Latest / Mythmakers / Mammoth Rider: SJ Poyton's Long Road to Publishing

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Mammoth Rider: SJ Poyton's Long Road to Publishing · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today
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  I am doing one of my favourite things which is talking to another author. So I'm delighted
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  to introduce to the MythMakers audience, SJ Pointon, who has just written a fantastic book,
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  middle grade book called Mammoth Rider and if you're looking at this on YouTube you see it has
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  an absolute splendid mammoth on the front and SJ has a splendid mammoth sitting behind her which
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  looks like the same picture. There it is. So SJ, how did you get to the stage when you had a book
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  published? Because that is a long journey for most people. How did it happen for you? What mine
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  was possibly longer than most people. So I started writing when my children were coming up three and
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  coming up to a year old and when it was published a few weeks ago it was two days shy of my eldest
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  22nd birthday. It was literally 19 years so for me the journey was the same as bringing a child
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  from infant to adult and in that time I've written lots of books like 10, 12 novels,
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  picture books, chapter books. In all sorts always generally all raised children or YA,
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  started with YA fantasy, went on to the middle grade and had some successes so I was
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  longnessed for the times, chicken house, children's writing, competition twice,
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  undiscovered voices, a load of other competition wins or kind of short listings, long listings,
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  and but this is the first time where actually the luck has gone all the way to in print.
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  And so yeah, it's been a long journey but the arts have given, not just giving up, has been key
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  and having lots of supportive people around me like my writer groups, Avington writers,
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  Scooby, Oxford writers, Green Pen, Godneck, people like that has really, really helped because
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  they lift you up when you're down and they celebrate you when things go well and that's so
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  important when you're doing something that's more of a marathon than a sprint.
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  Yeah so amongst that list, you mentioned Scooby for those people who don't know, it's a acronym
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  for the Society of Children book writers illustrators, it has an American section which I think
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  is where it started as well as a UK section and in fact it's one of the places if someone is
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  you know, almost ready to publish and they ask me advice and they're working for the younger
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  end of the market, I always say that's a great place to go, it's very professionally run and
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  they have conferences and it connects you to the industry in a way that your writer support
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  group can't, it's you know so did you, you sound like you had a good experience through the
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  Scooby network? Yes so I volunteered, so as part of the conference committee for a year I
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  ran their professional series but then ended up being called the industry insiders where I did
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  I think six different talks across the year in central London in Piccadilly where we had,
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  we would do a different theme each time and we would have industry professionals as a panel event
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  and I would chair and we would like have talks so yes I was also in the Scooby Oxford critique group
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  for a very long time which is brilliant but was also kind of very humbling because we had like
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  Terry Terry Paula Harrison, Nikki Thornton, Amy Butler Green who is and they're all best sellers
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  either this side of the pond or the other side of the pond and it would just be like me and
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  I love you, it's awesome, you're going, but now you can go to the meeting say look everybody I've
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  got a fabulous hardback, yeah that's lovely so let's turn to Mammoth Rider itself and tell us a
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  little bit about it and why you wrote it I mean it is something where it does what it says on the
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  tin it is about mammoths so tell us what's your, how would you describe this book?
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  Mammoth Rider I would say is a climate change stem action adventure story with a neurogiverse
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  own voice protagonist so essentially it's about three children that race across the tundra to help
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  save a herd of mammoths that have been flown to help in the battle against global warming from
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  hunters so it's just a big adventure story really I just wanted to create a big adventure story
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  which kids would enjoy the reading of that was quite fast fast paced so you know a lot of children
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  find it difficult to read a book or even watch a film now because concentration is getting
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  smaller so I wanted to do something exciting I wanted to do the mammoth cloning in fact it was
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  a book that I didn't actually intend on writing I was researching for a book which was again
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  science fiction but for YA thriller about mammoth no not mammoth the end of the whole human
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  primaries and I started writing reading a book for research called how to clone a mammoth by
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  professor Beth Shapiro which was about de-extinction science but more broadly it was called how to
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  clone a mammoth because apparently if you're in that business nobody says when are we going to see
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  a dinosaur or a dodo they would say one we're going to see a mammoth so but I discovered there was
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  a theoretical use for them which is to help slow the rate of global warming and also there's a
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  place waiting to house and which is called Plier Singh Park inside Biria and I just thought kids
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  would love this and it's a good way to get kids thinking about STEM solutions for climate change
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  and conservation so I just got a bit distracted and started to go down a wormhole of all things
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  mammoths really yeah so just to the pick up on the use how they would come back climate change
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  because that's not an obvious connection no though it's expanding the book what is it that a mammoth
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  can do to the landscape that would help with that well mammoths were that one of those cornerstone
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  kind of species and so they can really help shape not just the ecosystem but the geography
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  of a landscape there aren't very many creatures that can do that humans are one beavers are another
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  but what they can do is just live their best mammoth life so there are areas in the Arctic where
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  there is land that has been permanently frozen for thousands of years within that up frozen soil
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  there is massive amounts of methane gas much more methane gas frozen and locked in that ice than
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  there is currently in our atmosphere however as the world warms our ice caps are melting that is
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  creating more snow in areas of the Arctic where there's not been snow for thousands of years
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  the snow is blanketing that permafrost and it's insulating it which is making the permafrost
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  beneath the snow thaw and as it mounts it releases the methane gas back into the atmosphere which
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  increases the rate of global warming and the way that mammoths can help is by just living their
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  best mammoth life they crutch along the tundra they clear that blanket because the food is underneath
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  that blanket of snow and with that blanket cleared it stops that cycle because the permafrost stays frozen
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  and so that nasty methane gas stays locked in the ice so it's not very obvious until you say it
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  and then you go oh yeah I can see how that would happen you've chosen Greenland for your population
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  which is an interesting choice at the current time but yeah let's move on from that
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  a different way of looking at Greenland and so you mentioned we you had a list of things at the
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  beginning that it felt it sort of fitted into so you had the environmental action adventure
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  and absolutely you know the the star of the piece is the mammoth herd particularly the mammoth
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  baby do you say ni'ala ni'ala ni'ala it's a secret to be told I just was a pretty spelling and
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  then somebody went how do you say it and I was like oh it's a sound of that creature
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  so we're all around there going I think it's ni'ala it was a really interesting editor
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  as we're all around they're trying to work out the correct way to say
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  who's a rare white mammoth is that an albino mammoth or a white mammoth is it no it's a white
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  mammoth it's a particular species of what they think is because they obviously there's a lot of
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  mammoths coming out of the the the permafrost as it thaws and a lot of those still have their
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  theron still have their last meal in their stomach but most importantly we can get DNA from them
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  and we can study that DNA and so our understanding of mammoths is ever evolving every time we get
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  a new piece of DNA to study one of the things we do know about mammoths is that their DNA
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  sequence for hair colour was similar to humans so the iconic image that you have when you
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  summons a mammoth in your mind will be brown but they could come in different colours too
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  so they reckon about three percent of them would have been lighter blonder mammoths
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  and then the rest would have been the brownie russet and a lot of kind of red jeans
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  there is no evidence either way as to whether they went all the way to white but you know it is
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  got a slight fantasy that I'm saying yeah you're right sci-fi so yeah but we do know they did
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  come in different colours yeah um we've never found born in a different colour but I think
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  personally I think if you look at the um if you look at the natural worlds and any animals
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  born in different colours very rarely make it to adulthood or even out of infancy and the amount
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  of animals that we are finding in their eyes is going to be a very small percentage than
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  what actually ever roamed the earth so I think the percentages were finding one of these three
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  percent of the smaller ones of the ones that were lighter colours it is just statistically
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  very very small so theoretically they should have been apt theoretically possible which is
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  what matters in this in this case because I would say that whilst we're talking about fantasy and
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  sci-fi it feels very real it feels as though this could be a real life story happening in 10
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  years time or maybe a bit longer than that 20 years time um time for the herd to grow yeah um so
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  as well as the environmental theme and the action adventure you mentioned it's about um dyslexia
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  dyspraxia those issues which you talk about at the end in a very interesting way do you want to
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  tell us a bit about that and the way the book is actually set out yes so um I um neurodiverse I
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  have dyslexia which most people know what dyslexia is it is when your brain doesn't process the
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  written word in the same way as neurootypical people it means accessing anything which is written
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  down is difficult learning to read is difficult spelling is difficult I always like to describe my
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  spelling in the words of them very famous philosopher we need a poo which is my spelling is wobbly
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  all the right letters in all the wrong order um but I also have dyscalculia which is much less
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  understood very few people um know what dyscalculia is and that's probably because it only
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  affects 2% of the population rather than 10% which is dyslexia and dyscalculia is like dyslexia but
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  with numbers so um I I can't dial a telephone number I don't know my times tables um pin numbers
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  are a disaster like I cannot put four pin numbers in and get the right number um can't tell the time
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  on an analogue clock or of 48 hour digital one after one o'clock in the afternoon because that
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  involves math um and I also have something called dyspracy which is like the other two with coordination
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  and dexterity I don't know my left hand right um I'm very clumsy now when I was growing up
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  it was widely acknowledged that there were issues but because I had a kind of multiple diagnosis
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  which at the time in the 80s I don't think even the educational psychological just really
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  knew what this that a dyscalculia was so I didn't get a diagnosis until I was in university
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  um and it was really really frustrating and I never ever saw anyone like me
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  reflected book in a book at all and it wasn't until I was an adult and I was reviewing children's books
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  and I was a bookseller that I started to see books with dyslexic um protagonists not very many
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  but if you some were brilliantly crafted and envisioned like um Sally Gartner's maggot known the
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  main protagonist in that is is so wonderful that's the first time I was like oh I'm not alone
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  but I've never seen any characters with dyscalculia um at all dyspracy so it was important to me
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  to have a main character that had those but it was just part of who they are they weren't
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  defined or limited by it it was just part of their multifaceted personality um and to show that
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  actually there are benefits and there was certain things that come with being uh neurodiverse
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  which um which are gifts and so and we deserve to be seen uh and reflect about but without
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  just being purely about the um neurodiverseness so to me it was really important to do that
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  thankfully my um publishers thought so too and they were also very lovely because they shared
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  my vision to make it as readable as possible so the actual text is uh been done in with the national
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  dyslexia guidelines uh association guidelines so we have dyslexia friendly font uh we have
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  generous space sing um and also is only justified to the left which means it's really easy for tracking
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  so it's it's just really super readable uh which i've we've had a lot of feedback on that people are
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  really um really finding this readability of benefit and actually i've done a few school
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  events school events now we have to do reading um i'm so grateful it's readable because it makes
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  it so much easier to read and notice you use bold rather than italics as well that was also the
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  national dyslexia association guidelines they think it's easier than the italics um and i agreed
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  italics can be very difficult to read when you're dyslexic um i was a bit worried it might seem a
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  bit shouting but actually it's okay when you read it um so yeah yeah i think you get the big
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  wicking code switch can't we and so you you get used to it pretty quickly and you think oh that's
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  what that does just in the way we get used to speech marks or no speech marks or sometimes you get
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  a book where it's a dash rather than speech mark and you just go okay that's the rules within this
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  particular yeah uh particular book so um as you say it's really important to have a character
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  who has the condition without it being a book about a dyslexic child or whatever it is
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  that isn't the issue the issue is the mammoth when you're looking at fantasy more generally
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  what would you say were the writers who deal with people of diverse conditions best have you
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  you mentioned the Sally Gardner but is there others i was thinking that um what came to my mind as
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  you were talking was of course the um um Percy Jackson books where and he's hardwired for ancient
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  Greece Greek yeah i love that actually that was because it was such a positive way of doing it um
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  you're really starting to scale yeah it was brilliant um and Sally Gardner sorry
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  maggot meme was brilliant because that was because she is also
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  so dyslexic and its own voice she got all of the other little things right like having the same
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  school at the same notch in her school tie that he would have for like three or four years
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  like pulling it up and down because it couldn't tie a tie um and all the little things that
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  people that don't live it don't really realise his part and pass all of it
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  a lot of people say to me but grammar isn't an issue with dyslexia because my grammar is awful
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  or what's my name first started writing and and they're right actually it shouldn't affect
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  grammar but if for instance you are still on biffon chip books or in my day Peter and Jane
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  books when you're 13 um you don't get the grammar lessons because you are pulled out lessons to
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  get to try and teach you to read the the basis of reading so it's not an actual symptom
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  of um of the neurodiversness but it is an indirect one because you miss massive amounts
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  of learning um so yes Sally and Gardner was good oh i'm trying to think about that
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  you know i think it's still a undeserved part of the population and i was trying to think of
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  um adult material as in YA and adult material and i i i my i haven't come i can't think of any
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  it'd be really interesting to find out if that concerned which people when they're thinking
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  about children or thinking about learning to read so it might be something you put in
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  but what about an adult space kept in you know yeah i'd love to see it where it's just an
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  ordinary thing to mention amongst all the other things that happen and other tv show where the um
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  the main character is dyslexic and that's a murder mystery one i think is the Chelsea detective
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  okay yeah yeah yeah characters got dyslexia and then oh obviously i've not read the books but
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  have watched the tv show because i lived while the tv show was on so i don't know how anybody got
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  away without watching it which is Jamie Lannister and Gamer Throne's who is dyslexic and his father
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  really takes it out on him because he doesn't understand why he's not good at academically
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  so he's rather a dark example but it isn't he's a rather dark example but it is the only one
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  i can come to that i can think of which is yeah definitely an adult kind of fantasy
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  with dyslexia specifically yeah yeah so and what's your plans going forward
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  i'm currently writing book two well book two first draft is done my edits for book two very
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  brilliantly timely timing wise came in the day after the launch party so i've got in at one o'clock
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  in the morning that did a course publishing course i've been put on in the morning and then
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  in came the edits of course so i'm doing the edits on book two at the moment which is in the same
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  is the sequel to mammoth rider so there've been one man and and a few surprises that however you
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  does it have a title or is it a working time no no title yeah i like to call it MR2 which
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  sounds like like a sports car from the early 90s or a covid jab yeah well all the best for that
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  so let's have some fun with the idea of i guess it's a bit Jurassic Park isn't it are you you
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  reference Jurassic Park in the um sort of the afterward to your books was that a big influence on
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  you and thinking of this sort of or maybe it's Jurassic Park has influenced the people thinking
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  it would be great to have a park for mammoths which then you found and then thought oh well
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  if i'm going to write about mammoths it could have been that way around i don't know so
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  so it what i was drummitting it i was mostly thinking of um the science and the race to
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  yeah two clone mammoths um and the plyosine park which is in cybe area where they're already
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  taking expand animals animals exist today that used to be in the tundra they are putting
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  them back in the tundra to do the same jobs at mammoths wood and they're having simplicity
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  results with that um but i they would like something bigger because mammoths can obviously
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  clear that blanket much quicker because then but they can also do something which the other
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  animals can't which is they can uproot trees and one of the big issues in the Arctic at the moment
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  is there are more trees coming north of the taiga which is that kind of forest on the um at the
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  that that is then butter between the Arctic and further south and that's because it is warming
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  temperatures are warming so trees are growing further north into the tundra but as they do that
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  their roots um obviously are warm because they're living and that also melts the uh the permafrost
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  so it's probably the only time where you're here take trees out to help with the people usually
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  its plant trees that when it comes to the Arctic you want to take them out and um mammoths could do
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  that um but i was thinking more of that but then when i started to think how do you explain
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  these big concepts to children i was like why am i panicking about it most children have seen
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  Jurassic Park yeah it is the same kind of thing um and then i thought of a a fantastic
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  book from the 70s which i came to in my when i was very young by the 1981 animated
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  adaptation of the book which is Mrs. Ferris being the rats of ninn by Ryan and that obviously is
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  um why not obviously if you're not ready you won't know but for people that have read it or watched
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  the film uh it's about genetically engineered mice where the national institutes of mental health of
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  ninn have taken street rats and they have changed their genetics so their intelligence and their
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  lifespan is more similar to humans the rats have escaped nimmer after them and all the rats want to
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  do is live like an eco an eco-friendly life in the mountains away from humans um so i think the two
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  books Mrs. Ferris being the rats in them and the book version of Jurassic Park i love the films
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  but the book is better um really then started to get me to think how you could explain it to children
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  although children or adults do not get your children to read Jurassic Park it's an adults book
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  it's very scary it's not like the film yeah i often refer to something as Jurassic Park rules
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  um i've been using that terminology about something i'm writing at the moment meet and by what i
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  mean is don't worry none of the children are killed because it's just adults we need killing
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  you get killed but it sounds like that's a rule only seen in the film uh no the children do
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  survive in the books oh okay but they are the only ones that survive in the books that
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  so in the books the people that die are the ones that survive in the film and vice versa it's really
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  weird and books are much better though uh yeah yeah i love the books not maybe as easy to read
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  but you know i read them over a very very long time basically they aren't really good
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  and what i appreciated at the end of your book which i think would be really good for someone a child
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  who's quite you know i don't like all this fiction stuff i like fact because at the end you're talking
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  about the factual basis behind the story and you're also talking about um the questions like should
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  we do this you know you don't answer the question you raise the question and say well what do you
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  think um child reader who's just finished the book so i'm going to um make you break your own sort
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  of careful scientific approach because i'm going to ask you to consider reintroducing to a
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  area of the world of your choice maybe your own backyard a imagine where in all the fantasy world
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  which fantasy creature would you like to reintroduce into the world if you could in your
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  mad scientist white coat well um i really like a dragon um love a dragon i used to collect them
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  when i was a kid so it would always be a dragon for me and i think into the atmosphere
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  and a massive dragon that he doesn't breathe out fire but its breath heals the ozone layer
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  so how do we know about that a a man i don't know a man with a dragon that helps save the planet
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  that's what i would do yeah i i also think dragons would be excellent but i will i think he more
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  on the domestic scale um you know i probably if if you were going up roughly the same time as me
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  there was a very um lovely animation called either the engine setting whales about a steam engine
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  he says that is you know beautifully illustrated but um because it's in whales of course they've got
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  dragons but these dragons are like little ones who um are hatched in the firebox of the steam engine
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  so i'd rather like the idea of just a little one i've written a book with a little dragon in it
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  and i think that's me getting my eye for the engine uh love out of out of me somehow
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  yeah so thank you so much s j for joining us and all the best with mammoth to
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  and your adventure and um it's so lovely to hear that after such a long journey
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  that you've managed to get to the point where you've been published which i think may encourage
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  many people who listen to this who are similarly on their long trek that's a thank you very much
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  oh no thank you very much i haven't eaten it's been wonderful
• 28:44
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