A Q&A Interview with Ali Sparkes
Winner of the Blue Peter Award for Frozen In Time, Ali Sparkes has published more than 40 adventures for children and young adults over the past decade. Her latest book, Night Forever, concludes a gripping supernatural adventure series, The Night Speakers. The books star a group of young people who are all woken up every night by a strange beam of light at exactly 1.34am. Ali answers our questions on the book here.
Sum up The Night Speakers for us, and can you tell us where the idea for the series came from?
It was one of those nights, I think; the nights when you can’t sleep. Happily, I don’t get insomnia very often but when I do it’s usually because something in my life needs to be sorted out, whether I know it or not. The world looks so different through the window at 1.34am, when nobody is about except the odd fox. It feels like anything could happen. I think that’s where it all started.
How much of the series did you plan out before you started writing? Were there any surprises for you as a writer along the way?
I’m not a big planner. I tend to jump in and see where it goes. Most of the time that works – but there were a few rewrites, especially at the start of the series. I had ideas of things that would happen across the five books, most of which did happen… I just didn’t know how they would happen. For me that’s a lot of the fun; working out how. In Night Forever, for example, I always knew the Earth would slow down – I just had to work out how and why. Long and fascinating chats with my go to Earth scientist helped me arrive at the ‘how’ and it worked really well. The ‘why’ just followed naturally. I do love research!
But other things do take me completely by surprise. The way Matt and his dad (abusive throughout the series) end up in the final chapters of the last book was a real surprise. I had no idea that would happen!
How does writing a series compare to writing a one-off story. What are the pros and cons?
A one-off is so much simpler, because you’re not thinking beyond it. With a series you’re constantly having to weigh the importance of recapping on previous storylines with the pace and readability of the current one. Readers who’ve read earlier stories don’t need too big a recap, but can get annoyed if you don’t reference earlier themes, while a new reader can be confused and put off if you hark back too much. On the other hand, a series lets your characters really live – there’s much more time to get into their backstories – and readers can get much more emotionally connected to them.
What is the secret to writing gripping supernatural adventure stories like these?
Ha! Who can say for sure? For me it’s about the characters speaking to you; making you care about what happens to them. But it’s also about a quirky start, something which makes you stop and think right from the word go. If I explain a story or a series in one or two sentences and an audience goes ‘ooooOOOoooh’ I know I’ve probably cracked it.
You’ve said that your characters are often based on real people. Is that true of the Night Speakers protagonists?
To a degree. The character of Elena is partly inspired by my niece, of the same name; the way she looks and behaves is quite similar, but not identical. And Spin is not based on – but certainly partly constructed around – a real person, called Sam, who has the same condition that Spin lives with (porphyria). Although their characters are very different, they need to manage the same problems – and Sam was an invaluable part of the research for Spin.
Do you have a favourite scene or moment in the series? If so, what is it and why?
I think the moment when Tima, the littlest of the Night Speakers, holds big baddy Spin at gunpoint in the first book is a particular favourite. But in Night Forever the scenes set at the very top of the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest building) were fantastic fun to research and write. If you read that bit you might notice some of the detail of what, exactly, is at the top of the tower. I did a lot of research on that and I can tell you even the graffiti I mention is actually there. For some reason this tickles me a lot!
What are you working on at the moment? What’s the next project we have to look forward to?
I’m working on a contemporary thriller, about dopplegangers; one in a dull, deprived life and one in a superstar world, whose paths are about to cross in a high octane way. It’s brilliant escapism!
Do you think you would cope well with super-powers?
I could only cope with them if I could keep them secret. This much I have learned from creating so many characters with powers. If you could use them well, for everyone’s benefit, but not have your life ruled by them, that would be great. In fact, the Night Speaking superpower of being able to communicate with the animal world and speak literally every language on the planet was inspired by thinking this way. It’s an amazing superpower but one that you could easily hide.
Night Forever is published by OUP, 978-0192749994, £6.99 pbk.
