Friday Five – Kiran writes stories…

FRIDAY FIVE: M.G. Leonard

Kiran Millwood Hargrave — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 15:43:52 +0000

In case you hadn’t already noticed from this, I am a huge fan of this writer’s wonderful book, BEETLE BOY. And I’m not alone. The Bookseller named it their Book of the Month, and it’s getting great reviews left, right, and centre (and even off-centre). So you’ll be very glad you hear the author is just as brilliant as her book – and that she has answered this month’s Friday Five!
1) When did you start writing and why?
I’ve always loved telling stories. I remember being five and prancing around the living room giving the street kids a private performance of Swan Lake. My swan died more times than Bottom’s Pyramus. I danced, acted, painted and sang my way through school. I tried to write, but failed to produce anything that wasn’t riddled with self-conscious angst.
Once I’d lived a little, completed a literature degree, a masters, and read a whole library of books I began to understand what kind of writer I might like to be, and so I started writing scraps, a page here, a paragraph there, which lead to the birth of characters, and from the characters came ideas, but oh, so slowly.
The idea behind Beetle Boy, that the world needs a children’s book with beetles as heroes to engage young readers with the natural world, was powerful enough to force me to make the time to write, in the early hours of the morning, and I began working in earnest about five years ago. Beetle Boy is my first book.

2) What advice would you give writer who aspires to be published?
Writing is its own pleasure, and anyone feeling the inclination should do it. However, if you want to be published you have to write stories for other people – not yourself, and that takes hard graft. A book’s purpose is to be read, and it costs money to produce and purchase, therefore the most important thing is the reader’s experience of the story. You need to know who will want to read your story, and why? You must know what you are doing to a reader with every sentence; are you thrilling them, misleading them, or making them fall in love? Each occasion you unwittingly neglect or abandon your reader, gives a publisher a reason not to publish your book, because first, before they are your publisher, they are a reader.
3) What are your five Desert Island books and why?

1) It is a fact that I cannot live without the Complete Works of Shakespeare, and I’d take the Arden edition to the Desert Island. I have a different edition of the collected works in all the main rooms of my house. On a desert island I’d act out all the plays, and perfect my favourite speeches. I’ve read all the plays at least twice, even King John, and I’m besotted with Shakespeare’s language.

2) & 3) If stranded on a desert island there is no more fitting book to have with you than
The Odyssey and I love both Homer’s epic poems, so I’d take Richard Lattimore’s translation of The Iliad and The Odyssey. With time on my hands I’d attempt to learn them by heart, and in the evenings tell the campfire and the coconuts about brave Hector, or love-crazy Calipso, oldschool style, like a rhapsode.

4) To appease my homesickness, for England, I’d love to have the collected work of Dickens, but I don’t think there’s a book big enough for one volume to exist. Great Expectations is a masterpiece, but if I had to pick just one Dickens title, for it’s epic length, sheer Englishness and episodic nature I’d chose Dombey & Sons.

5) My final choice is Dune by Frank Herbert. I think it is a work of genius. It has inspired many great works of fantasy, but in my opinion has never been surpassed or become dated. The book had a profound impact on me when I first read it, as a teenager. It’s a gripping read, and well written, but the main reason it had such an impact on me was its philosophical nature. It made me think in a way that fiction never had before, and has informed my approach to many real-life situations, although I’ve never gone out into my back-garden with a thumper and called a worm… might try that this weekend.

Here’s my favourite quote:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” (Frank Herbert, Dune)

This was my mantra in the month before my first son was born, when I was terrified of giving birth. I also think it when coping with panic attacks, which I am prone to.
4) What would your daemon be, and why?
My daemon is an arctic wolf. We have the same unblinking stare, and I’m a dogged fighter. I’ll keep going, even when I’m exhausted and on my knees.

M.G. Leonard #justchillin

Often, when I meet new people, once we’ve become friends, they’ll admit to having been a bit scared of me at first. This never ceases to surprise me, as I’m a loyal friend, laugh at everything, and rarely loose my temper (maybe, once in a decade). I put it down to my resting arctic wolf face and my capacity to be fierce (in every way, girlfriend).

(The final question is sent to the interviewee thus: What question do you wish I’d asked? And answer it.)
5) Can I buy you a pint of Guinness?

Anytime!

BONUS QUESTION ALERT
What are your three jealous island books, the three books you wish you’d written?
I’ve never wished I’d written someone else’s story. That’s like wanting to have given birth to someone else’s child.
However, I am envious…

I envy Hilary Mantel’s prose. She is just about as good as writing gets. I loved Wolf Hall and Bringing Up The Bodies, and I am living for book three. I don’t wish I’d written her books for the simple reason that I know I could never create such works of artistry. They are exquisite, and all I can do is pay homage.
I envy Neil Gaimen’s ideas, each one is a diamond. I don’t always enjoy the direction his stories travel in, but the ideas for his books fill me with excitement and are strong enough for me to have bought and read every single one from American Gods, to Graveyard Boy.
I envy Frances Hodgson Burnett’s creation, The Secret Garden. I think it’s perfect and it visits my thoughts regularly. Some of what I’m trying to do with Beetle Boy is inspired by her tale of how being outside and having a positive relationship with nature is a healing thing for children, and in fact, everyone. I consider it an anticedant to Beetle Boy.

THE BOOK
Darkus is miserable. His dad has disappeared, and now he is living next door to the most disgusting neighbours ever.
A giant beetle called Baxter comes to his rescue. But can the two solve the mystery of his dad’s disappearance, especially when links emerge to cruel Lucretia Cutter and her penchant for beetle jewellery? A coffee-mug mountain, home to a million insects, could provide the answer – if Darkus and Baxter are brave enough to find
it …
Published 3rd March 2016.

THE AUTHOR
M.G. Leonard has a first-class honours degree in English Literature and an MA in Shakespeare Studies from Kings College London. She works in London as the Senior Digital Media Producer for the National Theatre, and previously worked at the Royal Opera House and Shakespeare’s Globe. Leonard spent her early career in the music industry running Setanta Records, an independent record label, and managing bands, most notably The Divine Comedy. After leaving the music industry, she trained as an actor, dabbling in directing and producing as well as performing, before deciding to write her stories down. Leonard lives in Brighton with her partner and two sons.

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FRIDAY FIVE: Perdita and Honor Cargill

Kiran Millwood Hargrave — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 10:49:49 +0000

Welcome to the first Friday Five! I’m very happy that my inaugural guests are Perdita and Honor Cargill, mother-and-daughter authors of the hilarious WAITING FOR CALLBACK, out 28th January 2016. Pre-order here.
THE QUESTIONS (All painfully literal images my additions. Can never resist a cat pic)
Question: What advice do you wish someone had given you when you started writing?
Perdita: This writing business is peppered with painful periods of waiting. Expect them and don’t worry about them. Try if you can to fill them with positive things (like working on the next book) – easier said than done. Weirdly one of the themes of our book is that waiting is a very active and difficult thing…
Honor: You’ll get offered a lot of help along the way, take it. Editing in particular is brilliant. Also publishing firms are waist deep in cake, it is every author’s duty to help them get through it.

Q: Who is your favourite minor character?
Both: We squabbled over this because we both wanted to choose Eulalie (we’re not counting Moss (Elektra’s BFF) or Archie (her crush) as minor characters). Eulalie is Elektra’s step grandmother and she’s French and very extravagant and frankly a bit inappropriate. Elektra loves her best of all her relatives (not just because she takes her shopping…). We have literally no idea where Eulalie came from or why she is French. (But if you know the Wodehouse novels you’ll know where her name came from…).
Q: What are your five Desert Island Books and why?
Both: We chatted about this and think that there would be something comforting about taking a series of books so we could each disappear time after time into a whole distinct but consistent world. It would have to be a world as far removed from the whole sand and sharks things as possible …
P: Don’t judge me but I’d go for Regency and romance. I think there’d be something very lovely about dropping into a virtual ballroom after a
hard day spear fishing. I’d like to say I’d take five of the Jane Austen novels (I’d probably leave behind Mansfield Park because I can’t warm to Fanny Price and Sanditon obviously) but I might go for the comfort of
five (any five) of the Georgette Heyers.

H: Wodehouse for sure. It’s my comfort place. I listened to
the audiobooks every night for years and I know them backwards and still find them as funny as the first time I listened to them. Any five of the Jeeves & Wooster series would make me very happy.

Q: What would your daemon be and why?
P: I’m shy and wary as a person so something like a hare – except I can’t run at all (not even slowly) so an unusual hare.
H: I identify with the whole sociable and curious thing meerkats have going on (although to be honest I’m probably mixing up the meerkats in the insurance adverts with the real ones..

Q: What do you think about writing at the age you are?*
P: Getting a first book deal in my fifties is just a great adventure. I always wanted to be a writer but I started pursuing it so late that I never expected it to happen and I feel very lucky. Also I know it sounds like a cliché but writing funny contemporary teen novels (especially with a teenager) keeps me young (on the inside).
H: I’ve been lucky, I’ve started very young but it’s a collaboration. Our characters are teenagers so I’m pretty confident with the voice (writing dialogue is my favourite bit) but I’m less sure whether I’d ever have wrangled the book all the way to the end if I’d been doing it on my own. Also it’s been a fantastic excuse to skip sports lessons…
(*Question five is the authors’ chance to choose a question they wished I’d asked them)
THE BOOK
Geek Girl meets Fame meets New Girl in this brilliantly funny new series!

When Elektra is discovered by an acting agent, she imagines Oscar glory can’t be far away, but instead lurches from one cringe-worthy moment to the next! Just how many times can you be rejected for the part of ‘Dead Girl Number Three’ without losing hope? And who knew that actors were actually supposed to be multi-lingual, play seven instruments and be trained in a variety of circus skills?
Off-stage things aren’t going well either – she’s fallen out with her best friend, remains firmly in the friend-zone with her crush and her parents are driving her crazy. One way or another, Elektra’s life is now spent waiting for the phone to ring – waiting for callback.

Can an average girl like Elektra really make it in the world of luvvies and starlets?
WAITING FOR CALLBACK is available for pre-order here.
THE AUTHORS

Perdita used to be a barrister but was happy to hang up her wig and gown and (finally) start writing. Honor is 17 and at school in London doing her A levels. Other than the writing and drama she has a strange niche interest in classical archaeology. They live in North London and are represented by Hannah Sheppard at DHH Literary Agency. Waiting for Callback is the first in a series and they’re working on book 2 now.
Honor’s photo credit: David Locke 2015

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