Melina Marchetta, author of Looking for Alibrandi and Finnikin of the Rock talks to Hypable about bad reviews, winning the Printz award, John Green vs JK Rowling, and more.

Melina Marchetta recently spoke to Hypable in anticipation of the American release of Quintana of Charyn, the final book in her Lumatere Chronicles fantasy trilogy. Earlier we shared her update on the Saving Francesca and On the Jellicoe Road movies, and why she won’t allow Finnikin of the Rock to be adapted for film. Now read part 1 of our full interview with Melina, and watch out for part 2 following the release of Quintana of Charyn, for an in-depth look at her fantasy trilogy.

Hypable: Tell us 5 random facts about yourself.

1. I used to be a teacher of boys, I taught boys for ten years.

2. I was born and have lived in Sydney all of my life, I have never lived anywhere else except for holidays.

3. I will not read a book that is part of a trilogy, or part of a series, until it is finished. There is no way I will read something that has a cliffhanger.

4. I left school when I was 15 years old and didn’t go to university until I was 25.

5. I have a burning desire to be in a rock band although I can’t sing and can’t play a musical instrument, and it’s why Francesca Spinelli, Tom Mackee, Justine Kalinsky and Ben Cassidy are in bands in various novels, and why Froi knows how to sing like Andrea Bocelli.

If you had to recommend one of your books to a complete stranger, which one do you choose?

The Piper’s Son. I think with The Piper’s Son, it is a book for young people and older people, whereas with the other books, sometimes they get defined by a particular age group or particular interest. For example, Finnikin, I wouldn’t recommend to everyone because because just say you hate fantasy. Or Francesca, I wouldn’t recommend that to everyone, because say some people think it’s a teenage girls story.

I think with The Piper’s Son I’m covering all bases, and it’s quite a universal story. I think the Francesca gang and the Tom book especially, they are just really personal to me so I am very protective over those books. There’s a primeval link that I have to those books, whereas with the other ones I’m proud of them for different reasons. But The Piper’s Son and Francesca are set in my area, they are a bit about my world.

Francesca, The Piper’s Son and Alibrandi are all geographically linked to the same area. Did you choose to set them all in a similar place because you know the area so well, or did it make sense for those specific characters?

I’d say both, because with Alibrandi I wrote what I knew, which is what you’re told constantly in Writing 101. Because I didn’t know anything else, you end up there. One of the things I remember about my writing when I was younger was that I was writing about places I had never been to in my whole life. So whether it’s a coincidence or not – the moment I started writing about the Inner West, the story just took off and I couldn’t stop writing. I think it’s that familiarity.

The other thing, and I notice this a lot with the Lumatere Chronicles, is that I can come up with the storyline, I know the characters, but it’s the setting that really slows me down. I have to go and visit that certain type of setting, and that slows down your writing a lot. When you’re writing about your own area it’s just down the road, and also you know the psyche of the people, you know the smell, you know everything.

When I think of the difference between the two, I would say that the Sydney novels are the easiest to write technically, and they are the most difficult to write emotionally, whereas the Lumatere chronicles are so difficult to write on a technical level, but as much as a lot of emotional stuff happens in those stories, I can step back emotionally. I just find it a lot easier writing about my world.

What do you find easier to write, the first or the last line of the novel?

I always know how it begins and I always know how it ends, I just don’t know what’s in between. I think if I had to go through my entire book history, I think I have always known the first line, it is almost like it has come to me. For example, I think one of my strongest opening lines is On The Jellicoe Road – “My father took 132 minutes to die.” I don’t ever remember sitting there and trying to work out how to begin that story, it began with that line.

I think I have always started with an opening line, and the time that I didn’t was with Quintana, because I knew everything that was happening in that story but I just didn’t know how to start it. I was a bit hard on myself, and I thought “Well you’re not going to start it until you have that first line,” so I just waited. I have to say, patience has really helped me a lot with my writing.

Do you intentionally write for a Young Adult audience, or do the characters determine the audience for you?

I do not think of audience at all. I love people in the YA world, I love the fact that teenagers read my work, so it’s not remotely a rejection of YA because I love it. But saying all that, I do not think of audience when I’m writing, I think of the story I want to tell and I just go with it. With something like The Piper’s Son, it’s not easy to put it in a category, and sometimes I wonder if I had done it all over again, would I have made different decisions? But I don’t think that I would have.

That’s frustrating, I have to say, but I wouldn’t write it any other way and that always proves to me, “Well then you don’t care about audience, if you had a problem with it you would do different things.” Obviously I don’t change the way I go about my writing so it’s obvious that that’s the way I want to do things. So I only have myself to blame I suppose.

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)