Ali Sparkes

The Shapeshifter 1 Finding the Fox
Ali Sparkes

About Author

Ali Sparkes grew up knowing she was going to be an actress even though she was writing stories from the age of six. She focused on acting and singing and was on telly at the age of 14.

Eventually, after working backstage in London's West End theatres, being a Bluecoat at Pontins and singing in bands, she got a proper job as a reporter in her home town of Southampton before moving into radio and television.

Her first published novel was The Shapeshifter: Finding The Fox, which was published by OUP in 2006. It was the first in the five part series of adventures about Dax Jones, who turns into a fox and all his COLA (Children Of Limitless Ability) friends.

She has also written another series, Unleashed, based on some of the characters in The Shapeshifter series. UNLEASHED: Trick Or Truth was published in 2013 and another stand alone novel, OUT OF THIS WORLD, is published in June 2013.

Author link

www.alisparkes.com; www.switch-books.co.uk

Interview

UNLEASHED: MIND OVER MATTER

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

FEBRUARY 2013


Twins Gideon and Luke are meant to be enjoying a relaxing week's holiday in the Isle of Wight - but their special powers make them a target and they are soon deep in trouble.

Ali Sparkes, author of The Shapeshifter, tells us more about her Unleashed series featuring young people with special powers.


Q: What inspired your new series, Unleashed?

A: I got the idea for Unleashed from my earlier series, The Shapeshifter, which had done very well and has a strong fan base. When I came to the end of the series, many of the fans wanted me to write more Shapeshifter books but I felt that was finished so I needed to do something else. I decided to start a new series but to base it on characters who had been linked to Dax Jones, the main character in The Shapeshifter.

The Shapeshifter books are all about COLA's - Children of Limitless Abilities - but all the books are written from Dax Jones' perspective. In Unleashed, we will be meeting lots of other characters although Dax will be pivotal to the ending of the series.


Q: Why do you make the characters older in Unleashed than they were in Shapeshifter?

A: When you meet characters in Shapeshifter they are 11 or 12 years old but in Unleashed they are 15 or 16.

I was imagining what it would be like if this was real, if you had 100 children with special powers and the government had cloistered them away. When they are 11 or 12 that would work, but once they are 15 or 16 things could get a lot scarier.

So these books are about their life as well as their superpowers. They are trained, taught and educated by the British government with lots of military guards involved but they will also want to get away from it all and have a break - so I can explore what happens when they have their time out from the college. The series will get more scary and intense as it goes on.


Q: Did you need to re-read the Shapeshifter series to write this latest one?

A: I dipped in here and there, it was slightly weird because it had been a while since I had written them and the writer in me kept thinking 'I would have done x next rather than that'.


Q: How did you choose the characters from Shapeshifter to write about in Unleashed?

A: I chose the ones I felt I could have the most fun with! The first book (Unleashed: A Life and Death Job) is about Lisa, a psychic or medium who can speak to the dead. She's a bit spoilt but she is also courageous and funny because she is so rude. She might be able to talk to the dead but she doesn't appreciate them babbling away in her ear so I would just cackle away when writing her, plus I wanted something a bit more girl-led without being 'girly'.

I also wanted to write about Gideon and Luke, the twins, and to investigate them. Their background is fleetingly referred to in Mind Over Matter; Gideon has a long lost twin brother, Luke, who lived near the Isle of Wight, so that is why the book is set there. It is also known as 'Dinosaur Isle' because there are so many fossils found there, which also meant I could introduce a fossil hunter as a new character.

Because of something that happened in the earlier series, Luke can't talk, he is mute, so he and Gideon sign. It's always fascinated me to watch people who can sign - they can talk to each other across a crowded room when no one else can.

So many awful things have happened to Luke in the past, it was nice to be able to get inside his head and to find out how he is processing them.

The book I had the most fun writing is book three in the series, Unleashed: Trick or Truth, when I could focus on Spook Williams, who is also one of the COLA children. He is an illusionist, a glamourist, who can affect what you see.

Spook is the best illusionist at college but he and Dax were enemies. They reconciled their differences but Spook remains egotistical and arrogant and he despises everyone. In this story, he is broken out of college and abducted, and thrown into the world of magic, the kind of world he wants to live in, and along the way discovers more about his life and background. I explore his backstory so you come to understand why he is like he is. The question is - will he continue down the path he is on, or can he be redeemed?


Q: Is it hard to keep the momentum in stories where your lead characters have superpowers - they can always just escape any situation?

A: Having just completed a story where there were no superpowers involved, it does make you aware of how handy they are! But although there's always a convenient way out, at the same time you have to apply rules. So in the third Shapeshifters book, Dax and Gideon are on the run and hiding. Dax could just fly away, but he wouldn't leave his best friend Gideon behind, it's a very human reason.
With telepathy, the rule is that if someone knows how to, they can block telepathic people from reading their minds, and for dowsers the further away they are from something or someone, the harder it is for them to find it. So the superpowers have to be wound around a very practical framework.


Q: DO you prefer writing series to one-off books?

A: I like writing both but sometimes you need a break from writing series so it's nice to write a stand-alone book until you feel ready to return to a series. I think the nice thing about series is that readers get more connected with your characters in a way that you might not get with a one-off book. I wouldn't want to write just one or the other, I like to switch between the two.


Q: All your books move at a cracking pace, why is this?

A: I have the attention span of a gnat and I get bored easily so I used fast-paced techniques, I chop and change scenes rapidly. I also enjoy writing dialogue which can help add to the dramatic pace of a story.

I like to write at a varied pace, to have an extreme cataclysmic scene and then to cut away for a while so you can take a breath before you're back in the thick of the action.

I think of my writing style a little bit like being on a roller coaster although as a reader, I enjoy authors like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and they don't go anywhere in a hurry!


Q: How does your writing day go?

A: I can write a lot although I don't write for very long. My writing day normally begins after I have run for an hour, then I think for a bit, go and have a cup of tea and think, and I start writing at midday and write for two hours, but a lot of the plotting is done during my run. On my ideal day I will write for two hours and will get a chapter or two done, although I will do much more than this closer to deadline.


Q: Has your training as a journalist been useful to you as a writer?

A: I don't do journalism work now but my training has stood me in good stead as a writer. It served me well in terms of getting research done and it is probably why I write such fast-paced stories.

AS a journalist you have to learn to cut to the chase quickly, headlines and openers are quick off the block and being interested in people and real life stories probably also comes from my experience as a journalist.

I had my own page in the local newspaper and I used to write celebrity features but the best and most powerful stories I wrote were about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

That is behind ideas like Shapeshifter - a boy turns into a fox, so you ask what would people do, local people, your family and the press, which is based on my experience.

Personally, I can't think of a better place to start writing than on your local paper, finding out about your own community.


Q: Your top tips for budding writers?

A: You have to read and read because all the while you're reading, you're studying the form, what works what pleases you, what bores you, and you're learning, and then you have to do the writing. So many people have great ideas for books but don't get around to writing them.

You have to find what topic excites you, or you could buddy up with someone who is good at ideas, you can write a graphic novel or comic - you can take story to so many places from there.


Q: Can you tell us more about your next novel, Out of This World?

A: Yes, it's a standalone teen novel that is publishing in June and I am very excited about it. I wrote it quite a long time ago and we've been waiting for the right time to publish it. It's another telekinetic story about a boy who picks up a lump of metallic rock and it gives him the ability to move things with his mind and he's on the run from government types. Others have also had this experience and they get together and decide what to do with their new-found abilities.

Author's Titles