Linda Strachan: Is it real?

Linda Strachan' s Dead Boy Talking was released last month (June). To celebrate the launch of the new title, we invited Linda along to the blog spot to talk about her new book and how she is making her characters in her stories live and breathe.

In 25 minutes I’ll be dead.

No, this is not some dead person talking from the grave. It’s just me, Josh. You know me.

I’m not scared

I’m not!

Who am I kidding?

And so begins Dead Boy Talking.  Josh, the boy in the title, has been stabbed and is lying all alone, bleeding, perhaps dying.  He has heard it takes 25 minutes to bleed to death but even Josh is not sure if that is right or not.  The day before he stabbed his best friend, Ranj, and now it’s happened to him. But nothing is quite what it seems at first and as the story unfolds we start to find out about the series of events that have led Josh and his friends into this situation.

Sometimes people ask me if what happens in my books is real. Is it a real story? But what makes it real?  When you pick up a book if you start to believe in the characters, worry about them - becoming scared with them and for them or if you feel sad when something bad happens to them - that is when you, the reader, make the story real.

As a writer I want the people in my stories to live and breathe and I want you to get to know them as well as you know your own friends and family. If, while you are reading about Josh, you begin to trust him; if you begin to feel his fear and agonize with him about what he has done, then he has become more than mere words on the page.

I have also been asked how I know what it feels like to be stabbed and to be honest I don’t but I have been told, by victims of stabbings, that I got it right.  When I started to write this book I tried to put myself in Josh’s place, to imagine what he was feeling and to get inside his head.  Bit by bit it became more real to me and hopefully that comes across.  In some ways I was doing that all through the book because when Josh is speaking I have to try to be him; to see through his eyes and to swap places with him, which can be a pretty scary and sometimes upsetting thing to do.

If the story seems real enough that you shed a tear, or can’t wait to turn the page and find out how it all turns out, then you too are getting inside the character’s head whether it is Josh, Skye, Danny or Ranj - it is becoming real for you.

So is it real?  Only you, the reader, can decide.  I hope I have given you the chance to step into Josh’s world for a while, to see things the way he does, because for Josh and the other characters it is all very real.

Dead Boy Talking by Linda Strachan is out now, published by Strident Publishing June 2010.

You can find out more about Linda Stachan and her work by visiting her blog and website. 

You can also read what author Hazel Allan has to say about Dead Boy Talking here. 

Other news:

Chicken House author Lucy Christopher has scooped this year's Branford Boase Award for Stolen, a children's novel full of rich descriptions of the Australian landscape, inspired by her family's move to the country when she was 10. 

You can find out more about the Branford Boase Award and the author Lucy Christopher by selecting the links!

The Harvill Secker Young Translators' Prize has already received lots of entries from budding translators - but they are sending out a last call for entrants to make sure no one misses out. The deadline for entries is 31st July 2010. The annual Young Translators' Prize will be presented to a translator at the start of their career and will focus on a different language each year. Good luck!

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