Nubian Jaunts and Sailors’ Haunts: All in a Day’s Research

Discovering the ship's control room with Captain Hainaru Mircza

Verisimilitude. It’s one of my favourite words. I actually remember when I first encountered it: Mr Patterson’s class, Long Road Sixth Form College, during a discussion on Hollywood films. He explained that it means the appearance of reality, and it’s a fundamental component of all but the most surreal or postmodern fiction.

Children’s fantasy asks a lot of the reader. Come with me, it beckons, to a world of magical portals, sword-fighting knights and feline warlords. I have always maintained that the best fantasy is firmly rooted in reality. This may seem like a paradox. Fantasy is, after all, the very opposite of reality, exploding the grubby day-to-day in favour of flights of fancy. But to be persuasive – to be convincing – fantasy must be anchored in the familiar. Vitally, there are rules.

I am fascinated by the gateway between our own experiences and the magical space where the impossible is realised. In The Tygrine Cat, the fantasy comes from seeing our world from a new perspective, by entering the secret lives of ferals and following them into Fiåney, the feline ‘dream-wake.’ The ferals live on a market-place, loosely based on Camden Lock in north London, where I spent time wandering around the stalls and snapping photographs when planning the story. You can read an account of my market walkabout for a Write Away! Story Starter here.

In The Bloodstone Bird, an ordinary boy called Sash – the son of a Russian immigrant – discovers a portal to a mysterious paradise beneath an unassuming London street. Gully Lane is a far cry from Hobbiton or Narnia, housing a string of small shops with flats hidden behind them or above them off street level, including ‘a rug shop, a pawnbroker’s, a charity shop’ and ‘the place on the corner that sold fried chicken.’

Sash lives behind Stuff the World, a taxidermy shop where his father, Max, practises his mysterious trade. The geographical co-ordinates are vital to the veracity of the story because of a true feature of London that Sash discovers. While researching the book I spent time studying maps of London and trotting around key streets with a camera and notepad.

As Hampstead turned to Gospel Oak, detached Victorian houses gave way to terraces and council developments. Sash made his way down Highgate Road into Kentish Town. At the junction of Highgate Road and Fortess Road, four lanes of traffic funnelled into two. Armies of cyclists wove between grumbling cars. Gridlocked and impatient, the cars inched forward, their fumes lapping at Sash’s feet in murky gusts.

[from The Bloodstone Bird]

Max takes his craft seriously, believing that it’s possible to preserve life through taxidermy. In order to obtain a clearer idea of what was involved, I read manuals, signed up to various taxidermy chat rooms (trust me, they exist!) and attended the Guild of Taxidermists‘ annual conference. The conference was held in the heart of the Derbyshire countryside and naturally I lost my way there, arriving late and feeling more than a little out of place. I quickly got into the spirit, watching ‘live taxidermy’ – if you mind the pun – and chatting enthusiastically to Guild members. I was intrigued to hear the talks. One by an award-winning taxidermist addressed amateur errors, such as systematic over-grooming. Max himself makes a similar observation in The Bloodstone Bird:

The trick is not to over-preen. The taxidermist always wants the perfect specimen, but nature is imperfect. Fur is sometimes ruffled, twitching and shifting in response to muscle tension beneath the skin.

Most of all, the experience of meeting such a varied group of enthusiasts reminded me that it’s dangerous to make assumptions about people. It would be easy to consign the taxidermist to the role of storybook ogre. I was determined to avoid simplistic type-casting. Max would be a complicated, faintly melancholy character, a man who struggled with fatherhood and the pressures of a world that is alien to him.

A Nubian catling waits for scraps beneath a table in a cafe

In my current book, The Tygrine Cat: On the Run, Mati and his friends stow aboard a cargo ship bound for Suez to escape the menacing phantom cats. I visited Egypt in November, taking notes about Nubian ferals and absorbing the sounds and smells that a catling – a young cat – might experience. Were traders patient with their city’s feline co-habitants? Would the Nile look brown or green up close? Did papyrus reeds really line its banks? The answers to these questions would help me to set down the landscape of the story.

Closer to home, I have recently spent a delightful day at the Port of Felixstowe, where a chaplain from the Seafarers’ Society gave me a tour and arranged a visit aboard a massive cargo ship. Felixstowe is one of the largest ports in England and akin to a city of ships, containers and giant cranes. Without seeing it with my own eyes, I would have struggled to appreciate the scale of the dockyard or understood how a cat might climb the metal gangplanks. The ‘gangplank scene’ is pivotal in the story, and I knew that I had to get it right.

Much of the research for each book will never appear on a page. At Felixstowe, I filled reams of a notepad with numerous and random observations. None of this is lost – it all helps to contextualise the story in my mind, to set out the world of the book. It has energised me and allowed me to empathise with the characters. When Mati weaves between metal containers to discover the immense tarmac gangways, I understand what he sees. With him, I raise my eyes to the moon and shudder. Heart thumping, I know that the phantoms are close. In the nature reserve outside the borders of the dockyard, a shadow stirs.

The air grows hazy. A hiss catches the autumn wind. I spot the metal gangplank and realise it’s my only hope…

Next week – Chalk and Cheese? The Author and the Editor

The Death of a Cat: Killing a Central Character

In writing my first book, The Tygrine Cat, I wanted to explore the secret lives of felines: their loves and losses; their battles and betrayals. Here was a world where humans lingered on the outskirts – where tribal loyalties were tested to the limits. Life was brutal and often short. Cats could be cruel, foolish, or proud. Evil was there to be fought and overcome. But what about the brave and the good? 

I am currently writing the sequel to The Tygrine Cat and have encountered a dilemma: is it acceptable to kill a central player? In the context of a children’s book, who is allowed to die, and how? J K Rowling famously killed off favourites in the Harry Potter series but does the demise of a major character – a ‘good’ character – remain a children’s book taboo? 

Let us be clear: I really didn’t want to kill this particular cat, of whom I had grown fond. But a story can take on a will of its own; this one demanded a sacrifice. The cat’s death would serve a purpose, affecting the remaining ferals and altering the nature of their journey. A death can leave characters feeling reflective and melancholy, while encouraging them to appreciate the value of life. It can also make them tougher – and perhaps some toughness is necessary before doing battle with evil spirits. ‘Don’t do it,’ said my mum – unofficial life coach and faithful oracle. ‘The readers will be so sad – why upset them?’ But isn’t drawing out a range of emotions part of what we hope for as writers?

I pondered the fantasy fiction of my youth. From Tolkien to Le Guin, violence and death were common, but rarely too arresting and never (from what I could recall) among key characters, at least not mid-story. I found myself wondering how different The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe would have been had Edmund not been saved by Aslan’s elixir. What if Shelob had prevailed in The Lord of the Rings? The unspoken rule seemed to be that peripheral players could die, particularly if they had done something wrong. Evil characters fell in large numbers. But the central figures, the leaders, the wise and the good were usually to be spared. Had things really changed since the epics of my childhood?

I put it to my UK editor at Walker Books and my US editor at Candlewick Press. While neither condoned a killing-spree, both agreed that there were times when the plot permitted or even demanded such a death. After all, death occurs in the real world – an aphorism, no doubt, that it’s the one unavoidable truth. A note of caution was added: the character should be written out thoughtfully, with consideration and suitable regret.

With this in mind, it seems as though it’s acceptable to kill a good character, provided it’s reasoned and handled appropriately. Much depends on the audience for the book – the broad umbrella of ‘children’s fiction’ covers a huge range of ages and abilities. A child of 12 may be better equipped to deal with challenging topics than a nine-year-old, but even within an age range there are notable discrepancies. Particular genres have their own conventions. Death in junior fantasy may be a regular spectacle, but it is probably just as well to tread lightly.

It’s an exciting time to write for young people, with so many possibilities and so little proscribed. I read somewhere that despair is the final taboo: you can leave the reader with sadness, you can leave them with regret, but a kernel of hope must remain. Perhaps this is the last remaining boundary between adult and children’s fiction – the one rule that is sacrosanct. Because childhood is transitory, special, worth protecting – there’s enough despair in an adult life.

In the end I decided that the cat’s death was warranted. But all is not lost for the remaining band of ferals. It signifies an end – but not the end. While the last cat stands, there is always hope.

Next week – Eastern Cats and Western Eggs: The Trouble with Titles