The following interview appears in the latest issue of The Bookseller & Publisher, journal of the Australian book trade, who have kindly given permission to reproduce the article:

It’s all in the detail
Ben Beaton speaks to Kate De Goldi, author of The 10pm Question, and asks a few questions of his own …

B - Frankie’s world is so beautifully rendered on the page. How challenging was it for you to create the fine detail of the story which helps bring it to life so effectively?

K - I keep notebooks in which I write all manner of details that catch my eye or ear. These records go back years—and the observations are gathered from all over the place: things seen when I’m driving, running, sitting in cafes, on planes, in queues, etc. Conversations overheard, interesting names, the odd things that children say, small newspaper items, puzzling words, people’s domestic habits, stories my parents have told and retold, it’s all there in the notebooks.

I work on the principle that if something tickles my fancy then it will eventually find its way—usefully—into a story, either as part of the texture of a character’s life, or a character trait, plot point, psychological detail etc. The notebooks have a more primary purpose, too. Over time as I read back over them (which I do particularly when I’m ‘incubating’ an idea), the observations become somehow animated, they begin connecting and cohering, and suddenly the ‘idea’ moves into a new phase and the story is beginning ...

For example: I had been thinking about an anxious boy character for some time and about a mother who never left the house over a period of several years. I’d noted down 1) the name Gordana 2) document destruction vans driving round the city 3) a beagle who might be named after a rock star 4) the wonderful lexicon of card games 5) a peripatetic woman and her long-suffering daughter.

When the title The 10pm Question came to me (courtesy of my son Jack) all these details became kind of supercharged, and a domestic world came into focus.

Once I began writing, as always happens, an enormous amount of detail already lodged in memory (recent and past) began rearing up and so I found the anxious boy had a cat named after a story book character, he had a battered music box playing Lara’s Theme backwards, he had a pile of obsolete coins, his brother collected Kinder Surprise toys, his father sang hymns, his great-aunts gambled, and so it went. I guess the short answer to the question is: the real challenge is being alert to both the quotidian and the odd around you—and noting it down.

B - There’s real love of literature, words and art in the novel. Are you concerned that we’re reading blogs and wikis more than great Russian literature or our own carefully crafted stories about valiant people?

K - I have enormous faith in the allure of the printed word, the story on the material page, the aesthetic pull of books as beautiful objects, the sensory pleasures available through a physical experience of literature, and not least, the measured, beautifully crafted unfolding of story or verse. On-screen reading offers a number of wonderful advantages but it’s a quite different experience. I don’t like to think of books and blogs as mutually exclusive.

B - The book will be marketed as a crossover title, or multi-generational. Who were you writing for when you began the story?

K - I’ve never been much good at—nor interested in—writing for a particular age group, it seems kind of presumptuous and limiting. I tend to have a sense of an ideal reader; someone who enjoys the adventure and play and music of language, someone who likes to take their time reading—who is as interested in the ‘why’ of a story as the ‘what next’; someone who enjoys the texture of a created world, the nuances of a character’s personality, the mysterious nature of family life. That reader could be any age, and of course, they’re rather like me.

Frankie may be compared to another quirky character in Christopher Boone, who was described by his creator Mark Haddon as ‘completely fictional’. Is there a Frankie Parsons in your life?
Completely fictional seems to me a pretty unlikely notion. Frankie bears a little resemblance to my son, Jack, he has some of my traits, but is a good deal his own man, too.

B - What bird are you?

K - I wish I were a kingfisher (like Frankie) because it’s just about my favourite bird. But really I’m too sociable and busy and noisy to qualify for that comparison. My sister says I’m a tui, which is probably about right. (It’s very instructive getting others to suggest which bird you might be). The tui is, of course, a New Zealand native—very active and raucous (especially in spring and summer), with a great array of calls (some beautiful, some rough.) It’s often comical and occasionally splendid, and dressed in black.

B - What are you working on next?

K - I’m working on a couple of picture books and a novel.

Link to The Bookseller & Publisher here.