Interview with John Fardell

Anna Gibbons of BRAW - The Network For The Scottish Children's Book - interviewed author John Fardell about his two novels.

You’re a cartoonist as well as a writer. Which came first? How did you get into writing?

I've been a cartoonist for considerably longer than I've been a writer, though my cartoon and comic strip work has always involved a lot of writing and idea-generating. Also, for many years before starting to write children's novels, I'd tried writing and illustrating picture book ideas (though without finding a publisher for them).
I got down to attempting to write a full length book afer meeting a children's book editor who liked my comic strip work for Viz, and said she'd be interested in seeing a children's novel from me if I ever came up with one. No publishing deal was promised at that stage, but knowing there was an editor who'd at least look seriously at any book I came up with was enough to encourage me to get down to it.

The Seven Professors of the Far North is a fantastic, old-fashioned adventure story. Is this the kind of book you liked to read when you were younger?

Very much so. I loved Tintin books, the Narnia books, Biggles books, Roald Dahl's books. I still do. I'm never quite sure what 'old-fashioned' means, even when given as a compliment! With my books, I suppose I combine classic ingredients of adventure stories with modern cutting-edge themes. And I combine elderly characters, with back-stories stretching back into the middle of the 20th century with entirely modern children in contemporary 21st century settings.

One of the most intriguing ideas in The 7 Professors is the underground tube network that links countries. What was the inspiration behind this?

Like many writers, I think my imagination was fired by my the London Underground. And by several of the great Alfred Bestall's Rupert Bear stories, which feature surreal underground travel systems. I think the trick to making a far-fetched idea like an intercontinental tube system really exciting for the reader is not to describe it as fantasy at all, but to make all the details (the infrastructure and logistics, the boiler-suited maintanance men, the toilets, the ticket systems, etc) seem absolutely realistic and believable. Real masters at this, who I'm sure inspired me, include Heath Robinson and Raymond Briggs.

The sequel to The 7 Professors, The Flight of the Silver Turtle, has just come out. Are you planning to write any more in the series?

Yes, I'm coming towards the end of writing a third, which will be out in summer 2007. I haven't come up with the title yet though!

Both your books start in Edinburgh. How important do you think this is?

Edinburgh has been a great inspiration to my imagination. All Edinburgh writers interpret Edinbugh according to their own temprement and experiences. To me, Edinburgh always seems a city full of unremarked-on eccentricities - the ideal place for an inventor's house, or a little shoe-polish shop with a secret lift to an intercontinental underground railway.
It was useful in The 7 Professors to start with a place I knew well, and could describe authoritatively, before taking the characters to the Arctic, which I don't know first-hand at all and researched from books. I think the sense of first-hand knowledge in my descriptions of Edinburgh shores up the feeling of realism I was aiming for in the later Arctic scenes.
My third book actually starts in London, another great city. This is partly because it works for the plot, and partly because I wanted to avoid repetitiveness. Edinburgh will feature again in future books though, I'm sure.

Do you have a particular audience in mind when you are writing?

Myself, mostly. (Myself now, and myself as a child reader; same thing really.) If I'm interested and excited by what I'm writing, I hope someone else will be.

Do you have a favourite time and place to write?

I write in my garage studio on the side of the house, a place I like being. Like most writers, I need to work in solitude. I sometimes go out for a walk to think of ideas though, or to somewhere exciting like a museum, to refresh my imagination
I seem to be writing (or trying to write!) all day and all evening at the moment, with the book three deadline looming, and I'm not sure what my favourite writing time is. Mid-morning on a day when it's all going well can be a good time. Mid afternoon rarely is. I sometimes find myself getting very sleepy around three or four o'clock!