Tanya Landman
About Author
Tanya Landman grew up in Gravesend, Kent. She went on to study English Literature at university, and then worked in a bookshop running the children's section, at an arts centre and a zoo. She was also a writer, administrator and performer for Storybox Theatre. Her first book was Waking Merlin, published in 2006, and she now writes for younger readers and young adults, including titles Apache, Sam Swan Mysteries and the Flotsam and Jetsam stories. She now lives in north Devon with her partner, two sons, a Siamese cat and two Labradors.
Interview
BEYOND THE WALL
WALKER BOOKS
APRIL 2017
In her earlier novels including Apache and the Carnegie-winning Buffalo Soldier, TANYA LANDMAN delves into history to explore how injustices of the time shaped its people. In BEYOND THE WALL, Landman returns to the past, this time to Roman Britain when the local population lived in thrall to the Roman Empire.
With the empire stretching as far as it did, freedom could be no more than a dream for the peoples the Romans enslaved and in Beyond the Wall, Landman gives an unflinching exploration of what this would have meant especially to the enslaved women and children.
When one slave does the unthinkable and finds her way back to her ancestral home - to those lands beyond Hadrian's Wall - she gives hope to those still enslaved by the Romans and the roots of rebellion are sewn.
We asked Tanya Landman to tell us more about BEYOND THE WALL:
Q: Why did you decide to set your latest novel in Roman Britain?
A: When I was growing up, the past seemed to me to be a place where adventures could happen. There were no rules, no regulations, no timetables, no adults supervising every move.
As a novelist, the past appeals to me for the same reasons. When you're writing a novel the first thing you need to do is put your young character into a dangerous situation where they can't get adult help easily - if they can simply telephone a parent or the police and get rescued there's no story!
Some writers opt for a dystopian setting where there are no safety nets so a character has to forge their own path. I like to go back to the historical past because it's basically the same thing but with the added bonus that the past often throws light on the present.
Roman Britain was such a dangerous, troubled outpost of the Empire - a perfect place for a thrilling tale. And the idea of a 'civilised' empire fighting against 'barbarians' (and constructing a wall to keep the savages at bay) has so many contemporary parallels.
Q: Why does Hadrian's Wall - somewhere you visited and were impressed by as a child - form such a strong part of the story? Have you been back?
A: I like borders and boundaries - and people who dare to cross them. The idea that one side is 'safe' and the other is 'dangerous' is really appealling. Hadrian's Wall is a physical manifestation of my early obsession, and yes, I've been back lots of times. It's a very haunting place.
Q: Are there other places from Roman history that you visited and that left an impression on you?
A: Plenty! The Roman baths (in Bath) and the aqueduct in Segovia, Spain are two of them. But probably the most extraordinarily impressive place I've been is Pompei - that really set fire to my imagination.
Q: Roman Londinium and a wealthy Roman's villa are described as part of the story, where did you go to research them?
A: I looked at a lot of picture books, actually - and then used my imagination.
Q: Often your stories focus on a person or group of people who have been exploited, what draws you to telling their stories?
A: I've always hated cruelty and unfairness. Rage is a good fuel for me - if I can get angry on a character's behalf, it propels me through the writing their story.
I've always been inspired by people who have fought for justice and fairness but history tends to be told from the point of view of the victors - the oppressors - so I like to tell the other, forgotten side of a story.
Q: Why did you decide to focus in this story on the impact of slavery on its female victims (although not exclusively) in this story?
A: Because women very often get rubbed out of history - we don't very often get to hear their voices.
Q: How difficult was the balance between describing what happens to the slaves, particularly the sexual exploitation of the women and children, and withholding the worst of it?
A: It's always a bit of a balancing act. I don't want to soften or paint over harsh realities but I don't want to be gratuitously cruel either. I'm actually very squeamish - I work on the assumption that if I can't stomach writing it, a reader won't cope with reading it, so I don't write screeds of detailed horror.
I think it's actually more effective to use just one line or one word. The reader's imagination will do the rest.
A: How did the main character, Cassia, develop?
A: That's quite difficult to answer! I don't know, really - it was quite an organic process. I start with the bare bones and gradually a character acquires muscle and flesh and personality.
Q: You also bring in a more feminine wisdom to the story - Cassia's dreams, awareness and heritage, why did you want those threaded through the story?
A: I'm not sure that it's a particularly feminine thing - it applies to both brother and sister. When people are enslaved or oppressed they lose identity as well as freedom. Part of her journey to self-discovery, involved re-discovering her heritage.
Q: Why did you also want to bring in Marcus's story, a true 'son of Rome'?
A: I wanted to tackle the themes of a clash of civilisations, the effect of empire building and occupation on native peoples and what happens when one culture regards itself as superior to another, so I needed two separate and opposing viewpoints.
Q: Why did you decide to have a storyteller narrating the action, and why do we only learn the narrator's identity at the end?
A: The Romans were excellent record keepers - they wrote down EVERYTHING. In contrast, the native Briton tribes would have had an oral tradition. So the idea of a storyteller as narrator seemed to fit.
Q: You also raise questions at the end and leave them open, why have you done so?
A: It's because I like stories that leave me thinking and wondering. I hate it when every last detail is tied up and the point the writer is trying to make is more or less underlined in thick red felt pen in case the reader isn't clever enough to work it out for themselves! So when I write, I want to leave room for the reader to breathe and imagine.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Just finished the very first (very rough) draft on another YA one and am waiting anxiously for a response from my agent...
Q: Where is your favourite place to write?
A: I often dream up ideas or think through knotty plot problems when I'm out walking the dogs. But the real, hard graft is done at my desk.
Q: What are your top tips for young writers for creating great historical fiction?
A: Remember that for your character the past is the present. They don't know their future any more than you know yours.
Do your research thoroughly, but wear it lightly. It's good to get details right, but you're writing fiction, not a text book; the most important thing is to write a gripping story.
SAM SWANN'S MOVIE MYSTERIES: TOMB OF DOOM
WALKER BOOKS
APRIL 2014
Tanya Landman is well known for her YA novels like Apache but she also writes for younger readers and Tomb of Domb is the second of her Sam Swann Movie Mysteries, following Zombie Dawn. These stories are aimed at readers, particularly boys, aged seven years plus and their combination of a mystery to solve, perfectly-pitched text and humour, film facts and cartoon illustrations make them a great package for this audience.
The mystery books are narrated by Sam, whose somewhat limited skills at mystery-solving are bolstered by the spoiled child actress Tinkerbelle Cherry, or Tink, as well as his reliable and adoring side-kick, a Labrador called Watson. In Tomb of Domb, Sam sets off for Egypt with his father who is a special effects make-up artist and who is needed to help film the Tomb of Doom on location in Cairo and Luxor. Thence follows a mystery caper involving a fake Anubis collar, a dodgy wardrobe assistant and a motor boat, all of which are ultimately solved by Watson.
Landman admits that her own boys, now aged 13 and 16, were the inspiration for this series. "If anyone had said to me would you base your characters on people you know?, before now I would have said it's all fiction, but with Sam Swann and Watson I have to agree that they are totally based on my two boys and our Labrador dogs." While her boys are now teenagers, she says, "These are all things that they used to do and that drove me insane at the time. My youngest child, for example, could not pass a button without pressing it, especially if it said 'Alarm' - the number of times he's set off alarms in libraries, on escalators etc; he just had to do it, he couldn't help himself. It's that kind of behaviour that inspired Sam and some of the things that happen to him in the books."
The detective theme was something that interested her as a child as well as her boys, she says. "I loved Scooby Doo and those kinds of supernatural but farcical adventures. I like finding clues and solving riddles and we stay with Sam because, while he's very enthusiastic, he's not good at picking up on what's going on although the reader will get it."
Inspiration for the film theme of the books also goes back to Landman's childhood and the hours she spent watching her famous uncle, Robert Shaw, appearing in films like Jaws (as Quint), as a Bond villain in From Russia with Love and as Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons. "He died when I was 14 but I grew up with him constantly appearing in these blockbuster Hollywood movies so I always knew it was an industry and, because he was a big Hollywood name, I grew up knowing it was a job that real people did," she explains. "I also knew that a lot of it was quite boring and that behind-the-scenes stuff can be very tedious and time-consuming."
Since Sam's dad is a special effects make-up artist, Landman also needed to research this area. She had some idea of the detail she would need to have at her fingertips from an earlier incident. "When I lived in Bristol we got a call from BBC drama who had used our flat to film a scene from Casualty and they wanted to use the flat again. I remember speaking to the make up people about all the different consistencies of blood they needed, whether it was fresh arterial blood or day-old blood - they have to make it all up in advance - so I had a sense of how much I would need to learn in order to write about special effects. I now have volumes of books on special effect make up and I've watched hours of YouTube examples of how to make things like pus," she explains, "although I'm a bit squeamish so it was fun writing my Zombie book!"
The books are littered with facts about the movie world (when they were filming Jaws, for example, the shoot lasted 159 days instead of the planned 55 days because of problems with the mechanical shark) and we also learn some film terminology, such as who are the cast and crew, from these side-notes. "We get a lot of film magazines and I spent a lot of time cutting snippets from newspapers that I felt could be a good Sam fact," says Landman. "I wanted to make these books really visual because I used to love books that had lots of pictures and little boxes of text, it's a really good way of giving information and snippets of trivia." Also, instead of describing the action sequences with lots of words, she uses storyboards and cartoons to replace the text.
Landman would give the illustrator suggestions of what might work, such as a cartoon sequence alongside a particular section of action, and the designer would work out the page layouts and where the breaks should go. "It goes back and forth between us so these books take much longer to produce than for example my Poppy Fields books which are just about plotting and writing. These ones are much more time-consuming but it's new and different for me and I like to do things that I've not done before."
Because of the movie backdrop of the books, Landman can take her characters anywhere in the world and Sam Swann's next adventure will be set in the US and with the Statue of Liberty in New York. "Plus there are so many different genres I can play with. It'll be superheroes next and I'd like to do a monster movie at some stage," she adds. "He can also go back in time to any period."
Landman began writing the latest Sam Swann Movie Mystery after completing her YA novel Buffalo Soldier. She says, "YA is much tougher to write and I like doing both since the YA novels are quite serious, historical books and need a lot of research. They take a lot to write and are quite emotionally draining, you have to feel the difficult journey your character makes yourself, so I feel quite drained emotionally and after writing those, the Sam Swan books are fun to do."
Her interest in writing her YA books, starting with Apache, also dates back to the films she watched as a child, she says. "My uncle acted in Custer of the West so when I was five, he was General Custer and I grew up watching Westerns where cowboys were the heroes and Indians the villains. It wasn't until I saw Little Big Man that I saw the other side of the story and recognized that Custer, who had always been the hero to me, could also be perceived as the villain."
She wanted to write Apache as a reaction to "the cowboys as hero" and while researching for that, she kept coming across references to 'negro soldiers'. "This is what the Indians called them and I found out that these were slaves who had been freed and now they were fighting to take away the liberty from people who had always been free. That was such a bitter irony that I did some research into it and from that came the idea for Buffalo Soldier. I felt that the story of these 'negro soldiers' hadn't been told; it wasn't taught in school and no one had written about it before."
During her research, Landman discovered that, after the Civil War when the slaves were freed, "in reality there was nowhere for them to go and nothing for them to do". Many ended up signing up for the army thinking that the war was over, but then they were sent to fight in the Indian wars. "They found themselves on the Plains and then in the West, fighting the Apaches. It was a big, epic, tragic history."
Landman's next YA novel will be another historical fiction story set in England in the eighteenth century because, she explains, writing in the past gives her the freedom her characters need to have an adventure. "These days people are so protective of children and in touch with them all the time so it's difficult to send a teen off on an adventure. That is why we have so much dystopian fiction around because that also allows you to set them free. You can do the same with the past because it was a tougher time, and I find history fascinating."
Buffalo Soldier
