Airport Security and YA Awards

By Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

We children’s writers have our own secret societies, with pins, secret handshakes – and prizes!One of our secret societies is SCBWI (it is so secret that no one can pronounce the acronym). The initials stand for Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and it is the biggest children’s writers’ organization in the world.  Last year, SCBWI International introduced a new members’ choice award for novels, called the Crystal Kite Award. Each year, fourteen Crystal Kites are given worldwide. Last year, my novel, Stolen Child, won the first Crystal Kite Award for the Americas. It is a wonderful thing to be recognized by one’s peers. Not only that, the award itself is beautiful. It is solid crystal and it comes with its own pair of cotton gloves. I was presented with this award in Ottawa last year. Airport security was quite boggled by it. And the gloves.

The Crystal Kite Award

This year, I was rooting for Lena Coakley’s Witchlanders to win the Crystal Kite for the Americas, and it did!

Witchlanders is a big fat beautiful fantasy. The kind you can sink into and live with for a while. It’s about a world in a different past that’s been torn asunder by war. And about two young men – Ryder and Falpian – who are so different from each other that they’re like two parts of a whole.  They’re from two warring cultures – the Witchlands and the Baen. It begins with Ryder’s mother making terrible prophesies that no one will believe, but when monsters rise from mud and begin to kill the people of the Witchlands, Ryder realizes that he must stop the rest of his mother’s prophesies from coming true.

He embarks on a journey to find and kill the assassin she sees in her divining, but what he finds instead is a young man who may kill him or may be his salvation.

Here is an interview with Lena Coakley, the magnificent author of Witchlanders.

How long did it take you to write Witchlanders?

Ten long years! My writing group had its tenth anniversary right around the time I was signing my contract with Simon & Schuster. Four of us, all published authors, get together about once a month to read and critique each other’s work. Because we keep a journal, I was able to look back and see what we were reading at our very first meeting.  Sure enough, I was reading Chapter One. I really have to hand it to my group for sticking with the story for so long!

For the last two of those years, I was working with my agent, Steven Malk of Writers House, who helped me to do a major rewrite of the book. I know Witchlanders wouldn’t have been publishable if he hadn’t decided to take it on—something I’m eternally grateful for!

Did you ever feel like giving up?

Always! In fact, when I first started the novel, I told myself that if it wasn’t done in five years I could quit. But when you’ve been working on a book for five years, you think: Well, I’ve put in so much work, I can’t stop now. Then you feel the same way at six years, seven years, eight years… I really had no choice but to finish!

What was the inspiration for the novel?

There are so many.  Like a lot of first-time authors, I really threw everything I ever wanted to say into the pot—about feminism, archeology, religion, cultural identity, matriarchal cultures, pictorial languages…. There is probably way too much in there!  But mostly I just wanted to create a compelling character. As soon as I got the idea for Ryder, the gruff, taciturn farm boy living on the border of enemy lands, I knew he was a hero I wanted to build a book around.

Franny Billingsley, the author of Chime, once told me: “often a character needs to be a little outsized to succeed in turning the narrative cogs of his or her story.” I knew that Ryder was a character who would make the kind of choices—bad, good or just plain crazy!—to keep those “narrative cogs” turning.

I love the fact that you have two conflicting male protagonists. That is an unusual character combo for any novel, let alone a young adult novel. Had you planned the story to be this way from the start, or did the characters insist on having their way?

The very first kernel of the story was the idea of having two boys of rival cultures trapped by a snow storm at the top of a mountain. Much of Ryder and Falpian’s identities come from viewing the other as the enemy, and yet, when they are forced to work together, it becomes impossible to see things so black and white.

From that kernel of an idea I started to build the characters of these two boys, trying to figure out ways for their flaws and strengths to play off one another. In a way, they created each other, because each is the other’s foil. It seemed right that both of them should be point-of-view characters, so that the reader could see the story from these two very different perspectives.

In the first draft of the novel (the draft that I sent to my agent) Part One of the book was from Ryder’s point of view, Part Two was from Falpian’s point of view, and Part Three had alternating points of view.  This was one of the first things Steven asked me to change. He felt that I was allowing this rigid format to interfere with the story, and he was right. He suggested that readers should be introduced to Falpian in small snippets throughout the first part of the book, so that the transition from Part One to Part Two wouldn’t be so abrupt.

How does one do research for a fantasy?

Some people think that fantasy novels don’t need to be researched. After all, doesn’t the author just make it all up? I probably thought that myself when I started. Boy, was I wrong! I needed to research mountain climbing, medieval farming, sword fighting techniques, how to make bread in a wood stove, how to build a snow shelter, the effects of frostbite… and that’s just off the top of my head!

I also learned how helpful picture research can be. For the final scene of the book, I knew I wanted a dramatic and beautiful setting, but there is so much snow and weather in Witchlanders that I thought I had exhausted all possible forms of wintry precipitation. Then a friend came home from Vermont with photos of an ice fog. I practically jumped her for them!  I was so happy with the resulting scene that when it came time to rewrite the book, I went to the picture collection at the Toronto Reference Library and looked at pictures of snow and wintry settings to inspire me and to help make the book’s imagery more detailed and concrete.

Did you write an outline before you wrote the book?

I tried, but I simply didn’t know enough about plot structure when I first started writing the book.  This made the rewriting process much more laborious. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I probably threw away more scenes than I kept. Once I’d written a first draft, I finally figured out that I needed to know more about story construction.  I pored over books like Story by Robert McKee and The Anatomy of Story by John Truby, even attending McKee’s famous, three-day workshop.

For the book I’m writing now, I wrote an outline before I began and I think (hope!) it will make the writing go much more quickly.

What was the original title and why did you change it?

For a long time the book was called The Boneshakers, because the witches in the book throw bones in order to tell the future. I was absolutely wedded to that title, but right when my agent and I were about to pitch it, both Cherie Priest and Kate Milford came out with novels that had the word boneshaker in the title. I was devastated! But after about a day of moaning about it, I realized that The Witchlanders was a much more apropos title. After the book was sold to Simon & Schuster, it was actually the book designer who wanted to drop the ‘the.’ She thought the cover looked prettier without it!  Now I can’t imagine any title other than Witchlanders.

Kirkus gave Witchlanders a starred review and said, “Exquisite storytelling plus atmospheric worldbuilding equals one stunning teen debut.” You’ve had other high praise as well. What sort of feedback have you had from teens?

Getting feedback from teens is one of the best perks of writing a YA novel and one I had no idea I would enjoy so much. They are so enthusiastic! I got an email about Witchlanders recently with the subject heading: Epic Win!!!!!!! That really made my day. I’m also in the middle of an email conversation right now with a teen who is really taking me to task about not writing a sequel. It’s very heart-warming for me to know that what happens next to Ryder and Falpian is so important to readers—my characters have become real to them.

How has your life changed since the novel came out?

For the moment, I am able to write full time, which is something I absolutely adore.  I don’t know how long this period will last; I suspect I just don’t write fast enough to be able to live without a “day job” forever; but for now I am making the most of it.

What is your writing routine?

I usually start the day with a swim, and I honestly think I get a lot of work done in the pool.  Often I get the thorniest plot knots worked out there before I even hit the desk.

I’m writing by ten or earlier. No email, Twitter or Facebook is allowed until I break for lunch at about one.  (Well, this is the rule, anyway, but I often break it.)

I’m usually a bit burned out for creative work by three, so I’ll answer business emails, write blog posts or do research until about five.

Every Thursday I spend the day at the Toronto Reference Library to do research, so that’s a bit of a break from the writing. I also take one day of the weekend off, and on the other day I work on something that isn’t my novel, usually a short story.

Tell me about your current work-in-progress.

I’m very excited about it. I’m working on a historical fantasy about the Brontë siblings as teens. It’s well known that all four Brontës (Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell) created imaginary worlds as children that they wrote about copiously in tiny little books. The premise of my book is that these imaginary worlds were real places that they traveled to escape the bleakness of their lives as a poor parson’s children living in Yorkshire in 1834.

I must say it’s a bit of a daunting task writing about people who are so well loved. Wuthering Heights (by Emily) and Jane Eyre (by Charlotte) are two of my favourite books. I feel under enormous pressure to do justice to these extraordinary people.

How do you feel about being the Crystal Kite Winner for the Americas?

I feel ecstatic! The wonderful thing about the Crystal Kite is that the winner is chosen by other authors, my peers in the children’s book industry. This means the world to me. I’ve been asked to accept the award in Ottawa and give a speech about my writing journey. I don’t know what I’ll say because I really feel as if my journey has just begun! Still, I couldn’t be more honoured to have won this award for my first novel.  I’m quite humbled by it.

Witchlanders, Lena Coakley | Atheneum |  416 pages | $18.99 | cloth | ISBN #978-1442420045