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Interview with Veronica Bennett, author of The Broomstick Bike

Introducing the newest writer to join our small island, Veronica Bennett, author of The Broomstick Bike. We asked Veronica a few pressing questions:

Writers are often asked the same questions everywhere they go – for instance, where do you get your ideas, or how long did it take you to write this book or, the big one, how much money do you make. What question do you get asked the most as a writer?

“Why aren’t you rich?” is probably the most common one.  The answer is that very few books sell enough copies to make their writers rich, and most of those that do are books for adults, which have a much, much larger number of potential readers.  Children’s reading ability and requirements differ every two years or so, which means a book only appeals to two-years’-worth of children at any one time. Once you’re grown up, however, you’re grown up for decades.  Also, unlike adults, children don’t pass a bookstand at an airport or a railway station with money in their pocket and a need for something to read, quickly.  So there is no ‘casual trade’ in children’s books – it’s a very deliberate purchase, by an adult for a child.  All this means that if a children’s book doesn’t get picked up by adult readers, like the Harry Potter series or Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (and maybe adapted for the theatre or film too, like the Alex Rider novels), the author won’t be rich!

Is there anything you never get asked that you’d love to be asked?

I’d love someone to ask me about the way I put a book together.  So many questions put to writers are about our working day, our favourite things, our everyday lives, our influences.  But  writing a novel is making something out of nothing, and to do that you have to have some materials which you then put together to create something else, just as if you were making a cake or a car or a painting or anything else that wasn’t there before.  An enormous part of producing a piece of work is therefore dealing with bits – bits of memory, thought, dialogue, description, jokes, questions, ideas, dreams, half-formed plot-devices etc., etc.  You are in charge of mustering and mastering all these bits so that they get together, not only in a sensible order, but in an order that allows each bit to do its job to the best of its ability.  That is the skill, the triumph or failure of a piece of writing, but no one ever asks you how you do it.

So how do you go about putting your books together from all those bits, Veronica?...

[Note from the editor: She's keeping us in suspense!]

What is your very favourite (and least favourite) thing about being an author?

My favourite thing is being my own boss – I write what I want, when I want, for whom I want. 

The worst thing is the long, detailed editing process, the mistakes that always turn up in the finished book despite everyone’s hard work, the inevitable disappointments that accompany any endeavour that involves putting yourself in the public domain.  But that’s writing…and as everyone knows, writers have to write, despite everything.

Is there any book you’ve read and thought ‘Oh, I really wish I had written that!’?

More than I can count.  Stand-out ones are: 

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith – a funny, compassionate, passionate, brilliantly evocative book about adolescent love, and the envy of any writer of young adult stories like me;

Rebecca and The Scapegoat by Daphne Du Maurier – masterpieces both, in their different ways.  All Du Maurier’s work is terrific for young people to read – I started at about eleven and worked my way through the lot, and would do so again, though sadly I’m no longer eleven…

More recently, I’ve been solidly impressed by great writing and great stories from Alexander McCall Smith, both his African books and his Scottish ones.  I wish I could write light-hearted thrillers like that – I so love reading them.  They are the perfect definition of entertainment, for everyone. 

Mag from The Broomstick Bike is a brilliantly funny character, but there’s also great warmth in the relationship between her and Zack. Is any bit of her based on your real family?

Like Zack, I had a wonderful granddad who always had time to play, explain, chat, joke and generally make each of his eight grandchildren feel like the most important child in the world.  I think every time I create a loving grandparent/grandchild relationship in a book I am paying homage to him in a way.  But I suspect traces of Mag are also to be found in my no-nonsense, rather glamorous Scottish mother, who always wore stiletto heels and never minced words.  And sang around the house.  Among her favourites were: “O there ain’t no sense, sitting on a fence, all by yourself in the moonlight,” and  “Don’t throw the lamp at Father, wait till he gets in bed”.  Classic tunes, obviously.

If you had a motorbike like the one Mag has, where would you go on it, and why?

I would go to the USA and visit all the places I want to see there, from the Grand Canyon to Savannah to the Rockies to Monument Valley to Yellowstone.  The bike would just take me wherever I wanted, with no need for maps or planes.  I have only been to New York, whereas my husband travelled all over the States when he was young and has been saying we’ll go for the last 30 years.  Maybe if he got on the Broomstick Bike it would give him the necessary push!

The Broomstick Bike is for children aged 9 and upwards, but you also write for younger and older children. Do you write with an audience in mind, or does the story come first?

I write with an audience in mind.  As I said in my answer to the first question, children like different things at different ages, written in different ways.   Some subjects and stories lend themselves better to older children’s interests, some are more suitable for younger ones, and the treatment must be sympathetic to the young person’s reading ability  Of course the story must be a page-turner, too, or no one would read it, whatever age they were.

It’s Hallowee’n week – do you have a favourite scary film, book or story? 

I’ve never been keen on horror in any form, as a child or an adult.  In fact I’ve only ever seen one horror film, when I was about 20, which scared me so much I couldn’t stay until the end.  As far as books go, I am pleasantly chilled by police procedurals and thrillers – about the horror-level of CSI, I suppose – but could never read a story about monsters or aliens, even aloud to a young child, who probably wouldn’t be nearly as scared as I was.

Veronica Bennett is the author of The Broomstick Bike, published with Little Island in 2011. She is also the author of a great many other books for children of different ages. You can find out more about Veronica and her books at http://www.veronica-bennett.com/

Nightmare Club Launch

Little Island is delighted to invite you to join us for spooky storytelling above Glasnevin Cemetery. Join us on Wednesday 26th October at 6:30 p.m. but be warned - if you don't come in costume, Annie Graves might play a few tricks on you...

THE NIGHTMARE CLUB PLACE NAMES COMPETITION

Little Island would like to pass on the message below from author Annie Graves regarding the Dublin Place Names Competition, in celebration of Dublin UNESCO City of Literature:

Hey there, all you dead smart readers of my deadly books! Listen up, now, if you like cake and can read …

Right, so there are twelve clues in total, hidden inside my four wonderful Nightmare Club books (here, here, here and here), and what you are looking for are Dublin place names. So, for example, there might be (there isn’t but there might be, it’s just an example) … there might be a character called O’Connell. And you would say, ‘Hey, O’Connell Street, that’s a place in Dublin.’

That is how you solve the clues. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Only they are not as OBVIOUS as O’Connell Street, obviously. 

So then, when you have solved all the clues, click here and you get this form thingy and you write in the answers. That’s how you get the cake. Or at least, that’s how you get invited to the Meeting with Cake (or party, if you are from Glasnevin).

Twelve unlucky winners will be invited to the cake thingy, and one of the twelve, the unluckiest of all, will also win a book token for a million pounds. (Hah! There aren’t any pounds any more, that was a joke.) I mean, a whole lot of euro. (But not a million. Come on, they are little tiny publishers.)

OK, so watch out for the street names and place names, all in Dublin, as you read the story, and write them down. And then get the next book and do the same. And the next, and the next. They are all called The Nightmare Club (books 1 to 4, down there, see?) and I wrote them. That’s how you know which ones to get, clever, eh? Dead clever. 

Your friend,

Annie Graves

PS: Not everyone who gets all twelve right can have the cake thingy, there isn’t enough room and there isn’t enough cake, so if more than twelve of yous get it right, there will have to be a raffle. OK? And if you can't guess all twelve, send a message anyway - they're pretty tough, so NO ONE might guess them all.

PPS: The last day for entering the competition is The Last Day. Of 2011. Easy date to remember: the last day is the last day. 

TWO Little Island authors shortlisted for Reading Association of Ireland Awards 2011

Congratulations to Dermot Bolger and Sheena Wilkinson whose books have been shortlisted for the Reading Association of Ireland Awards 2011. Bolger's New Town Soul and Wilkinson's Taking Flight are among the ten books shortlisted for the awards, which will be presented as part of the opening ceremony of the Association’s Annual Conference to be held at Church of Ireland College of Education on 29th Sept at 19:30. 

New Town Soul is the first novel for young adults from Dermot Bolger, a well known novelist, playwright, journalist and poet. Taking Flight is Sheena Wilkinson's first published novel for young readers and was the winner of two awards at this years Bisto Book of the Year Awards: the Children's Choice Award and the Honour Award for Fiction.

The Reading Association of Ireland (RAI) was founded in 1975. It is affiliated to the International Reading Association, a body with over 100,000 members throughout the world, whose aim is to promote literacy worldwide. The association is run on a voluntary basis by its members. For more information see www.reading.ie