Jubilee Books: Your new book 'Lady My Life As A Bitch' has received an enormous amount of media attention ahead of its release. What have you made of what has been written and said so far?
Melvin Burgess: As a news story it’s always about sex and those subjects. You always get this sort of lip curling from the right, about how horrible and corrupting it is, which is a complete load of nonsense. The funny thing about the people who get outraged about the sex is that they just can’t get beyond it, they just get stuck there.
Ian Hislop is on all these panels for children’s books, and it’s a very basic GCSE English thing, whether you interpret a book in terms just of what happens, what the characters do and the narrative, or whether you look at the ideas it flings up. All of that went straight over his little head.
This woman in The Independent, which was a rather more thoughtful piece, was basically saying middle aged man, writing, sex, teenage girls, dirty old bloke, and that she (Sandra) was presented as this poor little victim who was given booze and sex by boys and men and food and sex by the dogs which is all wrong. She’s a real taker, Sandra, she really goes out and gets it, she’s not really anybody’s victim.
All the ideas that the book hopefully flings up about responsibility and irresponsibility and what it is to be human, what’s important and what’s not important, what matters and what doesn’t matter, all that went straight over their heads.
There was some very good stuff in The Sunday Times where they had a couple of kids do reviews of it which I thought were excellent. So by and large I was quite pleased with a lot of the coverage. I do think it’s been a bit of a storm in a tea cup.

The idea of metamorphosis is central to the plot of the book. What gave you the idea of writing the book in this way?
My last book 'Bloodtide' had these halfmen in there, that were genetically modified people or animals, species mixed up together. Animals as a metaphor and what they mean to people, is something I’ve done quite a bit of before. There were also these awful 'Animorph' books. The thing about those books is that it’s all completely unreal and you just get these superpowers, whereas if you really did get turned into an animal it would all be a bit more sniffy and difficult and strange, so I wanted to do it like that.
Also I’ve been working on this book about sexual things, issues, relationships and activities for boys. It’s been taking me a long time to write and 'Lady' kind of cropped up while I was doing it. Once I had the idea of the girl getting turned into a dog, the dog doing what it wants, her being fed up with doing her GCSE’s, difficult relationships at home, complicated relationship with her boyfriend and the whole thing and it took of from there. So I think there’s a number of sources, and I did think of Franz Kafka when I was thinking about those 'Animorphs', I was thinking how much more real it was, the guy being turned into a cockroach and how much more genuine that was.

You’re no stranger to controversy, previous books of yours, most notably 'Junk', have courted controversy. Do you consciously set out challenge readers and trigger debate?
A lot of my books deal with dodgy subjects, it’s only the ones with sex and drugs that the media pick up on and run with. In a way that’s their agenda although you are aware that if you are going to do that sort of thing that they are quite likely to do it.
I don't really see why books should be shocking really, if you’re silly enough to be shocked by them you deserve to be shocked by them. The book itself is the thing and I hope that the book will maybe make people think about things or look at things from a different angle. When it starts a public debate that’s really a different animal altogether. It’s nice when it does but it’s not something you can rely on. Nobody really thought 'Junk' was going to make all that fuss, and nobody thought 'Lady' was going to make all that fuss.
It’s very nice when those things get aired publicly because it makes people realize what's going on in books for teenagers and it raises a lot of questions about how people treat teenagers, so I’m very pleased when it happens.
People often ask me if I’m deliberately setting out to shock and I think it would be a really lousy book if it did only shock, but it’s quite nice when it does, I don’t see why books shouldn’t be a bit dodgy or dangerous, it’s nice if it stirs things up a bit.

I actually thought that 'Bloodtide' was more shocking than 'Lady', would you agree?
Yeah, 'Bloodtide' was much more shocking. There was a lot more violence and that didn’t create half the fuss. People are much more bothered about sex, nice things, rather than the horrible things like violence.
'Bloodtide' caused a bit of concern in the world of children’s books, but then again it was supposed to be an exciting, bloodthirsty, adventure story. I haven’t had many complaints about it, quite a few people don’t know what to make of it at all and others think it’s the best thing since sliced bread.

You’ve written previous books, 'Bloodtide' and 'Junk' for example, in the multiple first person. You've written 'Lady' in the singular first person. Why did you chose to write those books in different ways?
'Junk' was originally done from Gemma's point of view. Gemma's OK but she rattles on a bit and by the end of the book it was a bit much really. So I started looking at the multi first person and it was just great to write in that way because you can tell a long story and have these constantly shifting viewpoints. It builds up a very three dimensional view. If people are telling you about an incident you get all these different viewpoints and it does build up a very complete picture. I thought that worked very well in 'Junk'.
In 'Bloodtide' it was much harder because there was two separate stories, there was Siggy on the one hand and Signy on the other. Then I wanted the third person narrative voice in there as well so that was quite hard. But I did enjoy it very much and I sort of feel I can get into the characters voice and under their skins in the first person quite easily, so it's a good way for me to write.
'Lady' is less of a narrative and more of an inner world thing, it's just about Sandra so there really wasn't any point in putting it in a multi viewpoint. There is more than one viewpoint because she changes into a dog and her view as a dog is different from her view as a girl. While she's a dog she keeps changing her viewpoint and she becomes more of a dog and forgets what it is to be a person. I suppose that's one of the points of the book that she sees her own life from different viewpoints of her own which is an interesting thing to do.

When you write books in the multi first person do you usually write the story first then rewrite them in the multi first person?
Well it's really difficult, you know I haven't yet managed to sit down and write in the multi first person way and just do it, I've always got to muck around. 'Junk', as I said, started off from a single viewpoint. 'Bloodtide' started off from the third person, actually that's not true because I did intend to do it in the multi first person but I had to keep chopping and changing, it took me ages before I sorted that out.
The one I'm doing at the moment, this book for boys, my 'Knobby Book for Boys' I call it, I started doing it in the third person and then in the first person and then back again. You've got to have a really clear idea of your basic story or stories before you go ahead doing it in that way because you have so many more viewpoints.
I suppose I think of each voice, each chapter with each voice as a short story. It's got to work on that level so it's complete in just that one little bit and it's got to work as a whole as well. It's much harder and much more demanding and they just take me years, it's the only problem with them that they take years to write those kind of books, but I suppose the best way to do it is write the story down first and just go on from there. I always have a fairly clear idea of what the story is but there's always room for improvisation en route, you've really got to have a central story that you're sticking to, otherwise you get lost really quickly.

There are often strong female characters in your books. Why do you think that is?
When I was first living away on my own in the late seventies and early eighties all my female friends were very strong feminists, there was a lot of rad. fem. stuff going on. You had to watch it really, you had to be quite sharp about your gender attitudes. So when I started writing I was very conscious of that. With that sort of attitude you get very much aware of your own assumptions, so I was kind of alert to subverting my own assumptions.
One of the things I used to do was to start off a character in one gender and swap to the other gender and it kind of carries across characteristics which, if you're not careful, you might think that's male and that's female, but it's not like that, people mix up these qualities in their characters.
So it might have been that. I know it's important to get strong female characters across, now I'm beginning to want to go the other way and start thinking about writing more male stuff so I'm thinking about the other side of it now.
I've got so many good women friends maybe that's part of it as well.

Your work is often described as amoral or immoral. Is this something you would agree with?
I don't think they're amoral or immoral, that very simplistic morality which says that oh this character does that therefore that's immoral as though if you're portraying a character who's behaving amorally or immorally, then that makes the book immoral. It's not really like that, all of my books are there to be judged, and they're there to be thought about. No one in their right mind would take them as an example.You're never going to meet anyone who wants to live their life like that, or wants to be like that, it's such a stupid view of morality.
Characters are there to make decisions and sometimes they make some pretty stupid decisions or wrong decisions or crazy decisions, but that doesn't mean to say that they're being condoned or that I think that they're right. It's just that it is interesting to watch people doing that or wonder why they're doing that, and it's quite interesting to read, it's colourful to read, it's exciting to read, so I disagree that they're immoral or amoral.
They did a debate on Newsnight about 'Lady' and Ian Hislop was saying that she (Sandra) has this awful, abusive relationship with this tramp and she's a bitch and that she's really horrible and nasty. John Carey, a good guy to have on your side, he's professor of English at Oxford University, was saying that it's about having a relationship with an abusive person so you can think about and be aware of that, it doesn't mean to say that it's being condoned.
On that level it's quite a moral book, on one level it could be interpreted as saying if you behave like that you're no better than an animal so who's to say it's immoral. It's only people who say that this is right and this is wrong who would think like that and I don't think like that. You have to work it out for yourself and that's what the books might do.

You recently wrote the book to the film 'Billy Elliot' and your book 'Junk' was turned into a television drama for the BBC. How do these two experiences compare?
I didn't have anything to do with the production of 'Junk', they just went off and did it and held me at arms length. I remember talking to someone about how weird the way they (the BBC) treat you is, they won't let you get involved, you ask them questions and they're all really embarrassed as if you're putting them on the spot. Someone said to me that they treat you like a mad aunt, which is about how it is.
They also did a stage production of it, which was good, and they were much more engaged about meeting the people that it was based on.
The Billy Elliot thing was entirely different. I went to see the film and I thought I'd like to do it. It was completely different and in a way quite easy, I did the multi person viewpoint there and it was really a question of going through the screenplay deciding which voice I was going to do it in and then swapping between them.
The couple of bits I had difficulty with I got in touch with Lee Hall, the scriptwriter. We had a bit of dialogue in which he told me what he was trying to do. He told me various bits which hadn't made it into the film from his original script which was very interesting, and very helpful actually. It was great to do because the story is all there, the characters are there, I didn't worry about things not working because it had already been done. All I had to do was bring it to life on the pages of a novel, provide characters with a history, which film characters don't have, in a book you can go off and describe what had happened in the past.
It was a fun experience, I had to do it very quickly, I was completely spaced out by the time I finished, it took me about three weeks in total, I had to fiddle around with the first draft but after that I was just crawling around the place.

Where and when do you normally write?
I've got a little study at the front of the house, tiny little room and that does me. As long as I can gaze out the window from my computer. I sometimes take the laptop on the train but usually when it gets down to it I can't be bothered. When? Nearly always in the morning. I used to think I was someone who preferred writing in the night but in fact I think you churn out much more rubbish then. Even if I feel quite dozy in the mornings, because the mind is empty, you can actually produce good work, clear work, everything is there in your mind without you knowing it and it just comes out. So that's the time, first thing in the morning before you've been cluttered up by events of the day. As the day goes on I do less and less writing and more and more administration.

Do you have any hobbies or interests other than writing?
Yeah, I quite like cooking, although since having kids that's become less of a hobby because you've got to do it all the time. I quite like faffing around in the garden although my garden is a bit of a slug pit and it's not very big, I quite like doing that. I like walking sometimes, I do quite a bit of photography. When I get stuck on a book I play stupid games on the computer, although that's a distraction rather than a hobby, there's a difference isn't there. I like going out and socializing, and reading of course.

Who are your favourite writers?
The first book I can remember being really enthralled for was 'The Wind In The Willows', I really went for that and I read it endlessly. The chapters I really liked weren't the Toad of Toad Hall ones, there's two types of people who like 'The Wind In The Willows' you see. There's the Toad of Toad Hall and there's the ones who like the more mysterious chapters, the mole, dulcie dolum where he goes back to his home and the piper at the gates of dawn where otter gets lost and Pan comes to rescue him. I really adored that when I was very young. My parents even put a picture of the god Pan to hang up on the bedroom wall.
I loved reading Gerald Durrell books, he's the guy who founded Jersey Zoo who went off collecting animals around the world for zoo's, great man.
Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast I adored. I read quite a lot of Tolkien. I really liked George Orwell around about the time I was doing my O'levels.
Good children's writers now? There's Philip Pullman of course, David Almond, Anne Fine, Jacqui Wilson is great, Tim Bowler is very good, you could go on forever there's so many of them. Adele Geras, 'Troy' I thought was a super piece of work.
In adult fiction I've just been reading a book by Patrick McGrath, I like him very much. I've started reading a few things by Martin Amis and I've got the same feeling I did last time which is they're not as good as I thought they were going to be in the first half. There's a great book by a woman called Joan Parker called 'Theories Of War', which is one of my all time favourites, Roddy Doyle.

Who are the people outside of writing who have influenced you?
Heroes! Actually someone I should have mentioned was Bertolt Brecht. When I was in my mid twenties I came across his poems, really simple, ever so simple and it made me think that actually, if you're a really good writer you should be able to write even the most complicated thought in prose that are so simple that anyone can understand it. I honestly believe that most difficult thoughts and difficult ideas are just because they are badly expressed.
Most of my heroes date from my childhood really, I was a big fan of Mohamed Ali when he did the Vietnam stuff, even though it's a strange mixture, freedom fighter, conscientious objector, Islam and boxing. What a weird mixture, but a great man and the fact that he could box so much better than anyone else was great. I watched the movie 'When We Were Kings', such a clever guy, I admired him very much.
I must have been about 8 or 9 when the Beatles came out, so I was a big Beatles fan, and I did that thing that a lot of people of my generation did which was growing up through your childhood as they were changing so much. I was a very big fan of John Lennon for a lot of years, although I look back on it now and it sounds really arrogant old stuff, great songs though.
I really admire Nelson Mandela, you've got to admire him because he stuck to his principles and went to prison for god knows how many years and he came out sticking to the same principles without any bitterness at all which seems truly ridiculous.
There's been people I've met who I've thought have a good angle on life and I've wanted to take it on board and think about things the same way as they did.