I read a lot of children’s books for this blog and out of interest and I do often find ones that I think would make good gifts for family or friends. But the from the moment I finished reading ‘Joyous & Moonbeam‘ I wanted to send copies to every child I knew and recommend it to every parent. It is a book that not only has a wonderful story and a wonderful message, but somehow creates a link that allows you to leave the book with two new friends. I was lucky enough to get to exchange some thoughts with the author of this wonderful book, Richard Yaxley, about this and so much more.

I remember reading lots of Enid Blyton novels. In Grade 3 our teacher read The Secret of Killimooin which I loved. My friends and I stood around the monkey bars and hotly debated potential plotlines as the story unfolded. There was also the Bigglesbooks (for some wholesome war-time adventures) and a series of books about a naughty British schoolboy called Jennings, who became a bit of a hero of mine for his bizarre but hilarious antics.

I graduated to ‘older’ books quite quickly. My parents owned a large set of Readers Digest abridged classics so I worked through many of these, books such as Great Expectations and The Call of the Wild and, perversely, a book of biographies of all the kings and queens of England.

My writing tends to be quite traditional in style, which I think is a legacy of having read so many classics at a young age. At that time (the late 1960s, early 1970s) we didn’t have the availability of many books that were definitively ‘Young Adult’ so if you loved reading, as I did, there was probably a more natural, speedier progression into higher-level literature than there is today.

Anyone who enjoys it and/or finds themselves reflecting on aspects of the story after they’ve read it. I don’t set out on the long and lovely journey that is writing a novel with a really specific audience in mind, although publishers do like to have that sort of information clarified, for distribution and sales purposes, and editing can certainly steer the book in a particular direction. That said, a good story will find different audiences simply because it is a good story.

I have the most trouble with endings. It’s a matter of striking the right note and, hopefully, resisting cliché. I’m not a fan of those everything-neatly-tied-up type endings because life is rarely like that, unless you happen to live inside a Hollywood movie. With Joyous and Moonbeam, there were several possible endings available, each of which had the potential to be written in different ways. I worked through some of those possibilities with the publisher and eventually we decided to keep it very simple, very clean. The story was certainly improved as a result of that process.

Because this is a novel made up of different voices, another way of looking at it is; which was the hardest voice to write? For me, it is a matter of interest that the voice of the character of Joyous – by far and away the most unusual in the novel – changed very little from inception to publication, yet the other voices underwent significant reworking as I tried to find the right rhythms and tonality. That is particularly true of the voice of fifteen-year-old Ashleigh. Young people shift their manner and mode of speaking in a much more liquid and diverse manner than we older folk, so they can be elusive to capture in a way that is honest, non-patronising and write-able.

The various conversations between Joyous and Ashleigh. I relish the way they develop their relationship from an awkward beginning into something that is meaningful and loving for both. Writers are a bit like directors (of films or plays) in that they need to find characters with chemistry. Joyous and Moonbeam have that, I think. There was a recent review of the book in which the reviewer wrote that ‘They had become my friends.’ That was exactly the effect that I was hoping for.

I write in my study, which is a smallish space crammed with reference books, music CDs, photos, files and various bits of technology. I need quiet to write effectively – which means getting into the kind of flow that transcends time – so my best work is usually done in the mornings. When I’m immersed in a novel I’m never far away from it, meaning that ideas and phrases, half-sentences, plot-twists etc. will pop into my head at the most inopportune moments. Because of this, I am constantly jotting stuff down on bits of paper, tapping notes into my phone or laptop, repeating things over and over if I’m out walking, so that I don’t forget. It might only be a word but every word counts. I’m very exacting when it comes to the process of drafting and editing. A writer makes a million choices in constructing their story, and it is incumbent on the integrity of the process that each of those choices be carefully and precisely considered.

It is not often we get to see into the life of an author or even hear their opinion and especially an author of such a moving book. I suggest you check out the blog on ‘Joyous & Moonbeam’ and head over to a local bookstore as soon as you can.

-Leah