The interview gives you a taste of the side-splitting humour that won Jamie a shortlist nomination for the 2012 Roald Dahl Prize. Not only that, it's full of brilliant creative insights like this one:
'[Dark Lord] is a classic fish out of water/odd couple plot, but it also parodies its genre, albeit in a loving way. It lampoons fantasy, but it is also a cracking fantasy tale in itself, though I do say it myself. It's also interesting that this book probably couldn't have been written thirty years ago. Its time is now because everyone knows what a Dark Lord is, the imagery, the “trope” is everywhere.'...though the truth is you can't study to acquire authorial talent like Jamie's, you have to be born with it. Curse him.
You can buy Book One in hardcover from the Amazon.com link below, and UK readers can still get it in paperback, as well as the sequel A Fiend in Need. I know, I know, you want him to write more Fabled Lands books - but really, take a look at the Dirk Lloyd series as they are genuine modern children's classics that I believe will be read and enjoyed by kids and grown-ups for generations to come.
Let's see when he'll arrive in Italy, too, breaking every bookshelf... If it happened, I'd surely make my students read the book! :)
ReplyDeleteWe'd love to get an Italian edition in the works (there are Spanish, Catalan and German editions) but so far no takers among the Italian publishers we've talked to.
Delete"I know, I know, you want him to write more Fabled Lands books..."
ReplyDeleteAh, I think it's no bad thing for writers - hell, for artists in general - to evolve, and move in new directions. Going back to Roald Dahl, I loved 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' as a boy (even despite the psychadelic 70s film adaptation)... yet when I came across Dahl's stories for adults in my twenties - people starving to death in lifts, or being clubbed with frozen food - I found them downright chilling, and suddenly started voraciously absorbing this 'other' Dahl's back catalogue, with far more fervour than I'd ever felt for his work as a child.
For that matter, your own recent adaptation of Frankenstein was a far cry from the Blood Sword books I grew up with... and yet no less rockin' for all that.
I think one of the indicators that I was 'a grown up' was when I realised that my favourite rock groups were putting out their seventh or eighth album. At least, the ones that were still together, and alive, were. And while you can't say that Pearl Jam's ninth album is imbued with the same energy that propelled their first couple of records... it's a pretty fantastic album nonetheless.
Perhaps with Dirk we merely see the 'seasoned' Jamie Thomson. Which, as I've argued, is likely no bad thing.
Now, tell him to get back to work on Fabled Lands. Ooh, and more Falcon books.
That's certainly how I see it, Paul. The later work of Dickens, say, or Nabokov is much more interesting than where they started out.
DeleteFabled Lands fans may not be interested in Dirk Lloyd (unless they have kids of their own, perhaps) but they should certainly appreciate that the Dirk books are what enable us to release FL in paperback, by heavily subsidizing production of the gamebooks.