Thank you so much to Catherine for the interview!

Interview

What was your inspiration for The Fortune Maker?

I’m a bit of a magpie – I get bits and pieces of my stories from lots of places and weave them together. History is full of fascinating characters and improbable events that are stranger than fiction or that stop me in my tracks and make me wonder about the people who experienced them. While writing The Fortune Maker, I read a lot about the London docklands, suffragettes, Edwardian-era poverty, the period in the UK before WW1 known as the Great Unrest, and even about the science of dye-making. Some of the characters are inspired by my own family history. And the tone of the book is a sort of love letter to the mid-century classic children’s novels I grew up with.

It’s also about our preoccupation with knowing the future and the implications of that. Humans all over the world have always tried to see the future – some of our hundreds of different methods of fortune-telling make it into the book. It seems we will have a crack at reading the future in almost anything, even toenails and sneezes.

What drew you to writing middle grade?

When I finished university I got a job as a publishing assistant at a children’s publisher. I used to overhear the publisher and senior editor have earnest conversations with creators about the character development of dragons or wombats, and of course I got to read lots of manuscripts and the backlist as well. Up until that point I’d been writing for adults and fancied myself writing some terribly important literary novel for grown ups. But that job reminded me what a magical thing it is to be a child with a good book. I decided I wanted to write something that would have kept my ten-year-old self reading all night with a torch under the bedcovers.

How did you choose which character to centre the story around? 

I really wanted to write about Maud because there aren’t enough kids with her sort of background depicted in novels. Having said that, Eleanor kept popping up, demanding to have her say. So I had to go with the dual perspective in the end, and I did enjoy writing Eleanor – but the story is really Maud’s.

What was your process for writing The Fortune Maker?

I like to play with ideas – including characters and scenes and grabs of dialogue – long-hand in a notebook and read a lot before sketching an outline for the plot. Even then, there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between notebook and manuscript as I work ideas through. I never came across a rabbit-hole I wasn’t likely to fall down, and as a result The Fortune Maker doesn’t bear much resemblance to my earliest ideas for it. 

I do edit quite a bit as I go and I’m quite a slow and meticulous writer. I think character drives plot, so I need to understand from paragraph to paragraph what my characters are thinking and feeling and why they are doing the things they do. If I hit a snarl, I’ll look for the cause of it and sometimes find it chapters back – even right back at the very beginning. If that means reconceiving and redrafting, so be it. 

What is your approach to world and character building?

In terms of development – see above. In terms of technique – avoid heavy-handed exposition at all costs! The story always needs to be moving, especially for kids, who have high standards and won’t put up with boring bits. So the world needs to unfold with the story and be a process of discovery in itself.

How would you describe The Fortune Maker in five words?

A lot of people have used the word ‘gritty’ to describe The Fortune Maker. As for the other five words – exciting, historical, mystical, hopeful.

Did you have a favourite moment in the book to write?

The scene where Maud’s house sinks into the mud was fun to write, and so were the two Seers’ markets – the one in the tunnel in London and the one on the barges in Manchester. I also enjoyed describing Eleanor’s time in the laboratory with Herr Kohl. Some scenes take endless drafts to get right and others zip out of the end of my pen and hardly change from the day I first wrote them.

What was your favourite book growing up?

I loved a good cry and so Watership Down by Richard Adams and Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson were two favourites. I still think The Lorax by Dr Seuss is just about a perfect story – I didn’t have my own copy growing up and I used to read it every time I went to the house of a friend who had it. An all-time favourite was The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. My son, who is a teenager now, recently described it as a ‘fever-dream’ of a book, one of the strangest things he ever read as a kid. I was surprised because I never thought it was strange, I just thought it was really clever and funny. I don’t know what that says about me!

Do you have a favourite genre to read?

I read quite a lot of books for younger readers, especially middle grade, but I also enjoy YA. Non-fiction gets a look-in, but the so-called literary novel has always been my thing, even if that is a problematic category. What I really look for as a reader is that rare confluence of story, style and substance. I want a gripping story, masterful prose and thematic depth. Even a bit of formal experimentation. Not much to ask, I know.