Start the Story
<< Cont from page 2
Have you ever written a standalone story
and been tempted to write the sequel?
Yes – definitely. Dark Summer and Wishful
Thinking could both stand a sequel or two,
but the path hasn’t led back there yet. Oddly,
my most successful book, Frozen In Time, is
the one that I never planned to write a sequel
to. And I get asked to by fans all the time! I
could be tempted, I suppose, but I fear it
might be a re-run of the gags in the first
book.
3
Issue 1 , June 201 2
someone smuggles in a box of Scrumpy because she’s learned everything she needs
to know from the Internet and Satellite TV
Jack, unruly behaviour was inevitable
and you can learn a lot from Eastenders.
All the different phases of each book started
wildly overlapping. In the space of one week I The only problem is, Lucy has a stowaway
could be writing SWITCH Reptile series book aboard her ship. The very thing which wiped
3, line-editing UNLEASHED 2, redrafting out every one else on her home planet and
UNLEASHED 3, approving artwork for it’s just about to start on Earth.
SWITCH Reptile series book 1 , providing
jacket design notes for UNLEASHED 4 & 5 Read more of our interview with Ali
(which I hadn’t even written more than a at startthestory.co.uk/alisparkes
paragraph pitch for) and checking blurb for
Ali has also kindly written us the first
UNLEASHED 1
line of a story for pupils to continue.
And if this sounds like the kind of thing which You'll also find more story starters on
Do you work on more than one project at would lead to a meltdown, let me tell you, it page 11 of this issue.
a time? If so, how do you deal with very nearly did. If I hadn’t somehow kept tight
switching from one set of characters and control these assorted stories might have
started mating. I could’ve ended up sending
story to another?
Like many authors who genuinely earn their
living this way, I take on as much as is
feasible. Over 201 0 and 2011 it got a bit out
of hand and I ended up writing UNLEASHED
and SWITCH Series 2 in tandem. How lovely
it would be to have the time and resources to
work on a book a year and spend many
months angsting and polishing it – but it
seems that’s not me. I do write fast and I do
agree, probably, to more than I should. It’s
my freelancer blood. We can’t say no
So, with these two series it went something
like this – three months on UNLEASHED 1 ,
six weeks on SWITCH FrogFreakOut, three
months on UNLEASHED 2, six weeks on
SWITCH Reptile series books 1 and 2, three
months on UNLEASHED 3
you get the
picture.
SWITCHLEASHED 4 and its deformed
cousins to my editor
Oxford, in the end, appointed an Ali Sparkes
Czar to oversee the whole mad ballet, JUST
before I started gibbering and clawing out my
own eyeballs.
NOTE TO AUTHORS: DO NOT DO THIS AT
HOME. OR ANYWHERE.
If you could be a character in one of your
books, who would it be, and why?
Dax Jones. No question. Because he can
shapeshift into a fox, a
peregrine falcon and an otter
and be totally independent,
flying, swimming, running,
hunting for himself and
vanishing in to the natural
And it wasn’t as simple as that, of course, world whenever he needs to.
because, l