ISSN0708-594X Volume 35, Number 3 Fall 2013 Dianna Bonder CANSCAIP News Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers La Société canadienne des auteurs, illustrateurs et artistes pour enfants Introducing … Don Aker by Jill MacLean To: [email protected] Subject: Don Aker From: [email protected] And what good talk we had! So good that I hesitate to call it The Interview. You arrived at 8:30 a.m. on a morning in early May, after a two-hour drive from Hi Don, your home on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. Obviously you’re a morning person. You took three In a weak moment you confessed you’re helpless to hours out of your busy schedule: in the last month, resist the little ping that means an email has you spent a week in Toronto doing school and arrived, especially when you’re supposed to be library presentations; you presented at the River writing. Thanks for that confession, because it John “Writing on Fire” festival; you visited several helped me begin your profile. We talked about schools in Nova Scotia for the Writers in the beginnings, which you – unlike me – find relatively Schools program; and, as if that weren’t enough, easy; each of your young adult novels starts with you were working on three books. Three books. I’m such a strong, tension-filled scene. Then there’s astounded you could speak at all, let alone in that dynamite first sentence in The Space Between: coherent, often funny, and always illuminating “I’m going to Mexico to get laid.” sentences. CANSCAIP News If I had to characterize your writing career, the seed of all your books. “Every piece of fiction I’d say versatile, constantly evolving, and grounded I’ve ever written…has grown out of something that in integrity. In the late eighties, you began with has bothered me, kept me awake at night, wouldn’t award-winning short stories for adults leave me alone.” (interestingly, all your short stories have as their Stranger at Bay, also published by Stoddart, lynchpin a child or teenager), and they’re still your came out in 1997; Harper Collins has been your favourite form to write. You took a course from a publisher ever since. The First Stone appeared in Los Angeles screenwriter and wrote three 2003, followed by One on One in 2005, for middle screenplays; film continues to be one of your readers, then three more books for young adults, passions. You’ve written numerous textbooks for The Space Between (2007), The Fifth Rule (2011), and the Nelson Language and Running on Empty (2012). Writing series, stemming All your titles have won or from your thirty-plus years been nominated for awards of teaching high-school across the country. Oh yes, English. While you say, and there were two more rather wryly, that textbooks books for younger readers pay well – unlike, let’s face published by Scholastic in it, most young adult novels 2008. I mentioned the – there’s more to the three manuscripts textbooks than hard cash. currently in draft form – an They’re also a form of historical novel for redress. You freely admit Scholastic’s I Am Canada you started your career in series about the fall of education as the world’s Louisbourg, a thriller called lousiest writing teacher. Delusion Road featuring a “Before you begin, you have psychopath (I can hardly to know what your story’s wait), and the final volume about,” you declaimed to of The First Stone trilogy. the teens in your first classroom. Don’t we all “I owe much of my early have sentences we’d like success to winning awards erased from the record? that raised my profile, and I’m especially grateful for the Forest of Reading But teaching also program because the led you to write for young readers themselves get to adults. A journal kept by choose which book wins. one of your students But despite the increased described her father’s attention they garner, awards can be daunting. physical abuse; you were impelled by law to report If I’m not nominated, does that mean the book this, even though you were betraying a confidence. is no good? Will the next one be strong enough Then, in church, the minister read from Hebrews: to make the cut? Ultimately, I have to put all “Faith is…the conviction of things not seen.” You this aside. What’s most important is whether had your subject, domestic violence. You had your I’ve done justice to my characters and the title, Of Things Not Seen. In 1996 this book won struggles they face.” Atlantic Canada’s Ann Connor Brimer Award and the Canadian Authors’ Association Lilla Stirling These comments segued into your writing Award, and you were launched. In this book was process. You had no idea what you were doing when you started Of Things Not Seen, so you wrote 2 CANSCAIP News careful outlines for each chapter; for your second So when I ask, “Do you know the general novel, you didn’t bother with an outline, letting the arc of the story before you begin?” you say, “Very story take you wherever it wanted. “It was a general. And mostly vague.” In The First Stone, you nightmare – I wasn’t fit to live with. At the end of knew Reef would throw the rock, that Leeza would that summer, my wife said, ‘Don’t ever write a book be harmed, and that they’d get together by the end. this way again.’” The last of these convictions, by the way, turned out to be wrong. When you visited a rehab centre By the time you were ready to start The and talked to people who’d suffered terrible First Stone, you’d figured out a method that has physical damage, you realized there was no way served you well ever since. Three questions serve as Leeza could so easily and quickly have forgiven the backbone of every novel. Who is your main Reef. character? What does he want more than anything else? What frustrates him from achieving that goal? You wrote the ending that felt right, and “None of my characters are real people, received a lot of flack from your although I often use details and traits readers for its ambiguity. from people I know to flesh them out.” “Every piece of Although you’d always Before you even think of writing, you fiction I’ve ever maintained you weren’t a sequel spend a considerable time getting to kind of guy, the death of a close know your protagonist, his backstory, written…has friend drew you to revisit that his friends and parents or lack of them; story. The Fifth Rule almost wrote he always arrives with a name, the grown out of itself, probably because the two single right name. And it’s knowing main characters were already your character that saves you from something that formed, their longings clear in recurrences of that early nightmare – has bothered me, your mind, and it was “a joy and from outlines. returning to characters I’ve loved.” The challenge was to But there’s a lot you don’t know kept me awake insert the necessary backstory when you start. In The Space Between, at night, without slowing the momentum. for instance, Jace thought all he wanted I like the way this book can stand was to get laid; unconsciously, of wouldn’t leave alone, as a companion to The course, he was desperate to make peace First Stone as much as its sequel. with his older brother Stefan’s suicide. me alone.” Along came Connor the athlete in Lisa Doucet, co-manager Chapter One. You had no idea Connor was gay, nor of Woozles, Halifax’s children’s independent did you know why Stefan, also an athlete, killed bookstore, puts it this way: “Don Aker has created himself. You were 100 pages into the book when some of my favourite teen male characters in young you overheard one of your students saying, “I’d adult literature. He has a genius for crafting rather go to prison than be gay.” And there was compelling, believable and highly sympathetic your theme. characters – once you get to know them. They make their share of mistakes as they navigate their The psychopath in your thriller has a thick way through the challenges of their lives and they scar on his face and a thing (“not a good thing”) for challenge readers to look beyond the surface.” blonde women. Suddenly, in the midst of writing, you realized that his mother – his blonde mother – You write “realistic” fiction because “…there gave him that scar, and something unknown, yet are so many real-world problems facing young organic to the story, was yours. It’s these people now that I can’t help writing about them.” discoveries, these surprises, that drive you, that You start a book as near to the ending as possible. give you the energy and momentum to face your The “big event” has already happened (Stefan’s laptop every morning. suicide) or is about to happen (Reef throwing the rock at Leeza’s car); in consequence, your novels 3 CANSCAIP News have a fairly short time span – a week for The Space techniques, and perspectives.” Good editors, you Between. You find it easier to write about say, see the whole picture; figure out what the book unlikeable characters than likeable ones. Ethan, the is really about. A good editor, I’ve always protagonist of Running on Empty, wasn’t born maintained, should be paid as much as an NHL angry and self-centred.