This week World Kid Lit regular contributor and French-to-English translator Catherine Leung talks to French YA author Manon Fargetton about some of her great books that have yet to be published in an English translation.

by Catherine Leung

Catherine Leung: Thanks for joining us on the blog today. I know you are very busy as you have just published the first book in your new YA fantasy series, Le Cycle des Secrets, with Gallimard Jeunesse in France. I think young readers will be really inspired to hear that you started writing at a young age. Could you tell us a little bit about what drew you to writing? Did you always know that you wanted to be an author?

Manon Fargetton: Actually, I started writing when I first learnt how to write, but for a long time it was only songs. For me, writing is very close to music and so I wrote songs for years – it was, and still is, a kind of writing directed towards me and not for others. Then when I was in high school, I had an idea for a story; I didn’t know any book with this kind of story, so if I wanted to read it, I had to write it! I started writing my first novel like that, very naively and not knowing how hard it was to write a book of course. But if you know how hard it is, maybe you wouldn’t do it, so I think it’s good to not know at first!

CL: What advice would you give to any aspiring young writers?

MF: Maybe start with a short project, a short novel that is not a series, just one book that you can write in a few months because the longer it is, the longer it will be to rewrite afterwards, and so you can easily say it’s too much and stop during the process. So I would say try something short, and something that’s very important to you, because if it’s important to you, you will eventually do it.

CL: Did you always read a lot yourself as a child?

MF: Yes, I was a very voracious reader. I was lucky enough to be born in a family who loved books and stories and so I had lots of books when I was a child and I also had a big sister and a big brother, so I could borrow books and sometimes steal them when I didn’t want to give them back! I had ready access to books and I dived into reading! I felt a bit different from the other kids and I didn’t quite understand how friendship worked, how love worked – it was like everyone had the manual and I didn’t, so books were a way to explore relationships and the world around me and to understand who I wanted to be in this world.

CL: Having written books for all age groups – from picture books, to middle grade, to YA, and even books for adults. Is there an age group you most enjoy writing for?

MF: If I had to choose one, and I could only write for one – which is fortunately not the case – I think it would be teens. I love writing for teens; I also love this age group as readers because they are so direct. When they love a book, they adore it and when they don’t like it, they’ll tell you! And I love that. I love how direct teens are. I also know that when you are at this age, a book can change your life and take you in a specific direction which you would not have taken if you hadn’t read this book. For all those reasons, and also because when you write for teenagers, most of the time you have teenage characters, and I love to write them because everything is big, everything is huge and any little thing you go through is a drama. For a writer it’s a gold mine, because emotions are our raw material and so writing teenage characters is fun and also complex.

CL: Are there different challenges that come from writing for different age groups?

MF: I have a tendency to write longer books and so one challenge is to write something short for younger kids. Most of the time, I write books with multiple points of view, and when I write for younger kids I can’t do that. I have two middle grade series – Les Plieurs de Temps and Les Tisseurs de Rêves, with four books in each series and each book being narrated by a different character. So if you put four of them together, you have multiple points of view!

When you write for teens you can do whatever you like. The only thing for me is to leave a light on somewhere – I don’t want to write a book for teens that’s really dark with no way out and where everything is doomed. I published Tout ce que dit Manon est vrai as an adult novel because I put my reader in the shoes of predators and I didn’t want to do that for teens. So those are my personal limits as a writer. I know there are very dark books for teens with almost no hope – I don’t want to do that.

CL: Do you have a book or series that you have most enjoyed writing?

MF: I have co-written two books with another writer, Quand Vient la Vague and En Plein Vol and those books were fun because it was the first time I wrote with someone and it was new and it was really a game between us.

CL: You have published across the genres, with so many different worlds and characters. Where do you get all your ideas from? Are you always carrying a new idea for a new story in your head?

MF: The weird thing with ideas is sometimes you know where an idea comes from because it’s from an article you read, a conversation, or a dream you had, but sometimes an idea just arrives in your head. For some books I really know where the ideas come from – often it’s several ideas coming together to make a book. But sometimes I can’t say where an idea came from.

CL: I know you also enjoy travelling – Do you also write when you are travelling? Do you get ideas for different worlds when you are travelling?

MF: Sometimes travel can give me ideas about settings, but I travel a lot to write, not because I want to inspire myself and have new ideas. I travel to write because I need to have a break from my day-to-day life and be in my novel for a couple of weeks. I do that often when I have to start a project or end a book, or when it’s going very slowly and I really need to push ahead with my writing. I often go to Scotland actually, especially in winter because I know it will rain and so I’ll have writing time. Also the sun sets early so I know at 4pm I’ll get back to where I’m staying and be writing. Scotland in the winter is perfect for that – nobody’s around except for the people living there, there’s a bit of rain but also sunshine too, good for going on walks. I can go into this little routine and not break from my novel – it’s always there during those journeys – when I’m walking I’m thinking about it, when I’m cooking I’m thinking about it, so no interruption! Sometimes a trip can inspire me, but usually that happens long after the travelling. I’ve been to Scotland ten, maybe twelve times, and soon I will start a novel where, for the first time, part of the novel will take place in Scotland. I first visited Scotland when I was three, and for the first time, I’m infusing it into a story! So I’m not usually looking for inspiration when I travel, but sometimes of course ideas and settings come from those journeys. When I travel I usually stay in youth hostels and meet lots of people from everywhere in the world and have lots of conversations about how it is in their country and who they are, so all that can give me ideas sometimes.

CL: What is your writing process? Do you have a routine for your work? A time of day?

MF: I’m not able to maintain a routine for more than a few months. Right now, I’m in between two books so I’m not in a writing routine. But some books I was in a writing routine where I woke up and wrote straight away, stopped for lunch and wrote again afterwards. Usually I do two writing sessions a day, of two to three hours each. At one point, I didn’t write before four or five in the afternoon, so it really changes. I wrote at home, or in coffee shops when I couldn’t concentrate anymore in my home office. The important thing is to put time in! To choose to write and to put time into a book because it’s important to you and you want to finish it!

CL: You used to work in the theatre as well as writing. Now you are a full-time author. Do you miss the world of the theatre? How do the two worlds compare?

MF: When you work in the theatre in France you have a specific status. You must work minimum hours a year to unlock the status, then you receive a salary from the contracts in the theatres, and a payment for days you don’t work. We’re very lucky to have this status for stage artists in France, but for book-writing, we can only rely on ourselves and school visits. So you have no safety net as a writer but you do when you work in theatre. Also, with regards to the two creative worlds – theatre and publishing – for theatre, it’s a group project; for publishing, it’s one person deciding to write that book and one person deciding to publish it.

I loved the theatre and worked there for ten years. My last year working in the theatre, each time I arrived at work, I thought ‘I should be writing right now’! It’s been four years since I quit theatre. At first I thought I would miss it because I had met a lot of people through theatre, but then I started to meet a lot of people through book fairs and school visits. And in book fairs you meet a lot of your fellow writers. So no, there hasn’t been a day where I woke up thinking I should go back to working in the theatre. I think I’m where I am supposed to be and where I want to be.

CL: You mentioned you spend a lot of time with school visits and at book fairs in France – how is this experience for you? Do you find children can relate to you more because you started writing at such a young age?

MF: It might be true ten years ago, when I arrived in their classroom and I was the age of their older sister. Now I’m 36 – I’m not their older sister anymore, I’m more like their mum. I think I still need to be in contact, especially with teens, because I need to know how they talk, what they talk about, what’s important for them right now, what their day-to-day life is like. It’s important for me not to be disconnected from them because there’s a part of being a teenager that is universal and it was the same when I was a teenager and I can remember that, but there’s another part which is very context-dependent – how the world is right now and what society is like and technologies and so on. So yes, I need to stay in touch with them regularly.

CL: There are a couple of aspects which particularly interest me in your novel A quoi rêvent les étoiles – one is the strong sense of place – the theatre plays an important role and the novel follows the structure of a play; also it’s based in St Malo in Brittany – I get the impression that these two elements are very personal to you and important in your own life?

MF: The book is set in North Brittany between the cities of Saint Malo, Cancale and Rennes. I grew up in Saint Malo and so of course I know those cities very well. I didn’t initially plan for the story to take place there. I wrote the first part without saying where it was, but whenever I write about a music school in any book, I can’t help visualising the conservatoire at St Malo! I rewrote the part so it’s obvious that it’s St Malo. Actually, many of the secondary characters and story settings also come from my experience of Saint Malo as a teen. So this story is very close to me. As for theatre, it’s funny because I wrote this book during my last months working in the theatre, and I completed the first draft a week after finishing my last contract in the theatre. The theatre is a huge part of this book because there’s one character who wants to be an actress, and another who is actually her drama teacher. I think it was a way to say goodbye to my other job!

CL: I was also really interested in the concept on which this novel is based, of the ‘six degrees of separation’, particularly as I read this story during Covid. Could you tell us a little bit about this?

MF: This theory was actually invented by a writer and not a scientist. It was in a short novel and this writer imagined that you can be connected to anyone in the world with six degrees of separation – someone who knows someone who knows someone …who knows someone who is the most different and far away from them. What’s funny is that when Facebook arrived we were able to verify the theory because it was very tangible. It wasn’t just imagined; we could see how we’re related to other people. It seems that it doesn’t even take six people, but three to four people, to be in touch with the furthest away person from ourselves.

CL: Could you tell us a little bit about your latest series, Le cycle des secrets?

MF: The story is set in the city state of Aletheia, which is arranged into castes, noble clans, and slaves. Lora is a young 16 year-old girl, born into the sailor clan as a noble. One day her mother and sister are away doing trade with some island people nearby, and when they don’t come back, Lora assumes they will return home the following day. Then a woman arrives to tell her that her mother just died. The woman also shocks her with a revelation about the identity of Lora’s father, who turns out to be a slave from the nearby empire who had an affair with her mother. So technically Lora is a slave too and shouldn’t be part of this noble clan. Lora has no intention to disclose her birth secret to anyone, and she also cannot do it because the woman who visits her is Equinoxe, a magician of secrets. These magicians collect secrets from themselves and other people, which fuel their magic. A secret is most powerful when it’s known to fewer people or if it can cause destruction or change when it becomes well known. Equinoxe can only use the power of a secret if someone affected by it knows about it. That’s why she tells it to Lora. From then on, Lora has one goal – to eliminate all magicians in this city, especially Equinoxe, because she’s outraged that people’s lives and secrets are used for power. Lora also has a sword hanging over her head, so to speak: if Equinoxe reveals the secret to anyone else, Lora will become a slave! But of course, Equinoxe is not there by chance or mistake – she has a purpose and must stay alive. So it will not be an easy relationship between the two!

CL: I love the names of the characters – can you tell me a bit about these?

MF: What I love in fantasy books is that you can really play with names, because there are different countries and in my case, castes. In Altheia city, nobles have Greek-inspired names, and the castes have more Arabic-inspired names, and there is a big Empire around it, and so people from the Empire have another kind of name.

CL: Is this one of your stories where you know where the idea came from?

MF: No, this one I don’t. The original idea was based around the power of secrets – afterwards I had to throw lots of questions at it and see what came out. How does it work? Who uses it? Why? In what kind of world? When you ask yourself enough questions, it becomes a big, complex world!

CL: What are your plans for the future? Presumably we can look forward to the next book in the series of Le Cycle des Secrets in the coming months?

MF: I have these three books in the series, Le Cycle des Secrets. I’m almost done rewriting the second one (it will be out next June), and the third one I have a first draft for which I’m rewriting.

I also have a book for 7-8 year olds that will be out next autumn. And I’m starting to work on a new contemporary adult book for the same publisher as Tout ce que dit Manon est vrai.

CL: Thank you so much for joining us on the blog today, Manon. It’s been so inspiring to talk with you, and good luck with all those projects – it sounds like you have a busy time ahead!