Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books: Guest Post by Cecilia Busby - Deep Amber/Frogspell (David Wyatt)

The Importance of Great-Aunts…

I have a bit of a thing for great-aunts. My nan was one of three sisters, so I had two great-aunts of my own – Auntie Joan and Auntie Joyce. They were a constant of my childhood – when my sister and I went to stay with my nan, which we did frequently, the visit was never complete without an afternoon round at one or the other aunt’s house, playing cards for small change, having sweet milky cups of tea and sticky gingerbread, going for a walk down to the parade of shops to buy an ice-cream or some sweets. Or just listening to the soothing sound of my nan and her two sisters reminiscing about growing up in India or complaining about the world in general and the inadequacies of men in particular.
As a teenager, long after those visits had ceased, I discovered P.G. Wodehouse and his endless parade of great-aunts.

Bertie Wooster had two very particular ones: Aunt Agatha (always on Bertie’s case and not to be crossed at any price) and Aunt Dahlia (a little more good natured but still requiring endless running around from Bertie that inevitably got him into sticky situations). I discovered on recent re-reading that they were strictly speaking aunts, rather than great-aunts, but, perhaps because they reminded me very strongly of my own great-aunts, that’s what I remember them being.
I hadn’t realised the extent to which great-aunts were lurking in my sub-conscious till I started writing my own books. In my first series, set in Arthurian England, the plot requires that the hero, Max, be given a very special cauldron.

And who should appear in the story to give it to him but a great-aunt – in this case, Great-Aunt Wilhelmina, who is an ancient dragon with a hoard of cauldrons. (Wilhelmina was the name of my own great-aunts’ great-aunt, who helped bring their mother up when both her parents died of cholera in India.)

Great-Aunt Wilhelmina was a fabulous character to have in the story – wise, very powerful, generally helpful but not above giving my child characters a stern talking to when they needed it. She also had the privilege that vast age brings, of being able to give even the more powerful adult characters (such as Merlin) a ticking off – always good for a bit of comic light relief!

But it was when another great-aunt forced her way into my next series that I realised I was very slightly obsessed… In this case, a powerful amber jewel, left in a box in Great-Aunt Irene’s house, causes siblings Cat and Simon all sorts of trouble when they move there after their great-aunt’s death.

Small objects keep disappearing – a pair of swimming goggles, a camera, a DS – and then a rather large object suddenly appears. A shining long-sword, in the middle of the stairs. No sooner has it arrived, than trouble – in the shape of two black-suited men called Mr Smith and Mr Jones – comes to the door. Cat and Simon have to try and work out what’s going on, and why they are attracting the interest of these two rather menacing officials. At the same time, in another world – one with magic and castles – apprentice witch Dora and kitchen boy Jem are trying to work out where the plastic goggles and picture-box have appeared from. When Cat and Simon finally track down the amber jewel and open the box it’s in, they discover they have another problem to deal with – the ghost of their great-aunt, trapped in the box with the amber.

Great-Aunt Irene is sarcastic, irascible, impatient and able to make herself alternately solid enough to throw vases at people’s heads, and immaterial enough to pass through walls. She chivvies and encourages the children through the difficult and dangerous tasks they find themselves involved in, as they try to find four magical pieces of amber and, more importantly, keep them out of the hands of the dark and sinister Lord Ravenglass. She may not be able to do much directly – she’s a ghost, after all – but she keeps everyone on their toes, and never lets them despair of finally winning out.

I’ve just written the last of the trilogy, The Amber Crown. At the end, Great-Aunt Irene has done her job, and she moves on. I felt genuinely tearful as I
wrote her farewells. Just like the characters in the book, I will miss her – as I still miss my own great-aunts. But I don’t suppose she’ll be the last great-aunt that finds her way into one of my books…

Cecilia Busby writes fantasy for children aged 7-12 as C.J. Busby.
“Great fun – made me chortle” – Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell
“A rift-hopping romp with real charm, wit and pace” – Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber www.cjbusby.co.uk
Twitter: @ceciliabusby

Author Guest Post #2: C. J. Busby - My Favourite Read - Eight Days of Luke’, by Diana Wynne Jones

                                             

Twitter: @ceciliabusby             Website: http://www.frogspell.co.uk/

‘Eight Days of Luke’, by Diana Wynne Jones

I first read Eight Days of Luke when I was about nine, not long after it had come out. It was just about the best book I had ever read, and from that point on and on the basis of that book only, Diana Wynne Jones was my favourite author. I checked every library or bookshop I entered for other books by Diana Wynne Jones. Never being quite sure whether I would find her under ‘W’ for Wynne, or ‘J’ for Jones meant that the disappointment of finding no trace of her was always delayed till I had thoroughly checked both places, as well as the letters either side in case a book had got misplaced. But although I did find Charmed Life (quickly another favourite), there was generally no sign of her. So I read Eight days of Luke again. And again. I probably got it out of our library at least ten times (why on earth didn’t my parents buy it for me? But somehow books seemed too expensive in those days to actually own!) It’s not hard, even now, to recapture that sense I had as I read it that here was something completely out of the ordinary – utterly compelling and magical. It’s the particular combination of the ordinary everyday world with the world of myth that marks out a Diana Wynne Jones book – rarely are her books completely set in a fantasy realm, and even when they are, there is a kind of matter-of-factness at the heart of what happens. 

David, the protagonist of Eight Days of Luke, is an ordinary schoolboy, in the horrible situation of being dumped with a whole bunch of rather selfish and unpleasant relatives in the school holidays because his parents are dead. One particular holiday, thoroughly miserable and angry, David decides to curse them. His curse, all made-up words and emotional release, suddenly takes on a life of its own, a combination of ‘fierce terrible words’ that ‘asked to be said’. As he finishes declaiming them, the garden wall comes crashing down around him, and a strange, red-haired boy appears in the ruins – Luke. From then on, David’s life changes, immensely for the better, although Luke gets him into all sorts of scrapes, and draws the attention of some very mysterious and powerful people: Mr Chew, Mr Wedding, Mr Fry. It soon becomes clear that David isn’t the only one with difficult relatives – these people are after Luke for something terrible he’s done, and only David can save him, by somehow finding the ‘object’ that Luke stole, without knowing what it is. 

Anyone who is familiar with the Norse legends – and when I first read the book, I had thoroughly absorbed Roger Lancelyn Green’s magnificent Myths of the Norsemen – realises quite quickly that Luke is the Norse trickster god, Loki, master of fire and mischief. It follows that Mr Chew is Tyr, Mr Wedding, Woden, and Mr Fry, Frey. Suddenly, it’s as if you are reading the book with double vision: the ordinary and the mythological, the mundane and the magical, side by side – and it’s this, I think, that makes Diana Wynne Jones’s books get under your skin in such a thorough way. It’s impossible, after that, not to have the sense that only a thin veil separates your everyday life from the world of magic and myth. Any time, any day, you might just enter an amusement arcade and find yourself in Valhalla, or cross a bridge and realise it was an echo, a ghost, of Bifrost. Unlike with Harry Potter, ordinary people are not forever walled off from the magical world as unknowing Muggles – they are always just one step away from diving into or being caught up in the magical or mythological.  The effect of this revelation at the age of nine was a completely exhilarating ‘extra sense’ of magical possibilities in the everyday world that has never left me. For me (as for Neil Gaiman) it makes Diana Wynne Jones simply the best writer of magic for children there is. And although I have now managed to find and read (and re-read, frequently!) almost everything she’s ever written, Eight Days of Luke is probably still my favourite book.

About the Author

C. J. Busby was brought up on boats and in caravans in the southeast of England and north Wales. She lived in south India for a year for her PhD, and then taught Social Anthropology at universities in Edinburgh, London and Kent. She lives in Devon and has three children and currently works on environmental issues with schools, and is a copyeditor for an academic press. Her first picture book text, The Thing, was shortlisted for the Nickelodeon Jr national Write a Bedtime Story competition.