It is a
delight to welcome the immensely talented and witty Jacqueline West to the
Inkpot! I remember picking up the first
of THE BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE (#1, THE SHADOWS) in a bookstore because I couldn't
resist the cover image of a girl climbing through a picture frame into a
clearly very magical woods. When I
started reading, I was thrilled to find myself in the thick of a magical
adventure with all the best ingredients:
a spunky, imperfect heroine (Olive), a spooky house, extraordinarily
gifted cats, and, of course, those enchanted pictures a girl might want to
climb into. I loved THE SHADOWS and
could not have been happier to ask Jacqueline West a few questions, now that #2
(SPELLBOUND) is out and #3 (THE SECOND SPY) on its way to bookstores in a
couple of weeks!
Anne, on
behalf of the Inkpot: Thank you so
much for stopping by, Jacqueline! Standing in front of a painting and dreaming oneself
into it--we've all probably done that at least a few times. Your books
confirm my suspicion that no portal could possibly be as satisfying as a
painting in a frame! Do you remember any
particular paintings that you wanted to enter, back when you were a child?
Jacqueline: When I was little, I spent a lot of time at
my grandparents’ house. It was a big old house (so of course it seemed
absolutely gigantic and ancient to little me), and it had a lot of interesting
antiques and art objects in it. I can still remember many of the
paintings that hung on the walls: a girl picking wildflowers in a long pink
gown, a shepherdess on a dark hill, a crumbling brown barn, several Norman Rockwell
prints… It was very un-menacing stuff, unlike the collection in Olive’s house!
I remember giving names to the people in the paintings, deciding ‘She looks like
a Gretchen,’ and ‘He looks like a Charlie,’ and imagining what they might have been
saying to each other when they were captured in paint, mid-scene. I
almost got myself to believe that the paintings would come to life as soon as
no one was looking, and the people in them would finally go back about their
business. I think that’s where the idea of the living paintings came
from. It’s funny: I never imagined myself actually climbing into a landscape
or joining the painted people. I just wanted to live through the characters
I created in my mind.
Anne: How about painting people or worlds? When I was in college, my friends and I
worked for months on a collective felt-pen masterpiece, an illustrated map of
fairyland. (Alas, it faded to nothing in the sun a few years after graduation.)
Have you ever painted or drawn a landscape that you wanted to wander
through? Or have your landscapes always been written, rather than drawn?
Jacqueline: Oh, I love the idea of a collectively created
fairyland map! Maybe it faded because the fairies wanted to keep their
secrets…
I’ve always
enjoyed painting and drawing, and I’ve dabbled in art off and on, but I’m
always frustrated by not being able to get the image in my imagination onto paper
or canvas. My pictures never turn out the way I intend them to—sort of
like Olive’s disastrous experiment with powerful paints in THE SECOND
SPY! With writing, I’ve realized that I can get a lot closer to
transferring what’s inside my mind to the outside. Now and then, I even
put together a line or find a simile that’s exactly what I meant to say, and
that’s a wonderful feeling.
Anne: Leopold, Harvey, and Horatio join a long and
august line of fabulous fictional cats. All the best magical stories seem
to have 'em, and I have to say yours are some of my favorites. But what
is it with cats, do you think, that makes them so very story-worthy?
Jacqueline: Young readers often ask me that, especially
when they learn that I’m a cat-allergic dog-lover! I explain that cats
seem to me like they’d be awfully good at keeping secrets. My dog would
give up all his secrets (if he had any, which he doesn’t) in exchange for a
baby carrot. Cats always appear to have an interesting inner life. They’re
so independent and self-contained and regal—it just seems like there has to be
something fascinating going on in there.
Anne: Olive's parents make me chuckle every time
they wander into the story, with their obsession with numbers and complete
inability to understand what's really going on in Olive's life. Do you
have any math-oriented people in your world, or does the mismatch between Olive
and her parents really just stand in for the mismatch between almost every
child of Olive's age and his or her well-meaning but slightly clueless parents?
Jacqueline: Ah, the Dunwoodys… No one in my world
is quite like them, although I’m sure fragments of former math teachers are
mixed into them here and there. I decided that math should be the
Dunwoodys’ calling because I thought of it as the counterpoint to the
McMartins’ magic. Math and magic each have their own rules and logic and
complexities, but they run along parallel lines—or at least they do in Olive’s
world. Because Olive is so different from her parents, she notices things
about their new home that her parents don’t perceive at all. While they
are caught up in the magic of numbers, she’s caught up in the magic of
art.
Anne: Olive
herself is a great character. She is lovable, but not perfect. She's a good friend, but she makes
mistakes. She's scrappy and creative, but also has her worries and fears
and weaknesses. Who are some of your favorite fictional heroines or
heroes? Do you have a larger picture of how Olive should be growing and
changing across the series?
Jacqueline: Thank you so much. The setting and many
of the characters around her are fantastical, but I wanted Olive to feel
real. She doesn’t have any inborn magical talents or superpowers; she’s
not secretly a demi-god or a chosen one. She just uses the strengths that
she does have to change her own world for the better, when she can.
Some of my own
favorite fictional heroes and heroines are like Olive in this way. As a
kid, I loved Anne of Green Gables, in part because of how Anne imbues the real,
natural world around her with beauty and excitement and magic. I also
loved Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, who is weirdly similar to Anne in
that he uses his imagination to transform his whole world (with much more
violent and sometimes disgusting results, of course). All of the animals
in the Hundred Acre Wood are alive because Christopher Robin believes in
them. Wonderland may only exist because Alice dreamt of it, or was
curious enough to discover it.
Olive is
flawed in many ways, and sometimes her shyness or her reluctance to trust others
gets her into trouble. Throughout the course of the books, I knew Olive would
find good friends for the first time in her life, and that she would then have to
learn how to be a good friend herself. A lot of Olive’s inner conflict
stems from this issue, and from her learning to have faith in her own strengths
and talents—even if they aren’t exactly what she or her parents hoped they
would be.
Anne: Since
I brought up the "series" question just now, let me say that this is one
series where the books just get more vivid and more fun as you go. I think
my favorite so far is actually the third!! This makes me so happy, just
to know that it is POSSIBLE to write sequels that have all the zest of the
original, and that truly can stand alone. I hadn't reread THE SHADOWS
(#1) before starting SPELLBOUND (#2), and I wasn't lost or confused for a
moment. Kudos to you for bringing the reader so seamlessly along!
Did you know from the outset that this would be a series? A series longer
than three books? How many more do you have plotted out in your mind?
Jacqueline: Woo-hoo! So glad to hear that each of
the books stood on its own! The truth is: I didn’t know that this would
be a series until THE SHADOWS was finished. I had assumed that no one
would want to publish one book by me, let alone two, so when my agent and
editor first brought up the idea of a sequel, I was surprised, and then nervous,
and then ecstatic. Maybe I had been subconsciously writing the start of a
series all along, because there was nothing in THE SHADOWS that had to be
changed in order for there to be a Volume Two. Most of the doors were
closed, but a lot of windows were left open. Almost as soon as I started
work on SPELLBOUND, my amazing editor (Jessica Garrison at Dial) brought up the
idea of a longer series, and suddenly I had the freedom and the space to think
in terms of a big, multi-part story. I’m revising Volume Four right now,
and Volume Five will be the final installment. I know what’s going to
happen in the last book, but I haven’t put anything more than sketchy notes on
paper—I only work on one book in the series at a time; I can’t move on to the next
until I know the one before it is truly finished.
Anne: Are there parts of Elsewhere we have not yet
seen?
Jacqueline: Oh, yes. Absolutely. There are many
more secrets waiting to be discovered, both inside and outside the house.
Anne: Your
#1 villain is named Annabelle McMartin. I always knew Annabelle was a
scary, scary name--I have friends who call me "Annabelle," and it
makes me shiver. Now I understand why! I won't rest easy until
Annabelle is thoroughly defeated, evaporated, melted, and/or reformed.
When does the next installment of THE BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE come out? How
long do I have to keep looking over my shoulders whenever I go outside??
Jacqueline: Just one more year, I promise! Volume
Four will be released in summer 2013, and if everything goes according to
schedule, Volume Five will follow in summer 2014.
Anne: And . . . are you working on anything else
that is non-Elsewhere-related?
Jacqueline: I am indeed. I’m currently at work on a
YA project (the title is currently in flux) that’s very different from THE
BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE. It may be released between books four and five of
ELSEWHERE, but nothing’s set in stone yet. I’ll keep the Inkpot posted!
Anne: Thank you for taking on these questions,
Jacqueline! I can't wait to see THE
SECOND SPY hit the bookshelves in July--it's a great yarn, thrilling and
moving. Congratulations on these lovely,
wonderful books!
Lena Goldfinch
