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Q&A with author Patrick Carman
Creator of The Land of Elyon trilogy
Patrick Carman, who lives in the Northwest, was in his mid-thirties
before conceiving The Land of Elyon series, and writing his first book,
The Dark Hills Divide. An entrepreneur like his father, Carman can't
remember a time when he wasn't searching for a way to creatively express
himself, an urge that led him to start an advertising agency, then create
board games, and finally develop and sell a dotcom before finding the thing
he was obviously meant to do: write youth fiction.
One could say it was serendipity how he finally got up the courage to
take that path. The father of two young daughters, Carman began trading
places once a week with his wife, so she could have a night out, and he
took over reading to their young daughters.
As the months passed, Carman began spinning a tale for his four- and
six-year-olds about a girl trapped behind the walls the town elders had
built around her village and her exploits in trying to find a way to explore
the forest that lay beyond. In the year that followed, he "journaled" his
thoughts and sketched out impressions about the characters and place, which
became The Land of Elyon series.
Please talk about the creative process you went through for the book.
Carman: It was a journey. Getting to the point where I was ready to write
a book has been about a 20-year journey of being, really honestly, too
afraid to try - which I think is pretty common for people who are trying to
write a large piece of fiction.
When did you start thinking about writing a book?
Carman: I remember all the way back in high school thinking about writing
books. And in fact, I've written a lot of stories. I've got dozens of stories
I've written that no one's ever seen.
Did you ever take writing courses?
Carman: I took English courses in college, but I don't have an English
degree. I have a degree in economics. But, for me, I think it was more
about the creative process. I've always been somebody who wanted to be
involved in creative things and felt like that was my passion. And so I
was really involved in filmmaking and film studies when I was in college,
and put on a big film series at Willamette University for a couple of years
and was just really into that whole scene.
Is that why you got into advertising, because you could be creative?
Carman: For the nine years I spent owning my own agency, I think I tried
to fulfill that desire. I mean, I actually did a lot of the design, but I
never felt like I was really doing more than looking at what everybody else
was doing and just kind of doing the same thing. That's pretty typical of
designers. So I was just spitting out work and running the business, but I
felt frustrated in terms of the creative process. And I think it was the same
thing with the board games I designed in a sense.
And what got me into writing was I finally came to the conclusion that I can't
really draw. I really am just an okay designer. I can't paint or sculpt. No
matter how hard I try there's no way I'm ever going to be very good at those things.
And with writing, it was like from the very beginning - when I started thinking,
okay, I can do this - it just felt like this is perfect. I can totally do
this. It feels very natural. It's a great creative outlet and I just love doing
it. And so I think that for me part of that journey was just coming to a place
of understanding about the creative process. For each person it's different, but
for me writing feels very natural. So, anyway, that's kind of the journey I went
through.
Have you and your wife always had a ritual of reading to your daughters every night?
Carman: Yes, we're pretty into books around my house. We have lots and lots of
books around. We have TV, but really no one ever watches it.
Were you reading the classics to them?
Carman: Pretty much everything. We read everything from the classics to
Captain Underpants. It just depends on their mood.
So you were pretty much up on the children's books out there?
Carman: Right. And I did a lot of research, and I just like those stories
anyway. I just like youth fiction myself. I read it just because I like to
read it. You know, they just tend to be good, fun stories.
So how did The Land of Elyon series evolve?
Carman: It started out where Karen and I decided she'd get out of the house
one night a week and I'd just hang out with the kids. And I came up with this
idea of a girl who's in this town surrounded by walls and she has to figure out
a way to sort of crawl under it and she'd go out and have these little adventures.
And more than anything that was the spark that kind of got it started.
I had been working on all these different stories. It was like, okay, I'm
ready to write a book. And for whatever reason, this just sort of emerged as
I started keeping a journal as I was weaving the story for the girls each week.
I spent about six months with this journal working out the rest of the characters
and the plot. And it just developed from there.
What was the purpose of the journal?
Carman: As I tell students at the schools where I speak, if you have some idea for
a story, start making little pictures about it and writing little notes about the
characters and where they are and all this kind of stuff and pretty soon it'll evolve
into something interesting. And so this journal that I had started out as, well,
what does this place look like? So I was drawing all these crazy little maps and
things. And then who were some of the characters? And what might happen in this
story? And so a good deal of the work was kind of done before I even started. I
spent all this time doing all this research and all this writing on little notes
to myself in this journal. And then, of course, once you start writing, everything
changes.
When did you officially start writing the book?
Carman: I would say the actual writing of the book started at least two and a half
years ago. It took about six months to write the first draft, then it went through
all the editing. I hired a professional editing company to go through it.
How did you find the illustrator and the book designer?
Carman: I actually went through all the books on my bookshelf and picked the one I
like the best, which was The Thousand Balloons. And it had this awesome illustration
by Brad Wienman. His name was in the back of it and I looked him up and called him.
How did you find him?
Carman: I put his name in on Google and it came right up, because he's so well
known. You know, honestly, I didn't think I'd be able to afford him. I was like,
well, this is going to be way out of my league. But he's going to do all three books.
He's under contract to do illustrations all the way through, and we're releasing a new
sketch every month to anyone who signs up for our e-newsletter.
What are some of the moral messages in The Dark Hills Divide?
Carman: Probably a good passage to illustrate what I was really trying to get
at with this book is on page 70 in Chapter 10. This is the first time she's
been outside the wall, and she's walking up into the mountains and turns back
and sees the circumstance she's been living in her whole life.
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"I looked back over my shoulder and saw the wall getting smaller
and smaller in the distance. I was surprised at how insignificant
it looked, cowering at the foot of the mountains. Beyond the walls
the Dark Hills rolled on and on, into ominous and forbidding valleys
unseen from Bridewell itself. I turned to the mountains and began
walking again. The higher I went, the higher they seemed to go, ever
farther and brighter in the sunlight, ever expanding to places I could
never fully discover. I stopped and turned to look upon Bridewell
again, and I saw it as I had never seen it before. It sat squarely
between darkness and light, its roads a three-headed snake, bound at
the center with a hideous head, dividing vast lands. It had a certain
balance, a symmetry - as if each land were pushing against the walls,
trying to bring them down, to dominate, and to rule. As I began walking
again, following the little man, I felt a profound sense of exhilaration
and fear, and I promised myself never to venture out into the Dark Hills
no matter what duty might call into its sinister lands."
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Interestingly enough, the second book begins with her going off into the dark hills.
But this to me describes in a metaphorical sense what the book is trying to get
at: if we're going to build all these walls around ourselves, then not only are the
bad things not going to be able to get at us, but nothing good is going to be able
to come in either.
Also, there's another scene, where she's in the forest with the big grizzly bear
and she finally starts to understand: well, who's the real enemy here? And the real
enemy is the walls themselves. And so, in a very real sense, it's a story about her
beginning to understand as a young person that "I can't just protect myself from
everything. If I try to protect myself from all the bad things that can come into
my life, then nothing good is ever going to come in either."
How can kids relate The Dark Hills Divide to their own lives?
Carman: The walls in the book are very much like the emotional walls that kids build
around themselves to cope with all the peer pressure. They feel they have to dress a
certain way, to act a certain way, to talk to only certain people, and all of that.
That's not what being a kid should have to be about. You should be able to just be
yourself and be with the kids you want to be with and dress the way you want to
dress and, you know, have a good experience with school. But so many kids are so
afraid. And they lose themselves and they lose the opportunity of meeting the kids
they probably should have met - of being the kid they really should have been.
What makes Alexa so interesting to follow around is that she's far from perfect.
She's very normal for her age.
Carman: I wanted the story to also be an examination of a person's choices.
Alexa tends to lie. She does it three or four times, and there's always some
sort of consequence to that. What I wanted to show is that you're responsible
for your own behavior whether you like it or not. It always comes back to bite
you. And there are things she does and she has to say she's sorry, that she has
to come clean about.
How do you relate what the story's about to the kids you talk with at schools?
Carman: When we get to the point in the discussion where, well, what's the
story really about? I try to get them to totally visualize themselves in this
story. So I say, imagine yourself on a cart. One of the old-style Western carts.
And you're sitting with your father, and there's a couple of horses in front and
you're just going down this nice dirt road. And it's a hot day. It's just like an
oven. But if you look to either side, there are these walls - big walls that
go very high up in the air. And you're on this road with these walls next to you
and they just go on and on like that. And pretty soon you come to a big, giant wooden
gate. They open the gate for you. You go inside, and you're in a town where you're
going to spend the summer. The houses are all single story. They're all well below
the wall. And the town is also walled in. And so that's the way it is and you've never
known anything different. There have always been these walls everywhere. And when you
ask adults about it, they say, well, there's this legend about why they were built
and who built them - but you really don't get the answer you're looking for. So you're
just kind of hanging around for the summer with not a lot of kids around. And you
have one desire and really one desire only: this is the summer you're going to figure
out a way to get outside the wall. To find out what's out there.
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