Laura Amy Schlitz
About Author
Laura Amy Schlitz is a Newbery Medal winning author and this is the first time she has been published in the UK. She is a librarian and storyteller based in Baltimore County, USA. She has worked as a costumier, actress and playwright and her plays for young people have been produced in theatres all over the country.
Interview
FIRE SPELL
BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN'S BOOKS
SEPTEMBER 2012
When Clara persuades her father to bring the puppeteer, Grisini, into their home to perform at her birthday party, it begins a chain of events that includes kidnap, magic, danger and near disaster.
Fire Spell is set in Victorian London in 1860 and, like Dickens's tales, explores the extremes of wealth and poverty for families and especially children of the time. The story itself is filled with adventure, melodrama and some wonderfully eccentric characters.
Q: What do you enjoy about writing stories set in the past?
A: Imagination is a curious thing. It has its own appetites. For some reason, my imagination feeds on the past. It always makes sense to me that the old fairy tales begin "Once upon a time..."
Time gives a haunting flavor to stories; the past is always a little spooky, and often a little sad. I like those flavours - sadness and spookiness - the same way I like salt in my caramels and a dash of pepper in my cocoa.
Q: Why did you set this story in Victorian England, is it a period you already knew about or did it involve a lot of research?
A: I am passionately fond of Dickens, and this book is my salute to him. I know the Victorians well, because I've read all of Dickens and almost all of Trollope, George Eliot, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins. Reading and rereading these books helps me grasp the language and customs of the time.
I also bought - I've done a rough count - another forty books or so about marionettes and gemstones and furniture and food. And I visited a lot of museums. I love doing research - it's a watertight alibi for not writing.
Q: Why set it in London, and why 1860?
A: Well, London for Dickens, of course, and 1860 for cholera. From the first, I knew that Clara, my heroine, would be the only surviving child of the Wintermute family, so I needed an epidemic that would finish off the other children.
Originally I set the story in 1839, seven years after the cholera epidemic of 1832. But as I continued to write, I realized that a photograph of Clara's dead brother would be important in the story.
There were photographs and photographers in the 1830's, but the art form was still in its infancy. Ordinary people didn't yet have family photographs in their homes. Because I needed the photograph, I had to move the story up a few years. Clara is five years old when the cholera epidemic of 1853-54 begins. That makes her twelve in 1860.
Q: Would living in Victorian England have suited you?
A: Absolutely not. The corsets alone would have finished me. Women were given scanty educations and allowed very little freedom.
Growing girls were even deprived of protein, because the medical wisdom of the day held that too much 'animal food' would make them would make them hysterical, passionate, and uppity. I like my passions, my books, and my meat. 2012 is fine by me.
Q: Many children then were expected to behave like adults, and support themselves did anything in your research surprise you about what was expected of them?
A: If you read Dickens, you know that children did all kinds of work: they were factory workers and chimney sweeps; they picked pockets, and swept the streets clear of mud; they sold flowers and made dolls' clothes - anything to earn a living.
I was surprised to learn that some children collected "pure" (dog manure) and sold it to tanners. That sounded disgusting to me, but it may have been healthier than factory work and less degrading than prostitution.
Q: Why did you decide to focus this story on puppetry - have you ever been involved with this, given your theatrical past? And how did you research this subject?
A: Some 22 years ago, I was exploring a Venetian palazzo, and walked straight into a room that held an antique puppet theatre.
It was one of those discoveries that makes your skin prickle and your heart beat fast. I was alone in the room; the marionettes had been strung and posed, and they stared at me with their overlarge black eyes. It wasn't just a discovery - it was a confrontation.
After that trip to Venice, I became obsessed with marionettes. In order to learn more about them, I made some. Though I flatter myself that I made some fine-looking puppets, I never became a skilled manipulator. Figure-working is a demanding art form. Unlike Parsefall, I never acquired the knack.
Q: You have two real baddies here, which is your favourite?
A: Oh, Cassandra, because I understand her better. Cassandra is tragic, because when she's 13 years old, she betrays someone she loves, and that betrayal becomes the defining moment of her life.
Many of us know what it is to betray a friend, but we are usually given the chance to make amends and move on. Cassandra can't move on; that's the nature of her enchantment.
I don't love Gaspare Grisini, the second villain of the story, but I did come to appreciate him. He's a catalyst; he gets the other characters moving. In the original draft, I killed Grisini in Chapter 11. But once he was gone, the story lost momentum, and I realized that I needed him back. A villain like that is worth his weight in gold.
Q: You also have three main characters in the children, did one of them stand out for you? Were there always going to be three of them?
A: There were always three, and each one has a unique role in the story, which I came to understand only through time. Parsefall, for example, is charismatic. He's everyone's favourite: he's demonic, he's funny, and he's brilliantly intuitive. But he's a reactor, rather than an actor.
Lizzie Rose, who seems much tamer, has far more impact on the plot. She has the power to make decisions, and she serves as the conscience of the book.
Clara was the most inscrutable of the three. It wasn't until the second draft that I learned her guilty secret.
Q: If you had the fire opal, what would you wish for?
A: I'd wish to be rid of it, of course. That's the point.
Q: You use the puppets to explore themes of death and bereavement, witchcraft and child abuse - did you ever feel you needed to hold back on how evil this world could be?
A: I did hold back. This is a macabre and melodramatic book, but I don't think it's a bleak one.
The original title for the book is SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS, and the story contains splendors as well as horrors. I tried to imitate Dickens by using bright and dark colors, humor and danger.
I wanted to tell the truth. Being young is never easy, and young people know this in their very bones. If you're young and poor and unprotected, it's ten times harder.
I didn't want to sugar-coat that, but my children are not so much victims as fighters and heroes. They are more than a match for the adults around them.
Q: What next for these children? Do you have more adventures planned for them?
A: No. I like reading sequels, but I don't like writing them. When I write a story, I give my whole heart to it. At the end, I leave my characters where they have a fighting chance at a happy destiny. Then I say farewell.
Q: As you are also teaching, when do you find time to write? How does your writing day go?
A: After I won the Newbery Medal, I changed my work schedule. I now teach three days a week instead of five. I also write during the summers.
My schedule varies a good deal, because the person inside me who makes up stories hates routine and finds schedules oppressive.
I usually write in the morning, but if I get tired of that, I'll write after lunch, or even after supper. First drafts are written longhand, so I can move around a good bit. If I'm sick of working at home, I'll take my notebook to a garden, a caf, or a museum.
Q: What do you do to relax?
A: I read, play the harp, do needlework, see friends, and play with kitty toys. (Don't worry; I have a cat. She plays, too.)
Q: Do you have any writing tips for budding authors?
A: Read and play. Reading is essential, but play is more so, because reading is about other people's lives, and playing is about your own.
Try to live first-hand. It's a temptation to plug into something and remain a spectator, a consumer, but you've got to resist that. It's all right to watch soccer on television, or read about it, but if you want to write about it, play the real game. Even if you play miserably, you'll learn something.
Pay attention. Cultivate a sense of mischief. Stay alive.
