1. Why did you want to be a writer?
So I could be in complete control of the picture books that I wanted to illustrate.
2. What’s the best thing about being a writer?
Besides working at home in my own studio I enjoy talking to children and adults about my work.
3. What’s your favourite New Zealand book?
“The Three Legged Cat” by Margaret Mahy
4. What do you love most about New Zealand?
Feeling as if I belong here.
5. What book changed your life?
“The Hobbit” by J. R. Tolkein
1. Why did you want to be a writer?
I wanted to be a writer because I absolutely loved reading books and being in libraries. I wanted to help other children find the joy that I found between the pages of so many wonderful children’s books.
2. What’s the best thing about being a writer?
There are many great things about being a writer, but the best thing for me is when children come up and say they love a story I wrote.
3. What’s your favourite New Zealand book?
My favourite NZ book is The Terrible Q by Tanya Batt.
4. What do you love most about New Zealand?
The thing I love most about New Zealand is how easy it is to get to the sea. I love the feeling of looking out over the ocean and imagining what’s on the other side.
5. What book changed your life?
The book that changed my life was a picture book that I was reading at bed time to my two toddlers. I don’t know what the story was but it was probably something by Lynley Dodd. While reading it to the children, I suddenly realised that I had forgotten to be a children’s author! I was already 40 so I very quickly started writing stories and sending them to Learning Media. Before long I was a published author and I haven’t looked back since!
Sharon has been writing for 10 years and has had stories, poems, plays and articles published in the School Journal. Her latest novels, Sabotage and No Survivors, are in the New Zealand My Story series and tell the stories of two girls growing up in New Zealand at the time of the Rainbow Warrior bombing and the Erebus crash. Sharon has also written her own joke book called It’s True! You can make your own jokes, because her son kept trying to make up terrible jokes.
1. Why did you want to be a writer?
Don’t know. Just always did. Maybe because I was a keen reader as a child.
2. What’s the best thing about being a writer?
Visiting schools and literary festivals and meeting your audience. Without that, it would be quite a solitary vocation.
3. What’s your favourite New Zealand book?
Aarrgh! Don’t make me choose. Too many brilliant books to choose from.
4. What do you love most about New Zealand?
The people. The climate. Rangitoto. The beaches. Lots of other things. I miss NZ!
5. What book changed your life?
Any one of the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton. These were a revelation for me. It was fabulously exciting (with lashings of fun) to find a new Enid Blyton book was in the library when I was young. I am sure that these books are part of the reason that I became a writer.
Brian Falkner is the author of The Tomorrow Code, The Real Thing, Brainjack, Northwood, and his latest book, Team Recon Angel: Assault. Visit his website – http://www.brianfalkner.com/
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.
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.
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…
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 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…
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…..
My Best Friends Are Books 