11 Books that have influenced this pre-published author...

They say if you want to write, read. Read, read, read. And write, of course. So, having read Candy Gourlay’s blogpost about the Seven Books from the Last Decade that made her an Author, I started to ponder which books had particularly moved or influenced me. I’m not sure I want to particularly stick to just seven books, or confine them to the last decade because every book I read impacts in some way and there are books that I read as a child that told me that if I could do something like that, well, my life would be a good one.

So deviating slightly from the structure of Candy’s post (and Kathryn Evans, Vanessa Harbour and Dave Cousins - who've done similar posts) here’s my list of influential books, in no particular order (other than the first two):



Linnets and Valerians - Elizabeth Goudge
If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll have seen this one come up time and again. For me it is a classic case of magic and realism brought together beautifully and I suppose, no matter how “dated” the story may seem to a modern child, it is that deftness of touch and lyricism of words that always resounds for me.





The Little White Horse – Elizabeth Goudge
I read this story as a 10 year old, having borrowed it from a friend. Over the years I forgot its title but I never forgot the story - the magic had totally captivated me. Much to my delight, I found it had been reprinted earlier this decade – after JK Rowling had said it had been one of the books which had most inspired her journey to becoming a published author.





Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – JK Rowling
Of all the Harry Potter books this one stood out for me – it further developed the Potteresque world, was better written and combined, as Goudge had done, magic, myth and reality in a classic fantasy. The series per se, no matter what you think of the quality of the writing, opened up the world of reading to many non-reading children - and, in doing so it opened the market for writers and authors.




The Pure Dead series - Debi Gliori
OMG! This woman can make me laugh out loud, she gets humour so bang on and her imagination is a riot. I take my hat off to anyone who writes children’s humour with such insight and ability to tickle the funny bone. Although I don’t write humour, I am well aware of how difficult it is to do and get right, and, moreover, I think every book, irrespective of genre, benefits from having even just a couple of lines which make the reader chuckle.




How I Live Now – Meg Rosoff
I wasn’t sure how I was going to like How I Live Now and I wasn’t sure I felt about it even when I’d finished reading the book. Meg Rosoff broke all sorts of barriers when she wrote this book and I soon came to realise that was exactly the reason why the book resonated for me - and resonated more the longer I thought about it. It’s a book that’s tough, it’s real and it’s powerful, and it’s written by an author unafraid to do things differently and tell the story in a way she has to tell it. Meg has gone on to become one of my favourite authors.



Lucas – Kevin Brooks
I list Lucas as it was the first Kevin Brooks book I read. Frankly, I’d happily list the lot (Road of the Dead, Killing God, Candy, they’re all up there amongst my top books). I love this man’s writing. He’s unafraid to tackle difficult subjects (in Lucas he deals with love, hatred, prejudice and jealousy), and he writes in a way that may be defined as both art and craft. He’s good, really good, and if I get to write anywhere near as well as him, tackling tough subjects head on and yet with insight, sensitivity and power, I’ll be happy.
(You can read my interview with Kevin Brooks here.)


Wicked Lovely – Melissa Marr
This is a book that brings me back almost full circle – it’s urban fantasy, myth and lore colliding head on with reality. It’s faeries and humans and all the confusion and hopes of being a young adult in-between. There’s romance, there’s grit, there’s magic – it’s the sort of mix that I would have loved to read as a 16 year old. It’s got everything that has timeless appeal to older teen girls.




Crossing the Line – Gillian Philip
This was the first of Gillian’s books which I read and I knew immediately I was in the hands (or between the pages) of an author who was going places. Like Kevin Brooks, Gillian is unafraid to tackle tough subjects – and to do so with tremendous insight - and deft touches of humour – take it from me, it’s not an easy balance to get right. Gillian’s honesty and her fearlessness really struck and resonated with me.
(You can read my interview with Gillian Philip here.)



Tall Story – Candy Gourlay
Candy is a writer whom one cannot help but admire and respect. I have watched her journey through the slushpile over the years. Her sheer determination to work at and hone her craft and achieve publication are credit to her, and the arrival of Tall Story on the shelves earlier this year proves that working at it and persevering are worth it. Tall Story is a triumph and in so many ways. It’s a story that blends magic, humour, reality and it makes you laugh and cry. Moreover, it’s a book that is superbly crafted and deserves every award for which it is being nominated. Of course, I am biased – Candy is my pal and critique partner and I’m kind of hopeful that some process of osmosis will occur…
(You can read my interview with Candy Gourlay here.)


City of Thieves – Ellen Renner
Now here’s another author (and pal and critique partner) who has honed her craft. For me, Ellen Renner’s characterization and her ability to “show not tell”, stands out from the crowd. She is also unafraid to tackle big subjects in a way which is accessible to younger children. If you want to learn about crafting a story, and enjoy a jolly good adventure which challenges your thinking at the same time, you couldn’t do better than reading this book.
(You can read my interview with Ellen Renner here and my review of City of Thieves here.)


Forbidden – Tabitha Suzuma
I’ll be honest, I struggled with Forbidden – and yet I couldn’t put it down. For me, what stands out is Tabitha’s ability to tackle the grittiest, the most challenging of subjects - and to do it bravely, honestly and without pandering to niceties and sensitivities. Forbidden is a story which challenges not only the reader and his/her perceptions, but, I suspect, heartily challenges the publishing industry as to what is acceptable reading for young adults. Yet Forbidden is also a book which is beautifully crafted and sensitively told. All credit to Tabitha for her courage in writing Forbidden.
(You can read my interview with Tabitha Suzuma here.)


You’ll probably have noticed that most of the books that stand out for me are written for teens or young adults – and that’s because I’m blown away by the quality and variety of writing for this age group and wish that books like these had been around when I was 16. I guess it also becomes pretty apparent that similar things constantly inspire and inform me – from craft to honesty, from perseverance to genre – and frequently the blending of realism with “magic” or the supernatural. But above all, I think it is the courage of each writer to boldly and deftly tell the stories they simply have to tell. With each book I read, with each aspect that stands out for me and which I take on board, I know my own writing grows stronger as does my confidence in telling the stories I know I too have to tell.

And the winners are...

The opportunity to win a signed copy of Ellen Renner’s wonderful children’s novel, City of Thieves has now passed.

And there are two winners.

Yes, it was all done properly. To the chagrin of my tree-hugging friends, I printed out all the entries, cut up the paper and folded it neatly. Then I put the names into a mixing bowl – sorry, no hat available – and tossed them together like a good salad, and got Lovely Husband to close his eyes and draw two names from the bowl.

So, I’m happy to announce that the winners are…

Michele Fabio of the blog Bleeding Espresso,

and

Alice – for whom I have no contact details.

So, Alice, would you please contact me by Monday 20th December - you will find an email address on the blog’s profile page - and let me have your postal details so Ellen can send you your copy.

Congratulations to both of you, and I hope you both enjoy reading Ellen’s wonderful story!

To the rest of you, I’m sorry you couldn’t all get a copy of City of Thieves, but thanks for entering!

UPDATE - 21 December 2010:

I've not heard from Alice and have no way of contacting her, so I've drawn another name from the mixing bowl - and this time the winner is BlueIceGal from the Fantasy4Eva blog. BlueIceGal, I'll be contacting you via your blog to get your postal details. Congratulations on the win!

An interview with Nick Green, debut author of The Cat Kin

For thousands of years it has been a secret: the Ancient Egyptian art of moving and sensing like a cat. Now, for the first time, the hidden world of Pashki is revealed.
The Cat Kin tells its story.

I wasn’t sure that, as a dog lover, I was going to like Nick Green’s The Cat Kin, but The Cat Kin is a gripping story about children who learn to tap into their inner cat – their Mau power. It is a brilliant read for 9 – 12 year olds who’re looking for excitement, danger and adventure. In The Cat Kin, Nick Green has created a well-written and intriguing book that will hold your attention the whole way through – and asking if there’s to be a sequel.


Ben and Tiffany never expected their after-school gym class to be like this. For Mrs Powell teaches pashki, a lost art from an age when cats were worshipped as gods. But who is their eccentric old teacher? What does she really want with them? And why are they suddenly able to see in the dark? They are going to need all of their nine lives...


It’s my pleasure to interview Nick Green on Absolute Vanilla and learn more about The Cat Kin and writing.

Children's author, Nick Green and his cat, Red.


I heed no words nor walls

Through darkness I walk in day

And I do not fear the tyrant.

First off, Nick, the obvious question – why a book about cats and Pashki? Where did the inspiration come from, where did you learn about Pashki and, why Pashki in particular?

Well, I like cats, of course, except before 6am. Years ago I read something interesting. Domestic cats, even those that are kept indoors, rarely lose their extraordinary agility, no matter how sofa-bound they are. The theory is that all the stretching they do keeps them in shape – like a kind of natural yoga or Pilates. My wife’s into yoga, and I still have an old notebook with this note in it: ‘Cat yoga… what if humans did cat yoga? Would they become as agile as cats?’ Then asterisked: *A form of yoga that gives you cat-like powers.*

This idea languished for over a year in the notebook, because (perhaps absurdly) I couldn’t see where to take it. I didn’t want to write a ‘superhero’ story, I wanted to be a more literary author than that! Then, one evening, I was watching an overblown action movie on TV, and was forced to admit that I really liked this sort of stuff. I thought, ‘I should stop trying to be worthy, and write something like this.’ Then I remembered the old scribble in the notebook. Before long the ‘cat yoga’ had a name – pashki – and the story just caught fire.


Did you have to do much research in writing The Cat Kin and if so, in terms of which aspects of the story?

Pashki I decided would be Ancient Egyptian in origin (as cats were a sacred animal in that culture), so I did a fair bit of research there. The name takes ‘pash’ from the cat goddess Pasht or Bast and ‘ki’ from the word meaning ‘spiritual power’ or ‘life force’ in many cultures. In fact, in Ancient Egyptian this word is actually ‘ka’, but I presumed a certain evolution of the word over time. And pashki just sounded better.

I also read up a lot about cats, just trying to absorb any information that might help in developing pashki and the characters. I wanted pashki to seem as real as possible, and worked out complex systems for it, only a fraction of which make it into the first book (although more trickles out in the sequels). Research into real martial arts and also disciplines like yoga and tai chi helped to ground it in something that hopefully feels real.

Some other research was into muscular dystrophy (a disease which affects Tiffany’s brother in the book) and also into bear farming in China, a real-life atrocity on which I based something similar that features in the book. For obvious reasons I didn’t make it bears in my story, but this foul and pointless practice continues and makes me angry beyond belief.


You tie the Pashki theme into some fairly esoteric stuff – meditation, awareness, chakras, yoga, inner power – what is your view on alternative ways of being and experiencing the world?

Perhaps surprisingly, I’m a rationalist to the bone. I don’t have ‘spiritual’ beliefs myself, of any kind. However, I am fascinated by them. I think such things are our attempts to explore our own selves, the mystery of our own consciousness. I find it quite easy to reconcile a stunned awe and wonder at the world, with the underlying premise that it is rationally explicable. For example – I don’t believe that crystals are magical. But it fascinates me to ask why some people think they are! What is it about a transparent, angular mineral that fires our imaginations? What is going on there? Why is it beautiful? The questions that follow on from that are endless.


The adventure elements of the story notwithstanding, you actually tackle some pretty big issues, for example developers who literally get away with murder, animal abuse, domestic violence, divorce, chronic illness, shonky alternative medicine. Did you deliberately set out to cover so much or did the story just unfold like that?

‘Shonky’ – great word! And a new one on me. Let me see… I suppose it just turned out like that. I tend to plan my plots in advance, but since plot must be driven by character, this means I need the kind of characters who will deliver me that plot! But Ben and Tiffany aren’t heroic by nature, they’re just kids. So I had to throw a lot of problems and upheaval at them to make them get up and go. Why those problems in particular? I suppose they were things that either bothered or intrigued me. There are real landlords like John Stanford; animal cruelty like that really goes on. I suppose I was following one of the writer’s top tips: write everything you love, and everything you hate.

Nick Green

To what extent did your own personal life experiences inform the story?

My own parents did divorce, but the situation was nothing like Ben’s. I was at pains to point this out to my own mum, who on reading the book said to me, ‘You’ve made me really awful!’ There was one line, I think, which echoes a real-life incident in our lives! Everything else was entirely made up. But people will see themselves in books. Especially parents. I’m sure my own experiences do colour the story throughout, but in such tiny bits and pieces that no-one but me would ever notice.


Of the two main characters, Ben and Tiffany, who do you prefer more, which one resonates more for you and which one was easier to write – and why?

It’s hard to say. I’m writing book 3 now and I still don’t know. When I’m writing Tiffany I think, ‘She’s so much easier than Ben,’ and when I’m writing Ben I think, ‘He’s so much easier than Tiffany.’ They’re like different hemispheres of my brain. Tiffany shares my love of cats and is more middle-class, like me. Whereas Ben has something of my hot-headedness about him, and of course he’s a boy which might make it easier. But I must say I like writing girl parts – you can say more and be more open, and you don’t have to always mask emotions! That can be really tiring; boys don’t reveal as much, they tend to imply more.


You’ve created some spectacular villains in The Cat Kin – what was it like to create and write such ultimate baddies?

Glad you like them! I used a tip from Roald Dahl there. He once wrote that the trick to a good story is to have really detestable villains. John Stanford is the less evil of the two; once or twice he almost shows flickers of conscience. But I pulled out all the stops with Philip Cobb, to make him truly diabolic. He could be exhausting to write; trying to imagine what it’s like to be that person, with no empathy or morality at all. Sometimes you feel like you need a shower after being around him.




Mrs Powell, the Pashki teacher, is an elusive and mysterious character – quite catlike, one might say. Was her characterization a deliberate attempt to make her seem more cat than human?

Absolutely. She’s done pashki for so long that it’s fundamental to who she is. Also, without giving too much away, it might be all she has left now. By nature she is a very alone person, and it strikes me probably very lonely too; but she’s made her choices in life and has the courage to live with them.


Although he’s a secondary character, you create strong characterization in Tiffany’s brother, Stuart, a child with Muscular Dystrophy. Were you inspired by anyone in the creation of Stuart and what prompted you to choose MD as his illness?

I was approached recently by a muscular dystrophy charity, who assumed from my book that I had personal experience of the disease. I don’t, touch wood. I just researched it, like everything else. Reading about some young sufferers, I was struck by their courage at living with this debilitating condition, and how in their own way, they were heroes. If you have severe MD, picking up a book can feel like lifting a bookcase. MD seemed a poignant contrast to what happens to Ben and Tiffany, who develop superhuman physical prowess. Stuart is the flip side of Tiffany – his muscles are wasting away, but in many respects he’s every bit as heroic as her. I like him a lot; he has more to do in subsequent books, as he becomes the only non-Cat Kin person to learn Tiffany’s secret.


The Cat Kin is a brilliant adventure, is it the sort of book you would have read as a child? And what sort of books did you enjoy when you were younger, and did they, or any book in particular, inspire you to write for children?

The authors I read most as a child were Diana Wynne Jones, Susan Cooper, Nicholas Fisk, Robert Westall, Tolkien, C. S. Lewis… I don’t know if any of them are remotely similar. Perhaps Fisk. It could be that I’ve filled in a gap in my own reading, by writing the book I would have liked to discover back then. Who knows! I’m not sure why I chose to write for children. Maybe it was that I remembered my childhood reading so fondly. The books you read as a child can stay with you for life. That doesn’t seem to happen so much as an adult. There are books I read now and adore; but they don’t become part of me. I’ve lost that ability that children have to take something absolutely to heart.


The Cat Kin is your debut novel – what did it feel like when it was accepted for publication? And what has been the best and worst thing about being a published author?

The big ‘hooray’ moment was getting an agent. That felt like my big break. Then I waited a year with no news at all, officially ‘gave up’ and self-published. The self-published book caught the attention of Faber, but before long it became clear that they didn’t want to do the full trilogy, so I had to get the rights back in order to publish the sequels somewhere else. I’m now with Strident, who are great, so it’s now my ‘second debut’ if you will. I’m too wised-up now to feel more than cautious optimism. I just get my head down and write.


Finally – what next for Nick Green?

The rest of the Cat Kin trilogy will be out in due course. Book 2 (Cat’s Paw) was briefly available in self-published form, but the Strident version will be much better produced. Book 3 I’m halfway to finishing now. I also have two new, unrelated books currently looking for a publisher. I’m really pleased with them, but it’s now harder than ever to get publishers interested. But they’ll be out there sooner or later. Just you wait.

'Pashki awakens the part of yourself that is like a cat. For cats have much to teach us. They are proud spirits yet calm. They live in the present, without worries beyond it. Cats are pools of serenity that may surge up in storms. They are weightless clouds that can quicken to lightning.'

To find out more about the books, Nick and Pashki, visit Nick Green’s website .

To order a copy of The Cat Kin go to Amazon.co.uk or order directly from Strident Publishers.

An interview with children’s author, Ellen Renner

Introducing children's author, Ellen Renner

I know many lament social networking and in particular the productivity sink that is Facebook. But for me, it has been a godsend - as aware as I am of its shortcomings. As you will have gathered from the various interviews with fellow writers, Facebook has been a fertile meeting ground, and I’m happy to introduce to you yet another of my writer pals found through the connectivity of social networking.

Ellen Renner was kind enough to send me a copy of her debut novel Castle of Shadows when it became blindingly obvious on someone’s Facebook wall that I hadn’t read the book. What a treat!

Castle of Shadows is shortlisted for the West Sussex Children’s Book Award and on the Times and Independent newspapers’ lists of suggested summer reading. For readers aged 9+, it’s a beautifully written story, full of political intrigue, derring-do, wit, imagination and has a plot that twists and turns through chapters filled with smoke and mirrors. It is a story which is filled with evocative imagery and has a feisty heroine whose life story pulls at the heartstrings. It is a thoroughly enjoyable romp of a read!

The blurb reads as follows: The day Charlie discovers a scrap of paper that could solve the dark mystery of her mother's disappearance, her world changes. Forever. Charlie and her friend, Toby, must race against time on a dangerous mission to uncover the sinister truth. But in this shadowy world of secrets and lies, there is more to fear than they can possibly imagine...

But without further ado, let me introduce to Ellen Renner.

Children's author, Ellen Renner

Ellen, the clarity of your descriptions gripped me from the start. You paint the most vivid images with words and without lapsing into rambling prose. You do that thing that writers are always admonished to do – you show rather than tell. Examples which spring to mind are: “His voice was soft and sharp, like a slice of lemon cake.” “The dress was made of silk the colour of cool water.” “The pain was too fierce for tears. It burnt them to ash.” Did you find it easy to show, was it something that came naturally to you or was it something you had to work on?

Hi Nicky,

First, thanks so much for interviewing me. There’s nothing writers like more than talking about their books!
Show-not-tell. That’s the mantra, isn’t it? But you have to know how to do both. Sometimes you need to tell. However, it’s certainly true that if you want to write for the children’s or YA market these days, you must be able to show. It’s partly a fashion for filmic writing. But for me it’s also the most effective way to accomplish what I want to do.
I want the reader to experience, as much as is possible, what it feels like to ‘be’ my character. If I keep jumping out of their point of view and into an authorial voice with loads of objective description, back-story or telling, I not only slow the pace, I yank the reader out of my character’s head.
I do tell in several places in Castle, just to get some information in there the reader has to have and which I can’t do any other way. But I keep those sections to an absolute minimum. I try to work them in as seamlessly as I can and I always know when I’m doing it.
I’ve been teaching creative writing for a few years and show-not-tell is the number one problem most beginning and intermediate writers have. It’s like maths, it just has to click and then you get it. You must always know when you are telling and why. After that, by all means break the rules if that’s what’s best for your story – form should follow function – as long as you’re in control of the technique and not the other way round. Editors and agents tend to immediately reject any manuscript that starts off with back-story or telling, especially if you’re a new writer, so use with caution.


Castle of Shadows is a very rich story, a layered tapestry of political intrigue, emotion, and the heartfelt quest of one girl to find her mother. How did the idea for the book develop and what came first – the character of Charlie (Princess Charlotte Augusta Joanna Hortense of Quale), the setting i.e. the castle, the political intrigue – or something else – and, what was your inspiration?

The characters came first, the mad king and his neglected daughter. The image of the king dangling from his scaffolding about to put the last card in place on his enormous card castle just popped into my head one day.
I started off by staying in my comfort zone. I was thinking fables, a short book for younger readers, nothing too big or ambitious. Then something happened and I realised that playing safe was not an option if I ever wanted to get anywhere with my writing. I had to try to write the sort of book I actually wanted to read. I knew I had the germ of a good idea and I didn’t want to waste it.
Castle, as you say, has layers. There are some pretty heavy themes going on in the background: bad parenting, the threat of war, political and scientific responsibility, and what happens to children when grownups do the wrong things for what they think are the right reasons. It has a complex plot set in an alternative world and the hardest thing of all was to juggle all of that and keep the narrative moving forward at a page-turning pace.
The book might never have been finished if Helen Corner hadn’t run the 2007 Cornerstones Wow Factor competition. A writing buddy encouraged me to enter and then I had to write to speed to keep up with the deadlines. Castle of Shadows won and I got my agent as a result.


The depiction of the Charlie’s father, the king, swinging from the scaffolding building his castles in the air, his castles of cards is a particularly powerful image, and in multiple ways. Can you tell us more about this and what it means to you?

It is the book. It was the genesis and yes, it’s loaded thematically. My original title was Castle of Cards. Worlds built on lies, crumbling castles, political intrigue, personal relationships, identity, the king’s own fragile emotional state – it all refers back to that first image. And then there’s the climactic scene …
I feel quite tenderly towards the king: he’s gentle, kind, well-intentioned – and a bad parent. Life has proved hard and he’s opted out, neglecting the kingdom and his child, leaving her to cope with the loss of her mother on her own. She’s lonely, isolated and abused by the housekeeper, although he doesn’t know about that – or to be more accurate, he hasn’t noticed.
There’s a bit of him that’s about parents who become obsessed with their work to the point that they neglect their children. My son suffered some benign neglect while I was writing the book and some of my guilt is in there, although he was probably very pleased that Mum had something else to worry about for a while.




There is a lot of detail in terms of cloth and clothing, the castle layout, the pneumatic railway in the story. Did you have to do a lot of research and could you see clearly in your mind’s eye what you wanted to describe?

I did a lot of research. I write visually so I want to be able to see a scene, like a film playing before my eyes. The book is set in an alternative Victorian kingdom, and as much as possible corresponds to 1840s England – a fascinating period of political, social and technological upheaval. A time of boom and bust, extremes of poverty and wealth, mass migrations to the cities. The French revolution still loomed large in the imagination of the English political class: they were terrified of mass unrest and the Whigs begin the process of political reform and extending the franchise as a way of addressing these fears. Pneumatic and atmospheric railways existed. Isambard Kingdom Brunel built the only working atmospheric railway in Britain in the 1830s between Teignmouth and Starcross in Devon. It only ran for a year because rats ate the waxed leather seals and the vacuum kept failing. Vulcanised rubber was invented 10 years later. If that timing had been different, we might still be riding on atmospheric trains. There’s a working one in South America somewhere.

You’re an American who has lived in the UK for many years and your story has a quintessentially English feel to it, is this because you are completely at ease with the language and literary style of your adopted country, or because you set out to create a particular style?

I’ve lived in the UK for twenty years now. I’m doubtless pretty anglicised, although I try to keep that detachment which is one of the great benefits of being an ex-pat. My vocabulary is a mixture and I forget these days whether a term is American or English. I grew up reading a lot of English fiction, which is one of the reasons I headed to the UK first when I started traveling. I come from the Ozark mountains of southern Missouri and live in Devon now, where the local accent and dialect remind me of the Ozarks (as does the countryside). I use a vernacular for Tobias; his words may be anglicised but his rhythms and tone have a bit of Ozarks in there, I think. And that’s the lovely thing about alternative worlds: anything goes as long as there’s an internal logic.


There were many aspects of Castle of Shadows the reminded me of the classics of English children’s literature. To what extent have you read and been influenced by those English classics?

Massively. I discovered I wanted to write for children after I moved to the UK. My husband and I are always buying books; our house has piles of them everywhere because there are never enough shelves. We spent a lot of our pre-parent days trawling through second-hand book shops. He’d disappear into history, biography and social sciences, and I’d head for fiction. I bought lots of lovely old Puffins and dug in. Sometimes I’ll revisit a favourite, like Tom’s Midnight Garden or The Way to Sattin Shore, by Philippa Pearce, or John Gordon’s The Giant Under the Snow, or Leon Garfield’s brilliant Smith. I’ve read everything by Joan Aiken, Margaret Mahy and Diana Wynne Jones many times over, and I’m kept busy these days reading people like Garth Nix, Jonathan Stroud, Charlie Fletcher and Sally Gardner. My current to-be-read pile is nearly as tall as the king’s card castle and contains Halo by Zizou Corder, Hootcat Hall by Lucy Coats, The Ogre of Oglefort by Eva Ibbotson and Amazing Grace by Mary Hooper, to name just a few. There are so many good books out there!


Castle of Shadows is the first book of a quartet. Did you know from the start there’d be more than one book or did the ideas evolve as you progressed through the Castle of Shadows?

I fully intended to write a stand-alone. The message was clear: publishers do not want trilogies or quartets. But the characters hadn’t finished with me. Castle does work as a stand-alone, but I wanted to write Tobias’ story before I’d finished the first draft of Castle and as soon as that was winging its way to the Cornerstones competition I set down and wrote the first draft of City of Thieves in about six weeks.
There are four books. Each has its own villain and contains a complete story which is resolved, but at the same time there’s is a larger villain and over-arching story for the entire quartet. That has been great fun to work out. I don’t like series where a book just stops with a ‘to be continued’. There can be a sense of the larger story continuing, but I want that specific story to have a finite shape and resolution.

Ellen signs books for fans

Castle of Shadows is rich with political intrigue; the entire story revolves against this backdrop of deceit, machinations and the lust for power. What prompted you to choose politics as your canvas for Charlie’s story? And do you think it’s the sort of scenario young readers can readily appreciate?

I don’t think any subject is out of bounds if handled appropriately. My readers are 9+, same age as Harry Potter and Dark Materials. Speaking of which, ‘deceit, machinations and the lust for power’ figure pretty largely in both of those. Politics is everywhere. It affects most aspects of children’s lives and kids are not stupid or unaware, especially these days.
But the book isn’t overtly about politics. Grownups reading it will see the political aspect; many kids will be reading it purely for the adventure. At that level it’s no different than any other book with a big villain. Most villains are after power in some form: Voldemort, Lord Asriel, The Wicked Witch of the West, Aladdin’s uncle. Castle of Shadows is enjoying a wide readership; because it has levels, kids and grownups both seem to like it. At the most basic, it’s a fairy tale: mad king, neglected daughter, evil advisor. Mostly, the kids are responding to the characters of Charlie and Tobias. They are living the adventure with them.


Were you, in choosing a political backdrop, deliberately intending to parody the machinations of government or a particular state or system of government?

No. The book started with the image of a king building a castle of cards. If you have mad king you have a kingdom in trouble. It begs the question of who’s running it. Enter a prime minister. It’s that simple.
But it’s certainly true that my own preoccupations determine the slant a story will take. I was around ten when I learnt about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII. Ever since, I’ve been obsessed with the question of whether or not scientists have moral responsibility for their discoveries.
So yes, the world of my book contains a weapon of mass destruction and impending war. During the Iraq war the news media in the UK reported on ‘collateral damage’. It was no surprise to learn that the majority of those killed and injured were women and children. It’s always been the weakest in society – women, children and the elderly – who suffer most in wars. So an obvious question is: Can you be an effective politician in an imperfect world and remain a moral being? Windlass does bad things for what he believes are good reasons. Is he right? Are there levels of morality where shades of grey slide into black and when does that happen?
Again, these were some issues I was thinking about as I wrote the book, but it’s part of that thing about levels. It’s background. Adults may see some of it, but I doubt many children are aware of these themes as they read. Page-turning adventure is what they want and what I was determined to provide.




Returning once again to your fabulously evocative descriptions, I laughed out loud at the image of the “fishy” Esceanian ambassador, I couldn’t help but love the loyal Mr Moleglass, the butler, and I bristled in indignation at the malevolent and scheming Mrs O’Dair in her bustling bombazine. You have a wealth of brilliantly depicted characters and I have to wonder, are any of your characters based on real people? And, how do you go about getting to know your characters?

I think the best fiction is character-led. My characters are the heart of my books, although I love plot twists and shamelessly manipulate my readers to keep them turning the pages. I don’t draw on real life for my characters. I don’t know where they come from and I don’t enquire too closely. They always seem to show up as needed, often fully formed. Only one of the minor characters in Castle is partially based on a real person, and he was added in the very last draft for plot reasons.


I was intrigued throughout the story by Charlie’s maturity. You’ve made her 11 but in many ways, despite her tomboy-ishness, she reads more like she’s 14 or 15 – both in her manners and her interactions with other characters. What made you settle on 11 as her age when the book could easily have been targeted at a Young Adult audience and might even be said to be a little too mature for a 9 – 12 year old market?

I see this rather differently. Charlie’s rising 12. Her mother’s a scientific genius and Charlie is no slouch in the brain stakes, but that’s really beside the point. Her circumstances have formed her: she’s had to raise herself since the age of six, living by her wits and facing a formidable enemy in Mrs O’Dair. She’s lost her mother and is emotionally abandoned by her father, who is a burden of care to her rather than a parent. I would be surprised if she didn’t seem older than her years. I’m sure that Elizabeth the First, who lived her childhood in traumatic and dangerous circumstances, was precocious as well. She would have had to be to survive. (btw, the red hair is not coincidental.)
Adults tend to forget what it was like to be ten or eleven or twelve. I remember that age vividly: what I was reading and thinking about, my moral and philosophical preoccupations, the conversations I had with friends. At 9+ brains are fully formed and functioning; it’s only experience and context which is lacking. I would always rather err on the side of over-estimating anyone, especially children, which is why I also don’t simplify language past a certain point. If the story is good enough, kids will skip over words they don’t know, getting enjoyment from the sound of them and meaning from context. It’s how you learn.
Also, I don’t think this is a teen idea: it’s classic adventure story territory, no more complicated than the setup in the Harry Potter or Dark Materials books. And quite frankly I didn’t want Charlie and Tobias snogging! There aren’t enough adventure books for 9+ with strong female leads. Girls are often ghettoised into pink and sparkly. Publishers are worried boys won’t read about female characters. Well, they do if you give them the right one. Pullman proved that with Lyra, and boys seem to be loving this book as much as the girls.


Castle of Shadows’ sequel, City of Thieves, in which Charlie’s friend, Tobias Petch plays a starring role is due out in August this year. What made you want to write about Toby in particular in the sequel?

Yes, the second book belongs to Tobias although Charlie is still a strong presence. She returns to the foreground in the last two books. I can’t say very much about my reasons without giving away a plot twist in Castle of Shadows, but Tobias is a boy with secrets. He has a pretty big problem as well as an unusual talent, and both those things were begging to be written about. It was also necessary for the overall narrative arc that his story be told next. I loved writing him. In some ways, he’s easier to write than Charlie, because his personality is simpler and more direct.




Castle of Shadows is your debut novel; what has the journey to publication been like for you and what advice would you give aspiring authors?

That’s a huge question; we could do an entire interview on that. My journey has been untypical. I’d only ever previously submitted one other thing to an agent, a short book for 7-9 year olds (which was rejected). But I had spent years learning to write and studying what was being published. I only started to submit once I felt I was writing at a professional level. Castle of Cards (as it was then) won the 2007 Cornerstones/Writer’s News Wow Factor competition for best unpublished children’s book, which brought me to the attention of my agent, Rosemary Canter. There was luck involved as I very nearly didn’t enter the competition. There’s been bad luck too, of course. Some debuts may have stress-free and magical journeys to publication, most of us do not.
As a pre-published writer I didn’t really look past the goal of getting an agent and then a book deal. It’s such a huge, difficult thing to achieve, especially these days. Things happened fast after the Cornerstones win, and I found that my journey had only just started. The learning curve is huge and no one has time to tell you anything, so you wing it. Possibly the worst thing is that it becomes increasingly difficult to find time to write, which is what you love doing and is the only reason you’re here in the first place.
Advice? First, make sure you know what you want out of your writing. There’s nothing wrong with writing for pleasure and if you want to share your stories with friends and family, internet self-publishing is much easier now. If your ambition is to be published traditionally, then make sure you want it badly enough, because unless you’re very very lucky, there’s little money in it and a great deal of stress. You will have to promote. You will have less time for writing and your family. The positive side is worth it for me: seeing your book in shops and libraries and meeting readers is all fabulous, as is a glowing review in a national paper. Best of all is the fact that people are reading your story and giving it life beyond you. The first time I saw a copy of my book in a public library was one of the most thrilling of my life!
But do be aware that the climate is very harsh right now. Publishers are forced by current market conditions and the power of retail monopolies to take a scatter-gun approach to writers. They throw a number out there every year and see who sticks. Unless they’ve paid mega-bucks for you in a huge auction (probably becoming a thing of the past as most of these advances fail to pay back), you’ll be doing most of the promotion yourself. And if you don’t sell well enough, you’ll find it very hard to get another publishing deal.
Still want to find an agent and get a book deal? Okay, write for yourself and write the best book you can. In order to do that, join SCBWI, find a good critique group, learn to re-write and develop a very thick skin for rejection.
And when you are getting close to publication – when you are getting personalised rejections – get a website up, start blogging, get on FB and Twitter and build relationships. Don’t just promote yourself: be interesting and supportive. You need to be doing that at least six months before the book comes out. I didn’t. I was too busy writing, the family was very busy, I’m shy and don’t like the idea of self-promotion. Well, six months on and I’m still struggling to catch up. You have to get yourself out there. On the positive side, I love school visits and working with the children almost as much as writing. It’s a rare privilege

Ellen on a school visit, with some of her readers

Tell us what it felt like when you landed an agent and then a publishing contract?

It was great, of course, but in hindsight I wasn’t ready for either. I’d been a member of SCBWI for five or six years and thought I was clued up, but I was dreadfully naive. Again, if I had been on Facebook talking to all you lovely people I would have been a whole lot wiser. When Rosemary Canter told me she wanted Castle to be a ‘big’ book, at first I thought she meant longer. Duh! What I hadn’t realised (although I thought I had) is how fast the industry is changing and will continue to change. We’re in uncharted waters.


And finally, where to from here for Ellen Renner?

City of Thieves is out in the UK August 2010 and has an amazing cover. I can’t wait to hold a copy in my hands! The autumn is already booking out with promotional events: school visits, festivals, library visits, book store signings. And I get to go to Sussex in November to visit schools taking part in the West Sussex Award process: 74 schools are studying the 9 shortlisted books over the autumn term. So it’s going to be very busy. I have to write a book as well. And it needs to be brilliant. So it’s all pretty fantastic, really.


Many thanks to Ellen for agreeing to be interviewed and here’s wishing her all the very best of luck and success in her ongoing authorial adventuring!


For more about Ellen Renner see her website

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All images courtesy of Ellen Renner

A cosy chat with children's author, Lucy Coats

Children's author, Lucy Coats

The inimitable and rather wonderful Lucy Coats is another children’s author whom I was lucky enough to “meet” on Facebook, and I’d like to think we “just clicked”. Lucy is brilliant – funny, feisty and a wonderful children’s writer. As I read the bundle of books Lucy so kindly sent me I kept asking myself, “Where was Lucy Coats when I was a child?!” It strikes me as totally unreasonable that she wasn’t around then!

Lucy has a passion for mythology which weaves itself through all her storytelling, because Lucy is not just an author, she’s a storyteller of the very best kind. Her stories, from the obviously mythological like the Greek Beasts and Heroes stories to the sublimely magical Hootcat Hill show her fascination with the power of myth.

It was when I started to read Hootcat Hill that I knew I was in trouble though. Trouble of the very best kind. I didn’t want to finish the book. I wanted it, instead, to go on forever and ever and ever. I wanted to read it as slowly as possible, savouring each delectable morsel. And it was then that I realised why. Hootcat Hill reminded me so strongly as my favourite book from childhood – Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse - the book which JK Rowling has said had the most profound impact on her wanting to be a writer.

I so enjoyed doing this interview with Lucy, it was like sitting down and chatting with a favourite friend, all that was missing were the tea and scones, or nice bottle of red wine... So, given this is a lengthy interview, but a fun one, I suggest you get yourself a cup of tea (or whatever you fancy) and settle down to chat with us.




Okay, Lucy, I have to ask this one, given what I’ve just written: Are you familiar with the work of Elizabeth Goudge and if so, do you think her writing has influenced your own in any way? And what is it about her work that holds such appeal for so many children’s writers?

You couldn’t have asked me a better question, Nicky. I am indeed familiar with Elizabeth Goudge—in fact, she would be right up there in my Top Ten Writers of All Time. Like you, I adored The Little White Horse as a child, but my own favourite was The Valley of Song, now sadly long out of print, (and I’ve never come across anyone else who’s read it). It has the same perfectly magical feel as LWH, but with the added bonus of a door to another world. Tabitha, the practical, messy and determined heroine, is who I named my own daughter after. There’s a real sense of wide-eyed childlike innocence and wonder about The Workshop behind the little door in the quarry—and some great mythological references, which of course I love. It’s a book I should very much like to have written myself. Other Goudges I couldn’t do without on my bookshelves are Towers in the Mist, which taught me so much about Elizabethan England (as well as introducing me to Walter Raleigh’s wonderful poem ‘The Passionate Pilgrim’), and Henrietta’s House (part of the City of Bells cycle). I want to live in that house SO much!
What is it about her work we all like so much? I think the way she deals with language is part of it. Her descriptions are so lush and lyrical that they are almost edible, and yet she never overdoes it. Her characters have a goodness and luminescence about them which is enchanting (in the literal sense of the word), but they are in no way ‘goodie-goodies’ as many of the other child characters written at the same period are--instead being endearingly human in their failings. There’s just a perfect lightness of touch about her writing which I would certainly aspire to emulate—that you compare me to her in any sense has made my head swell to twice its normal size, and I am overjoyed!
I don’t ever think much about being influenced by other writers, really. But if the concoctions in my ‘cauldron of creation’ are, in part, the sum of the books I have read and loved immeasurably, then Elizabeth Goudge would certainly be a rare and marvellous ingredient in the brew.

My own small collection of Elizabeth Goudge books

You have an undoubted passion for mythology – not only Greek mythology as you show in Greek Beasts and Heroes but in all mythology – from what does this passion stem and when did you first discover the importance of mythology in your own life?

I must have been about seven when I was given a copy of Stories of King Arthur illustrated by Harry Theaker (and priced at seventeen shillings and sixpence, which just shows how ancient I am). That set me on the quest for anything to do with Arthur and his gang. But the two books which led me into Greek mythology and hooked me forever were given to me by my grandmother, who had been given them by her own mother. They were Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales (A Wonder Book), and Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes both published in the 1850’s. What they taught me was that although some of the same stories were to be found in each book, it was possible to tell them in completely different ways. Those were the books which showed me that storytelling had the potential for infinite variety, and that myths were the ultimate stories to tell—or to plunder for material.

Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales and Kingsley's The Heroes

How important do you think it is for children today to understand mythology, and why?

Hmmn. I don’t know that I do think it’s important for children to understand mythology itself, per se. Not in the scholarly sense, anyway. What is vital, though, is for them to understand at a young age that the myth stories themselves are full of wonder and excitement—and that many of the bestselling books they read (say Harry Potter), films they watch (like Percy Jackson or Clash of the Titans, or How to Train Your Dragon), or PSP games they play have drawn on those same Greek myths for inspiration, so it’s fun to know the originals. Also, if they have a good grounding in the stories, if they know who Heracles is, and what the importance of the Trojan horse was and all that, it makes understanding so many things—everyday phrases we don’t even think about— so much easier. To give a fairly recent modern example of that, let’s say the family computer crashes and a child wants to know why they can’t play on it. If they know about that same Trojan horse, they will immediately understand why the Trojan worm which sneaked into Dad’s email is so-called. Mythology, whether we realize it or not, permeates our lives on many levels and it is vital for us to give our children the keys to unlocking its frame of reference.



You’ve recently been running a series of interviews on your blog, Scribble City Central, in which you conduct “Mythic Interviews” with other writers influenced by mythology. Have you found there is a common thread amongst authors as to the power of mythology and what do you think makes mythology so powerful in storytelling?

I haven’t yet found anyone I’ve interviewed who has disagreed with me that mythology is a powerful force—and most authors I’ve spoken to seem to feel it has had some sort of influence on their writing, whether it be on characterizations, or plots, or something vaguer and more indefineable. I think its storytelling power stems from the fact that mythology deals with all those archetypal parts of human nature we all find so difficult to manage (and I include the gods here too, because although they are deities, they also have very recognizable human reactions to events). We are always looking for clues to decode the whys and wherefores of why people act the way they do. The myths at their deepest level provide this, and where the gods are involved, of course, the consequences are bigger and louder and more terrible, which makes it all very fascinating and compelling reading (or listening).



Is there a particular myth, irrespective of culture, that stands out most for you and why?

The Wild Hunt is the one which I would pick above all others, I think. There’s something about the unbridled anarchy of it all, which I find incredibly appealing. Herla or Herne or whatever you want to call him riding into the heavens, with his red-eared white hounds before him, and all the heroes following him through the night sky towards the red of dawn—give me a horse made of wind and cloud, and I am SO there! I just adore the idea of that one uncontrolled thread of Fate which allows all the others to be woven safely into the tapestry of life. Call me weird—I don’t care!



In Greek Beasts and Heroes, you do something quite remarkable by distilling the essence of the myths into morsels which are manageable for young children. How did you find the process of taking what are often quite complicated themes and making them so accessible?

The one thing I had to remember was not to be frightened of the weight of history. I could have been terrified of walking in the footsteps of Homer and Ovid—but in the end myths are just stories which belong to everyone, and moreover stories which are made to be retold and refashioned by any storyteller with a voice and a passion for the material. So often I am asked, ‘But how did you deal with the incest/murder/violence/adultery/bestiality?’ etc. I suppose that what I really do is to take the kernel of the story—strip it down to its heart if you like—and go outwards from there, using what is appropriate. Children are very accepting, and in all the years I’ve been doing school visits and talking about myths, not one child has ever commented on or asked about the fact that Zeus has children with so many women (or nymphs or goddesses!) who are not his wife. They don’t comment on the fact that he’s married to his sister either. We, as adults, look at the myths in a different way because we have a different knowledge base. Children don’t mind if the ‘difficult stuff’ is left out or skirted around because they don’t know it was there in the first place. All that can come later, when they’re ready for it and if they want to explore further.

Of the stories contained within Greek Beasts and Heroes, is there one that stands out for you as a favourite and why?

I loved writing about the Fates. I’ve done years of shamanic training, and the maiden, mother and crone aspects of Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos tap into all that. It’s a myth which has echoes in so many cultures, and I like its simplicity even though I am not necessarily won over by the theory of predestination. I’m quite enjoying my transition into the crone phase, by the way. It means I can let loose my inner crankiness and bite people who annoy me. Snip! Snap!



Aside from Greek Beasts and Heroes and Atticus the Storyteller’s 100 Greek Myths, you also explore Celtic myths in Coll the Storyteller’s Tales of Enchantment. Do you see yourself writing about the mythologies of other cultures at some point?

The short answer is that I’d love to. There are so many other wonderful stories out there which are crying out to be retold—I have on my shelves all sorts of learned tomes on Aztec, Inca, Toltec, Hindu, Japanese, Icelandic, Inuit, Scandinavian, African and Aboriginal myths. But—and believe me I have tried—there is currently no real market, except in the illustrated gift area, and publishers are wary (in the current climate) of commissioning anything expensive to produce which is unlikely to get a co-edition. Greek myths are the default option for UK schools (and sometimes a bit of Norse for variety), so that’s what they publish. Personally, I’d much prefer to see a wider range of cultural myths available to children in a readable and non-worthy form—but it’s an uphill struggle to get them out there. It’s one of my hobby-horses that children in the UK should know the myths of their own land, and that’s what I tried to give them with Coll the Storyteller’s Tales of Enchantment. Needless to say, Celtic myth is still not on the school curriculum!




In your incredibly magical novel Hootcat Hill one sees elements of so many different mythologies all deftly woven together – did you plan the story to unfold with all these different mythological elements or did they just happen?

I’d be lying if I said there was a Great Mythical Masterplan for Hootcat Hill. The characters all just appeared in my head as I wrote, and I found myself saying, “Ah!” and “Ooh!” and being constantly surprised at what and who turned up. There was Cernunnos—I found myself being quite wary of him and his wildness when he roared out of his cave on Cerne Tump—and Rhiannon, who floated in so lightly that at first I didn’t know who she was or where she had come from. Robin McKinley (another of my favourite authors) says that her ideas come down from the ‘Story Council’, and that there’s nothing she can do about what she’s given. It’s a bit different for me. I have a bubbling ‘cauldron of creation’ in my head. Characters simply float to the top and manifest. I have no clue who they are until they arrive, but I’m always glad to see them. Sometimes they have names, sometimes they don’t and I have to find them one. Fidget Reedglitter didn’t—I found hers in the Fairy Name Generator. Mathafurd Llewellyn did, though I didn’t know till much later that he’d been a harper at King Arthur’s (known in Celtic as Artur Mac Uthair) court. Gladysant was my tribute to T.H.White’s Sword in the Stone, though I still have no idea where those girly pink wings appeared from. Names are very important to me, and I often put mythical puns or meanings in them which (probably) no one ‘gets’ but me. Linnet’s surname, Perry, is a play on ‘peri’, the Persian word for fairy. Petroc Miles is strong and dependable—like St Peter the Rock and like a ‘miles’ which is the Latin for soldier. Fay Morgan is pretty obvious—and Tyto Hullart is too, if you know about owls. Wayland Smith is one of my very favourites, and he came out of my love of Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies (both written in my grandmother’s night nursery at Batemans, which Kipling bought from my great-grandfather). All right, all right, I’ll stop now!

HootCat Hill... The Little White Horse meets Narnia with a feisty, modern voice

I think I see something of Lucy Coats in Linnet Perry, the heroine of Hootcat Hill – there’s all that feistiness and courage and being willing to be a little different. Do you think all stories are a little (or a lot) autobiographical?

Yes, I do think you’re right about that, Nicky. I’m sure there are almost always small aspects of oneself in the characters one writes. I suppose Linnet does have more than a little something of me in her—though perhaps the courage is more one of the grown woman’s characteristics than the child’s—I was shy and not at all brave when I was her age. In part she also reflects my daughter (a very feisty young lady now, but one who was being badly bullied at the time I wrote the book). I certainly understand about the lonely only child part of Linnet—I just wish I’d had a Petroc (or someone like him) as my friend and confidante. I think that’s another part of character creation—sometimes we write things the way we wish they could have been for us—a sort of writing therapy, perhaps!



There is something in Linnet Perry that I think appeals to many children and to which you pay homage – that feeling that they have a special “task” assigned to them in life, that sense that their life’s journey may just be a little magical. This is something that growing-up often erases. How important do you think it is to foster this form of self belief in children, if you indeed seeing yourself as doing that, in whatever small way?

Children are all beings of infinite potential, in my opinion, but some walk a hard path through no fault of their own. Fostering and supporting their dreams is incredibly important to me—and what are dreams if not a kind of magic? As a writer, what I can do is to put my characters in recognisable situations (such as bullying) and show them learning the tools for getting through to the other side, and that it’s ok to make mistakes on the way. Being forgiven for those mistakes is important too. Perhaps that might help a bullied child to have more self-belief—to know that they are not alone and that someone out there understands—even if it is via the medium of a fantasy novel. Also, I firmly believe that reading stuff which is clearly set in an imaginary world or place can spark imagination and keep that sense of wonder alive—not just for children, but for grown-ups too.



In Hootcat Hill you tell the story of the destructive force of the worldwyrm who is awoken by young Tom Bickerstaff’s greed, coupled with Linnet’s magical abilities to overcome the wyrm. It seems to be very much a metaphor for our own world – oil drilling, greed, corruption potentially resulting in the destruction of Earth. It might also be a metaphor for the Gaia mythology. Did you deliberately want to draw this sort of parallel – is it how and why you set out to write the story – or did it evolve as you went along? Do you think you have created your own “mythology” in the telling of this story?

Will you believe me if I say that you’ve pointed out something about my own story which I hadn’t even recognised in a conscious way? But now that you DO point it out, I know immediately that you are right! It certainly wasn’t a deliberate thing at all, although the state of the planet (and the current dangerous combination of oil and greed which is on the news each day) is a continuing and very real worry to me and has been for years. But the subconscious is a powerful tool in writing—stuff comes out that one often doesn’t realise is there till later, as evidenced by your perceptive comments above! Now I’m wondering what else there is that I haven’t noticed….
Perhaps I did create my own ‘mythology’—there’s certainly a huge backstory to Hootcat Hill. Stuff I know, but which doesn’t necessarily need to be overtly mentioned in the book itself. Linnet’s England is a sort of world next-door but one. It has rules and stories of its own, some of which are the same as our world’s, some of which are slightly skewed. What I loved about writing this book was the freedom it gave me to play around with mythological stuff I already knew and to make it my own. There were no rules about how the story ‘should’ go, and that was very liberating—the worldwyrm takes inspiration from Nidhogg, the dragon from Norse myth who gnaws at the roots of the world, but is in itself a new creation with its own story. Iddrasgyl is from the same Norse source, but again, a nod in the direction of, rather than directly ‘borrowed’. Writing like that, shaping and weaving entirely new stuff from a whisper of the old, is what I like doing best, really.

You also, in Hootcat Hill, compare old magic to new “magic” i.e. technology – there’s a divide and also a coming together. What are your own personal views on the old vs. the new and do you really think they can work together, or even sit side by side, in our modern world?

“Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater,” was what my granny used to say. And also, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” There are amazing new inventions arriving in our world every day. Advances in medicine which mean that thousands of lives are saved; labour-saving devices; communications faster than blinking. I appreciate these marvels, don’t get me wrong. They make my life easier, healthier, safer. But I do think that we ignore the simpler things of the past at our peril. ‘Old-fashioned’ seems like a sort of insult sometimes—but I have many brilliant and old-fashioned things at home which work perfectly in conjunction with my more modern gadgets. At the most basic level, just because I am using a computer doesn’t mean I don’t have a pencil and paper with me at all times! We have all forgotten so much, and lost so many skills (both for survival and for making things). It worries me a great deal that this is so. Linnet is a country girl—she understands about growing vegetables and the rhythms of the seasons. The way a seed turns into a plant which bears fruit which feeds us—that’s old magic, if you like. But the crop can be helped along by the scientific understanding of which nutrients the soil needs to make it grow best. So yes—I’m all for partnerships of old and new!




You write for a range of ages for younger children; but which age most particularly appeals to you as a writer and why?

I started off writing for very young children, because my own children were tiny babies when I began, and my writing ‘grew’ with them. Now they are nearly grown-up teenagers, and I’m very drawn to YA fiction at the moment because it gives me scope to deal with difficult subjects more honestly and to write for children on the cusp of adulthood. Discovering YA faery-lit as a genre has been a revelation to me recently, and has sparked a lot of new ideas which are simmering away nicely in that cauldron I mentioned. Really, though, I don’t mind what age I write for as long as I’m having fun doing it (and I almost always am).

To steal a question from your own “Mythic Interviews” – if you could choose to be the demigod child of any one mythical god or goddess, which one would it be? Which power would you like to inherit from them—and what would you do with it?

Ooh! You thief, you! Now I have the tables turned on me, what shall I say? I could pick Athene or Brigid—goddesses of creativity and wisdom, and choose the power of enthralling storytelling. Or I could pick Herne as my father, and choose the power of green things to heal the earth. But I think, instead, I shall be a bit selfish and pick Hestia, goddess of the hearth, for my mother and ask for the power to wave a hand and have a permanently clean and shining house (with delicious food including chocolate always in the fridge), so that I never have to do housework, laundry or go shopping ever again—and can instead concentrate on writing, cooking (but not washing up) and hugging my family and friends (terribly important). Perhaps I could also ask Hestia for the loan of a house-elf or two on party nights (who would obviously be loved and treasured mightily—I am no Malfoy)!



Your ‘first proper job’, to quote you, was as an editor in children’s book publishing. What drew you to children’s writing and which job do you think is easier – being an editor or a writer – and which job is more fulfilling? (Yes, this may well be a trick question!) Would you ever want to be anything else other than a writer, and if so, what?

Well, I loved my job as a children’s editor. I learnt so much about books, about what made a good one and what made a bad one (slush piles teach you that pretty quickly). I also learnt about the technical side of things—the production and how the actual making of a book works, but also the sales, publicity and marketing and how important all that is. I fell into it, really, and had a large slice of luck. There was a job in the children’s book department which came up while I was on work experience, and I had read a LOT of children’s books, so managed to talk vaguely intelligently, I suppose—enough to land it, anyway. I hadn’t written for years—due to a bruising experience with a now-deceased writer-in-residence at university. Being around all those books and all that creativity on the part of the authors I was working with made me want to start writing once more, and I quickly found out how much I loved it all over again. I stuck to poetry at first, and then ‘graduated’ to picture book texts. When I got the wretched Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and had to stop being an editor because I couldn’t walk upstairs or function properly, it seemed natural to keep on writing. Actually, I think it’s what kept me sane. So I can’t really answer your trick question, because editing was great at the time and very fulfilling, and now writing is. One simply evolved from the other. I couldn’t NOT be a writer now—it’s part of my blood and bone and being. However, if I absolutely had to pick an alternative job, I should have one of those little country restaurants in France, which open four days a week at lunchtime and where you eat what’s on the menu that day. I do love to cook for other people and to entertain them with food made with love and care and ingredients I have grown myself. Greedy, you see!

Scenes from Lucy's kitchen...mmmmm...

Many thanks to Lucy Coats for agreeing to do this interview – I look forward to reading more of Lucy’s books, because I know I’ve hit a winner and found a very special storyteller. Moreover, I really, really look forward to meeting Lucy in the real, 3D world, in the next few months!


To learn more about Lucy Coats and her books, visit her website

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