I would imagine that you have quite a wide ranging audience though, it wouldn’t be primarily teenagers. Would that be safe to say?
It’s very safe to say. It’s interesting that I get my back up – it happened with Tom with The Piper’s Son and with the Lumatere Chronicles. I don’t realise how much I love that teenage audience until someone says, “This book is not for teenagers.” I just get so cranky because I think “Of course it’s for teenagers.” Just because sometimes the age group of the character isn’t the same age as them, or sometimes because it’s darker, it’s not for them – I just really resent that thinking.
Oh my goodness, I want to write letters, but the rule is you don’t write letters, you do not respond to reviews, you don’t go on about it so you just go, “I’m letting it go, and I’m hoping so much that it gets into the right hands out there.”
There’s a debate in the YA world, I’ll call it the John Green vs the J.K. Rowling debate about knowing what happens to your characters after the book ends. John Green says he knows nothing, while JK Rowling provides endless extra information. Do you know where your characters are after a novel ends, or do their stories end for you when the novel does?
It doesn’t end, it certainly doesn’t end. I’m not sure what happens with them. An example is Francesca, and especially Francesca and Will. In staying realistic to their story, I picked it up in Tom a couple years later and they are still together, but the question has to be, who are these characters at 24, seven years after they’ve met?
I kind of know, in a way, where they are. I know where Tom and Tara are at the moment. With a character like Justine, I know that she is overseas playing music in Prague, so she’s easy. I kind of know where they are at this period in their life. I can understand why John Green says what he does and I can understand why J.K. Rowling says what she does, but I’m somewhere in between.
There’s no way that those characters just exit my head from the last page, there’s no way. They’re still there, and it’s obvious because you’ll see Ben from The Jellicoe Road popping into The Piper’s Son, stuff like that. So I kind of know where they are, but I don’t realise how much I don’t know where they are until I write about them again and go, “Oh, but I thought you guys were this way! And what are you guys doing this way?” And that’s good for me, because I don’t want my characters to plateau, and I also don’t want to be bored by them.
How did it feel when you found out you won the Printz award for On the Jellicoe Road?
What happens with an award is, you’re on a shortlist, and once you’re on a shortlist there’s a chance that you’re going to win, so you’re not going to go “Oh my god, I was so shocked that I won.” With the Printz there was nothing. I was very much a dark horse, and the next day after it was announced, someone had written something along the lines of “Melina who? Jellicoe what?” It was like, “Who is this person?” It was one of the moments of genuine surprise in my life.
It was the most wonderful thing to ever happen to Jellicoe. And the beauty of Jellicoe here is kids found it, teenagers found that book. It was one of those books, unlike Francesca and Alibrandi. Adults handed kids Francesca and Alibrandi and said, “Read this, you’ll love it,” whereas young people were handing Jellicoe to adults and saying “Read it.”
What means the most is that a book gets into people’s hands. For me, I remember being so excited about Jellicoe winning the Printz because I thought, “Good, now more people are going to be reading it.” I don’t write for myself. I write for myself when I’m thinking “I’m the audience,” but I don’t want a bunch of my friends to read my novels, I want a bunch of the world to read my novels.
Can you share a book recommendation of something you have read recently with us?
Wildlife by Fiona Wood, Red by Allison Cherry, First Third by William Kostakis, Where the Stars Still Shine by Trish Doller. Allison Cherry and Trish Doller are U.S. writers, and Fiona and Will are Australian writers, and I have loved all four books for four different reasons. There’s just different energies. Most of them are coming out in the next six months.
About ‘Quintana of Charyn’:
There’s a babe in my belly that whisper the valley, Froi, I follow the whispers and come to the road….
Separated from the girl he loves and has sworn to protect Froi must travel through Charyn to search for Quintana, the mother of Charyn’s unborn king, and protect her against those who will do anything to gain power. But what happens when loyalty to family and country conflict. When the forces marshalled in Charyn’s war gather and threatens to involve the whole of the land, including Lumatere, only Froi can set things right, with the help of those he loves….
For more about Melina Marchetta:
You can follow Melina on Facebook, and on Twitter at @MMarchetta1. You can find more information and contact her through her website. Quintana of Charyn (the last in the Lumatere Chronicles) will be released in America on April 23.
Image provided (Credit: Marc Burlace)
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