This year, for the first time, the Book Thieves decided to write to a favourite author and try to obtain an interview for our newsletter. As we had just spent a very enjoyable month reading some of the many books of Anne Fine we decided to write to her (enclosing a copy of last year’s newsletter). Anne was very gracious and prompt in her reply and we were delighted with her very comprehensive answers. She also gave us an insight into the world of Authors. Here are the questions we posed to Anne and her replies
Hello to everyone. Your club sounds wonderful and I very much enjoyed the newsletter. Here are my answers to your questions.

Have you been to Ireland, where and what did you think?
I’ve been to Ireland loads of times. My grandfather was Irish. He died of TB when my mother was ten. His family was from Dun Laoghaire. My very first holiday on my own (from university) was spent in Galway, and I’ve been back at least a dozen times since, very often giving talks there. One year I gave the RTE Open Mind Guest Lecture (published along with others by IPA, editor John Quinn, ISBN 1-902448-08-1) I’ve spoken at CLAI conferences, and Library Conferences, and I’ve very often come over for special book events. I love the place – especially Dublin and Galway.

Were any of your books ever rejected?
This is going to sound like Mrs Boastie, but no book I’ve written has ever remained unpublished for ever. (I think the secret is that I never sign contracts until the book is finished – so I can write exactly what I feel like and take the time to get it right. (I am amazed that Jo Rowling managed to stagger through the whole lot of her books. I’d have been sick to death of writing about Harry and Co by book 3.)
I have often had picture book stories sent back because, ‘That won’t work as a picture book, Anne,’ and usually the editor is right. But what I did with all those rejects was rewrite them as proper little stories, and put them together as The Stories of Jamie and Angus, Jamie and Angus Together, and, soon, Jamie and Angus Forever. Penny Dale did the lovely gentle illustrations, and the stories work very much better that way. So the editors who rejected the stories as simple picture books were absolutely right.

Your characters have unusual names. Do you make them up or is there a significance to them? Muffy? Stolly? Tulip?
To be honest, I find stories hard to keep track of if everyone has the sort of basic names you tend to find around a lot: Anne, Paul, Andrew, Peter etc. I get the characters confused. And since you should always write the sort of book that you would most like to read, I try to make the names a bit more interesting.
I don’t waste time thinking of the right name. I start with any old thing that comes to mind. But as the book progresses I come across names that seem to suit the character more. Often their names will change a dozen times or more in the months I’m writing, but finally I usually hit on the one that makes me think: “Yes! That’s it!”
Muffy sounded warm and cosy and toddlerish, the sort of name where you instantly see the child in her zip-up pyjamas with feet. It’s the sort of nickname the youngest child in a family – especially one who comes after such a long gap – would get. It just fitted well.
Stolly was the sort of boy who would never have ended up being called by his plain old name because everything he did was more fanciful and complicated than it need be. Hence Stuart Terence Oliver. (I had rather wanted him to be called Stewart Moffat. (Remember that name? It’s in the first chapter of The Book of the Banshee, when the author holds up her final typescript which is called The Rise and Hard Fall of Stewart Moffat. I thought it would be nice to actually write a book of that title – even so many years later. But in the end I was persuaded that it wasn’t quite the right title for Up on Cloud Nine. And after that, there seemed no point in sticking with the name.
As for Tulip in The Tulip Touch, I have an image of why she is called that. I think Tulip’s mum, Mrs Pierce, was too scared to name the baby without her husband’s say so. (She is clearly horribly intimidated by her husband.) So when the deadline comes for registering the baby, she says to Mr Pierce, “What shall we call her?” and he just casually glances out of the window and picks a flower name; and he cares so little that he doesn’t even bother to think, ‘Well, Rose and Daisy etc are names for girls. But Tulip isn’t.’
He just says it, and she’s too nervous to argue. So Tulip it is. (This is an example of what people mean when they say that a novel is like an iceberg – only one tenth of what the author knows about the characters ever gets written into the book.)

Do you enjoy writing one type of book more than another?
I love writing comedy. The new book, out in July, is Eating Things on Sticks, and that carries some of the family in The More the Merrier off on a completely mad holiday. (I think The More the Merrier is one of the funniest book I’ve ever written.) In between adult books ( my eighth, Our Precious Lulu, comes out in June) it’s a joy to go back to children’s books. And vice versa.

Would you ever write a series?
I do enjoy revisiting old characters like Jamie and Angus, and also the Killer Cat. (There are now five books about the Killer Cat.)
But I would hate to feel that I HAD to return to the same old gang of characters after they’d gone off the boil. And I so dislike series books published separately but which aren’t somehow rounded off properly in themselves.
I think many authors produce series books because every penny put into marketing one of them also helps to sell all the others. (It’s actually getting so that it’s mostly series books that get any serious marketing spend from publishers nowadays.) Of course, in case the readers forget, or lose interest, the contract the author signs always specifies when each book MUST be finished – and it’s often far too soon for the writer’s natural speed. That’s why so many of these books get weaker and weaker as the series progresses.
To compare an author who could and did take his time, look at the separate books that go to make up T H White’s The Once and Future King. Each stands alone and yet, for a good reader, they make a brilliant and satisfying whole.

What are you working on now?
Not telling. But it’s driving me mad. I’m at the stage where I fear it’s rubbish but I’m too far in to stop. (I’m told I ALWAYS say that at this point in the book.) But if anyone is getting impatient, The Stone Menagerie (for the same age group) is being republished in a very much altered and much more readable edition next month. That’ll keep you all going.

Good questions! It’s been a pleasure. Keep reading, everyone!

Love, Anne