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I was contacted by the family friend of a young girl who had been diagnosed with a brain tumour. Edyn Fawcett, I was told, was a great kid who everyone fell in love with the moment they met her and who loved Max Remy. They asked if I could sign a book for her to help take her mind off the months of treatment and operations and hospital stays she was facing.
The lovely Linsay Knight and Zoe Walton thought we could do better and we cobbled the entire series together from what we had at hand and sent her a signed set. Soon after I had the chance to meet Edyn (all of our visits from then would be in hospitals) and I instantly loved her. I was told I would but she was infectiously happy and always concerned about other people, even when she was in great pain. She had a grace that was lullingly beautiful. I also fell for her younger brother, Shannon and it was during my first visit that I told Shannon I was having trouble coming up with the name for my sea monster. He asked if he could think of one and I more-than-happily gave him the job. The next day he pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and on it was the name, Skelene. It was perfect. From then on the Skelene grew until its presence as a minor character lurking beneath the waves wouldn’t stay underwater much longer. The Skelene ends up headlining, thanks to Shannon and Isabella Charm became infused with Edyn’s generosity of spirit and life. A sword-wielding, justice-fighting, protectress.
Edyn never got to see the final book, but her beautiful mum read her the second-to-final draft. Her mum tells me she loved it.
I love this photo of Edyn….apparently she read the Max Remy books over and over and way past bedtime.
Grimsdon is dedicated to Edyn and Shannon Fawcett.
I was really keen for Grimsdon not to be a grim, disaster novel – there have been a few post-apocalyptic films and stories in the last few years and even though my characters face a world that has changed, there is still a lot to be hopeful about, including the fact that these courageous kids will be our future. There are moments when the kids face kidnappers, where their lives are threatened by collapsing buildings and even where they come face-to-face with sea monsters, but they always come through, if not at times a little soggy and bruised.
Grimsdon is the first book I have written, though, where the kids are not only on their own, but the adults who are around, are out to get them and use them for their own gains. This book then has called on my characters to be at their most creative, inventive and resourceful for their own survival. The kids left behind have no electricity, no computers, no phones, no hot water for baths or cooking, no shops to buy food and warm clothes. They have to reinvent a way of living in a cold and watery world. They find a solid house to live in, scavenge seeds from nearby houses to create a rooftop greenhouse, they use the tidal waters to create energy to power lights and create heat and a flying machine to scavenge from houses further from them as food sources run low.
The world is deliberately similar to London. I wanted an older city that had been established a long time ago and was expected to be around for a long time into the future. I wanted to have internationally recognisable icons, but which would now be half-drowned by water. I wanted the impact of what had happened to be greater and setting it in a London-kind of city with Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament hopefully would do that. My main question for readers is, what if you woke tomorrow and everything you knew had changed? Setting this in such a solid, seemingly permanent world centre, with so much history, felt like it would increase the ramifications of that change.
If you’d like to see the trailer my very clever partner Todd made, have a peek at: http://deborahabela.com./deborahabela.com/Grimsdon_Preview.html
Deborah Abela:
National Literacy Ambassador and author of Max Remy Superspy, Jasper Zammit (Soccer Legend), The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen and Grimsdon
www.deborahabela.com
‘Didn’t you know that water would be the end of me?’ cried the Wicked Witch. ‘Of course not,’ was Dorothy’s reply, ‘How could I?’
From The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (The opening quote from Grimsdon)
On August 2nd my latest book was finally released. It has taken me about two years to write with lots of interruptions in between….I wrote it because of my frustration at governments all around the world who were generally doing very little to tackle climate change. I thought, what if there was a big city like London, but in this case it was called Grimsdon, and it had a river running passed it to the sea. What if scientists had been telling the government that the barriers that stood between the ocean and the city would one day not be enough to hold back rising seas, king tides and water stirred up by increasingly fierce storms. The government refused to listen, and, as a result, one day the barriers weren’t enough to hold back the water and the city of Grimsdon floods.
Grimsdon now lies in ruins. Most people were saved, some were lost and others were left behind. Isabella and her best friend Griffin live with three young kids in an opulent mansion, surviving with the help of Griffin’s brilliant inventions and Isabella’s fighting skills. But will that be enough to combat the threat of powerful sneaker waves, unscrupulous bounty hunters, a ruthless harbour lord and the creeping rumours of a sea monster? And can they trust the mysterious stranger called Xavier Stone who arrives in his flying machine?
Many of my books have humour and lots of kid-driven action but Grimsdon my most action-packed and swashbuckling to date!! It is very much driven by the kids who face living in a flooded world caused by adults ignoring the warnings of climate peril. The kids are forced to find new ways to create power, to defend themselves against thieving and kidnapping adults as well as sneaker waves and sea monsters. There are also flying machines and a feisty female hero who is good with swords.
If you’d like to see the trailer my very clever partner Todd made, have a peek at: http://deborahabela.com./deborahabela.com/Grimsdon_Preview.html
Deborah Abela:
National Literacy Ambassador and author of Max Remy Superspy, Jasper Zammit (Soccer Legend), The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen and Grimsdon
www.deborahabela.com
Living in suburban Sydney as a kid surrounded by paddocks (where there’s now a 6-lane highway) seemed a dull way to be. We lived in a three-bedroom fibro house in a horseshoe street and through summers that burnt our feet and seared our bums as we hurtled down slippery dips. But then there were books and the days where we’d yell goodbyes to Mum and not return until dinner. Those days were the best. The paddocks and local park became battlegrounds for warring kingdoms, jungle rescue missions and deep forests with treasures waiting to be plundered, all beyond the swings and before the tangled outskirts of lantana. I wanted to be brave, strong and afraid of nothing and no-one. In my regular life I was short and not very remarkable, in my head I could be king.
I feel like I’d been working towards my first novel since those times. It became the Max Remy series about a girl spy who takes on the world’s bad guys with her cute spy partner, Linden. Max is actually based on me – feisty, adventurous and very, very clumsy – and my adventures I had when I was younger travelling around the world, getting thrown in jail (twice), harassed by monkeys and caught in a huge sandstorm in the Sahara Desert.
There’s no surprise then that all my main characters are courageous girls with marks to be made and, at times, bad guys to thwart and sea monsters to tame, (with the exception of Jasper Zammit who has a spirited girl friend). Aurelie Bonhoffen, Isabella Charm from Grimsdon and Max Remy are ghost-tackling, sword-wielding, gadget-using heroes.
To see the trailer for The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen , have a look at:
The lovely thing is that the Max Remy series attracts boys as well as girls and has just been shortlisted of the Young Australian Best Book Awards and Kids Own Literature Awards!!! This is such an honour! These are annual awards voted for by kids! Which makes me think there are still a lot of kids out there who dream of being heroes.
This video tells you what happens in the first nine books:
I think it has to be one of the biggest drawcards for kids reading books. No matter how puny they are or how puny their idea of themselves is, they too can be heroes.
Deborah Abela:
National Literacy Ambassador and author of Max Remy Superspy, Jasper Zammit (Soccer Legend), The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen and Grimsdon
www.deborahabela.com
Here we are smack bang at the beginning of the week that celebrates all things kids’ books. All around the country authors and illustrators entertain kids’, parents, librarians and teachers about the wonderful world of kids’ books and explain why they choose to live in their heads most of the time on great adventures and often in their pyjamas. They encourage kids with all their wordly might to read and love every minute of it!
This year the Children’s Book Council, who started Book Week, is celebrating their 65th year. It was a group who came together out of a common eye-raising at the dearth of Australian authored and illustrated books and was hell-bent on changing that. This was a time (and it was a for a long time after), where bookshop and library shelves were full of US and UK titles…where kids from Australia found it hard to read books about their own experience and backyards. Now our libraries are filled with books that fill that gap, written and illustrated by Australian creators that fly on the world stage collecting awards with the best international of them.
As a kid I secretly eyed off those shelves, wanting desperately for a book of mine to be on them too. I wrote from the age of 7 with this in mind. It’s taken a few years since I was 7, but it’s been a lovely, dog’s leg route to being a kids’ author and to have finally seen my books on those shelves.
Right, I’m off to talk books!
Deborah Abela
National Literacy Ambassador and author of Max Remy Superspy, Jasper Zammit (Soccer Legend), The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen and Grimsdon www.deborahabela.com
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