Authors and Editors
Interviews with Malorie Blackman and Annie Eaton
Regarding Noughts & Crosses
May 2002

In early April I had the great pleasure of interviewing author Malorie Blackman and editor Annie Eaton of Transworld/Random House about the development of the book, Noughts & Crosses . I was interested in hearing about how they worked together to put together such a fascinating and ground-breaking book. The interviews were conducted separately, and both Malorie and Annie were extremely generous with their time and thoughts. I hope that readers will be interested to see 'behind the scenes' so to speak, and to get further insight into one author/editor relationship. Be forewarned, this feature includes many spoilers, so if you haven't read this wonderful book yet, I'd suggest you get it right away and read it first (it's now available in paperback!).

My own background is that I worked as an editor of multicultural picture books in the states, so this topic is particularly close to my heart. In this piece, I basically quote and paraphrase what Malorie and Annie said as they offered such wonderful insight into their relationship, and into the writing and editing process in general. First are Malorie's Blackman's comments, followed by Annie Eaton's. If you want to know more about Malorie Blackman and the books she's written, visit the Achuka website to read her author profile. Enjoy!

Malorie Blackman

•  About black characters and the kind of books Malorie Blackman writes, as well as how she got started writing for children:

Most of the characters I write about are black. There is such a dearth of books that feature black characters and I got so upset about this. When I was a kid there weren't any, and I didn't read a single book where the characters weren't white. In my twenties I read books written by black people. And I decided to see if I could do it. I was very naïve going into children's books. It was fascinating to me. It took me about 82 rejection letters before I got in to speak with editors.

I received form letters for the first fifteen submissions, after that they started to tell me why and I knew I was getting better. It took a while to get the discipline, to write something, go back to it and edit it, and then re-edit it. This was about twelve years ago. My first book was published in 1990.

•  On writing books about 'black issue' books

I think I also got that as well, Why don't you write about black issues? And I just felt, does any white writer get told to write about white issues? The KKK? Why am I being pigeonholed in this way, that I should be writing about this? When I was a kid I liked reading about adventure stories and fantasies and mysteries and who-doneits and thrillers. I wanted to write these books where the colour features, but the whole subject matter wasn't about being black British, but the characters obviously were black. So that was always where I was coming from, which I think in a way worked in my favour and also worked against me, because I also got criticised for not writing about black issues. It's funny because Noughts & Crosses seems to be doing very well at the moment. I just got so fed up with people saying 'Why don't you write about racism?' I'm not going to write about it the way you want me to write about it.

I couldn't have written that book say ten or twelve years ago because I had all this other stuff I needed to write. As I said, I loved to read fantasy and adventure stories, and I wanted to write some of those that featured black children. And that's another thing as well, whenever I do meetings and discussions, especially in the beginning, I have to stress that [my books] are for all children. There is the misconception that the book is only for black children, which drives me nuts. I say, Does that mean if it has a white character is it only for white children, because if that's the case I wouldn't have read a single book until I was twenty-three when I read The Colour Purple . And I was thinking, again, I must admit, when someone tries to box me in and pigeon-hole me I want to say 'No, no, no!' I don't like to be pigeon-holed where people say, 'That's Malorie Blackman and she writes this kind of book." As soon as people start to say that then I try to write something completely different. My own point of view is that that's a bit boring, and I don't want to write the same style of book all the time. I always want to change, and I think that's the only way I can get better at this.

•  On Noughts & Crosses

Initially when I started working for Transworld, rightly or wrongly I felt they were looking for a particular kind of book from me, this adventure thing. So when I was thinking of Noughts & Crosses, I was thinking of another publisher to be absolutely honest, and then Philipa and Annie took me out for lunch. They said they would be happy to publish anything I write. Picture books are a different thing, but fiction-wise they would be happy to look at anything I want to do, any genre or whatever, which I hadn't know beforehand, so it was very fortuitous, and I told them about Noughts & Crosses and they were like, Brilliant, we'd love to do it.

I sent Annie a two page synopsis because I don't like to overwork a thing to death before I write it. I knew that the Noughts were going to white and the Crosses were going to black, I knew it was going to be a Romeo and Juliet friendship that turns into a love story between Sephy and Callum, I knew a bomb was going to go off and someone was to get hanged.

What I did with that one is I worked out the beginning and the middle of the story in very rough terms, but not the ending because I wanted to know the ending as I was writing it. Originally it was going to be Callum's story, Sephy's story, and Callie Roses' story, so it was going to be all three of them in the one book. I have to admit that after I was done with Callum and Sephy I had 400 odd pages and I thought, I want to stop now. When I sent the MS I put 'End of book 1' and I figured it would be in two parts, the second book will be Callie Rose's story. But Transworld said let's see how the first one does. They thought it would be better to take that off, and it would depend on how the first one is received before I write a sequel. They said if it seems to do well then we can put that in the paperback and they would know there'd be a second one. But in my mind it was always going to be the two stories so where this one ends for me was always the middle of the book. I got to the end of it and thought, Well, that was a good place to stop.

It was funny because I was writing it and I wasn't sure how it was going to end, and I felt, Oh no! It was like it wasn't my story any more. It wasn't my story from about chapter two, it was just like these people were talking through me. It sounds bizarre when I say that, but it really did feel like that. It was like these people were talking through me and I was trying to get it down. At the end I got so close to Callum, I thought Oh my god, at my keyboard, and it was so bizarre. It had never happened to me before. In Pig-heart Boy at the end Cameron's Nan dies and I kind of felt if you are dealing with the issue of someone facing their own mortality then it'd be a bit false for no one to die. And at the end of that I kind of got a lump in my throat when she did. But this one I was in tears.

I originally finished it when Sephy says, 'Please God, please let him have heard me. Please. If you're up there somewhere.' And Annie said, could we have something a bit positive at the end? And I thought I didn't want to add another chapter. So I thought, OK, a birth announcement saying that's she had this child, that she's given it Callum's surname, and you know she's had the baby. I think that was actually a good thing, because it would have been so, so downbeat. But again, that for me was the middle of the story.

The sequel is called Callie Rose and that's my next book. She's still talking to me, and I think I'm not going to get any peace until I write this. I must admit, it was going to be my next one [after Noughts & Crosses] but I thought I needed a break. So I'm doing something that is kind of lighter and then I'll go into Callie Rose because there are still some things I want to deal with in that one.

•  Relationship with Annie Eaton, editor

I must admit I'm not keen on showing anybody anything until it's finished or until I feel it's at least in a state to show. Annie's lovely, she's a very good editor because she kind of gives me a pull which I need, but she was really kind of, how's it going? And then I said do you want to see... I can show you the first part, I don't want to show you the second part yet. And she's said that's fine. So I sent to the point where there is the first hanging and then I said, Do you mind just holding off on comments and things. If there is anything big that's fine, but hold off on the other stuff until I've finished it. When it's finished I go back and so much of it changes anyways when you are reworking it, but I thought it might throw me off before that. And she was so good, she was really nice. She's very encouraging.

•  Publishing Noughts & Crosses in the States

We had a publisher just recently turn down Noughts & Crosses in the states. To be honest, I wouldn't ever expect it to be taken in the states. I think Random House was very interested, then Sept. 11 happened. And I wondered, with terrorism... You know, they were very very keen, and after Sept. 11 it went very quiet, and then they pulled out. And then Penguin Putnam were looking at it, and Sharyn November is still very very keen, but she's been overruled by her boss who doesn't think it's the right book for Viking and I kind of thought, I don't ever think this is going to get published in the states. But there you go.

It's interesting to me, I kind of think, it would be very interesting for me to know if it would have been published if it weren't for Sept. 11, but it's the kind of thing you're never going to know.

•  Book addresses tricky/uncomfortable issues

The book is addressing a number of things that are uncomfortable. It was a very uncomfortable book to write, and yet I know it's a very uncomfortable book to read. It's funny because originally I was going to write a book about slavery. And I was talking to friends of mine and they said, Been there, done that. Why do we want to go through all this pain again? Why do we need another book about slavery? And I thought, I want to write something where it kind of turns people's assumptions on their heads, so you can't get to the book and know what it's going to be.

So when I decided to turn it on its head, and thought white people are going to suffer from discrimination, it kind of forced me to think about things and think about what I was writing, I challenged myself. So many things here, it's like... there are black characters in it who are unsympathetic. They do hold some of these views. The two teachers, I wanted to have one who was really dark like me, who was saying we need to have equality, and the one who's kind of mixed-race who absolutely hates Noughts. And again, that was kind of tricky to write. When I sent it to Annie I sent her the bit where the teacher has said to Callum that the other teacher's mother was a Nought, but I hadn't sent her the part where that teacher says, I'm so glad I'm not one of you. And so Annie sent me a few comments, and she said something about [the mixed-race teacher] really being on Callum's side and doing this for a reason. And I knew that he wasn't. Again, it was playing with these assumptions, that of course you'd think he'd be more sympathetic and he's worse than the other teacher.

It was all this kind of thing, that I wanted to play with assumptions, and I wanted people to be surprised when they read it, just to make people talk about things. I had no idea whether it would work or not. It was a good experience for me. It was painful. A lot of it was based on things that happened to me, like the teacher and school experiences, most of those are real, most of those happened to me. And when I was doing a presentation to teachers, I told them that I'd put my own experiences into the book. In fact there are so many more I could have put in there and I said, No, let's just have the ones that are relevant to this book. For me, of all the characters I've written, I think that Callum's experiences are the closest to mine because a lot of the things he's gone through, and a lot of the ways he feels about things I have gone through or I did feel about things. And I thought, that's why it was so hard to write. It's probably my most personal book in that sense because if anyone ever said to me, are you ever in any of your books I'd say nope.

I find that really funny, really ironic, that of all the characters I've written, Callum is the closest to who I am, or how I used to be. Isn't that funny? And here he is a white boy. That's why it was a difficult book to write, shifting things 180 degrees. That's why I don't think I was ready to write it ten years ago, even five years ago. I needed to do all these other things. If I had written it ten years ago, five years ago even, I would have been constantly censoring myself, I would have been, not afraid, but very conscious that I wasn't not putting people off here. Where when I sat down to write it I thought, I'm just going to do it and argue about it afterwards.

•  The Sex

I think the only thing I really censored myself with, to be honest, was the sex. Even now I think I could have done more, but you do have to be aware of your audience, it is a young adult book. If I were writing an adult book it would have been very different. It's not a question of being more explicit, but it's such an important thing, the first time you ever do it, that I would have liked... If I had to change anything I think I would expand on that. Of course in all my books there are things I'd like to go back and change, but all in all I think it's the book I wanted to write, and sometimes with my books what I have in my head doesn't quite come out on the paper, but with Noughts & Crosses it came very close to the ideas that I originally had in my head.

•  The Editorial/Marketing Reaction to the edginess of the book

That was very positive actually. Annie was aware of the kind of book I wanted to write. As I said, at the end she did want that addition of hope. That was the only thing where they said can we just add that little thing. The only other thing where it was suggested I might want to look at it again was the part where Callum joins the Liberation Militia, and in the initiation stuff he has to do he has to beat up a person, and he has to have a knife. They weren't happy with that because they felt it made him so unsympathetic. I'm not precious about my stuff at all, and nine times out of ten it's, yeah no problem. But that one I put my foot down. I said, no pun intended, but I don't want it to be whiter than white. I want the reader to know he's done all these things which are not nice at all, but to still understand why he's done them. And I still want them to know he's done all these things and still care what happens to him. That was a challenge for me, to see if I could pull that off so that after he has killed someone, it's a challenge to make the reader care what's happening to him, in spite of all the stuff he's done. There was concern that it makes Callum so unsympathetic and I said Yes, that's the point, the kind of things you get driven to do, and if this is the kind you end up doing...

•  Letters about Noughts & Crosses

I haven't had a single negative letter, they've all been so positive. A number of boys have said it made them cry. They say, This is between you and me, don't tell anyone. And I think, I don't know you, love. It's been fantastic, they write that it made them think about things, and they could really understand why Sephy and Callum both acted the way they did, and what happened to the baby and am I going to write a sequel? I think I've had more letters about Hacker , Tell Me No Lies and Noughts & Crosses than any others. And in a short amount of time, I've gotten so many letters about this book, it's been fantastic.

•  Levels of editorial feedback

The major thing is to get the structure right. There was one section in the book where it wasn't working and Annie suggested I do it one way and I felt that wouldn't work. It was the bit just before the bomb goes off, and they suggested I do it one way. I thought I'm not sure that would work. But then I tried it another way and they were happy with that. So I brought in the bit where the ex-policemen is in the coffee shop and he's a kind of witness and he's the one who said Sephy wasn't taking it very seriously.

Generally there were very few things structurally that I had to change. That was the major one. There was another thing where originally Jude was going to be Sephy's dad's child, and they kind of felt that was too much. And I thought, is that too much of a coincidence? Maybe Jude could be half-brother or something. But they thought it would be too much. So that was changed. And originally when I wrote about the hanging, they thought maybe two hangings was too much with the hanging at the end. So I changed it to the father getting a reprieve.

Obviously there were a number of things copy-wise that needed attention. But they were at pains to say to me that it's a lot less than they often send out, and it kind of made me feel better. So I thought, well that's fine. I don't mind, if you give me ten odd pages of things to change, just don't give me three pages here and then two weeks later give me another three pages, give it to me all at once. So they know the way I like to work. At this point the piecemeal approach is a real killer. I'm happier doing it that way and they were very good. Most of them were very trivial things, so I had no problem doing them. The majority of the things they suggested I was fine with. The only thing I put my foot down about was Callum's initiation thing, and I didn't feel it should be watered down, and they said that's fair enough. I'm not precious about my stuff and I did feel very strongly about that and they were very happy to go along with that. That's why I like working with Random House.

I think that good editing is good editing, and I think that my way of telling a good editor is that the good editors are the ones who try to remain true to what you want to say and it's not necessarily what they might agree with or how they would do it, but it's what you want to say. The bad editors are the ones who try to rewrite for you. And having worked with both, I can tell the difference. That's why Transworld is my publisher because I am happy to work with them. I feel they try to help me to express the things that I want to say. And again it's like this conversation I had with Sue where she kind of felt [the Callum initiation] was a bit "oooohh," and I said, No, I don't think so, and she said, That's fine, OK. And it was again, if you feel strongly about it that's fine, and that to me is good editing. Obviously if you really feel I'm doing something that does not work, then say so and we can argue about it. I may not agree with you, but there are some things I really feel that this is what I do want to do. I feel that a good editor is someone who is going to try to help you develop your own style, your own technique, your own way of saying things. And that's why I'm very happy with Transworld. But don't tell them all of this....

Conversation with Annie Eaton:

•  History of their relationship.

Malorie's agent A. M. Heath, sent in a story that one of my editors read and said, this is kind of fun. It's a sort of lively thriller, high-tech for eight to thirteen year olds. She wasn't sure it was quite strong enough to publish, saying it needs an awful lot of work. She thought I should read it. I thought it had a bubbly life to it. As an editor, you always notice when a fresh voice comes in that is distinctive. I really loved bits of it, so we got Malorie in.

Malorie took comments in and made great changes and she ended up getting the W.H. Smith award for the book, which was Hacker . She had had some short stories published already. She was such fun to work with. She was the first black author we had worked with on an original book. It's so hard to find black authors. I am sure they are out there, but it's finding them that is hard. With most of Malorie's books, race is not really an issue. That's what Noughts & Crosses is, the world completely in reverse. And one of the great things about Malorie's writing is that she does write really strong, pacey stories.

There are so few books that black kids can relate to, it seems important to have books with black kids on the cover. Transworld is repackaging Malorie's backlist paperbacks and will be doing a big push with her new book, Drop Dead Gorgeous . The books are very contemporary and stylish. I hope it's going to lift her sales because really she should be reaching more people. She's having a fantastic reaction to Noughts and Crosses .

•  Annie Eaton's history in children's publishing

I first worked at Puffin as a secretary for one year, then went to Mary ? Publications for five years writing for a monthly magazine for kids learning French. Then I went back to Puffin for five years as junior editor then moving to ? editor. I came to Transworld in 1989, starting as a commissioning editor, then a series editor, and now I'm called publisher. I manage other editors, which is new for me. I have around eight people on the team, some really great people, and they all have different strengths. I manage the fiction side. Then there is the picture book side. Picture books have more rights involvement, and they are involved in international co-publishing. I am lucky in a way not to have that. If we sell books to America that's great, it's icing on the cake. Because of the expense of producing a picture book they really need to do co-publications Doing fiction just in the UK is more cost-effective. Also, agents tend to hold onto foreign rights. Of course, we like to try to get the rights if they can.

•  Development of Noughts & Crosses

I saw Noughts and Crosses as Malorie was writing it. Malorie is happy to send in early drafts. She sends in a synopsis first and she did that with this. She was quite specific, actually and also included a sample chapter. One of my editors, Sue ?, is an incredibly detailed editor, she is amazing at getting right into any inconsistencies or things that don't quite hang together. Her response was a very detailed letter. Malorie had left the synopsis open-ended. So the first question was to know how it was going to end. I'm not sure if she had planned how it would end. It was very much sort of a Patty Hurst story initially.

There was lots of discussions about the world and country it was going to be set in, and that had to be completely convincing and therefor it would need to be almost in a parallel world, though that's not specified in the book. I think Malorie quite cleverly managed to set-up that world. We needed the background, the structure, for the set-up to work, with the kind of opposition to the establishment being really set-up in a very convincing way. We talked about whether some of the elements were too disturbing, but in the end decided that they had to be.

The thing that works really well with the book is that as you are reading it, you keep forgetting who is white and who is black. My brain kept switching it around the other way, I had to keep reminding myself. That's one of the wonderful things about the book, it shows how arbitrary racism is, the way you yourself couldn't remember who was which. In another world, red men could be on top and little green men the oppressed. With Malorie it almost worked better than she might have expected it to. In this white publishing world, we come at the whole thing from a completely different angle than her. Malorie handles herself so well, is so articulate and so intelligent, but she has a completely different perspective on life. And there's nothing one can do about that really. I can't become black.

This was the first book where I was really aware of that difference. In most of Malorie's other books, the fact that the kids were black hasn't really affected the story particularly. This did make me think about how different it is, it raised my awareness.

•  Question of hope in the book. Was there concern about the darkness of subject-matter, from either editorial or marketing?

We are left entirely to our own devices in the editorial side. Marketing was quite excited about this project; a writer of Malorie's calibre, something like this that would break the mould and be a departure for her was quite exciting. There was a balance between making an impact and getting difficult subject matter across. We also had to work on getting it consistent. This was a little tricky, she did work on getting characters consistent from beginning to end, such as the age of Sephy, getting that right. All of these things Malorie worked on and pulled together quite effectively.

It's a page-turning book as well, she has not put that to use before with such tricky subject matter. To put all those elements together, this kind of plot, dangerous subject matter, it worked and there was no guarantee.

The point where they have sex was one stage that we discussed in detail. Did he rape her or not? We had lots of conversations, that Sephy needed to be a willing participant in that. Malorie felt that the sex had to be a part of the plot and she was right, the way she did it. She did it in an ungratuitous way, managed to put it in just the way I would have wanted.

We were all excited about the book. In our hearts we knew Malorie could do something like this.

•  On Noughts & Crosses in the States

It was slightly odd the way that happened. The editor who was keen, I think, left. Malorie Lehr? It was around Sept. 11 and the deal had not been sewn up, and after that... Sharyn November [at Penguin/Putnam] is very interested but needs to get more support on it. It seems quite appropriate to the US, some of the book felt like it could have been in the US, with bussing, and the history of slavery. Personally, I can't see why Noughts & Crosses couldn't work in the states.

•  Her philosophy as an editor:

Story. I try reading stuff to my kids quite often. I think a really good story is absolutely essential. David at Scholastic came up with this wonderful copy line: Scholastic, home of the story. But I think that is the most important thing.

What is my philosophy as an editor? I think as little interference as possible, and having said that, often you need quite a lot of interference. [Using another book she'd worked on as an example she explained:] you can get a book like this, a jumble of fantastic ideas, a really good voice, fresh funny narrative and something that didn't sound like anything I'd heard before, and yet the actual plot and the amount of characters was completely unmanageable. It was just too much. As editors we worked on the plot, put back in what we thought the author should put back in, and actually made her save a lot of ideas for the second or third book. Lots of writers like to put everything into their one book. Now it's a great, rollicking read. And that's a situation where we did interfere an awful lots. But you don't want to take over for the author, and if they aren't comfortable with what you're doing you have to listen to that.

Sometimes writers are surprised by how much editing there is. And a book is often not 100% perfect, but the next one is better. In fact I don't think any book is perfect. There are books on our list that perhaps haven't quite come together, occasionally it doesn't quite come off, but sometimes the next book does. That's the thing, authors learn as they write. With someone like Malorie, Hacker was a wonderful book, and it's so exciting to see the books get better and more ambitious. She's really come on, she's such an intelligent woman, and she listens to what the editors say. As an editor, it's satisfying to point something out and have the author come back and say, I hear what you say but actually I'd rather do it this way. That's what they are good at, and that's why they're doing this job and the I am doing my job. You are not the writer, you just show them where the plot doesn't work and they make it better.