British born writer A.J. Hartley has an M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Boston University and is currently the Distinguished Professor of Shakespeare in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

As well as being a novelist and academic, he is a screenwriter, theatre director and dramaturg (and has a book explaining what that is). He has more hobbies than is good for anyone, and treats ordinary things like sport and food and beer with a reverence which borders on mania. He is married with a son, and lives in Charlotte.

AJ Hartley has written adult mystery/thriller books as well as fantasy adventure books.  Darwen Arkwright is his first novel for a middle grade/young adult audience.

Synopsis:
Eleven-year-old Darwen Arkwright has spent his whole life in a tiny town in England. So when he is forced to move to Atlanta, Georgia, to live with his aunt, he knows things will be different – but what he finds there is beyond even his wildest imaginings!

Darwen discovers an enchanting world through the old mirror hanging in his closet – a world that holds as many dangers as it does wonders. Scrobblers on motorbikes with nets big enough to fit a human boy. Gnashers with no eyes, but monstrous mouths full of teeth. Flittercrakes with bat-like bodies and the faces of men. Along with his new friends Rich and Alexandra, Darwen becomes entangled in an adventure and a mystery that involves the safety of his entire school. They soon realize that the creatures are after something in our world – something that only human children possess.

You are Distinguished Professor of Shakespeare in the Department of Theatre at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, how do you manage writing and the day job?

I budget my time very carefully and I write quickly, at least at the first draft stage. Because I have an endowed chair, my teaching load is fairly light so I can usually assume two or three mornings a week when I can stay at home and write. I usually aim for about 3000 words per sitting (again, first draft) when I’m writing fiction. I’m lucky to get a third of that when I’m writing a scholarly book or article, and that’s when I’m actually writing and not doing all the research reading you have to do before you can say anything to academics! I also need to be sure I can give blocks of time to each project—weeks, preferably—so that they don’t all compete for focus. I might work on four or five different things in the course of a year. Summers, predictably, tend to be my most productive time.

Darwen Arkwright is your first middle grade novel.  Is there a different process involved than when you write adult novels? Was it more challenging writing for a different audience?

It was initially very challenging because I assumed the process was very different, but after a while—and with some encouragement from people whose opinion I trusted—I started worrying about it less and found it came quite naturally. The tonal register is different from writing for adults, but most of the building blocks of the story and how it gets told turned out to be basically the same, or so it seems to me. I guess readers will be the judge.

Tell us a little bit about your process and how you became a writer.

I’m not sure I became a writer. As long as I’ve been a reader I’ve wanted to write and did so. I wrote my first novel when I was 19, followed by another 7 over the next 20 years, all of which were rejected. I tried many times to quit but couldn’t. Being a writer—specifically a novelist—was just who I was and am. Still, it was hard to sustain what was effectively a very stressful and time consuming hobby, so getting a novel published (about 7 years ago) was a very big deal for me.

As for process, I used to be a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of his pants, making the story up as I went along), but I gradually found that that wasn’t a very efficient method for me and required the kinds of structural editing I couldn’t manage when I was close to a project. I began using simple outlines (5-18 pages per book) to give myself a frame to work with. I still think of myself as a very organic writer, and the story will often deviate from the outline in the telling, but it has proved very useful to have a shape for the thing in advance, particularly in getting the story started.

What was your favorite chapter/scene to write and why?

There’s a scene early on when Darwen discovers that the mirror in his closet turns into a doorway after sundown. I loved writing that scene because it’s so much a part of why I wanted to write a book like this in the first place: the thrill of discovering something impossible and beautiful and potentially very dangerous. It’s like a metaphor for being a writer.

What has been the toughest criticism given to you as an author? What has been the best compliment?

The toughest criticisms are probably the ones I suspect are valid (all writers get plenty that aren’t). For me the good criticisms target the areas I know I always have to be mindful of: keeping the core idea/setting or whatever strikingly “high concept” and original, and getting the story started quickly. I tend to meander in early drafts. As to compliments, I love it when people get on an emotional or intellectual level a sense of significance or value to my work which goes beyond the thrill or fun of the surface story. That and being told I write pretty sentences J

Where’s your favorite place to write?

At home in my cluttered, messy office with the door shut.

What character do you relate most to?

Probably the title character. He’s a bit lost, unsure of himself, never quite fitting in and living largely inside his own head, at least until the world (or in this case, worlds) gets insistent. I can definitely relate.

If you could have lunch with one of your characters who would it be and why?

Alex O’Connor. She was my favorite character to write. She’s quirky, idiosyncratic, smart, funny and, above all, brutally honest.

What is easier to write: The first line or the last line?

The first line is easier to write, but the last is infinitely more satisfying.

What are you working on now?

Book 2 in the series is done apart from final line edits, and I’ll be doing editorial passes on two other books, one an adult thriller called (at the moment) The Tears of the Jaguar which is coming out next year, and a YA ghost story which I’ve just finished in draft form. When those are off my plate I’ll be writing Darwen III.

You can find the latest information about AJ on his website and information on Darwen Arkwright on the book’s site.