Australian co-authors Kelly Ngai and Mikki Lish create worlds together, even though they don’t live on the same continent. This means that when they video call each other, it’s not unusual for someone to be in pyjamas.
Mikki has worked with many musicians and actors and now lives in America with her husband, dog and cats. Kelly lives in Australia with her two sons and loves waking up to the wild story ideas that Mikki has sent during the night.
The House on Hoarder Hill is their second collaboration and today they’re both on the blog to answer our Ten Terrifying Questions – read on!
Mikki Lish
1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
ML: I was born in Sydney and raised & schooled west of Sydney. Straight out of high school I won a competition to fly to London to attend the concert Live Aid and ended up traveling around Europe and working in London.
KN: I was born, raised and schooled in Sydney, Australia as well! Besides six months in the USA during university, I’ve never lived anywhere else, although I love travel.
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
ML: At twelve I would have been coming out of my Disney phase (to work in their Animation department) and falling in love with music. Eighteen I wanted to work in the music industry – touring. Thirty: I was well on the road as working as a personal assistant to actors, which I absolutely loved!
KN: At twelve I thought I would follow in my aunt and uncle’s footsteps and become a doctor. At eighteen, I wanted to be a writer but was too lazy to figure out how to make that a reality. So I ended up doing law at university and hating it. At thirty, I had wanted to get into publishing, but if I’m perfectly honest that was because I wanted to write, and I wanted to be close to books.
3. What strongly held belief did you have when you were younger that you do not have now?
ML: Hmmm, that’s a tough one. When you are younger, you can feel defeated when you get a ‘no’ and that ‘no’ seems final. But sometimes that ‘no’ can lead to an unbelievable ‘yes’ elsewhere!
KN: I wrote a few short stories in high school that just poured out of me and landed me an award. I then thought all writing would be easy – as easy as reading. Now I know it can be a slog, because the creative ‘flow’ doesn’t always happen. But I love that actually, because knowing you can work hard is much more gratifying than waiting for the Muse.
4. What are some works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – that you can now say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
ML: My influence has come most strongly via images or whilst listening to music. For example: from the movie The Greatest Showman, “A Million Dreams”.
KN: I love books of all sorts, but I’d have to say that fantasy stories of different types finding me at different ages has been the greatest influence on The House on Hoarder Hill.
Firstly, I adored Enid Blyton as a child. A mashup of The Magic Faraway Tree and The Famous Five is not that far from our book!
Secondly, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series. When I finished that for the first time as a teenager, I felt absolutely bereft because Middle Earth had felt so real. Deep in my bones, I knew wanted to create something that felt as real for someone else. I hope we’ve written a world and characters that readers will miss when they finish the last page.
Thirdly, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series for its dark, irreverent, haunting beauty.
Kelly Ngai
5. What made you choose to write a children’s book?
M&K: It started as a name that struck Mikki out of the blue – Hedy Hoarder – and we knew very quickly that the story would be about a child who stumbled upon a house full of mysterious, hoarded objects. Once we decided that the story would partly be about belief in magic, we felt it had to involve characters at that cusp age around ten or eleven. So it made the most sense to tell the story for middle grade readers.
6. Please tell us about your latest book!
The House on Hoarder Hill is about two siblings, Hedy and Spencer, who embark on a treasure hunt through the house of their grandfather, a retired magician. By unlocking the secrets of the house, they hope to discover what happened to their grandmother who went missing, decades earlier. But throughout house are objects that may or may not be what you think, and may or may not be dangerous.
This is our first middle grade novel, and we hope readers will find it a fun combination of (mild) spookiness, laughs, thrills and dark beauty.
It’s currently in development as a TV series with Sam Raimi’s POD 3 and Wiip Studios. We’re involved as writers in that as well, which is a very different and amazing experience.
7. What do you hope kids will take away with them after reading your book
M&K: Most importantly, that you don’t have to have special ‘powers’ to be special. But almost as important: look at the simplest of items in your house – could you imagine a magical history for them?
8. Who do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
KN: It is VERY hard to choose just one writer, but today I’ll choose Philip Pullman. Beyond his way with words, I love the His Dark Materials series for the themes it tackles, for daemons, and for its homage to one of my favourite films, The Magnificent Seven. I also adore his Sally Lockhart series – Sally is so gutsy and loving, who wouldn’t want to be her?
9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?
ML: I would be thrilled and proud if The House on Hoarder Hill series becomes a ‘family classic’!
KN: If our story is enjoyed widely enough for children to start dressing up as characters in Book Week parades, I will die happy.
10. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
M&K: Make the image in your head integral to the plot, not simply cool or beautiful.
Writers are often told to kill their darlings to tighten up their story. It’s old and true advice and you’ll definitely need to do this. But sometimes you can save a darling if you turn it from a nice to-have cool image into something that is crucial to driving the plot forwards. Give it function as well as form and then it has a compelling reason for existing.
Fantasy cast a character to help you write them. Fantasy casting a character can make it so much easier to write their dialogue, imagine their reactions and of course describe them! If they have life in your head, they’re more likely to have life on the page.
And they don’t even have to be actors. Over a couple of books we’ve fantasy cast Greta Thunberg as well as Richard E Grant, Ray Winstone and Dwayne Johnson.
Thank you for playing!
—The House on Hoarder Hill by Kelly Ngai & Mikki Lish (Scholastic Australia) is out now.
The House on Hoarder Hill
Magical, spooky and mysterious: welcome to the House on Hoarder Hill ...
When Hedy and Spencer start receiving messages on dusty picture frames, Christmas at their grandfather's spooky house turns into a mission to solve the mystery of their grandmother's disappearance. What is their magician grandfather not telling them? With the help of a (talking) mounted stag head, an (also talking) bear rug, and other (currently) disembodied spirits, and against the resistance of gargoyles and ravens, Hedy and Spencer set out to find...
Just announced: Alchemised by SenLinYu, author of Manacled 
REVIEW: Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer 
Love the romance in Baldur’s Gate 3? Check out our book recommendations!
Comments
No comments