The Facts of Fiction

David Friswell, Year 8, introducing Leo Hunt to his year group in April at the school’s author event

By Leo Hunt (02-07)

I wrote some of my first short stories as a student at RGS. I have a clear memory of the hardback English exercise books I wrote them in, by hand, and an equally clear memory of my thrill at being asked to read one out at the front of our class; the tale of a fearsome cat-like alien that had crash-landed on Earth and proceeded to menace the foolish people who gathered around the impact crater. Even then, I knew I wanted to become an author.

More than a decade later, I make my living writing fiction for Young Adults, a demographic we describe as covering the ages of 11 and up, since a surprising proportion of readers are fully-fledged adults. I began work on my first published novel, Thirteen Days of Midnight in 2010, my first year of university. I was19 years old, and didn’t feel like I understood adult life well enough to write a novel about it, but I did remember very clearly what I had enjoyed when I was 15 or so (monsters, magic, adventure) and I thought I had a reasonable shot at writing a story my younger self would have enjoyed.

What I ended up with was the story of Luke Manchett, a 16-year old Northumbrian schoolboy who lives in the town of Dunbarrow (a thinly veiled amalgamation of Rothbury and Morpeth, where I spent a lot of time growing up). Luke’s estranged father dies and leaves him a curious inheritance –a collection of ornate rings, a leather-bound book with seemingly blank pages, and eight captive ghosts. The spirits acted as his father’s servants, but they’re not keen on their servitude lasting any longer, and with Hallowe’en, the time of their greatest power fast approaching, Luke has to find some way to get rid of the rebellious ghosts. The story was intended to be fast-paced, with humour mixed into the darkness. Although I knew the first draft was rough, it felt like the start of something.

I was lucky enough to meet my literary agent while still at university, and by 2012 she had agreed to represent me based on a revised draft of Thirteen Days of Midnight. We worked together on the manuscript for several years after this, as I was deeply inexperienced when it came to writing at a professional level, but by the summer of 2014 we felt the book was ready to be considered by publishers. To my delight we secured publishing deals in several countries, and the novel was released by Orchard Books in the United Kingdom in July 2015. Since then Luke’s story has sold more than ten thousand copies worldwide, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2016, and won me Newcomer of the Year at the Journal Culture Awards 2016. Two sequels have been commissioned, and the second instalment of Luke’s adventures, Eight Rivers of Shadow, was released this summer.

To say I was overjoyed with the reception my story has had would be an understatement. However, alongside the positive reviews and being shortlisted for awards, an unexpected benefit of my career as a writer is the ability to talk to young people directly, both in live events and writing workshops. A large part of being a Young Adult writer in the modern era is making appearances at schools, and I have to confess I wasn’t overjoyed when my publisher explained this to me. My chosen career is firmly built around sitting at my laptop for long periods of time, occasionally leaving my house when I run out of tea bags. I never dreamed I would be expected to perform for people, or give readings of my work. At my first-ever school event, I forgot how to speak for what felt like a solid five minutes, and then burned through what was supposed to be 40 minutes of material in 15. In despair I opened the floor to questions, expecting stony silence.

Thirteen Days of Midnight and Eight Rivers of Shadow book covers

Instead the students bombarded me with questions, showing more interest in every aspect of my job than I had thought possible.

In April I was fortunate enough to be asked to run an author event at RGS, the first time I had returned in over nine years. It felt exciting and surreal to return to the same building where I read my short story aloud in English class, even to see that same classroom, but this time to walk through the front door as a professional author. The Year 8 students were a fantastic and engaging audience, and I reflected again how lucky I am to have a job writing fiction for such an inspiring demographic. I was even introduced before my talk by one of the students who was already a fan, something I could never have dared to do at that age. And as an added bonus, I finally discovered what the staff common room looks like on the inside. I couldn’t have enjoyed my author event at RGS more.

Book signing at the RGS