Nottingham City of Literature's Big City Reads: meeting four authors involved

John Allison is a cartoonist from Yorkshire who started off studying journalism at university but then pivoted to graphic design. His first comic strip was published online in September 1998, and he has now published more than forty graphic novels. We talk to John about his novel Charlotte Grote: Solver, which was selected to be part of Nottingham City of Literature’s Big City Reads Campaign.

Solver is about a teen mystery solver who has aged out of the business. What inspired this story?

I had been working on something, and had it scripted and roughed out, all ready to draw, when I realised it was over-complicated and underbaked, and I couldn’t use it. So I had to come up with something quickly. Solver used a character from one of my old series and some notes I scribbled down, so felt easy and fun to script in a way that what I’d been working on hadn’t. That’s the first 22 pages of the book.

Although you began by studying journalism, you later became a cartoonist. What first drew you to graphic novels (pun intended)?

Working in comics is like running your own little media empire. You can be in charge of everything if you want to. Every genre is available, sitcoms, drama, horror, or all of them at once. The barrier to entry is extremely low. I taught myself to draw. You can publish yourself if you want to. No one can tell you what to do.

This year’s Big City Reads campaign is focused on identity. How does Solver connect to that theme?

Solver is about who you are when you separate yourself from your ‘thing’. Lottie is like a very fast train that has come off the rails long before it reaches its final station, and will never get there, and she doesn’t know what to do. And she spends the book helping others work through similar situations. None of us are going to be one thing for life, and things can change very quickly. It’s a shock to find that out for the first time.

Solver is drawn in a very unique and recognisable style. How did your artistic style develop?

Slowly! I studied the artists I liked, and slowly they all got absorbed into how I wanted things to look. I can’t really picture things in my head, so I have to work it all out on the page. As I’ve got older, it’s less about style, and more about technique, adding little tricks into your process, getting more sophisticated. Sometimes I miss the simpler way I drew in the past, but you can’t go backwards, only forwards. Change and challenge are what keep a long career interesting.

When do you find is the best time of day for you to write and draw?

I am a morning person so I do most of my work then if I can. If I give myself all day to draw a page, I’m never happy with it. A tight deadline forces me to make do and roll on to the next one. Writing is the same when it comes to scripting, but I am always thinking about stories, even subconsciously, and if I have spare time, often I’ll start scribbling down notes that can be useful weeks or even years later.

badmachinery.com

Searching for the Remarkable in Things, the debut young adult novel by Natalie Lucy, explores themes of grief, friendship, and community. The novel is set in contemporary Britain and 19th century USA and is woven with research from Natalie’s PhD focusing on Caribbean and British literature and folklore.

This year, Big City Reads has the theme ‘identity’, which your book explores very well! What do you think is important about identity?

Identity can change and progress, and it’s important not to become too fixed in who you are. There's lots of different paths you can explore, which I have done in my life. As a teenager and beyond, it can be hard, but I’ve tried to emphasise in my book that it’s important to discover and embrace lots of different things.

Why do you think that this book is relevant to readers in Nottingham and beyond?

My book is very much about young people and trying to discover your path, and I hope it is resonant to young people in Nottingham and throughout Britain. Through my own experiences in Nottingham - doing my masters there and with family in the Midlands - I have seen how multicultural a city it is, and I felt strongly about shining a light on the multicultural aspect of Britain that is present now and in the past.

What was your favourite part of the research process for the book? 

Some of the background was part of my PhD, particularly the folklore aspects. I looked at Anansi, who was a trickster character in the Caribbean, and Br’er Rabbit. I also looked at other plantation stories, as I think oral storytelling was very important to the sense of identity on the plantations. For Mary, I wanted her story to be plausible. I didn’t base her life on a specific person, but I read lots of different biographies of people who were enslaved, to try and weave in aspects of their stories. That’s a difficult balance: how historically accurate it is, combined with the storytelling.

Your exploration of grief is so moving. Could you touch on how your experience informed the novel?

I used a lot of personal experiences in the book. Although I didn’t experience grief as a really young person, I tried to explore how that would feel to a younger person. I think it's important to try to celebrate the person that has died. People deal with grief in different ways, but celebrating a person in whatever way you can keeps a part of that person alive.

Finally, do you have any tips for any young people wanting to get into creative writing?

If it’s your goal to reach a point of publication, it’s a long and hard journey for lots of people. But I think the process of writing can be really satisfying, both to explore your voice and to have a creative outlet. I used to be a solicitor, which was fascinating, but it didn't feel like it tapped into any creativity. For me, that creative side is really important. So I would recommend just writing - whether that’s prose, poetry, or song lyrics - and seeing where it takes you.