Authors Electric

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie I’ve had a brainwave. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?  (Ah, turns out they have. See below. Never mind, I'm not stopping now.) So many stories – detective and mystery ones in particular – are set in a closed community that your characters can’t get away from. A train perhaps. Or a boat. (Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile .) An office block ( Die Hard , one of my favourite films) or a hotel on fire ( The Towering Inferno ).  The reasons for this are obvious: throw a bunch of different characters together in a tight cauldron, add some kind of disaster or threat, and BOOM, you have all the ingredients for a gripping, heart-in-mouth tale. Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie For children’s authors (including, cough, me) the enclosed setting is more likely to be a holiday camp, or a school – boarding, if possible, meaning that your beleaguered hero really is stuck with all the problem...

Recently, a headline in The Times caught my eye:  Make boys read books with girls in says Chocolat author Joanne Harris .  At the Hay Festival , Harris announced: ‘We’ve got to stop giving them the message that it’s wrong for a boy to read books about girls, because even schools are giving them this message.’ The Tragickall History of Henry Fowst by Griselda Heppel Ante's Inferno by Griselda Heppel As a children’s author, this is an attitude I wrestle with. I don’t consciously create characters to suit a supposed readership; they spring to life according to the needs of the story.  My first book, Ante’s Inferno , had a 12 year-old heroine, Ante, while in The Tragickall History of Henry Fowst , the main character is a boy. The Fall of a Sparrow by Griselda Heppel With The Fall of a Sparrow , I was back to a female protagonist, Eleanor, and arguably taking an even greater risk of limiting my readership by setting the story in a girls’ boarding school, as this meant the ...

Setting up for the Creative Writing group, Headington School. One of the best things I get to do as a children’s writer is visit schools.  I love these visits. There’s nothing like getting together with a group of 9 – 13 year-olds and their teachers and introducing them to the ideas behind a particular book, drawing them into the excitement of story creation and giving tips on how to make strong, believable characters and a gripping plot. Ante's Inferno by Griselda Heppel Because my books tend to be inspired by other, much greater works, there’s plenty of background information young people find fascinating. Ante’s Inferno , for instance, in which 12 year-old Antonia finds herself on a dark journey to the heart of Hell, is based on (can you guess?) Dante’s Inferno. Dante, in turn, drew  deeply from Greek and Roman legend of the afterlife, rendering my school talk full of references to monsters like the Minotaur and Harpies, and giving my audience the chance to tell me what the...

Grinning orange faces... all over till next year.  Photo by Toni Cuenca:  https://www.pexels.com/photo/two-jack-o-lanterns-619424 / Aaand... it’s all over for another year.  Those grinning orange faces, shop window displays full of pointy hats and broomsticks, estate agents advertising haunted shacks (actually, that one’s quite fun), groups of black and orange-clad children roaming the streets for sugar highs – all vanished into thin air on the stroke of midnight last night as the Feast of All Saints began. Much as I love pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie, over the years I greet the arrival of this day with increasing relief. About to be vanquished by the Forces of Good. Photo by Mike Jones: https://www.pexels.com/ photo/ young-girls-in-witch-costumes- covering-faces-with-balloons-9740365/ Why? Well, it’s not for religious reasons. All that dressing up as devils and witches and dancing around on All Hallows’ Eve goes back a long way, signifying the devil’s last grasp at power...

Fresh, deliciously green copies of The Fall of a Sparrow by Griselda Heppel This time last year I was just a few weeks away from publishing my third children’s novel, The Fall of a Sparrow . No book launch, alas, because of lockdown, but that didn’t spoil the excitement of all those lovely fresh, deliciously green books arriving from the printers and appearing online and in bookshops. So what does a writer do at that moment, apart from buzz around doing book signings (where possible) and school visits (where invited), plus the odd radio/magazine interview?  Well, she starts on her next book of course. If she’s not well into it already. Certainly a whole year later, there should be at least a first draft in the can, if not a second/third/fourth. Writers burst with ideas, don’t they, characters running around in their heads, banging on their temples, me me me they cry, what about ME, it’s my story now, get ON with it…. Erm. Yes. Or, in my case, not so much.  People often ask:...

Stig of the Dump by Clive King Last month something happened to me as a children’s writer that filled me with delight. Something that would have been unthinkable even a generation ago. When I was young, few children’s adventure stories had heroines. In most of the books I loved – Stig of the Dump, The Land of Green Ginger, The Phantom Tollbooth, Tom Sawyer, Peter Pan, Jack Holborn – it was a hero who drove the action. Jack Holborn by Leon Garfield I’m not in the least complaining about that; I loved Barney, Abu Ali, Milo, Tom etc. And of course there were many superb – if less obviously adventurous – stories with female protagonists: The Secret Garden, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Charlotte’s Web, Carbonel…  But here’s the rub. It was a well-known truism that girls would always read stories with boy heroes, while boys wouldn’t dream of returning the compliment with ones that featured girls. As a writer, if you didn’t want to halve your potential audience, it made sense to...

Bookshop browsing: hard to replicate online.... Photo by  Alana Sousa  from  Pexels I h ave Andrew Crofts to thank for the topic of this month’s post. In December 2021 , he introduced us all to a new book browsing website called www.shepherd.com .  You may think it’s not possible to replicate online the experience of browsing in a bookshop but I’d say this site comes pretty close. In fact, in some ways it almost works better, as, having chosen a topic, you are offered several lists of books to look through, each provided by an author selecting their own top five favourites in this area.  .... without being overwhelmed. Photo by  mentatdgt  from  Pexels All kinds of genres are covered, fiction and non-fiction, adults and children’s. Related lists are suggested below the one you’re looking at, so you can browse from one to another. As the site grows and more and more lists are added, the experience will just get richer; but crucially, the  ...

The Fall of a Sparrow by  Griselda Heppel (2021) A friend who loved the eccentric boarding school setting of my recent children’s book, The Fall of a Sparrow , gave me a copy of another novel he’d enjoyed, also set in a boarding school. He was keen to know what I thought of it; I have to say I was riveted, though any similarity between my book and The Ruined Boys by Roy Fuller begins and ends with the setting. The Ruined Boys  by Roy Fuller (1959)   It’s fascinating how the same structure can be used to create imaginary worlds that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.   To begin with, The Ruined Boys is not a children’s book. Like David Copperfield , it’s told from the point of view of a child whose childhood has come to a cruel end with a change in family circumstances. His parents’ marriage break-up sends young Gerald Bracher to Seafold House, an austere, comfortless public school. Place and date are left vague but some time in the 1920s would ...