Authorgraph 271: Jenny McLachlan

Jenny McLachlan interviewed by Joy Court.

‘Someday I’m going to walk through this same house and find a room I’ve never found before.’  It was this line from a beloved childhood picturebook (Someday by Charlotte Zolotov) that made Jenny McLachlan want to be a writer. ‘To me that’s what books were like, opening up not just a room, but entire worlds for me to explore.’ She loved books ‘more than anything’, but she struggled with spelling and punctuation and was a very slow writer. Age 11, her class was given the task of creating their own picturebooks and she describs writing and illustrating her book as like a ‘beam of sunlight shining down on me, I realised this is what I want to do.’ The thought was immediately dismissed however, ‘I didn’t feel good enough’. Instead, an English degree followed by teaching:  ‘circling around what I wanted to do.’

When she finally did submit a book to an agent, it resulted in a four-book deal with Bloomsbury – more than good enough! If that makes it seem that Jenny had an easy journey to becoming an author, she’s clear about not wanting to add to any ‘mythologising’ about the authorial process, ‘Like everything else you do, it requires constant practice and thousands and thousands of words to become any good’. From deciding, finally, to write, to the publication of what was then called Flirty Dancing, took her ‘about 8 years’. The four-book series is now called Friends Like Us with Bea, Betty, Kat and Pearl each the featured friend. She wanted them to be funny but also realistic. ‘I want  them to feel as though they are real worlds, real children and real scenarios’, a principle she was also later to apply to her fantasy titles. The characters were ‘entirely autobiographical, apart from the good bits! The clothes may change, the language may change, but the emotions of being a teenager are all the same’, She is, she says, ‘obsessed’ with that stage in your life when you grow up:  ‘how you do it, do you have to do it?’. She herself found growing up hard, ‘I didn’t like that there is a point at which you have to stop playing’.

This goes some way to explaining why, after two more successful younger teen novels, Stargazing for Beginners and Truly Madly Deeply, she decided to move to middle grade fantasy and eventually to produce the phenomenon that is The Land  of Roar!   But it was also that times were changing.  She  was ‘ very uninterested’ in tech and phones. although she could see ‘the comic potential’ of the latter, ‘phones really spoil plots’. She wanted to move away from writing about schools and into fantasy, because she ‘wanted to capture that pure magic that I remember so vividly … when the line blurs between reality and fantasy in a brilliant game’. Above all she ‘wanted to make the joy and magic of playing, real and never-ending. I really do feel that children need sources of happiness, escape and joy in book form’.

Arthur and Rose, the twin central characters of The Land of Roar series, very nearly had a completely different adventure, because her initial idea was for the fairy door, that she later brought to fruition for Danny in Fairy vs Boy,  to be in Arthur’s bedroom. Her publisher had another fairy book scheduled, so she was asked to come up with something different. She was ‘almost nervous’ about creating an entire magical world, but a ‘wild and windy’ cliffside walk with her husband, where they came up with every conceivable thing that they would have in their ideal fantasy world, brought the Land of Roar to life.  Basically ‘two grown-ups reminiscing about playing!’ She wanted to keep her style of first person, present tense, but it was ‘harder than I thought’ not to use an omniscient narrator. The toughest scene she had to write – ‘it took weeks’ – was Arthur going through the camp bed in the attic and arriving in Roar. It delighted me to discover that the unique concept  of a folding camp bed as the portal to a magical world where childhood games become reality, was based upon Jenny’s childhood adventures with multiple cousins in her grandmother’s attic, where she did indeed crawl into the camp bed and was convinced that she was transported to another place. ‘Writing is amazing, you can make your dreams happen.’ A concept that obviously struck a chord with countless children and The Land of Roar, a Waterstones Book of the Month and Sunday Times bestseller, was swiftly followed by Return to Roar and The Battle for Roar. Young fans will be  so delighted that they can now return to their favourite fantasy world with newly published  The Dragon Riders of Roar. ‘I had always thought there would be four books because I wanted to go into grandad’s fantasy world.’ The twin’s grandad’s fantasy world will, I’m told,  now be in the concluding episode of what will be the three books in this highly anticipated new sequence.

Finding a new part of Roar to explore was never going to be a problem, none of the Roar books have visited the same area, and she knew she wanted to showcase  her love for dragons, but again it was a favourite game of her childhood that brought inspiration.  She had loved inventing her own school: designing unforms, timetables, maps and so on. In The Dragon Riders of Roar Rose has been busy writing a story set in Roar, complete with a Dragon Riders Academy. ‘The comedy potential of Arthur having to attend a school invented by his sister, where she was the star pupil and which all comes to life, was irresistible’ Unbeknownst to Rose, Arthur finds her story and adds extra comments which also come to life when the book ends up in Roar. A wonderful metaphor for the power of words (and authors!).

But before returning to Roar, Jenny created two further fantasy series, continuing to produce at least one new book every year since her first in 2014. Having had the pleasure of reading all her novels before this interview, I think what really struck me was what she said about real children and real scenarios  being important to her even amid the most imaginative fantasies. ‘I take children seriously’ she says, ‘I provide escapism but not escape from the real world.’ Dead Good Detectives and the sequel Ghost Rescue feature Sid and her best friend  Zen  who, like the twins, are at that key transition age between child and teenager and give Jenny the opportunity to examine tricky friendship issues. Essentially, she has ‘written the books I needed to read when I was younger. Giving myself the message: “You’re fine!”’ She remembers so clearly the feeling of having to ‘be on high vigilance and not do anything weird,’ and Sid’s anxiety about fitting in nearly destroys her friendship with Zen. The series also gives her the chance to feature some of her favourite things: history, ghosts, and seaside villages. It was the discovery on a Dorset camping trip of an apparent Pirate’s graveyard with gravestones adorned by the Skull and Crossbones, that provided the spark.

I am sure her characters feel so real because of their real-world inspiration. So, when she finally achieved her ambition of writing and illustrating a book and the hilarious Stink (now called Fairy Vs Boy) was born, we meet  Danny, who is at that age where social embarrassment is feared more than anything and what could be worse  than having a fairy door in his bedroom with ‘the worst fairy ever’ popping out of it?  She loves ‘discombobulating’ readers and challenging assumptions, not just about boys but also about fairies, and Danny has a lot in common with her own long suffering older brother,  just as the anarchic toddler Sophie, who inflicts the fairy door upon him, is like her  own little sister or indeed her daughter at that age! Fairy vs Wizard swiftly followed, and fans will I am sure look forward to whatever the irrepressible Fairy will be vs next!

Admitting that she has ‘a mind crammed full of stories and not enough years to write them all,’ she tells children that she has them all lined up ‘like Netflix’ in her mind and can flip between them, choosing which to land in. ‘I can go into my fantasy world whenever I like. It must be quite frustrating for my family…’ She can have these ideas running through her head for ‘months or years,’ before she begins to work through them, filling a notebook by hand. A typed chapter by chapter plan, about 10,000 words long follows, ‘then I start to write and having been through these three stages, I rarely need to look at the plan. I can concentrate on how I write, not what I write. I know what’s going to happen and I try to write it in the best way I can’. Despite what sounds like quite a lengthy process, she keeps to a fairly punishing publishing schedule by ‘basically working all the time’. But, she admits, ‘I enjoy it a bit too much!’ Her many fans would argue that her sheer enjoyment is what comes across to the reader and  makes her stories such a delight to read and Jenny a go-to author for parents, teachers and librarians who want to get youngsters reading for pleasure.

Joy Court is a trustee of The United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA), co-founder of All Around Reading and Conference Manager for CILIP Youth Libraries Group. She is a Past Chair of the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals.

Books mentioned, all by Jenny McLachlan and published by Farshore.

The Land of Roar 978-1405293679

Return to Roar 978-1405295024

The Battle for Roar 978-1405298148

Dragon Riders of Roar 978-0755503377

Dead Good Detectives 978-1405298155

Ghost Rescue 978-0755503353

Fairy vs Boy (Stink) 978-0008524272

Fairy Vs Wizard 978-0008524302