How important to your writing is the period in your own life of the age you are writing about?
I think that it's a hugely critical period in anyone's life. If you think about it, most people between the ages of 13 and 16 undergo the greatest number of metamorphoses they'll ever go through, barring perhaps the female menopause in the case of women. Most people undergo more sexual, emotional, intellectual and biological changes during that period and probably of greater magnitude than at any other time in their lives. It's a massive period of change and I always liken teenagers to being two people in one. They're like a child falling asleep and an adult waking up. In a sense you've got two people to think about rather than one and it's immensely interesting and challenging. In terms of my own life I would say that yes, it was a critical rite of passage, but then it is in most people's lives. I think this is one of the main reasons why I find it interesting to write about young people.

The protagonist in the book is a boy called Luke. To what extent is he like you?
That's a question that often comes up, and I always say that none of the characters in my books represent me. However, when you write stories, you can't help but invest some aspects of your own nature in some of the characters and that includes the evil ones unfortunately. You can't really help tha. They've been created through the filter of your own personality and your own nature so they're going to have bits and pieces of you, mingled with bits and pieces of your own imagination, and bits and pieces from other people that you may have stolen things from. There's not one single character who represents Tim Bowler, but having said that, Luke is a hugely personal creation and I must admit that the book itself echoes my real life in many ways. I did get very close to Luke but he's not me.

There are several other strong characters in the book, especially Mrs Little and Skin. Are they based on people you've known?
Yes, they are to some extent. Mrs Little is based on two women I've known, an elderly woman who used to own a house called the Grange and another elderly woman who is still alive and I know quite well. It would be wrong to say Mrs Little is those characters but what happens when I create characters is that a real person may be my starting point but that character, through the writing process, develops his or her own qualities. So the real person is never more than a springboard into what becomes a different character. Skin's name is taken from an Irish boy I used to know at university who was a real hard nut. I didn't know him very well and had no desire to but he was a seriously dangerous piece of work. He was around 22 when I knew him so I've downsized the character for the book. I did think of other real characters when I was writing the book. Daz, for example, is based on a boy that I knew at school but in such a minor way that real person would never recognize himself. Miranda likewise is partly based on a young girl I used to know.

Music is at the core of the book. How important is music to you personally?
It's hugely important. I'm very musical myself and I come from a very musical family. We all play the piano. The book is dedicated to my maternal grandmother (called Nan) who died when I was 40 and she was 98. She was a fantastic pianist, completely amateur, but she used to do things like play to the inmates at the prisoner of war camps during the first world war. She was extraordinary. On my father’s side of the family I had a great aunt who was a concert pianist and my great great grandfather was a church organist. My brother is a very good amateur pianist and plays recitals, so there's a lot of music in the family and I've always loved music as far back as I can remember.

There's a part in the book where Luke is playing a song that he's having trouble finishing, he's suddenly taken by the music and finishes the song. Is this something you experience when you're writing?
Yes, that happens all the time. I don't think I ever know all the potential ideas for a story. It's only when I begin to work it that it starts to flow. Someone once said that writers don't have ideas, ideas have writers. The ideas become so potent that they possess the writer. This book evolved over many years and in a way it evolved as a series of themes. You start to work an idea, you think you're working one thing and it becomes more than that idea, and just keeps growing. It's a constant organic process of rejecting old ideas and developing new ones.

I was interested in the bully in the book. He’s a terrifying character. What can you tell us about him?
I'm a very intuitive writer, and I tend to regard writing as a series of revelations, although I don’t mean this in a biblical sense. In other words you build from one idea to another and gradually a new thing appears and you follow it and so on. With the bullying, for example, when I started there were these three misfit boys in the gang plus Luke, and I honestly didn't know what they were there for. In the early draft of the story I thought Luke was going to be the leader of the gang. He was trying to get over the bereavement of his father and I thought he'd got into bad ways and had led the other boys astray. In the second or third draft I began to realise that this Skin character was a serious threat. To begin with the boys were three almost lovable misfits and it was only after a while that I began to realise they were dangerous. Skin developed into the kind of person he became quite late on in the process of things. Once he did develop into this character, a potential murderer, it became a completely different story. I was quite glad in a way, at least from a structural point of view, because I realised that without that element to ground the story there was a danger of it floating off into the metaphysical realms too much. I think it needed to be grounded like that. The more you write, the more you learn about the characters and it took me a while to learn what Skin was all about.

How much input do you have with the covers for your books?
Well, I've been very lucky with OUP. They have an excellent design team. With the new book we've had a bit of a departure from earlier jackets. The idea for the hands came from me. The hands on the cover are actually my own. I went to see the design team and they initially took a picture of a boy's hands. I thought that the fingers needed to be longer and also the gesture wasn't quite right so I started to imitate what I meant. They suggested using my hands and it seemed to work.

What writers have influenced you the most?
Shakespeare influences me hugely. I love Shakespeare with a passion. If you’re talking about writers who've written for younger readers, then the biggest influence in my early years was Arthur Ransome and the Swallows and Amazons books. I lived that world. Now I would say writers like Berlie Doherty, Melvin Burgess, David Almond, and Geraldine McCaughrean. But I could add many more. This is a bit of a Golden Age for children's writing; there are so many good writers out there at the moment.

What are your hobbies and interests outside of writing?
I’m very interested in yoga and music. I'm also very active in sport. I play squash for a team in Dartington and have represented my county at over 45 level. You might have worked out from my books that I like sea, water and rivers, so my wife and I enjoy walking along the coastal path in Devon. I also love watching sport, especially rugby.

I know you speak several other languages. Do you read much foreign literature?
I read a lot of Swedish. I speak five languages but my favourite is Swedish. I studied it at university and I’ve been having an ongoing love affair with Swedish since I was about 19. I mainly like poetry; I’m particularly fond of Swedish poetry. I do a certain amount of Swedish translation work and have also studied Swedish music. My university thesis, which I had to write in Swedish, was about Swedish composers.

When did you realise that you wanted to become a writer?
When I was five years old. My mother read me a bedtime story called Little Tim And The Brave Sea Captain by Edward Ardizzone. It’s a real old children’s classic, a beautiful story about a boy who runs away to sea. I was so taken by the story that I thought I’d like to write a sea story myself, so I wrote this awful story about Francis Drake, who was a hero of mine from a television programme about him. I just thought writing was great and really enjoyed it so I carried on. I read my first novel when I was six, an Enid Blyton book, and then read several more. Reading books helped to fuel my desire to be a writer. I wasn’t sure I would ever make it professionally as such, but it’s something I’ve always loved doing. People often ask me how long I‘ve been a writer but what they really mean is how long I’ve been a published writer. I’ve been a published writer for nine years but I’ve been a writer since I was five.

When do you write?
I have a little office that is a converted upstairs bedroom in my house in a sleepy village in Devon. It overlooks a churchyard. My best time for writing is in the morning. I usually get up at half past four so that I’m at my desk for five o’clock. I set myself writing targets for the day and if I’m on a roll I reach my target by about nine o’clock. I usually wake up with plenty of ideas in my head and it’s a good time for me; it’s quiet, there’s no phone ringing and my wife gets up a bit later than me so I can get on with my dreams.

Once you have an idea for a book how do you go about turning it into a finished novel?
People work in different ways but with me I don’t tend to plan or plot much. I feel restricted if I have too much structure in front of me. I like to be free. For me it usually starts with characters and places rather than plot. And the story needs a dilemma. Quite often I’ll start without having the faintest idea where it’s going to go. For example, with Storm Catchers the only idea I had in my head was a girl hearing a tapping noise in the night and she doesn’t know what it is. I didn’t know what it was either until I had written the first chapter. The girl gets kidnapped and so I was into a thriller. I didn’t know that when I started. I’m of the opinion that we all have an imagination and a critical ability but in the early stages of writing you need to let the imagination have free reign and let it go off at tangents. If you do that enough and are prepared to go in all directions and make a mess to begin with, you’ll eventually find that there’s a kind of compass inside you that’ll find the true north of the story. That’s how I work. My way makes quite a lot of mess but I like to feel that I’ve explored every possible way the story might go. My novels usually take three or four drafts and my first draft is almost always dire.

Any tips for aspiring authors?
I think the best advice I could give is just to keep writing and not give up and not be afraid of the bad stuff that comes out of you. You have to keep remembering that, unless you’re a genius, and there are not many of those around, most authors, myself certainly, produce a lot of bad stuff in order to write the good stuff. The very natural feelings of self doubt are difficult sometimes and I'm sure most writers suffer this, but just keep on writing and persisting and the good stuff will come in the end.

RELATED LINKS > Tim Bowler Website

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Interview conducted with Joseph Pike August 2002
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