L'entretien en VO

The Last Dragonslayer has just come out in France. I find it quite hard to get a blurb without a lot of spoilers in it. How would you present this story to a potential reader without spoiling the whole thing?

Wow! That’s a very tricky one. Especially for a first question! I think that probably the best thing to say is that what I do with my books is to take the fantastic and try to make it very boring, because if you have been living with Magic for the last 700-800 years, it would be very boring and very dull and you would realise that Magic is not perfect. There are lots of things wrong, troubles with it, this is difficult and you would have a lot of suspicions about it. So what I try and do is that I try to seek fantasy and make it realistic, rather than take fantasy and make it fantastic. In my world, with Jennifer Strange, Magic does exist but the general population regards it with a lot of suspicion and it implies a lot of bureaucracy. Jennifer Strange is not a magician herself; she is actually just an agent for magicians. Magicians themselves are pretty useless and are not very good at anything, really, so Jennifer Strange has to look after them. It is really about what happens in this magical world which seems ordinary.

Talking about agents. You said in the book that every good magician always has an agent. Is it a parallel with the literary world?

No, I think it is more a parallel with the world of celebrities or sport. The world always remembers the celebrities but they’ll never remember their agents. I think that Jennifer has a very keen understanding of this. The greatest magician that ever lived was the Mighty Shandar and she is convinced that the Mighty Shandar was only “Mighty” because he had a fantastic agent. This is my way of making the fantasy realistic.

I like the fact that she has to deal with everything, even the nitty-gritty they are unable to cope with. They are lost in their own world and can’t do simple stuff.

Actually, it’s like celebrities. I mean, most celebrities can’t even do their washing, they can’t even drive, they can’t even cook a meal. They always need people to look after them, they need the support and this was what my story was about. A lot of people write about Magic, it is a tired genre, people have written about this for a very long time, so I wanted to take an aspect of the genre and move it in a slightly different direction. This is my way to look at Magic in a new, slightly fresh light.

We all know how you came up with the name Thursday Next for the eponymous character but what is the story behind Jennifer Strange’s name?

I'm not sure that there is any story at all. I just liked the name. It just has a nice ring to it, as Thursday Next has. Interestingly this book was written a long time ago, in 1997. And it's been pretty much unchanged since then even if I did a little bit of work. But there is a book where the character is named Jonathan Strange, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. We were writing our books at about the same time. So it's clear this source has a certain ring to it. it obviously appeals to authors who can think of pretty much the same name.

You wrote the Next series, the Nursery Crime series, Shades of Grey, there is REM coming. But this one is your first attempt at young adult fiction. Why did you decide to write a young adult novel?

It's not such a big leap for me. For me, my books have always been a great deal of fun, slightly frivolous perhaps in their outlook, but for children and all of us, the excitement of looking at things in another way. I think it's an entertainment which is practically childlike and innocent if you'd like. For me, writing books for children is not such a big leap, because I actually write books for children of all ages. I never really write serious books. If I wrote serious books, writing children books will be a big leap and a very complex one, but the really big difference is that children are very smart, very clever. I found out that twelve and thirteen years old are reading my Thursday next series and enjoyed it a great deal. Children understand plotting very easily; they can understand very complex ideas. What children do not understand quite as well is allusion and by that I mean references, cultural and literary references. They weren't having such good ideas about foreign affairs or politics, or anything like that. So all I do is to take my usual books and take out all the allusions which adults would understand but I generally keep the plotting and the plots as complex because I think that children like a good complex plot. Once you've get to the end of the book, you can understand everything that's going on. Children don't like being writing down. So I think now just carrying as normal but just take out the allusions.

While reading the Last Dragonslayer, readers would clearly feel your touch on the writing but in fact, you did not feel the need to adapt your writing because it was for a younger audience.

A little bit, I think the silly jokes are still there, perhaps even maybe a little sillier. In the Thursday next book, and in Shapes of Grey, there were many, many threads and many, many subplots. There are fewer subplots in The Last Dragonslayer but it's also a shorter book. But I remember reading books that were very complex when I was in my early teens and I don't recall having a problem with them. I think children are pretty smart.

They are but we also have to be aware that most children’s books are sometimes really written down.

When you're talking to children, you want to speak normally to them but it's really hard to do. So you just have to remember that they are indeed very smart. I gave a talk to some children quite recently at the Hay festival. This was my first talk to children about this particular book. They were aged between 12 to 16, and all the questions were smart, and very clever. They all wanted to know particular things and I didn't really see so much difference between adults and teens.

About the way you write your novels. When you start reading the Last Dragonslayer, you're right at the heart of the novel. It is the same with the Next series or the Nursery crimes series. Do you have problem with introductory chapters?

Because I leap straight into the story? I just want to get on with it. I just think it is bit tedious if you have to start to explain too much. The thing about creating a new world, is that the world has existed as it has in the book for hundreds of years. What I'm doing is that I'm explaining a small part. My novels usually takes places over the course of four days or a week, most of my books take place over four or five days. The world is already there so we just leap straight in, and if perhaps you don't understand a few things straight away, they will be explained as you go on.
It's a good way to write, it's just expecting that your audience is intelligent. They have read books before and they know how books work. If they don't understand what's going on, they will soon pick it up. If you put too much early on, it's just info dumping. In Fantasy books it's the biggest problem because you're creating a new world, mammoth info dumping in the very early stage in the book. That's why we start off the last Dragonslayer when they're working on their daily jobs. It kinds of explain the world. It shows how the world works without having to explain it. It's much better because when you tried to get exposition across, showing is a better way than telling. So that's what I attempted to do, show the exposition rather tell the exposition.

Let's talk about an Ununited Kingdoms - in French Les Royaume Désunis. Where did the idea come from because in the Thursday Next series the United Kingdom is a republic and here it's a cluster of small kingdoms. So do you have something against the way your country works?

No, I thought it was interesting in the Thursday books to have it as a republic. And I wanted to make George Formby president, which would only make any sense in the monarchy. But I like the idea of having a mix between modern and medieval. I like the idea you can drive around in cars but that if you do something wrong you could be burnt , staked, beheaded, or have your head on a spike and put on a bridge. The fact that King Snodd doesn't behead people because it's not fashionable amuses me. And I like the idea of taking a very barbarous society which is also modern as well. And it's within a fusion of the two that shouts out these exciting ideas. So that was the background for it, and I wanted the possibility of the Jennifer Strange series carrying on. If people like the first read, I will write more. I wanted to create a nice canvas. If you're doing fantasy always make a broad canvas that you can play with. I wrote down on this kingdom - I think you can see that on the website - I literary did it in an afternoon because somebody said “Oh, could we have the tour guide of the kingdom?” So I had to put these things down very quickly. And now, I'm stuck with that but I actually work with it quite well. I could decide what to use and what not. And in Dragonslayer 2 that I've just finished, they do travel to Trollvenia which is in the far north.

What could you tell us about the next installment in this series? Will it still be called the Song of the Quarkbeast?

Yeah, the Song of the Quarkbeast. I've just finished that. It carries on the story. Magic has returned and it's building but much slower than they were expecting. There are two companies, two houses of enchantment, Kazam and Industrial Magic or Imagic as I call themselves now, because it's trendy and modern. The person who runs Imagic wants to merge the two houses. The king wants to control magic and they want to sell it as a commodity. There are no mobile phones because mobile phones use magic. When magic left, they had to switch them off, and they had to switch off medical scanners and radars, and microwave ovens because they all run on magic. They actually don't work at all but King Snodd and Drax, who runs Imagic, think that there are lots of money to be made by bringing back mobile phone networks. Jennifer says that magic should be for everyone, not just for one company. So the real story is about a magical contest: Imagic challenges Kazam to build a bridge in Hereford. But Jennifer has to stay calm even if King Snodd and Drax start cheating. Soon people are being arrested and by the morning of the competition, there are no wizards at all. They have been arrested or turned to stone. It's a big worry.

And so there will be a new Quarkbeast.

Yes. We learn lots about the new Quarkbeast, we also learn lots about a retired enchantress called Once Magnificent Boo. We just carry on in very much the same sort of world, but again, it's a struggle for Jennifer to keep magic away from big business. We have the theme of big business pointing out on magic and on how she stops it.

If I'm right you kind of imported the Quarkbeast from the Thursday next novels to this one?

No, the Quarkbeast started off in Dragonslayer but I think I use the reference to the Quarkbeast once in the Thursday next.

Yes, that’s what I was referring to.

I quite often do that, because it's a kind of very subtle foreshadowing. It's a way of smoothing things because I have a lot of very silly ideas in my books. I like to smooth the ideas in, rather than just dumping this huge new idea in the reader's lap. I like to sort of hint that it's gonna come and then it's much easier to get silly ideas through to the reader. It's a silly idea by stealth.

You told in previous interviews that you were not really eager to see your work adapted into film. I wanted to know if you changed your mind.

I wouldn't be against someone making a film out of the Last Dragonslayer, it could work very well. But I worked for the film industry for twenty years so I'm not beguiled by the charms of producers. And I could tell when they are genuine quite easily: first sentence. It's like when you read a book: you read the first paragraph and you know whether that writer can write. It's the same with the producers. If I meet a producer or if a producer has to send me an email - I'm not allowed to speak to them, because that's not how you approach authors - but if I got a call from my agent saying I've got this producer who did this film and so and so and if I've heard of the film then I go “Okay, tell me some more”. I've got many many producers trying to contact me, but in ten years we've had three meetings.
We are very particular because I could say yes and then they could have a meeting, talk about this, talk about that. And two years down the line, they have got no funding and they will collapse. It's just a waste of my time. So I'm only speaking to people who are players and if that means someone whose gonna fall by the way side…. Well… I'm not really that bothered that it gets made or not. I just want to speak to people who genuinely have a chance of getting this thing made. But I just don't have time for it. Making movies is a huge amount time wasting. It's like 95 % time wasting and 5 % shooting. We're talking to someone at the moment about Dragonslayer but we don't know where the thing is going. Nothing happened so far, we are still talking.

At the beginning of the Thursday Next series, you were working on the cover of the books, and then you came out with the idea of a dodo can which was used on the French cover. Would you like to work more on that, to provide illustrations for your books or why not a graphic novel?

I leave that to publishers because they understand covers. I just write stories. The can just happened to be on my website and whoever designed the cover saw it and asked me if he could use it for the cover. I just put it on my website one day, just for fun. I thought it would be amusing to say “that’s how you made dodos : out of a can”. You know, I've got tens of this in my house. They used to make them as present for people.
Graphic novel ? Yes, It could be made. A couple of people came to me but both of them said “We need you to do the script for our artists” to actually make the graphic novel but I said I don't have time. Some people told me “Could you do a ten parts, ten half hour episodes for tv. We'll pay you extra for this, we want you to do it.” But I can't, I just don't have the time. I’d like to do a graphic novel, I think it would be great fun but I just don’t have the time. So I said to people that If they want to take it away and make into a script and then make a graphic novel I'll be amenable but I have to see the script. Then finally they are not so keen because there is very little money on graphic novels. So at the moment no, but we are talking, because I got lots of short stories that I've written. And I've spoken to a big graphic novel company in the States. We are going to give them a short story and they're going to make it into script and then they are gonna have it come out as a graphic novel.

You're writing quite a lot!

Yes, I'm on two books a year at the moment. Yeah so T N 6, One of our Thursday is missing came out in February / march. I've been writing DS 2 and in the second half of the year, I have to write another book which is standalone. But for the moment it's top secret as it was for Shades of Grey as I was writing it. As I get to know how the book gonna be, then I can actually start to release details.

And maybe you will have time for a Nursery Crimes sequel?

Let's say next year I'll do DS3 and Nursery Crimes 3. Oh, no no I think I'm on Shades of Grey 2. Everything has to be planned because it's the first question everyone asks wherever I go to give a talk. So I have my next three years fully mapped out. Head down, close the doors, turn on the music and pulled out the incense.

So what kind of music?

All kind, I have a very eclectic mix. My iPod has everything from the Humming chorus by Puccini to the Clash both which I love equally.

So you don't choose music depending on what you're writing?

No, actually I think I don't even hear the music. It just cancels out all the other sounds that are going on. Because If I can hear the things going on in the house, you know like children, it's very disturbing. But when they scream really loud then I know I have to do something. But generally, if I can't hear them, I set the volume on three, and everything is all right.

A question about the wait between two books. We have a thread on our website about the wait. Some are like: okay writing is not like making a pie. Inspiration is not something that you can push. But on the other side, there are readers who are like, okay but we’ve been waiting for the Game of Thrones for 6 years and that’s way too much. So what do you think of that, where do you stand as a writer and as a reader?

It takes me about 100 days to write a novel. You can read my books in 5 hours so you read my books over a hundred and thirty times faster than I can write them. So this issue could never be resolved because I can't write that fast.
And also everybody wants different books. Lots of people have been saying “I love your Nursery Crimes books, I want one of those”. Other people say “I want the Shades of Grey” or “I'd just want Thursday Next and nothing else”. I have to balance it all up, and say you get a new book every year, whether it's the book you want or not. I can't help that but I can't write Thursday forever. I can't do it year after year; I have to do something else. And that's why I'm doing this standalone book because it just keeps me away from those kinds of worlds. I just can play with other ideas and use other subtle dramas. When I write a book like Shades of Grey, which is very different from my usual stuff, and when I come back to my usual stuffs I think they improve slightly. They improve through what I've learned from writing a different type of novel. So it will really work out in the end and hopefully the reader has a better book and a better experience. But the ideal thing if you like my books is to discover the series late rather than early. If you discovered my books this year, you have like 10 great books to read, I mean… 11 now. But if you were with me in 2001, it's a long wait!

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