ACHUKA Special Guest - The Two Steves

1. When did you start writing together?

The memorable year of 1987 - no, I tell a lie, it was '86…or was it '88? Anyway, it was memorable...

2. How does the collaboration process work? It's been said that Barlow does the vowels and Skidmore does the consonants. Is there another story?

Yes. Once upon a time there was a beautiful frog and a hideous, warty princess… Once we have an idea (hopefully better than the one above) we work collaboratively - we both have a Performing Arts background, and this comes naturally. So we try things out, role play, improvise - then we plan, go away and write sections, get back together again, rewrite…and before we send anything off to publishers, we read it aloud from line one to the end, editing as we go.

3. Your latest series for Puffin, 'Vernon Bright...' has a Science focus, previous series having been history or myth based. Do you think the fact that you are not writing pure fiction, but fiction peppered with humorously presented information is a factor in its popularity with boys?

Possibly. Boys tend to like factual material. But no matter what our initial stimulus might be, we concentrate on humour, dialogue, pacy plots, slightly larger-than-life characters and situations. It will be interesting to see whether our latest series for Collins, Tales from the Dark Forest, is popular with the same audience, since it isn't fact-based. Ask us again in six months.

4. Do you have a target audience in mind when writing?

Yes, but it's a moving target.

5. The latest Vernon Bright title is Vernon Bright and The Faster-Than-Light Show. It opens with a typically well-realised set-piece that involves a school orchestra's attempts to perform Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with Vernon, on the lights, attempting to add some atmosphere at the climax. Who thought up that opening? Who wrote it?

That's a Barlow bit. It's an illustration of what we always tell students - 'The most convincing writing is always based on your own experiences'.

Some time ago I was building a set for a show, and a guy called Pete was making the props. He had to make a cannon that actually went 'bang'. So I said, 'Just make the cannon, and we'll set a maroon (theatre jargon for an explosive charge) off in a bomb tank' (which is a special tank made of toughened steel so as to be blast proof) and Pete said, 'No, that won't be very convincing, I'll build a bomb tank into the cannon'.

So he made a bomb tank out of an old ammunition box and drilled holes in it to let the blast out. Then he rigged up the charge to the pyrotechnics control unit (which had a Big Red Button). At this point, I said, 'I think I'll just go outside for a bit' and Pete said, 'Don't be daft, it's perfectly safe'.

So I went outside and after a while there was an almighty bang and all the windows shook and a couple of tiles fell off the roof and all the pigeons flew away, and I went back in and there was Pete looking a bit windswept and staring at the ammunition box, which used to be rectangular but was now a sphere. So Pete said, 'We'd better try a smaller charge', and I said, 'We'd better hire a bomb tank'.

Years later, when we were writing the book, I remembered the story and thought, 'If that's what Pete managed to do with one cannon, what would Bright do with a performance of the 1812?'

6. A lot of the repartee in the Vernon Bright books is between Bright and his friend John. Does this lend itself to performance when you visit schools?

Yes. It's the Performing Arts thing again - we write dialogue as directors. Spot the stage directions. Barlow tends to read Bright, and Skidmore reads John and Dodgy Dave. I don't think we'll go any further into that…

7. As well as doing events for children, you are also involved in In-Service Literacy Training for teachers and librarians. Why do you think this side of your work is important?

Because it's vital that we engage and enthuse kids in the business of reading, and we want to pass on what we've learnt to the people at the ink-face. Most of the kids we see, we will only meet for a couple of hours at best. Librarians and teachers work with them every day. Hopefully, it might also provide some light relief in an inset programme that often and perforce has to deal with how to fill in the hundredweight of forms that lands on teachers' desks every week.

8. One of the Inset sessions you offer is about Reluctant Readers. It presents "strategies for the selection, presentation and use of material to motivate the reluctant and struggling reader". In your role as editors for Heinemann's High Impact series, what are your essential criteria for material aimed at reluctant readers?

This answer could extend to a doctorial thesis. In brief:
· It must be written in language accessible to the reader
· The subject matter must reflect the interest level and emotional maturity of the reader
· It must be attractively packaged (design is vital. The covers must be arresting, the text layout non-threatening, inside illustrations helpful, font size appropriate…etc)
· It must engage the readers' interest from the first page to the last. Readers must be motivated to turn every page.
· There has to be a variety of material.
· The series must allow for progression.
· Any title must undergo a successful trial with its intended audience.
· The writing must be good. If a reader isn't turned on by good books, why on Earth would he/she be turned on by bad ones?

9. What ARE the keys to selecting and presenting material for reluctant readers and who, in your view, apart from yourselves, are the authors who reach this target audience most effectively?

Well, all the above criteria apply. It's important for mainstream authors to write material for reluctant readers. This confers status on their material - 'We're reading Anthony Masters'… 'So are we!' Kids have to want to read. Therefore, the person who's done most to motivate reluctant readers in recent years is JK Rowling. The people, we find, who write best for reluctant readers are often the people in closest contact with that readership and are prepared to write for their audience, rather than for themselves.

10. Lindsey Fraser, of Scottish Book Trust, has described you both as "a wonderful aberration in the world of children's books", going on to speak enthusiastically of your "action-packed events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival". What has been the most memorable of your 'event' experiences.

We can't put that out on the web! Anyone wishing the full details will have to catch us late at night and ply us with beer…! We did enjoy doing 'Shakespeare's Ghostwriter' at the Oxford Union, where, under the painted gaze of luminaries and amid the shades of politicians and princes, we had three hundred and fifty kids jumping up, spinning round and sneezing every time we said the word 'Macbeth'. (We said it a lot.)

[This is the American edition of Star Bores, but available through Amazon's UK site.]

11. Does being joint-authors present any pecuniary problems. For example, I imagine your fee for school events is higher than it would be if you were just one person, and therefore might deter bookings. Equally, the advance and royalties from publishers have to be divided between two people.

Not necessarily. We have heard of others who are very expensive all by themselves! Transportation costs are usually no higher than for a single person, and in a workshop situation we can spend more time one on one with the kids. Our fees have to reflect the time we lose for writing by attending events - but we are trying not to put ourselves beyond the financial reach of anyone who wants us to visit. As for advances and royalties…true - but we probably do twice the work of most single authors!

12. Coming back to the Vernon Bright series... How did you ensure that the 'science' was correct (for example the ideas contained in Chapter 5, 'A Can of Wormholes') or are you both science boffins?

Well, we've got our GCSEs and we watch Horizon, so we thought we were pretty clued up. Our editor wasn't so sanguine, and called in Trevor Day, who read Magnetic Banana and then sent us a nine-paged single-spaced fax which began…'Did you know there are eight different types of magnetism?…' Since then, we've been very thorough in our research - or we've chosen subjects like gravitons, which even scientists aren't sure about!

13. The Mad Myths series is illustrated by Tony Ross and you've got a great cartoon-style illustrator, Geo Parkin, for this series. Is it important for you that the illustrators get things right?

Emphatically, yes! Tony can produce images of incredible immediacy and vitality with a few brush strokes, and Geo adds ideas to our text that we wish we'd thought of ourselves.

14. Your first two books -- I Fell In Love With a Leather Jacket and In Love With an Urban Gorilla -- were comprised of letters exchanged between Sammy and her pen-pal Camille. Was one of you Sammy and the other Camille? [see footnote]

Yes. Barlow wrote the Sammy letters and Skidmore says he wrote the letters from Camille….hang on a minute, there aren't actually any letters from Camille to Sammy in the books…Skidmore, come here! I want a word…

15. The 'Lost Diary' series is not exclusively by you. Did this change the way you wrote?

No. We helped formulate the series, and we always varied our text with a mixture of diary entries, newspaper clippings, postcards, advertisements and other fake regalia, which other writers didn't adopt.

FOOTNOTE to Q14 - The letters in I Fell In Love With a Leather Jacket and its sequel are all from Sammy. These two titles were published before ACHUKA began to review children's books and Q14, we're ashamed to say, was based on a lazy reading of the jacket blurb. The reply, however, was too entertaining to edit out!