by Mel (Fri Dec 11, 2009)
Sophie McKenzie is the award-winning author
of ‘Girl, Missing,’ ‘Blood Ties,’ the ‘All About Eve’ trilogy and her latest
series, ‘The Medusa Project.’ She recently agreed to speak to PowderRoomGraffiti, and as a big fan of her writing
I was delighted to interview her.
Sophie’s introduction to creative writing has
been documented elsewhere,
but in a nutshell it goes like this; made redundant from job and faced with marital
stress, turns to creative-writing course to cheer herself up and then has the
light bulb moment when she realises how much she loves writing fiction.
Sophie
has talked about obsessively writing her first novel, ‘Girl, Missing’ and how she
made it her priority above everything, apart from her son, so I asked how she found
juggling the demands of home life and her need to write the book.
‘Prior to ‘Girl, Missing,’ like anyone
doing freelance work, I spent chunks of my day pottering about the house as
well as writing. But when I started on ‘Girl, Missing’ and then the ‘All About
Eve’ series, I realised how hard I needed to work to write the books and I was
determined not to let my writing slip. I didn’t juggle successfully; I just cut
down on housework.'
I wonder if she is happy with her books when
they are finally published. Her response is emphatic,
‘I’m never satisfied! If I had my way I’d never
let them go. It’s the hardest point having to release that final proof. From
that moment on it stops being something private that you’ve shared with only a
few people, and it becomes public property.’ She pauses, ‘but once I have let
go, I’m immediately onto the next thing, I don’t let myself worry.’
With that release of her work into the
public domain, surely there must be some concern about how it will be
received?
‘Well, I know a bad review can hurt some
people, but I used to be a journalist and you learn to develop a thick skin. The
bottom line is, if you can’t handle a bad review, don’t get published.’
Prior to the interview I read the ‘All
About Eve’ trilogy, aimed at teenagers. There is a part in ‘Six Steps to a
Girl’ where one of the main characters, Luke, finally faces up to his father’s
death. Sophie describes Luke’s agony at the loss of his father so graphically,
I am sure that this part of the story is autobiographical.
‘No it’s not’ she replies. I am stunned and tell her that having lost my
Mum as a teenager, she had perfectly described my emotions as I tried to deal
with grief. How did she do that so convincingly? There is a pause,
‘It’s one of the best compliments when I’m
told that I’ve captured a feeling that I haven’t experienced. I’m not really
sure how it happens, I think by being open and curious, and by transplanting
emotions into different settings. For example, I have a fear of rats, and it’s
easy to imagine having a fear of something else, so I simply transplant the
feeling.’ It’s a believable answer, but I found it uncanny how, with no
personal experience, she could write so compellingly about the raw emotions of
grief.
Something else that intrigues me is how she
can write so convincingly for teenagers. In all her books Sophie appears to have
stepped inside the skin of her teenage characters. She laughs,
‘My theory about children’s writers is that
you write to the age that you remember clearly. I have strong memories of being
13, 14 and 15 and I find I can access the 14 year old in my head quite easily. I’m
always astonished when parents are scandalised by what their teenagers are doing.
How can they have forgotten what it’s like to be that age?’
However she is quick to point out that she
is not a teen expert,
‘I don’t think I understand teens as a
group, it would be hugely patronising of me to say that. I understand the
characters that I’ve created in my books; to me they feel like real people.’
I ask Sophie if being in her 40’s has had
anything to do with her success, and when she is confused by the question, I clumsily
say something about having a mid-life crisis, to which she bursts out laughing,
‘No! It’s just the way my life has panned
out. It was a collision of events (marriage breakdown, redundancy) and my own
determination to stick with the writing that made it happen. Divorce and
redundancy could happen in your twenties. I think my age has very little
bearing on it.’ I suspect the key word here is determination; marriages break down
every day, and redundancies are ten a penny, but they don’t often produce a
writer of such calibre.
I wonder if, despite her success, Sophie
has doubts about how good a writer she is,
‘I don’t really have doubts, but I am
always trying to improve. I fear getting complacent; I want each book to be
better than the last. I’ve read books where the second book in a series isn’t
as good as the first, and I don’t want that to happen with my books, I don’t
want to short change my readers.’
With what is coming up in the next year,
there is little chance that Sophie McKenzie’s readers will feel let down. January
2010 sees the publication of ‘The Hostage’ which is the sequel to ‘The Set Up’
in The Medusa Project series. For World Book Day, (March 4th, 2010)
comes a specially commissioned, stand alone book, ‘The Thief,’ and in July
2010, ‘The Rescue.’ The 4th Medusa
Project book will be published in 2011, and was to be the last book of the
series. Yet Sophie tells me that she’s just accepted an offer to write two
further Medusa Project books, and adds tantalisingly, ‘but there may be more!’ As
if that isn’t enough for fans to be salivating over, she is also writing the
sequel to ‘Blood Ties.’
So, books galore, devoted fans, and
brilliant writing. Is there anything that Sophie McKenzie can’t do?
‘Numbers. I am so useless with numbers, I have
to triple check each time I write a number down. With ‘Girl, Missing’ it was
almost at proof stage before someone pointed out that I’d put the USA 5 hours
ahead of the UK. I have huge respect for people who can do numbers, but I can’t,
I’m useless at maths.’
Maths dunce or not, Sophie McKenzie is the
woman to watch.
http://www.sophiemckenziebooks.com/
