It’d be interesting to see what he had to tell us about the future. And in the same way, but the opposite direction, I’d choose Puck from Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies, because he took his friends into the past and showed them things that happened a long time ago.

Ok. Not what you asked but you have to admit that’s at least  one interesting dinner-party full. If you cruelly limit me to just one, I’m going with Puck, but only because Elizabeth Bennet’s already in love with someone else and I’m no match for a Darcy…

  • What were the books that got you hooked when you were a kid?
Everyone’s reading journey is different, but they all begin with similar primary colours. So here’s an unedited memory dump: Going from my earliest recollections, in order: being read to: Dr Seuss and Winnie the Pooh.  And then reading for myself, pre-teen? Tintin. Paddington. Asterix. Any comic I could find, especially The Eagle, Victor, Hotspur or The Trigan Empire strip off the back end of a mag called Look and Learn.  A book called Mary Plain, also about a bear. Biggles. Enid Blyton. The Borrowers.  The Rescuers. Alan Garner. Geoffrey Treece. Rosemary Sutcliffe. Ian Fleming.  Wildly age-inappropriate Sven Hassel books about an SS Panzer battalion (in mitigation, I was locked in a pretty unreconstructed boy’s boarding school at the time).
Then everything I could lay my hands on, usually passed on from my dad – westerns, especially Louis L’Amour and JT Edson, pulp American crime like Rex Stout and Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, CS Forester’s Hornblower series, lot’s of WW2 and Prisoner of War memoirs (this was the 70’s and there were a lot of them about. I loved the Colditz Story especially since it seemed full of useful tips that might be helpful in escaping the prep school I was stuck in  at the time) Neville Shute, Nicholas Montserrat, Alastair Maclean (I still love his first, HMS Ulysses) and then a teenage double-life reading the classics by day for school and then pleasure, and SF by night – Heinlein, Dick, Asimov, Bester, Niven etc etc. And then it just keeps on getting worse and I always need new bookshelves or a trip to the charity shop with a bag full o’ books. Thank god for the Kindle…
  • If you could give one piece of advice to young writers, what would it be?

As you might think from the above answer; read everything and anything you can lay your hands on. If you want to write: do it. Don’t let anyone discourage you about writing – LEAST OF ALL YOURSELF. Keep at it. Pay attention to everything, because everything matters. So does everyone. Keep writing, even when it’s hard. Don’t be discouraged because what you write sounds like something else you’ve read. That’s not a bad thing. Every writer began like that, and the ones that didn’t are lying. The stuff you read, the stuff you love, the stuff that made you want to write in the first place, that stuff supports you as you set out on your own journey, just like training wheels on a bike when you learn how to ride. You’ll get your balance soon enough and the training wheels will just fall away, and you won’t even notice it until one day you’ll re-read something you just wrote and realize that the voice you’re hearing is your own, shaped by the ones you used to hear, but belonging to no-one but you. It’s a good moment, and if you keep writing, you’ll get there. Good luck and enjoy the ride…..