Sarah Mussi
About Author
Sarah Mussi is a multi-award winning author of children's and YA fiction. She grew up in the Cotswolds, went to school in Cheltenham, and graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Winchester and an MA from the Royal College of Art.
After completing her MA, she left for West Africa. An English woman, she lived there for over eighteen years, married a Ghanaian, and taught in Accra. Today Sarah teaches English part time in Lewisham and writes and visits schools as an author when she is not teaching.
Her first novel, The Door of No Return, won the Glen Dimplex & Irish Writers' Children's Book Award and was shortlisted for the Branford Boase, amongst others. Her second novel, The Last of the Warrior Kings, was shortlisted for the Lewisham Book Award and inspired a London-themed walk. Her thriller Siege was nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal (2014) and won the BBUKYA award for contemporary YA fiction and received many short-listings. Her novel Riot won the Lancashire Book of the Year Award 2015. Bomb, 2015, was listed in The Guardian New Best Kids Books 2015 list.
Her latest, novel Here Be Dragons, is a romantic thriller set on Snowdon and featuring the timeless myths of Snowdonia and the Mabinogion. It has already been showcased for the People's Book Prize.
Author link
www.sarahmussi.com; www.facebook.com/SarahMussiAuthor; twitter.com/sarahmussi/;
Interview
HERE BE DRAGONS
VERTEBRATE PUBLISHING
SEPTEMBER 2015
In her latest novel Here be Dragons, award-winning author Sarah Mussi steps back from the gritty, urban YA novels like Siege and Riot, where she has made her name, to delve into the mythical landscape of Wales's highest mountain, Snowdon, which becomes the powerful setting for a mystical romance.
Here Be Dragons explores the myths and legends of Wales through the seemingly fated love between teenager Ellie and a mysterious boy, Henry, who appears on the side of Snowdon. As the bond grows between Ellie and Henry over a few short days, Ellie begins to realise its true cost ...
Despite its mythical roots, the novel is firmly rooted in a teenager's everyday life. Ellie's mum is a mountain rescuer and Ellie frequently accompanies her, in between her visits to a close circle of friends who we also get to know.
We asked Sarah Mussi, who also works as an English teacher, to tell us more about her writing and HERE BE DRAGONS, the first book in The Snowdonia Chronicles:
Q: How did you begin writing for young adults?
A: I actually trained in Art. I didn't start to write until my father died. He was a literary critic so I lived in a home that was crowded with books but I was afraid to write for a long time because my family took it so seriously; maybe that's why I studied Art instead.
My father would say there was no point in writing unless you were writing as a great writer like DH Lawrence or George Elliott. "Those are the gods" he would say; writers like Tolkien were lesser mortals - but I loved Tolkien.
I started writing short stories in Africa and that was like my training ground. I was teaching GCSE to children in Ghana and we needed to know what made a good story so I started writing stories and got the students to write their own versions.
I carried on writing and won a BBC Worldwide competition which gave me an amazing boost, although the book I wrote was never published.
Q: Why is Here be Dragons so different from your earlier books?
A: It is actually quite similar to one of my earlier books, Angel Dust, although Here be Dragons is slightly younger and aimed at tween readers. I had in mind girl readers who want to explore something different but the same, that has challenges but isn't uncomfortably hard, that has mystery and romance but which isn't too 'pink'.
Even though I am better known for edgy, darker YA fiction, I don't want to be stuck writing the same kinds of books. I'm also thinking of writing younger fiction.
My earlier books were based on West Africa probably because I have children who are of mixed heritage and who grew up in West Africa before moving to England. I was trying to help them find a way into their past. I loved writing that but the publishers felt I needed to write about where I am now so I began to think about more urban settings and that led on to The Door of No Return and then The Last of the Warrior Kings, which is set in London.
Q: What are your connections with the Snowdon you write about in Here be Dragons?
A: Here Be Dragons is set on Snowdon and is about a small, Welsh community. Although I'm not Welsh, I do still feel connected to the area because I grew up in Gloucestershire and on a clear day, you can see the Black Mountains of Wales from where we lived. When I was a child we'd go to visit Barmouth Sands in Wales and we used to go walking in the Welsh mountains, so I've revisited that in Here Be Dragons. I've also climbed Snowdon many times!
Q: Why did you decide to set this story on Snowdon?
A: A combination of things, really, but the idea came to me after I visited Snowdon with my mum. I'm very fond of trains and especially trains that go up mountains; I have spent a lot of holidays with my family in India on trains going up mountains.
I was looking for another train journey that my mum would enjoy (she's 90!) and found there was a train that goes up to Snowdon, so we went on that. We were sitting having a cup of tea in the cafe and I was looking around at all the stuffed red dragons everywhere which you kind of don't notice, because they are everywhere, and I thought, this could be a novel.
Snowdon is also the highest mountain in Wales and the second highest in Britain and is so iconic in its own right. It's also beautiful but accessible; commuters can pull on a pair of trainers and go walking up the mountain and I like that you don't need to have specialist skills to do so.
Q: Did you do a lot of research about Welsh dragons and their mythology before you started writing?
A: A lot of Here Be Dragons is drawn from established myth, beginning with the story of two dragons, a white and red dragon, fighting under the mountains. This is part of the tradition of Welsh mythology and British myths too, because it is thought that the white dragon could be the White Dragon of Wessex and the fighting between the dragons represents the attempted takeover of Wales by England.
There is also a link to Snowdon's name in its mythology; the highest point of Snowdon, Yr Wyddfa, means 'The Burial Place' and there is a story that a giant was slain there by King Arthur. Merlin also makes an appearance on Snowdon in old mythology and buries the dragons inside the mountain. The question for me was, after the dragons were entombed in the mountain by Merlin, how could I bring them back to life?
I did quite a lot of research into dragons, including the Chinese mythical characters and real ones like the tiny Draco Volans, or 'flying dragon', recently discovered in Indonesia. I wanted my dragons to fit into the context of existing literature so that nothing jarred in the story and that's when I found dragons' connection with the stars and their positioning during the equinox, which is how I release the dragons from the mountain in my story.
Q: How did your main character, Ellie, develop?
A: On one level I have no Welsh connections and on another, I felt very connected but in a different way, so I wanted my main character to reflect that. Ellie grew up in London but has an old family connection to Snowdon through her dad, who died climbing a mountain.
I also wanted a positive sense of the local community where Ellie lives, especially the young people who tend to get a bad press. I wanted to make this group special and interesting and not your stereotypical depressed teenagers living in isolation and wanting to leave. They do have rivalries because of the shortage of boys, though - something I remembered from my own childhood; there were lots of rivalries between the girls about boys at school.
Q: Can you tell us about the love triangle you've set up in the story?
A: I wanted Ellie to have someone she could talk to and that was George, the 'boy next door', who is in love with her. George is a really decent guy, he's gorgeous, which the reader can see, but she projects everything she wants onto the mysterious 'other' boy on the mountain.
George is also connected to the myth of St George and the Dragon although in my story George has an axe rather than a sword. That myth will work its way through the story in future books. There will have to be a battle of St George and the dragon, although which dragon - the white or red dragon - I will keep secret.
Henry, the mysterious boy on the mountain who Ellie falls in love with and who is somehow linked with the dragons, is intangible and mysterious and unknowable because that is what I felt the nature of dragons would be. I called him Henry because Henry VIII was the first king to take the dragon into his flag.
Q: There are some great female role models in Here be Dragons, how did Ellie's mum and Granny Jones deveop?
A: I wanted Ellie to have strong female role models because mums often get a bad press in books; they are often portrayed as mean or spiteful, or you see teenagers rebelling against them, but I wanted Ellie's mum to be heroic; a lot of single mums are!
In this story she's living in Wales, her husband has died and left her not very much to survive on, and she's struggling to cope and to make a living on the side of a mountain. We have a lot of very heroic mums out there in rural and urban places who are doing the best they can.
I also didn't want my teenaged girl readers to see the characters as victims, so if you're not a victim you're a rescuer; Ellie and her mum are rescuers and support each other, no matter how hard things get.
Granny Jones, another wonderful female character, follows the tradition of mad grandmothers, Gandalfs and wise women, but I didn't want her to be too stereotypical so I gave her a funky, hippy lifestyle and put her in a tie dye shirt and old velvet jacket. She is a wise woman and all the herbs and flowers she uses to help protect Ellie are from the mythological character Blodeuwedd, a woman created from flowers who has a tragic history that repeats itself with each of her lovers; that story echoes through this book.
Other writers have drawn on some of these myths like Alan Garner in The Owl Service. Susan Cooper draws on the myth of Blodeuwedd in her books including The Dark is Rising.
Q: Here be Dragons is a complete story, but there are some unanswered questions - are there more books to come?
A: There are two more books coming, so it will be a trilogy. The next one, which I am half way through writing, will be called Here Be Witches and in that story, we discover that witches can summon up the dead and events will escalate. There will be giants, too; Snowdonia is the legendary chair of Idris the giant (Cadair Idris).
Here be Witches will be a story in its own right; you won't have to have read Here be Dragons to enjoy it but you will see the development of characters and plot lines if you have. The focus will be on Ellie and the absent Henry. George will also be there, with a new axe!
Q: Can you tell us what your school events for this book will focus on?
A: I'm hoping to encourage schools not just with reading but exploring myths and legends. I'll introduce them to aspects of themes in the book like mountains, mythical sites and Welsh legends, but I will also encourage them to explore their own local myths.
Q: When and where do you prefer to write?
A: I teach English at a school in Lewisham part time and write the rest of the time, but I would say that I am writing all the time, either in my head or jotting things on bits of paper or dictating into my phone, collecting ideas. Writing is not just about when you're crafting a story; it's all the subterranean writing that goes on all the time.
I can write anywhere, like a cafe on Snowdon, but the hard graft is done at home with the curtains drawn so I don't get distracted.
Q: Can you describe how you'd spend your favourite day?
A: My favourite day would be to wake up with nobody at home and then to write without the phone ringing and just to be able to stay there in the zone, writing. Then I'd have something to eat and go for a long walk over the hills, come back and go over what I've written. Then it'd be really nice if a writer friend called and we could talk about writing, and books!
Here be Dragons: The Snowdonia Chronicles: Book One
Siege
