It’s always lovely to celebrate local talent at the LitFest. Emily and Matthew grew up locally, went to local primary schools, Collingbourne Ducis and Ramsbury respectively, and both went to the local secondary school, St John’s. Matthew’s old English teacher was even in the audience!
They started by saying they’re both awesome. They might not have been deadly serious when they said it but they’re right, they are. Both of their debut novels came to be published after winning children’s fiction prizes, which is awesome.
The books from both writers have dark themes. Autumn, from Emily’s The Witchstone Ghosts, sees ghosts but not that of her father when he dies. Matthew’s Ellie, in The Lovely Dark, is on a journey to the underworld having died. But, as Emily said, “Young people like a bit of darkness”, and, to paraphrase Matthew, darkness doesn’t have to equal gloom, morbidity and hopelessness.
Emily, rather inspiringly, revealed an adult diagnosis of ADHD. She explained that this meant she struggled with the usual author process of “plotting” and found that sometimes characters just popped into her head and made their way into the book. It was fascinating to hear how her neuro-divergence was not only NOT a block to her writing career but actually helped to influence her character’s development and self-doubts.
Matthew explained that his book was inspired by a fascination with the character Charon the Ferryman of the underworld and that he felt the need to write on the topic due to COVID and lockdown.
The questions all came from the wonderfully curious young people in the audience who asked about the length of time to write a book, favourite authors, where ideas come from and what were the first books by both. Emily’s was a novelisation of Hocus Pocus when she was nine!
They both teased their new books, of which I shall reveal nothing other than that they are both set locally. Look out for them!
The children in the audience were asked to help the authors with a short story they plan to write. They want to write a story about a school and asked the children to write a time that they would like the school to be dropped into and to come up with some interesting things about the school. We look forward to seeing the outcome!
Alex Martin
Robert Harris at Marlborough LitFest
