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| Soldier Dog by Sam Angus is on the 2016 NYSRA Charlotte Book Award middle school ballot. |
Be sure to check out Sam's website.
Visit the Soldier Dog website.
Readers should
read my book because . . . History
lovers should read it for the little known side it reveals of the first world
war and animal lovers should read it for the story of the dog and all adventure
lovers should read it for the adventure of the story and but above all read it
for the human story.
I came to write
SOLDIER DOG . . . Soldier Dog
was my first book and the idea for this came from something I heard on the
radio. When I heard it, I knew instantly that I would write about it, that I
would tell it as a story and that it would be for children. At the time I
wasn’t a writer, I was in the fashion industry and I was running late for a
meeting and just stuck in this endless traffic jam and as I sat there in the
car I heard the story of a World War 1 messenger dog called Airedale Jack and
the story of Jack’s life was what made me take pen to paper and write my first
book. I spent almost two years
researching the book before I came to write it and I do think that this is
perhaps the best plotted of my books. Most readers seem not to have a sense of
how the story will resolve itself.
Some of the
pictures I discovered of World War 1 messenger dogs during my research for
Soldier Dog. The first sketch is the image I used on my inboard for the
character of Soldier.
My favorite
place to read . . . . In bed. I often
start off in the living room on the sofa but end up creeping upstairs to bed.
Ideally with a cup of tea.
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| Oh golly, there are books everywhere in my house. Below are some pics of the shelves in my study. |
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A book that has
touched my heart . . .
But more than
either of these. Ann Holme’s, I am David. Pure intense, brief, poetic, an ideal
story. It think it must have moved me very deeply because it is the one I go
back to again and again.
I collect my
ideas and inspiration for writing . . . The settings or circumstances for my
books tend to come from things I read. For example the book I am about to start
will be based in an English stately home during World War II. The home, like
many others, has been requisitioned by the government for use as a school for
children evacuated from the cities. I just loved the idea of setting a school
in a large old English home with the family still living there and I was
looking at this book. The plot on the other hand, or what happens to the hero
tends to come from something that has happened to someone I know, or that I’ve
heard people talking about.
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| An image of me at my desk in London. |
Readers should know . . .I love writing children’s stories because you can have happy endings. Adult fiction tends not to have happy endings and since I have a naturally happy temperament, I like to see the book end happily and as Oscar Wilde said, "the bad end happily," and I like things to happen in a story. I like the strong narrative children of work for children, of stories with beginnings, middles, and happy ends. Sometimes I think these are the hardest kinds of stories to write because you have to create a resolution , an ending that is happy, but that is also possible or plausible - so the plotting takes me a tot of time, sometimes as long s actually writing the novel and it is the bit I like least. Then, once I’m there, I start and if all goes well, and the main characters are fully developed in my mind, then the writing all goes along happily and then there’s a certain point where the characters tend to sort of stand up and take over and write the rest of the book themselves.
A project that I'm currently working on . . .
My next book come out in June 16. it marks a slight
departure from my previous books about war an animals. It is less
historical, and less concerned with war though may of the characters do
go off to fight. This book is set in the West Indies and is about a
gutsy, feisty young girl who is seedily taken from what she tough of as
her family in England and transported to the West Indies where she finds
she has inherited a sugar plantation. die The twelve year old Idie
Grace finds that she issued by both the white plantation class and the
local coloured population because she is neither one thing nor the other
and worse there is a mystery in her family. Abandoned by her governess,
lonely and alone, Idie Grace fills her beautiful home with monkeys and
parakeets and toucans and turtles. She keeps her horse in the hall and
her toucans on the drinks trolley and the turtles in the tub. She
keeps a mongoose in her pocket and hummingbirds eat from the tips of her
fingers and she grows to love the island until she is torn apart by a
shattering discovery about herself.
This happens to be my local beach and below is a snap of me and one of my boys riding on that beach! So the Americans are going to play a large role in the story which is set in an English country house.
I will tell you no more but do read it, I think it is one of my best.
Also, ideally,
I would live like Idie, with all sorts of creatures coming in and out of the
house. We did have a lamb once that
thought it was a dog and he followed by little white west highland terrier in
and out of the house all day and trotted up and down the corridor. When Kevin
grew big curly horns my husband evicted him and now he hangs about on the lawn
looking rather sadly into the lit windows of the house. Sometimes we bring a
pony into the kitchen, just for the fun of it, but on the whole I have found
that other people are less keen on eating with horses at their table than I am.
I’ve tried to get a pony to climb the stairs and have heard from other people
that it’s entirely possible though none of mine seem wildly keen on the idea
and then I worry I wouldn’t be able to get them back down again as going down
has to be harder than going up for a horse.
Here’s a
picture I came across which has inspired a section of the novel I am about to
work on. Here are the American troops
practicing maneuvers on a beach in North Devon in the preparations for the d
day landings of WW2.
This happens to be my local beach and below is a snap of me and one of my boys riding on that beach! So the Americans are going to play a large role in the story which is set in an English country house.
A great big
thank you to Sam Angus for taking the time to take a "Book Break"
with us! Make sure you visit your school
library to check out Soldier Dog. And we
look forward to the forth coming novel, The House On Hummingbird Island.
