I am thrilled as all get out today to present Sage Blackwood, author of the excellent middle grade fantasy,
Jinx (
my review).
Jinx is the only book I have re-read this year, and I can easily imagine happily reading it a third time. Since re-reading is the highest level of personal favor I can give a book, this is saying a lot.
So when Sage Blackwood asked if I might be interested in hosting her for her first interview, I said yes, with quick conviction! My questions are in bold.
The most important question first: Will
there be a next book, and can you tell us anything about it? I want to
know what happens next! I am hoping for more about Sophie and her
world...
Yes! A sequel, Jinx’s Magic, is due out from
HarperCollins in January, 2014, and yes, there will be more of Sophie and her
world. Jinx will go to Samara and, of course, get into all kinds of trouble.
And Sophie… well, you’ll see. (She said annoyingly.)
And speaking of Sophie, one of things I loved about Jinx
was the sense that there is lots of backstory to her, and to others in
the book, that is very nicely implied without being spelled
out. Because the characters give such a full feeling of
lives lived outside the pages of this particular book, I'm wondering
which people from Jinx actually became known to you
first, and in what imagined context(s) did they first appear?
Oh, great question! The characters wandered into my head at
different times, over the course of several years, before finally hooking up
with each other. The first character was the Urwald… the fairy tale forest
which I think is inside each of us. I wanted to evoke it, hopefully in a way
that begins on the page but ends in the reader’s imagination. Then came Elfwyn…
a girl in a red hood who was smarter than history has given her credit for
being. Elfwyn would not have any difficulty distinguishing her grandmother from
a wolf.
Next was Simon Magus, a legendary figure about whom we know
very little… and from what we know, it’s not really clear if he’s good or evil.
Simon Magus had a wife named Sophie. Or possibly Helen. But Sophie seemed like
a better name for the character. I forgot that it was also the name of the
protagonist of Howl’s Moving Castle.
I was on my front porch drawing pictures of these characters
when another one showed up—Jinx. There’s a rather enigmatic comment in the
Simon Magus legend: that he got his power from a boy who had died a violent
death. (The boy in the legend doesn’t actually seem to be dead, though, violent
death notwithstanding.) So I planned for the first scene to be Simon strangling
Jinx. When I actually sat down to write the scene, though, Simon refused to do
that. So I had to figure out what really happened, as it were.
So I doodled some more, and eventually drew a picture of a
boy, a troll and a wizard in a forest. And there the story begins.
Jinx is a book with tons of appeal for those of us adults
who still sincerely love reading (good) fantasy for kids. Are
you yourself one of those? When you were writing Jinx,
did you consciously recall books you loved when you were the target
audience? Or to put it another way, what books helped shaped your
writerly experience? And are there any favorite books of yours that you could recommend to the reader (young or not so young)
who enjoyed Jinx?
Oh yes, I’m definitely one of those!
My favorite author is Diana Wynne Jones. My memory insists I
have loved her since childhood, when I came across a copy of The Magicians
of Caprona at the village library. Unfortunately the publication date
doesn’t back me up on that. Apparently I was 15 when the book came out. Anyway
I sat down on the little bench in the children’s section, opened the book, and
was hooked.
You know what’s different about Ms. Jones? It’s that her
characters live in a real world. They’re not too noble to be irritated by
life’s little annoyances. They’re not too concerned with truth and justice to
care who gets the last brownie. And that makes her heroes more heroic, not
less.
Books I’d recommend: All of DWJ, but especially Drowned
Ammet (sheer brilliance), Cart & Cwidder (especially to
writers), The Homeward Bounders (more brilliance), The Lives of
Christopher Chant, The Magicians of Caprona… I feel as if I’m forgetting
something important, so everyone please insert your favorite DWJ book here.
I highly recommend Terry Pratchett too, but to your blog
readers, that’s probably like saying I highly recommend breathing. Of his
children’s books, The Amazing Maurice is my favorite.
I know that my personal representative of the target
audience (in this case, a 9 year old fantasy loving boy) enjoyed the
adventure/danger/questy part of the story most, whereas I (and I bet more
of the other grown-ups who've read Jinx), enjoyed the more personality-driven first
half (although I could be wrong!). Which part of the book was
more fun/more challenging to write?
I’m so glad to hear he enjoyed the book. I really enjoyed
writing the first half, with its focus on character and everyday life. I think
a lot of people like reading about everyday life, which is why Alexander McCall
Smith’s Botswana books are such a hit.
It was a lot of fun creating the Urwald, and creating
Simon’s house, both of which are somewhat archetypal so it was largely a matter
of writing my way into familiar places. And of course it was fun getting to
know the characters. Then of course the story developed out of who the
characters are.
My impression so far is that children like the idea that
Jinx can do magic. They would like to do a bit themselves. They like the
action, the monsters, the scary stuff at Bonesocket, and they think it would be
pretty cool to live in a wizard’s house.
And just dragging Sophie back into it, I don't think I'm
alone in feeling that if you ever felt like writing Sophie and Simon
stand-alone stories they would be welcomed....
Simon’s and Sophie’s backstory! I’d love to write that. Not
sure if I’ll ever get the chance. It’s a bit darker than Jinx’s, so it might
not make good middle grade material.
If there are any questions that I didn't ask, that you
have answers to all ready to go, do feel free to ask them of yourself!
Oh, thank you! I do have one of those, and no one is ever
going to ask it. So here goes:
Some have called Jinx’s ability to learn foreign
languages a form of magic. But isn’t it an application of second language
acquisition theory, meaning that pretty much anyone could do what Jinx does,
and isn’t this a rather loaded question?
Yes!
Thank you so much, Sage, for the fascinating answers to my questions! I'm so glad there isn't going to be a long wait for the next instalment.
The winner of the giveaway was
alibrarymama.
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