What is your most recent book about?
The Time Tider is the story of Mara, who is 12, and who has grown up living in the back of a van with her dad, Gabriel. He has some sort of job that he refuses to explain to Mara, and he also refuses to explain why they’re always on the move and who he’s afraid is following them. When Mara finally decides she needs to find answers, she discovers her dad is The Time Tider, a person whose task it is to dart back through history using a technique called the Stitch to gather up pools of lost or wasted Time before they can gather into Warps, dangerous anomalies in the flow of Time which threaten the fabric of reality for everyone. Before Mara can ask her dad about this, he’s kidnapped. Mara and her new friend Jan have to work together to get him back – and find out why he was kidnapped, and by whom, before Time itself is threatened.
2: You said that The Time Tider was written five times, is this normal for you? If not why was The Time Tinder more difficult to write than your other books?
Yes, The Time Tider took me five attempts, over twenty years, to finally get right! It’s not something I’ve experienced with any of my other books, though of course they do take a lot of drafting. Each book I’ve written has had to be drafted and redrafted numerous times – nothing ever comes out ‘right’ the first time you write it, which is something I try to tell young writers who might feel frustrated with their own work. Every book on every shelf in the world has had draft after draft after draft, each one getting a little bit closer to being ‘good enough’, until finally it comes to a point where the author and their editors can part with it. And I feel that no book is ever perfect. I think perfection is something that can squish creativity, so I never aim for that! I can’t explain exactly why The Time Tider was harder than my other books; potentially, because it has a contemporary (or modern-day) setting, which I don’t usually write, and also because it mucks about with the mechanics of Time, which is something I don’t recommend (unless you’re much cleverer than me!) Those aspects of the book took the most work, but they’re also the aspects that make the book work, so there you have it.
3: What is the worst thing you ever did (or considered doing) to one of your characters?
What a great question! Well, in my first book, The Eye of the North, I suspended my main character, Emmeline, a hundred feet in the air over a frothing pool from which a gigantic hungry Creature was about to rise (but don’t worry – she’s far too clever to get eaten. You’ll have to read the book to find out how she wriggles out of that one!) My second book, The Star-Spun Web, sees the main character, Tess, climb up a chimney! I felt a bit guilty about that one, but if you’ve read the book you’ll know it was entirely necessary. In Skyborn, my third book, we’ve got Bastjan, the main character, getting thrown out of an airship escape pod – that was thrilling to write, though potentially counts as the worst thing. Unless you consider the bit, also in Skyborn, where the character of Crake (who’s a circus strongman, and very brilliant) gets shot with a harpoon… I really am an author who likes to put their characters through the wringer! I suppose I should really let my readers decide which of these (if any) is the ‘worst’ thing I’ve ever done to my characters, bearing in mind that if we didn’t do dreadful things to our fictional people, our books wouldn’t be much fun…
4: What are your book or movie recommendations for people who have read and enjoyed your books?
Well. I’m not sure there are books or movies that resemble all my books, but I reckon you can’t go far wrong with some of the movies I loved as a kid, and which were hugely influential on the way I think, and how I imagine things. These would include fantasy classics like The Princess Bride (both book and movie are great), Labyrinth, Willow, The Never-Ending Story (again, book and movie are both worth checking out), and The Dark Crystal, and more science-fiction type movies like E.T., Flight of the Navigator, D.A.R.Y.L., Short Circuit, and Batteries Not Included. I also really loved the Indiana Jones movies, as well as The Goonies – they’re such great adventure stories, though of course I recognise some parts of them haven’t aged very well. (Speaking of age, I’m really giving away my age, here!) In terms of books, I was deeply influenced by some I read as a child, including Elidor by Alan Garner, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine l’Engle, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, and Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea. There are a ton of more recent books I love, and so I’ll try to narrow them down a bit! If you like the steampunky elements of my books, then you should try Vashti Hardy’s Brightstorm books (and, indeed, all of her books); if you like the historical fiction elements that I utilise in my stories then authors like Lesley Parr or Phil Earle should interest you, too. If you like the science-y bits in my books, particularly time travel, then make sure to check out Patience Agbabi’s The Infinite and its sequels The Time Thief and The Circle Breakers. Other authors I love include Patrice Lawrence, LD Lapinski, Elle McNicoll, Juliette Forrest, Jennifer Bell, and so many others.
5: If you were stranded on a desert island what 2 books, 2 movies and 2 animals would you bring?
Argh! This is such a tough question. Books: I’d bring Elidorand The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (especially if I can bring all five books in the sequence, which I guess is technically cheating?) Movies: The Princess Bride, which never fails to make me laugh despite my having seen it a million times (‘Anybody want a peanut?’) and I guess The Never-Ending Story, which would help me keep my imagination alive – something I’d need, probably, if I were stuck on a desert island. And as for animals: if I stretch the definition of ‘animal’ to include humans, then it would have to be my husband and our daughter! But if not, can I have Falcor the Luck Dragon from The Never-Ending Story, to get me home? And I’d also like to have Wares the Dog, from my own book Skyborn, as he’s based on my memories of my own childhood pet, who I loved and who I miss very much.