Chris d'Lacey

1 One of your new books from Scholastic--The Table Football League--can only have been written by a football enthusiast and Subbuteo player. When did you get your own Subbuteo pitch and have you had your own 'magic' player, like Willie Mackintosh?

I got my first pitch when I was about twelve. It was given to me by my aunt's boyfriend, as a means of getting me out of the way so he could play his own games with my aunt, I think. Gosh, what a start to the interview, that is: confessions of a Subbuteo enthusiast! The figures were actually strips of cardboard, painted to look like players. Later, I got a 'modern' plastic version for Christmas and chucked the cardboard guys out. What a dork. They're probably worth a fortune now. I lived for Subbuteo when I was a kid. Myself and a few schoolfriends formed a league when we were doing our 'O' levels. I remember it was terribly tense and serious stuff. Sweat dripping on the pitch, that sort of thing. My brother recently moved house and unearthed a whole pile of memorabilia: match reports and player profiles etc. They read something like, "Wally Brand, aged 29, plumber, caught toe in mousetrap in 1979, had trouble with inswinging corners ever since..." And yes there WAS a Willie Mackintosh, who was the subject of many a transfer bid. He wasn't quite the superstar described in the book, but he was my top striker and I still have him to this day. As to any allegations of hideous experiments with varnish and weights, my lips are sealed.

2 Traditionally boys have preferred PLAYING football (and when that's not possible, playing indoor versions like Subbuteo or watching Match of the Day) rather than READING about it. Your book is dedicated to the "5 Live" Commentary team and is filled with italicized football commentary which must have been fun to write. Is this one of the features of the book which you hope will appeal to young readers?

One of the expectations of The TFL is that it might appeal to 'reluctant boy readers'. When I do school visits I often seek out the boys who don't like reading and ask them what activity they prefer. Ninety percent of the time the answer is football. So I say to them, "Imagine you were injured and you couldn't play football for weeks, what would you do then?" I also have to insist that their PlayStation has blown a fuse and Dad hasn't paid the TV licence, before we get to the fact that they could always read a BOOK (football or otherwise). I find it sad that I have to impose so many conditions before some kids will agree to flick a few pages. So, to answer your question, yes, the commentaries were great fun to do and are an attempt to echo the vibrancy of the real game and hence grip the kids. I'm full of admiration for Alan Green and his Radio 5 colleagues. They put a great deal of enthusiasm into their commentaries. I listen to games when I'm driving, mostly, and I'm always chuntering away to myself. It's amazing how 'interactive' a radio commentary can be. I'll hear Alan Green scream: "Shearer takes a tumble inside the box! Is it a penalty?!" and hear myself screaming back: "No way, ref!" Odd, when you can't see it or get an action replay. But isn't that what we're doing with books - making pictures out of words? It's an interesting comparison.

3 I think the illustrator, Philip Reeve, has done a fabulous job of bringing the little figures and the main characters to life. Was he chosen by you, or by the publisher?

Philip is a fantastic illustrator. He suits my wacky style of writing perfectly. He was suggested by Jane Burnard, my editor at Scholastic. One good housepoint for her. What I like about Philip is the way he embellishes the text with his own little asides. I always have a good laugh when the roughs come in. Philip thinks The Snail Patrol, which comes out together with The Table Football League this month, is his best work yet. Personally, I think the TFL is better. What makes it so funny are the expressions on the players' faces. Philip will readily tell you he is not the world's greatest football fan, but he still manages to capture the full range of emotions; shock of balls whizzing past stranded goalkeepers and such. We took a few liberties with the 'static' figures. It was my idea, for instance, to have one figure with his hands covering his 'sensitive bits' when they're all lined up to face a free kick. But nine times out of ten, those sorts of things are thrown in by Philip. He's great. Top man. In the style of Ron Atkinson I would have to say: "This Reeve bloke draws for fun, Brian". That just about sums 'Reevesy' up.

4 As you say, Reeve also illustrates The Snail Patrol, which is about a boy who goes into business catching snails in a neighbour's garden. What gave you the idea for this book?

A-ha! Good one. I use the following anecdote at schools sometimes to illustrate how stories come about. I have a small back garden, okay? One rainy night, I was picking my way across the lawn, desperately trying not to murder snails, when Jay came to the kitchen step. "We've got snails on the lawn," she wryly observed. "What are you going to do about it?" I said, "What do you want me to do about it?" (apart from teeter on tip-toes like an idiot). "Get rid of them," she sniffed. "How?" I said. She went to the cupboard and brought out half a dozen empty jamjars. "Put the snails in the jars," she said, "and take them away." I looked at her aghast. "Where to?" I said. "You're the creative one," she shrugged. And that was that. So while I was collecting snails in jamjars and thinking, 'Why am I doing this? I'm forty years old, for goodness' sake!' it suddenly struck me that a boy could do it as a sort of bob-a-job thing - and ping! The Snail Patrol was born.

5 Boy-Girl relationships are given amusing treatment in both books (Janice in The Table Football League, Sharon in The Snail Patrol). You capture the embarrassed tenderness which boys feel for girls they like in a manner which doesn't often surface in children's books (sometimes in Tim Winton's Lockie Leonard books, but they're for older readers)--is this something you were consciously aiming to do?

No, not really. It just happened that way. This is essentially a question about characterisation, a topic I find quite difficult to discuss. You sometimes hear writing tutors banging on alarmingly about the importance of characterisation, as if it's something you have to decide upon before you can ever set fingers to keyboard. I never think about these things when I write a book. I place the kids in a certain situation, wait and see what comes out of their mouths and let it develop from there. I guess that the boy-girl situations in the two books are separate reflections of my own reactions to girls at that time. We all write about what we know, I suppose. If I was on the psychiatrist's couch, so to speak, I might say that the iconisation of Janice in The TFL is me prior to my parents' split when girls were great buddies and there to be admired, but that Sharon is more post-parental trauma when I was suddenly more introspective and anxious around girls. To be honest, I don't really know, but my publishers do like this side of the books. I once heard Jane Burnard describing The TFL to another editor at Scholastic and purring, "It's got a love interest!" I'd always thought this must be common in children's fiction. Apparently not.

6 Your other recent title, Fly Cherokee Fly, has its entertaining moments, but is essentially a more serious book. Can I ask about the humour in it first of all. Most of this emanates from the dialogue, and in particular from the things the main character's parents say, particularly the mother. I'm thinking in particular of the scene in which Darryl's parents talk themselves into allowing Darryl to keep the racing pigeon.

I find it even harder to pin down the evolutionary history of the parents in my books, because neither of my parents are like my fictional mums and dads. Prior to Cherokee, people were beginning to notice that my dads were always rather daft and a bit of a soft touch, whereas the mums were sharp, observant and the ones doling out the discipline. I noticed (unconsciously) that I had corrected that in Cherokee where the parents are firmly united at several key moments. As for where the humour comes from, I have one slim theory and it goes like this: if I had children of my own, I would want to be firm and fair, but above all funny with them (a bit like I am with my cat!). What I think you see in the books is 'me' distilled into those two idealistic roles. Generally speaking, I've had no adverse reaction to it, though my sister recently ticked me off because she thought it was getting a bit one-sided i.e. the mums were always depicted as stern. "Mums have fun with their kids as well, you know," she grumbled. She has a point.

7 What did you know about racing pigeons before starting the book?

Not much - and I still don't! I do keep pigeons, but I don't race them. Cherokee is based on the true story of me finding an injured feral pigeon on my local park. It had broken a wing which had reset awkwardly. I took the bird to a local vet who assured me it would die within a few days. It lived for fourteen years! For two months I kept him in a little enclosure on the floor of my garden shed. One day, to my utter amazement, he started to fly. I then transferred him to a custom-built bird box on the outside wall of the house. Big mistake. Suddenly I had two pigeons. Then four. Then a problem. Eventually, I decided to transfer my brood back to the shed and convert it into a 'loft' of sorts. I did consider joining a fancier's club, but never seemed to have the time to devote to it all. When I came to write Cherokee I had Darryl find a racer because it offered the story more scope. Strangely enough, my lack of knowledge about the sport gave me the twist I was looking for. The fact that Darryl couldn't fly the bird because it wasn't registered in his name saved me an awful lot of research! That said, I was always a little anxious about how real fanciers would react to the book. This came to a head when the Transworld publicity people rang me in great excitement one day to say they had arranged an interview with a gentleman from the Racing Pigeon Gazette! I was terrified! I thought he would tear me apart. Actually, he was extremely friendly and we had a great chat. He conceded that I'd taken one or two 'poetic liberties' and offered to read the manuscript of any more pigeon books I wrote, which I took to be a subtle hint that I should get it right next time!

8 Did you know that the themes of bullying and intimidation would enter the second half of the story when you began writing?

No, not at all - but it's a very perceptive question. I always tell primary school kids there are two types of writers: planners and growers. I encourage them to be the former, even though most writers I know fall firmly into the latter category. I certainly do. I'm forever pitching into a book and getting stuck early on. Cherokee is an typical example. I wrote the first five chapters shortly after I had parted company with my first agent. She had always wanted me to write something "straightforward and linear". One day, disillusioned and practically on the verge of packing it all in, I grudgingly took her advice and wrote the animal story I knew best of all. After five chapters I got bored with the lack of conflict and had to bottom drawer it. Three months later I re-read what I'd done and suddenly had the faint idea of someone trying to steal the pigeon. Whizzing through the range of possibilities brought me to the son of the original owner - and bingo, everything fell into place. Intimidation is something I cannot bear, in any form. It sickens me when I hear of kids taking their lives because of pressure from bullies. At school, I was regularly getting myself into trouble because I couldn't stand back and watch my friends getting picked on. This theme crops up an awful lot in the few adult stories I published. Don't be surprised to see me return to it in future children's' books.

9 The books I've read by you are very much for the 7-12 age range. Is this your natural audience or have you written/do you see yourself writing for older/younger readers?

My most successful book to date is 'Juggling with Jeremy' which was in the first set of Reed's Blue Banana series. They are aimed at 4-6 year olds. I don't consciously set out to write for any particular age group; I simply write the stories however they need to be, then assess the readership level afterwards. I have been trying to get a picture book taken for absolutely ages. I've come close on numerous occasions, but the usual message is: "the stories are lovely but too sophisticated." Hmm. Excuse me while I mutter darkly to myself. My ambition has always been to introduce the same level of wit into my young stories that I put into my older ones. I have a nice Little Hippo out next year illustrated by Nick Sharratt about two characters called Bubble & Float (a deep-sea diver and his dog). I'm hoping they will become my 'Wallace & Gromit'. You can order the T-shirt now, if you like? At the other end of the scale - yes, I'm getting more adventurous and pushing some stories into early teens. But even here I've encountered disappointing resistance. I pitched an idea for a very dark, unfunny book at Transworld recently. They liked it, but would far rather I do something in the style of Cherokee (first). You can understand their point of view vis-a-vis marketing and such, but it doesn't leave much scope for experiment. To use an avian metaphor: I don't like the feeling that my wings are being clipped. There's an interesting juxtaposition here between the state of mind of the unpublished author and the changes incurred once you get into print. Sometimes I yearn for the freedom I had. Would-be authors should think carefully about this.

10 With several titles out this year, and more due soon I understand, who do you feel takes prime responsibility for promotion: publisher, agent, or your own good self?

Oh publisher, definitely. Well, lets put it this way: the publisher should take the lead or at least set up the right opportunities for the author. How much promotion a book can command depends on the nature of the book. Transworld were very quick off the mark when Cherokee came out, arranging interviews with the local press and radio stations (and the pigeon Gazette mentioned earlier). Scholastic have talked about doing some sort of launch for the joint release of The TFL and The Snail Patrol to mark my arrival with them as a name author - but I haven't had any details yet. I've suggested they try to get me on Trevor Brooking's Football Night! When I was writing the TFL commentaries I kept imagining Alan Green reading them on air. It would be like a dream come true if it actually happened - and it might sell a few books into the bargain. Unfortunately, because I work full time, the number of school visits I can manage is very limited. My agent, Elizabeth Fairbairn, does her bit as well. I know she's touting my name round Frankfurt this year. Promotion is simply a case of everyone doing what they can when they can. An author of my present status can't expect much more than that.

11 When you do meet your readers, what is it they most frequently want to ask you?

'Where do you get your ideas from?' must have been top of this chart for ever, I think (see question 4 for the answer, kids!). I love question and answer sessions. It's an hilarious experience. I have stock replies to the common questions and even anticipate some. I'll say to a group, "Raise your hand if you want to be an author when your grow up?" 10% is a good initial response. Having made them laugh a bit, I ask again and might get 20%. When we get to questions, out comes number two in the chart: "How much do you get for being an author?" At this point I grin smugly, hold up a copy of Jeremy and say, "This book took me one hour to write. I've earned three thousand pounds from it so far. What do you want to be when you grow up?" A forest of hands go up! "What are you going to do this afternoon?" I bark. "WRITE STORIES!" they yell. It's crude, but it works. My favourite questions are the unusual ones. A boy of eight once stood up and sheepishly asked, "Excuse me, Mr d'Lacey, do you write love stories?" I knelt in front of him and said quietly, "Why do you want to know that?" At this point the boy's 'best friend' jumps up, points to a little girl a few rows away and pipes: "Because he's in love with HER!" You can't legislate for stuff like that. The kids are the best part of this business. No question.

12 How do you work? Are you a full-time writer, or does it have to fit in with other things? Give us an idea of how a day dedicated to writing would go...

A day dedicated to writing would be something of a luxury. I work full time at Leicester University (in image analysis) so finding the opportunity to write can be quite difficult at times. I try to work for 2-3 hours most weekday evenings, but in the summer I will get up at six and work in the mornings instead. Any writer will tell you that discipline over writing schedules is very important, but because my job is based around computers I've also become used to snatching half an hour at a manuscript in a tea break or dinner hour. Short bursts aren't good for sustained story development, but as I'm the sort of writer who continually rewrites what he's just done I often use these moments for polishing a text. The past year has been very stop-start for new material. Nine books in eighteen months means a lot of proofs to deal with, but you can't have it both ways. I'm not complaining.

13 Do you read other authors' children's books. Are there any authors you admire who you feel are deserving of wider recognition?

Yes, I read a lot of children's books. I get some very odd looks on the train. Most of the authors I admire are already getting a lot of recognition. I loved Joanne Rowling's two books, not just because they're beautifully written and a lot of fun, but because they're proving to editors everywhere, I hope, that kids of 9-12 WILL read a longer book. Another title I enjoyed recently was David Almond's 'Skellig'. I thought that was tremendously eerie and stylish. My good friend Linda Newbery will cease to be my good friend if I don't mention her at this point (hello, Linda). Hand on heart, I thought her young adult novel 'The Nowhere Girl' was a superb piece of writing. (That should keep the relationship going till Christmas.) I met Keith Gray at an Egmont bash last month and asked him if he was 'Happy'? He looked confused and grunted at me. Keith, you're supposed to say, "Yes, Chris, and I hope you're happy, too!" Shape up, boy. My favourite book is Allan Ahlberg's, 'It was a Dark and Stormy Night', with 'A Bear Called Paddington' snapping at its heels. And I know this is a children's site, but can I please give a plug to my friend, David Hood, whose first adult novel 'The Chess Men' comes out with Gollancz in the spring of next year? (That's a shandy AND a packet of crisps you owe me, Dave).

14 Books written by established children's authors normally gather several review mentions. But as ACHUKA's review reference database shows, for other writers it's a bit of a lottery, and many books don't receive a single review. What's the importance of a review mention to you as an author?

If you mean at a professional level it's difficult for me to answer because in career terms I'm still regarded as a novice. Barring a couple of small write ups in Books for Keeps, the only serious reviews I've had have come from you - on ACHUKA and the recent lovely splash for Cherokee in TES (crikey, now I owe YOU a shandy and a bag of crisps). At a personal level, it's terribly important. We all want to know what people think of our stuff. When you work as hard as I do to make a book entertaining, it's very gratifying when someone praises you for it. No one has slated me yet, but if they did I'd much more likely be confused than annoyed. It certainly wouldn't stop me writing. Besides, I know from my songwriting days that the worst thing anyone can say to you is, "Yeah, s'all right." I'd prefer ANYTHING either side of that.

15 Can you give ACHUKA visitors a foretaste of your next book?

I'll give you a short story first, if I may. In November, Scholastic are bringing out a Christmas football anthology called 'Nice One, Santa'. I'm in that. It's quite a decent collection. Nicely presented, too. My next 'proper book' in April next year will BE a football story. It's called 'Riverside United' and I think it's jolly funny. Oops. Yellow card for unliterary conduct, there, I think. Actually, I'm very hopeful that Riverside will be well-received. I read parts of it to a writers' group I attend and an historical novelist commented, "Well, I hate all sports, but you've almost got me interested in football now." You can't argue with that. I'm presently completing two novels. One is in the Cherokee style and is a mixture of teen love and ... football (sorry); the other is a collaboration with ... my good friend Linda Newbery! That one is still under wraps; it has nothing whatsoever to do with football. Watch out for it, it could be quite a stunner. Very soon I will be switching back to shorter texts again and more work with Philip Reeve - if he hasn't forgotten who I am...

16 One last question. When you talk about snatching half an hour at a manuscript for re-writing, do you mean on the paper printout, or on screen?

It can be both. Normally, I edit on paper and rewrite on screen. If I'm making major additions to a manuscript, even in a half hour break, it would definitely be on screen. My first story attempts were all done longhand, but with the gradual advent of sophisticated word processors and the proliferation of networked computers at the University it just became easier to commit things directly to disk. Having said that, editing is one of my favourite tasks and you can take a print-out anywhere, of course. I really enjoy sitting down with the draft of a story and sharpening it up. What I don't like doing are major rewrites. Sometimes an editor will say, "We'd like to see more involvement from the mum character..." Agh! They never seem to understand that a few 'simple' insertions can send ripples throughout the whole text, which can give rise to a lot of extra work. Interestingly, Cherokee is the most unedited book of all the ones I've written. Barring one paragraph and a few typos, it's as pure as it was when Transworld received it. Oh that they could all be like that.