James and Bullseye Bella

While the Welling­ton­ista is what we do on the side of our day jobs, it turns out that almost all Welling­ton­istas have a side hus­tle on the side of the side. Case in point: our fear­less leader only went and wrote a bloody book did­n’t he? So I had a chat to him.

Hey James, you wrote a book! What’s it all about?

The sto­ry is about Bel­la, a 12-year old girl who hap­pens to be very (very) good at darts, and her younger broth­er Max (who thinks he’s Black­beard the pirate). When Bel­la finds out that their moth­er (Jane, a solo mum who has a shift-based job) can’t afford to pay for Max’s spe­cial school­ing, Bel­la (with­out her moth­er’s knowl­edge) takes her darts-play­ing abil­i­ty out of the garage and down to the local pub to try and win some prize-mon­ey that’s on offer at a tour­na­ment being held there. There she cross­es paths with a cou­ple of old-school “darts-is-a-man’s-game” char­ac­ters who try their best to thwart Bel­la’s attempts to play in ‘their’ tour­na­ment. Trou­ble ensues.

You’re an award-win­ning blog­ger — has this sto­ry been bub­bling away inside you all along?

Not this sto­ry so much, although I’ve always been writ­ing some­thing over the last twen­ty years or so. I’ve entered the Tom Fitzgib­bon Award with two pre­vi­ous chil­dren’s nov­els and had no luck, so it was third time lucky with this effort. Most of the sto­ry came to me in a sin­gle evening as I was lying in bed think­ing about ideas for a sporty-type sto­ry where a child might be able to com­pete against adults. I was think­ing about snook­er and bowls and oth­er games that are more about tech­ni­cal skill as opposed to brute strength, then darts occurred to me, I thought of ‘Bulls­eye Bel­la’ as a title, and the rest flowed from there. That was in 2014, though, and it took a cou­ple of years from go-to-woe, because of real life, which leads us to…

How do you bal­ance a job that pays the bills, wran­gling us AND writ­ing? 

Per­se­ver­ance. My aim is to try and write 1000 words a week (on aver­age), which isn’t too much if you can spread it over a week. Over a year this adds up to a decent hunk of an aver­age-sized book if you can main­tain that lev­el of ded­i­ca­tion. I tend to block out the week­end after­noons as ded­i­cat­ed writ­ing time, as I can get myself set up in the back yard away from dis­trac­tions (name­ly out of wi-fi range). I also give myself a decent sum­mer hol­i­day every year where I can spend at least three or four weeks real­ly focused on what­ev­er I’m try­ing to write at that time.

What oth­er Welling­ton authors would you rec­om­mend peo­ple check out? 

For the 8–14 year olds, fel­low Tom Fitzgib­bon Award win­ner Suzanne Main’s lat­est book How Not to Stop a Kid­nap Plot is great fun. Very fun­ny, and, with­out want­i­ng to give too much away, has a cou­ple of ‘aha’ moments that have been bril­liant­ly set up in the ear­li­er parts of the book and which you don’t (or I did­n’t, at least) see com­ing.

There’s also Fleur Beale’s Lyla — a sto­ry about a young girl’s response to the 2011 Christchurch earth­quake — is amaz­ing. Just a great por­tray­al of some­one respond­ing to a mas­sive, life-chang­ing event. (And if you like either of those, delve into the back-cat­a­logues of both those authors).

Bulls­eye Bel­la is avail­able now in all good book-stores (and maybe even some bad ones).

Do try and sup­port your local brick­s’n’­mor­tar shops with real human staff by buy­ing a copy from there, but, if you must buy online, you can pick it up in NZ via Mighty Ape, or (and for every­where else) via Ama­zon or the Book Depos­i­to­ry.