Discover the beauty of Maggie Blue

Welcome to the world of Maggie Blue, a trilogy of outstanding books, and a Blog Tour with their author, Anna Goodall, which I am thrilled to be a part of! I asked Anna some questions about the stories, the characters, her inspirations... Her responses are beautiful, open, honest and will encourage you to think and wonder when you get stuck into this beautiful set of stories.

How did you decide on the name Maggie Blue for your character and do you like the names of your characters to be complementary or tell the reader something about them?

Hmmm, truly I can’t remember. I either have names arrive with me or I struggle a bit to name characters and change them a lot as I write. The only character who was named after someone is Hoagy. He is based upon a real one-eyed cat I met with whom I was always trying to make friends until his lovely owner told me he was half-blind and deaf and so, understandably, was rather cautious about making new friends. He was named after a British jazz musician called Hoagy Carmichael.

What, in your opinion, makes the trope of the quiet and possibly bullied or overlooked child-to-hero so popular with authors and readers alike?

Because everyone has that feeling in their heart somewhere, especially when they are a child or a memory from when they were a child. We’ve all felt overlooked, misunderstood and abandoned. In a sense, this is the existential difficulty of being a human being: we’re alone. Stories about popular people who never worry about anything don’t really meet that deep internal need we have to engage with these difficult feelings.

Did you set Maggie up with her talking cat so that she has a friend from the outset? Did you want her friendship with her cat to help her feel brave?

I think it is more that I have always had a very deep relationship with animals. They give you something that humans simply cannot. So, it was more like living a fantasy for me: the idea of having a talking animal as my closest friend really is my dream (and I’m sure many other people’s!) As regards feeling brave, that’s not what I explicitly wanted from their friendship… but I think as the story went on, their support for each other helped them to access feelings such as bravery and loyalty. Hoagy is a bit like Hans Solo… a selfish old thing who learns to love as the story goes on, almost against his nature and certainly his better judgement!

When you create your other/parallel/fantasy worlds how do they form. For example, do you draw them, make notes, or do they form as you write?

I wish I could draw them! I do see things very cinematically, so it really is about very strong visual ideas for me. I had to make notes to make sure it all worked out beyond the ideas that came naturally to me…

The first book in the trilogy starts charmingly, there is tea, chocolate cake. It feels very homely and traditional before quickly descending into chaos! Was this an intentional plot device to engage the reader? What other tools do you use when writing?

I think a lot of my ideas for the whole story came from the suburban and what’s underneath… a very common idea/trope, also. I have a current fascination with how a lot of very modern residential houses look like sanitoriums: blank windows, blank facades, so featureless and slightly frightening to me. They look like places you’d be trying to escape from, but they’ll often have a very posh Land Rover parked outside so you’re like, no, this is a choice to live there… how curious. Obviously, Maggie doesn’t live somewhere like that. But there is an endless fascination with this aggressive “normality” of place and what might lie beneath it.

How do you balance a desire to give Maggie some exciting and possibly dangerous adventures to embark on and yet, at the same time, not scare the reader? Is it clever use of language or are there other techniques you employ?

Ha, I wish it was as carefully thought out as you suggest… The potentially somewhat troubling thing was it took other people to let me know that the books are dark! I hadn’t really considered it! When I told Bella (Pearson, my editor and publisher at Guppy) one idea for Book 3’s conclusion, she was like, OK, no Anna… that is way too dark. Lucky she was there to hold me back, frankly.

Do you write and tell stories as a form of escapism? Your stories have many what might be called ‘realistic’ elements and lots of positive outcomes which some readers may think are too good to be true!

I don’t think it’s escapism really… it’s the only form of self-expression I know about. If people then want to read and enjoy that, that’s an extraordinary bonus. I guess I hoped that my stories, although very much functioning within the “everything’s gonna be OK in the end” genre, were a bit more nuanced than that. In that, I don’t think all Maggie’s problems are over by the end… I don’t think everything is fine or that her mum will never be ill again or that she’ll suddenly get on brilliantly at school or anything. It’s just that love has been able to come into her world, and that makes everything bearable.

Is Maggie a reflection of the child you were/would have wanted to be – with her talking cat and exciting adventures, or is she entirely a creation of your imagination?

I wish. There are parts of me in her, I suppose. But she is so much braver and stronger than I ever was, or am. But yes, as aforementioned, a talking cat or dog would have made my childhood flipping amazing!

Would you like your readers to consider Maggie as a role model?

I don’t like role models… As a kid that’s the last thing you want. Characters you can connect with, that you can relate to, that make you feel less alone. That’s really what you want.

A lot of the author’s personality goes into writing, it must be amplified when you are engaged with your characters over a series of books. How does it make you feel when you come to the end of the story?

Relief! Ha… I’m probably not supposed to say that, but that’s the truth. Also, sadness at the end of Book 3 because I wouldn’t get to spend time with Maggie and Hoagy anymore.

If there were other or parallel worlds to visit, where would you like to go and why?

I would like to visit a world where nature still dominates and where you get to meet your twin, the other side of you. Obviously, I’d need to leave, as this sounds sort of heavy. But it would be great to pop over to a place of great natural beauty and have a chat with my other self whenever I felt like it.