“A punch in the gut”: TeenSRC chats with ARTHUR SLADE

“I’m a teen at heart,” declares Arthur Slade. Naturally, it was a thrill to welcome the author, logging on from his home in Saskatchewan, to a TeenSRC chat that connected teens from across Canada.

Slade is immediately at ease in the online atmosphere, greeting users with a cheerful “Howdy” (and later “Yo”) and settling in to an exciting discussion.

First, to the interview question he must have heard a thousand times, “What inspires you to write?”, Slade’s quick comeback is, “My mortgage ba-dump.” The “haha”s subside, and he continues, “Really I always loved reading books so I wanted to create my own stories.”

Besides books, “I’d say heavy metal is my favourite muse,” says Slade. “At least I listen to it a lot as I write. I find that it gives me a mood as I’m writing. It also blocks out any other noise. LOL … I listen to Iron Maiden, they have story songs. Plus, I type faster the louder the music.”

“Oh, I do like heavy metal, but I also like pop and musicals. I know I’m odd. I’m listening to Les Misérables lately.

“I hear dramatic music all the time,” states Slade. Maybe this is in tune with the slightly frightening, suspenseful style evident in his stories. He speaks at length about Dust, the novel which garnered him the prestigious Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature in 2001. (Slade claims he “nearly fell out of my chair” when he heard the news.)

“Dust is set in the 1930s Dust Bowl and it’s all about a rainmaker who brings rain to a drought stricken town except the children start to disappear,” he explains. “One character, Robert, must find out how to stop him. So it’s a little scary.

“[Dust was] actually kind of fun [to write] but you don’t want to make it so over the top that it’s silly. So I try to give readers just enough details so they can imagine ‘the worst’, but if you describe a whole bunch of yucky scenes the reader just gets bored with it. So I tried to make Dust more psychologically scary than just gross.”

Also a graphic novel fan, Slade names The Watchmen as his favourite, “though I like Bone, too. It’s very well done … I also like The Dark Knight, which is quite a bit different from the movie.”

So, the author’s latest project can come as no surprise.

“I’m working on a graphic novel of Dust,” he reveals. Despite having wanted to be a comic book artist, Slade notes that on these projects, “I usually work with artists from around the country. The artist working on Dust is a guy named Christopher Steininger. He’s really good. I just write the script, describe what will happen in each panel then the artist draws it all.”

The partnership came about, says Slade, when Steininger and another artist teamed up with the author on a comic, Hallowed Knight. “We self published it and did okay but we decided to keep working on other projects together.”

According to Slade, the new Dust graphic novel is likely to be released in 2011. (“Yeah, that seems like forever.”)

The best way to start a piece of writing, Slade informs his audience, is with “a punch in the gut … Unless it’s a love story … then I start with an explosion. Explosion/smooch/lightning strike – they’re all the same.

“Actually, that would really get the reader’s attention,” he elaborates. “I do like to start books with something catchy. Here’s the start of one of my books: ‘It all started with a long, fearful scream.’ [- The Return of the Grudstone Ghosts] See, that gets people’s attention right away! Here’s another one: ‘If you’re gonna die, die with your boots on.’ [- The Haunting of Drang Island]”

Arthur Slade’s other favourite first lines include: “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried out bed of the old North Sea.” [– Mortal Engines] by Philip Reeve and “On career day Lily visited her dad’s work with him and discovered he worked for a mad scientist who wanted to rule the earth through destruction and desolation.” [– Whales on Stilts by MT Anderson] (a book Slade calls “soooo funny … I laughed and laughed.”).

Beyond the first line, Arthur Slade tells us that he writes on the computer, as it is faster. “I usually start writing by actually doing the first chapter,” he lets us know, “then I stop and do a bunch of research. I don’t know the real ending until I’m half way through writing the book. Then things start to come clear to me … I don’t use an outline, either. I’m too lazy.”

“Lazy” or not, Slade admits he follows a writing schedule that a chat participant calls “intense”. “I start at about 7 every morning and I write until noon. But I usually write for 40 minutes, then take 20 minutes off. That way I can write really hard then take a break and clear my head.”

A major part of the writing process is revision, which the author relishes. “Yep, I’d say about 80% of my time is rewriting. Rewriting rwtrint rewwrting,” he jokes. “You see, I have to do a lot of rewriting. It’s actually the part I enjoy most. That’s when I can fine tune a sentence or a paragraph, and … say the right thing without using too many words.

“I do want things to be perfect before they get published. Otherwise people send me emails that say things like ‘You spelled a word wrong on page 69. Why?’”

With such a busy writing schedule, Arthur Slade definitely needs time to relax and come up with more great ideas. He comments, “I take Sundays off, usually. I need one day to catch up on normal life things.”

Normal life things, of course, like the important Saskatoon Berry Pie with ice cream and visiting friends waiting for the author at the end of a two hour talk. Mr Slade is obviously in constant popular demand.

As a whole, the online chat experience must have been enjoyable. “This is burned into my memory,” says Slade, ending an unforgettable conversation with a smiley face, “:)”, characteristic of the ever-charming and good-natured author.

“That was fun,” he concludes. “I’m trying to do more things like this. I’m working on a virtual presentation, so that I can iChat or Skype with classrooms. That way I don’t have to leave the house … you read my mind. “[I’ll] call it, ‘You can have Arthur Slade’s Floating Head in your classroom’. Catchy, eh?

“People will remember it.”

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Arthur Slade’s published works include The Haunting of Drang Island, Dust, Return of the Grudstone Ghosts, Ghost Hotel, Meguiddo’s Shadow, Invasion of the IQ Snatchers and his newest release Jolted: Newton Starker’s Rules for Survival.

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When listing his favourite authors, Arthur Slade laughs, “I could go on and on …”:

• Ray Bradbury (“writes fantastical stories and they helped inspire me to be a writer”)
• Gail Giles (“if you like mysteries”)
• Frank Herbert
• Susan Juby (“makes me laugh and laugh”)
• Stephen King
• Garth Nix
• Kenneth Oppel
• Philip Pullman
• Philip Reeve
• Richard Scrimger
• Shakespeare
• JRR Tolkien
• Jane Yolen