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.