Category: young adult

Keep Calm And Carry On

First published on the Centre for Youth Literature Literature website, Inside A Dog, in 2012.

The FitzOsbornes at War is set (mostly) in England during the Second World War, and my characters get involved in all sorts of adventures. Sophie, my narrator, is dragged into a spy scandal at the American Embassy in London. Her cousin Veronica helps rescue a member of the British royal family from a kidnapping attempt. Her brother Toby becomes a fighter pilot and battles Nazis in the sky. Her friends Daniel and Rupert have top-secret jobs helping the military. Then Sophie has to investigate the circumstances surrounding a dear friend’s death when the authorities seem determined to hide the truth . . .

But you’re going to have to read the book if you want to find out more about that. What I’m going to write about here is how everyday life in England changed due to the war. Which is still pretty interesting, I think.

For example, during the Second World War, the British government had lots of information it needed to get across to the public. Often, it used posters to do this. There were posters reminding people to carry their identity cards and encouraging women to join the military services. There were posters asking people to donate their binoculars to the army or send money to the Red Cross. There were posters urging people to ‘Dig for Victory’ (that is, plant more vegetables) and warning them that ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ (because German spies might overhear vital information and use it to plan attacks). Most memorably, there were posters to boost the morale of the public, the most famous of which is probably this:

'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster

Ironically, this poster wasn’t widely distributed during the war. More than two million copies were printed, but they were designed to be displayed only if the Germans invaded Britain. Fortunately, this didn’t happen. So, most of the posters were destroyed after the war, but a few survived. The owners of Barter Books discovered one, displayed it in their shop and eventually started printing and selling the posters, which became very popular. Then came Keep Calm-o-Matic, a website that allowed you to create your own personalised versions. Naturally, I couldn’t resist creating some for the FitzOsbornes.

First, Sophie, who needs some encouragement to keep writing in her journal:

'Keep Calm and Update Your Diary' poster

Then, her glamorous friend Julia:

'Keep Calm and Stay Chic' poster

And Julia’s brother Rupert, who loves animals:

'Keep Calm and Care for Cats' poster

And Carlos the Portuguese Water Dog:

'Get Mad and Bite Nazis' poster

There are more FitzOsbornes Keep Calm posters here.

What would your Keep Calm poster say?

Next: Looking Good in Wartime

Same Book, But Different

First published on the Centre for Youth Literature website, Inside A Dog, in 2012.

If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’re probably aware that the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States. Apparently, the US publishers thought American children would be put off by the idea of reading about a philosopher. What you might not know is that the US publishers also made more than eighty changes to the story itself, which you can read about at the Harry Potter Lexicon. For example, ‘dustbin’ was translated as ‘trash can’, ‘jumper’ turned into ‘sweater’ and ‘lolly’ became ‘candy’. Some of the changes seem pretty silly to me – surely American readers can work out for themselves that ‘multi-storey car park’ means the same as ‘multilevel parking garage’. It was interesting to see that as the series progressed, the changes became fewer. By the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, there were only a couple of vocabulary changes in the American edition (‘crib’ to ‘cot’, and ‘kitchen dresser’ to ‘kitchen sideboard’).

But it’s not just best-selling fantasy series that get tweaked for different publishing markets. If you happen to have read both the Australian and the North American editions of my first Montmaray book (and I’m not sure why you would have, but anyway), you might have noticed that they’re different books. I don’t just mean they have different covers. The words inside the covers are quite different.

A Brief History of Montmaray Australian cover

A Brief History of Montmaray

There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, the North American edition of A Brief History of Montmaray came out more than a year after the original Australian edition, which gave us time to fix up some things that needed fixing. I trimmed the first section of the book, because the pacing was a bit slow (some people still think it’s too slow). I threw out the final chapter and rewrote it. There was also a scene that I thought could be more exciting and dramatic, so I rewrote that – which meant I also needed to change the location of one particular building, which led to minor changes in other parts of the book.

Then there were a lot of ‘But American teenagers won’t understand this!’ changes. Sometimes I went along with my American copy-editor’s suggestions, and sometimes I didn’t. For example, I was advised to take out some of the real history, because American teenagers would find it confusing or boring. Maybe they would, but Australian teenagers had managed to understand those bits. Are Australians smarter than Americans? I don’t know, but generally, I think teenage readers (especially the ones who choose to read long historical novels) are pretty smart. If they come across something new, they’ll use context to get the general idea of what it means. Or they’ll Google it. Or they’ll ask someone. Or they’ll just keep reading, figuring that if it’s important, there’ll be more about it later on in the book. At least, that’s what I do when I come across something unfamiliar in a book – which happens all the time to me. What’s the point of reading if you only read about stuff you already know?

Apart from the historical facts, there was also a lot of arguing about particular words. For example, in Australia, a ‘jumper’ is a long-sleeved top, usually knitted from wool. But for Americans, a ‘jumper’ is a collarless, sleeveless dress, worn over a blouse. Our ‘biscuit’ is an American ‘cookie’, whereas what Americans think of as a ‘biscuit’ would probably be called a ‘scone’ here. In the case of the Montmaray books, the vocabulary issues were complicated by my narrator speaking a posh 1930s version of British English. Sophie didn’t say ‘toilet’, ‘perfume’ or ‘mantlepiece’ – she said ‘loo’, ‘scent’ and ‘chimneypiece’. Having done a lot of research to ensure her language was authentic, there was NO WAY I was going to have Sophie suddenly talking about ‘cookies’ and ‘sweaters’. On top of that, the US edition had to use American spelling and punctuation, which is different to Australian (and posh 1930s British) spelling and punctuation.

The good news for me was that, just as with the Harry Potter series, my editors asked for fewer changes as the series went on. Maybe they figured that readers who’d made it through the first book would be able to cope with the characters eating ‘biscuits’ rather than ‘cookies’, and using ‘torches’ rather than ‘flashlights’, and so on. Or maybe my editors just got tired of arguing with me. Anyway, the final Montmaray book is pretty much the same book, no matter where in the world you happen to buy it. Apart from the spelling and the punctuation. Don’t get me started on how Americans use commas…

Next: Life in Wartime. Keep Calm and Carry On!

Real People in Historical Fiction

First published on the Centre for Youth Literature website, Inside A Dog, in 2012.

In the Montmaray Journals series, there are a lot of real, historical people interacting with my made-up characters. This presented a bit of a challenge to me, as a writer. Firstly, I needed to know a LOT about the real people I’d decided to add to my story. I had to know what they looked like, how old they were, what their nicknames were, how they spoke, what their political beliefs were, who they hung out with . . . which meant doing lots of reading. If they (or their friends) had published their diaries or written their memoirs, I read those. I read biographies of them (most of them were really famous, so they each had at least one biography). I examined photographs of them and (in the case of Winston Churchill) listened to recordings of their speech. I read newspaper and magazine articles about them so I could get an idea of what other people at the time thought of them. I also needed to know exactly where they were at key points of my story (for example, I couldn’t have Sophie FitzOsborne meeting Kathleen Kennedy at an English house party if Kathleen was actually in New York at the time).

Even with all that information, I still had to make some things up, but I tried to keep it consistent with the known facts. For example, I don’t know for sure how John F. Kennedy would have reacted if he’d met fictional Veronica FitzOsborne at a cocktail party – but the facts of his life suggest he would have flirted with her, as he did with most beautiful women he encountered, and he’d probably have asked her out to dinner at some stage, so that’s what happens in The FitzOsbornes in Exile.

Princess Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and Queen Mary

There is another problem with using real people in fiction. What if they don’t like what you’ve said about them? What if they sue you and your publisher for defamation, and your books get removed from bookshops and destroyed? (Yes, this has actually happened to some Australian authors.) However, people can’t sue for defamation if they’re dead, and luckily for me, nearly all the real people in the Montmaray Journals died a long time ago. I think the only real people in the books who are still alive1 are the Queen (see photo of her above, aged about thirteen, with her little sister, Princess Margaret, and her grandmother, Queen Mary) and the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, and I’m pretty sure that neither of them has read any of my books (especially as the books aren’t published in the UK). In any case, these two people are only mentioned in passing and I don’t say anything bad about them. They might not like what I wrote about their relatives (such as Princess Margaret and Diana Mosley), but a) their relatives are dead and b) anything I wrote about their relatives was based on previously published information and I kept a record of all my sources. Even so, I checked with my editor and she checked with the legal department at her publishing house. Publishers take this sort of thing very seriously.

If you were writing a story with real people in it – which real people would you use?

Next: Why the Australian and North American editions of my books are different

  1. They were alive when I originally wrote this blog post, but Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022 and Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, died in 2014. ↩

Planning Vs Not Planning

First published on the Centre for Youth Literature website, Inside A Dog, in 2012.

In my earlier posts, I talked about the detailed planning I did when writing The FitzOsbornes at War. I just want to emphasise that this is NOT THE ONLY WAY TO WRITE A NOVEL. It’s not even the only way I write novels. For my first book, I did ZERO planning. I had no idea how to write a novel, so I just sat down and started typing scenes, which turned into chapters. Eventually, I had a lot of words. Most of them were rubbish. I threw out a lot, kept the bits I liked and started typing again. This draft was a bit better. I kept doing this for another seven drafts. Eventually I had a book.

I decided to plan my next book, A Brief History of Montmaray, because it was told in the form of journal entries, with dates, and I wanted to incorporate a lot of real historical events into my story. For me, the only way I could keep everything straight in my head was to use index cards. When I was writing the next two Montmaray books, I refined my system a little (for example, I learned that writing down page references for the sources I was using saved me a lot of time and frustration).

For the book I’m working on now, I’m still using my planning system, even though the book isn’t told in journal form. It does have a lot of historical research in it, though, so I think my system will help me keep track of what I’m doing.

But (and I finally get to the point of this blog post), writers have their own individual ways of doing things. Each writer, and each writing project, is unique. If you’re a writer, don’t let anyone (not even teachers; not even writing teachers) tell you there’s only one way to write. There isn’t! You can plan, or you can jump straight into writing without any planning. You can edit as you go, or you can leave the editing until you have a complete draft. It’s entirely up to you. The great thing is that it doesn’t matter how you do it. All that matters is what you end up with.

How do you write? Are you a planner or a non-planner?

You might also be interested in reading:
‘Save the Cat! Writes a Novel’ by Jessica Brody
‘Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life’ by Anne Lamott
‘On Writing’ by Stephen King

Next: Real People in Historical Fiction

How To Write A Historical Novel In Seven Easy Steps – Step Seven

First published on the Centre for Youth Literature website, Inside A Dog, in 2012.

7. Admire Your Finished Book

Box of FitzOsbornes At War paperback copies

Okay, this is the only step to writing a historical novel that is ACTUALLY easy. I may not have been totally accurate when I said you could write a historical novel in seven EASY steps. But hey, I’m a novelist. I’m allowed to make up some things.

Anyway, after this step, there are many other things that go on, to do with sales and marketing and publicity, so that people will actually buy the book. I’m not really an expert in any of that, but if you want to ask a question, leave a comment below and if I can’t answer it myself, I’ll see if I can find someone who does.

Next: Planning vs Not Planning