Interview - Edie Amelia and the Monkey Shoe Mystery

By Sean Lynch

Interview with Sophie Lee

Author of Edie Amelia and the Monkey Shoe Mystery

Purchase Edie Amelia and the Monkey Shoe Mystery HERE!

Sophie Lee is the mother of three small children (Edie, Jack and Tom), a well-known actor (Muriel's Wedding, The Castle to name but a few), a novelist (Alice in La La Land), a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph and she has recently completed a post-graduate course in Creative Writing at UTS.

She is now embarking on yet another adventure - her first book for children and the beginning of a new series.

Web Wombat's Sean Lynch caught up with Sophie Lee as she prepares to venture into a brand new world of literature...

How does the idea of doing a children's book actually come about?

The idea starting pouring out of me when I was studying at UTS, and it was just a writing exercise I was doing where the ideas just kept pouring out and I just couldn't stop it.

So it was something I began to write in 2004, and then I was interrupted by having children and having to finish my adult fiction book.

But when I returned to it, it was quite daunting, because this thing had been buried for so long - but I was just able to pick up where I left off... it just started flowing again.

Was Edie Amelia's style inspired by what you learnt at UTS, by what you were reading your kids or what you read yourself as a youngster?

When I was little I didn't have a television - I didn't have a TV until I was 15 or 16 years old. And there were loads of books on the shelves at home so I just read...

I read everything from Trixie Belden Mysteries to Laura Ingalls Wilder to The Hobbit.

I just read voraciously and everything my mum gave me, and everything the school librarian gave me - and that gave me a great foundation in life.

... Even though I was quite bitter and pissed off about it at the time [Laughs].

With Twilight and Harry Potter so big these days, how much thought goes into the idea of building a franchise around these characters before you actually start writing?

I think when you feel comfortable with the characters that tumble out, and you feel you know them and that they're malleable - that is when you think "This is easy to write, this is almost going to write itself" and the ideas keep on flowing.

So in that sense, if people like reading it, then I wouldn't have a problem coming up with new ideas because I feel really comfortable with being with those characters.

Is it daunting, or do you feel any extra responsibility, writing children's books knowing that (like your own up bringing) the story, morals and ideals will have some kind of impact on the lives (even subconsciously) of kids when they grow up?

That would obviously be brilliant. The thing with my book, as opposed to some of the others I've read that are pitched at the same age group, is that there's more of an innocence... there is something of a bygone era about them.

I think childhood is quite short... now... in our fast paced modern age [Laughs]. I think that I was a child longer than my daughter will be a child, if that makes sense?

So in that way, my characters don't have cell phones and they don't wear designer clothes and they are more interested in foraging through a rubbish tip and working with a magnifying glass and a flashlight than the Internet.

So is there a lot of your childhood in these characters, or is it a case of things you wish you could have done?

Well there wasn't TV, there wasn't the Internet or computer games - I suppose my childhood was much less sophisticated than my daughters childhood. I mean, I didn't go to a restaurant until I was 17 years old - but if I tell her that she goes goggle eyed!

She was eating at a Japanese restaurant when she was eight months old, or something ridiculous like that. She is just so at home in a restaurant with her colouring-in book, ordering from a waiter... It blows my mind because I didn't even catch a plane until I was 18.

So where do you go from here?

Well I'm writing the sequel and it involves balloons, and a field full of Llamas, and once again there is a lot more food. But food which compares and contrasts so marketedly between the two different households.

Edie has that ridiculous bio-dynamic, organic juniper cutlets and mung bean stew... while the Chompsters have haggis and bread fried in lard. And I like the contrast that "every family is different", that they bond in different ways over different foods and that's what keeps life interesting.

Finally, if you could start your own TMZ-style myth or rumour to spread about yourself in the press... what would it be?

I think it involves trifle... and custard... and there is jelly involved [Laughs]. I think it involves me reading crime novels in a vat of trifle [Laughs].

Edie Amelia and the Monkey Shoe Mystery is out now through Pan Macmillan