Interview with Tim Wynne-Jones

www.timwynne-jones.com

Let’s get some of the typical interview questions out of the way first. When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer?

Writing kind of snuck up on me as a profession. From the age of 11, I wanted to be an architect and I worked really hard at getting into architecture school. I got through three years of it, before they chucked me out. They were afraid that if I designed buildings people would die. So I did the only thing that seemed reasonable at the time: I joined a rock band. I started writing lyrics and that’s when I began to take seriously this idea of stringing words together. I’d always liked making up stories (Well lying, I guess would be the proper term for it) – just never thought I’d spend a life time getting paid to do it.

Can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?

I got involved with a survey when I returned to university (after the rock band gig) looking at sexism and all kinds of other isms in children’s picture books. I was the token artsy type in a group of sociology majors. Once we’d “rooted out” all the “bad” stuff we discovered on the low shelves at the library, we were full of grandiose ideas about writing “good” picture books for children. So my first published book was a pretty shoddy, little, badly produced number called Madelaine and Ermadello. After I finished my MFA in visual art, I spent the summer writing an adult psychological thriller called Odd’s End, which won the Seal Books first novel award in 1980. The prize was $50,000, and that kind of convinced me to keep going!

Tell us a little bit about either your latest or upcoming release. If you could only tell your readers one thing about the story that had to convince us to buy the book, what would it be?

My latest book is called The Uninvited and it’s also a psychological thriller told from the point of view of three people, a 19-yr-old girl, and two 22-yr-old boys, who meet under unusual circumstances and find they have more in common than they would ever have expected. No, they’re not vampires! It’s worse than that – they’re family!

What, or who, has been the greatest inspiration for your stories?

Life. I mean, look around you; everything is an inspiration. You see a three-legged dog and ask yourself where’d he ditch that other leg? You read a story on page 23 of the Cleveland Plain Dealer about a chicken that crossed the road and want to know where he was going or what he was running away from and what’s that he’s carrying in the violin case? You eavesdrop on public transit; imagine that the Starbucks you’re sitting in is actually a starship; hear a piece of music and imagine what dialogue would sound good with that music in the background. You go through life applying the what-if function to everything you see. Making up stories is all about wanting more – taking the ordinary, turning it upside down and shaking out whatever it’s got in its pockets.

Let’s hear about your family, who I’m sure are thrilled to have a published author among them!

I’ve got five siblings. We’re Welsh so we pretty well all like to sing. My mother and father are both gone, now, but they were pretty proud of me, I suppose. In my own family there’s Amanda, my wife, who runs a theater school, and three grown up kids living all over the place. My eldest son works in marketing in Toronto but he also spins (mostly jungle) at clubs. My daughter is a dancer in London, England. And my youngest son is at college in Halifax, where he does a lot of acting and directing.

Now for some fun facts. What’s your greatest comfort food?

I love cooking! My greatest comfort is spending the day preparing some great meal for friends -- just sort of hanging out with food all day, with my iPod on shuffle. My tastes are all over the map but I especially love making Spanish paella or Thai fish stew.

What are the first three things you do when you wake up in the morning?

Feed the cats, put on the kettle for tea, and turn on the radio. In Canada there’s a great morning show on CBC, our public radio, called Radio 2 Morning. The host, Tom Allen, plays a lot of great singer/songwriters and really knows his stuff, musically. He also peppers the show with fabulous scientific information – stuff to amaze and get you thinking. I only listen for half an hour or so, but it’s cheery. I’m usually at my desk by 7:00.

If I came to your house and looked in your closet/attic/basement, what’s the one thing that would surprise me the most?

The complete lack of mountain-climbing equipment.

Everyone asks the question about “if you could be a tree, which tree would you be?” so I want to know: If you could be a color, which color would it be, and why?

Teal blue, British racing green, alizarin crimson, and mango. In fact, I’d love to see a forest of birch trees in these colors.

Who is your favorite cartoon character?

Lisa Simpson. So misunderstood.

Which cartoon character is most like you?

Well, he’s not really a cartoon character, but the Count on Sesame Street. I count everything!!!

If you could beam yourself to anywhere in the world (“Beam me up, Scotty!”), during any time in history, where and when would it be—and why?

I’d like to find myself in a Twilight Zone episode, around 1959.

So what’s your favorite type of music to listen to? Favorite musical artists? Do you listen to music while you’re writing?

I love all kinds of music, but I can’t listen to it while I’m actually writing because it influences me way too much. Sometimes, I’ll put on music when I’m taking a break, to get me in the right emotional place for when I go back to writing. These days I’m listening to a CD that M.T. Anderson sent me of movie music from early sci-fi flicks. It’s hysterical. Who’s on heavy rotation on my iPod? The John Butler Trio, Elbow, Tom Waits, Arcade Fire, kd lang, That’s the Spirit, Sergei Prokofiev, Elvis Costello, Ray Charles, Erik Satie, JW Jones, Was (not Was), Wolf Parade, Yo Yo Ma, The Weakerthans, The Acorn, Coldplay, Bruce Cockburn, Marc Cohn, Ferron, John Mayer, Patty Griffin, Joni Mitchell, Shawn Colvin, Sting, Michael Nyman, Arvo Part, Sia, Craig Armstrong, Lyle Lovatt, Jason Robert Brown, Jean Sibelius, Sade, Sarah Slean, Kevin Fox, The Beatles, Steely Dan, Pat Metheny, Lynn Miles, Gustav Mahler, Jimi Hendrix, Smokey Robinson, Michael McDonald, Peter Gabriel, Henryk Gorecki, Royal Wood…can I stop now?

Do you have any favorite T.V. shows? Movies you watch over and over again? What was the last movie you saw at the theater?

Last night I saw Easy Virtue and loved it. Movies I watch obsessively: Truly, Madly, Deeply; Love Actually; Little Shop of Horrors; Young Frankenstein; Desk Set; It’s a Wonderful Life; You’ve Got Mail (yeah, I know, very chick-flickish)…I don’t watch much TV anymore, although I really liked the series: Six Feet Under and Slings and Arrows.

You have the chance to give one piece of advice to your teen readers. What would it be?

Don’t take up mountain climbing. Okay, I’m only kidding – go right ahead if that’s what you want to do. In fact do anything that takes you out of your room and out of yourself. I’m sure your self is a very nice self and you’re really happy to be inside you. I guess what I’m saying is don’t box yourself in. Take off the ear pods; put down the Wii control; leave your cell in your sock drawer. Give twittering a rest. This may sound like really old-fart advice and you get enough of that from the rents, so I’ll shut up. It’s just that the world is such a wonderful, shoddy, beautiful, screwed up, sensation-full, nutty place, and you need to see it, feel it, taste it in the flesh. Life is not a text message. End of sermon.

One last question. What stories can we look forward to from you in the future?

The third of my Rex Zero books comes out this fall, Rex Zero, the Great Pretender. I’m also half way in to a new YA with the working title The Need for Caution. There are these two teenagers on the run: Blink is the boy, Caution Pettigrew is the girl. They meet and…

Again, thanks so much for joining us at TeensReadToo.com!