It’s safe to say that Skandar has taken pre-teen readers by storm. The five-book fantasy series (now plus a prequel) follows Skandar Smith’s adventures as he becomes a unicorn rider, a dangerous journey involving unexpected challenges, dark forces and surprisingly bloodthirsty unicorns.
If you were to describe the Skandar series in five words, what would they be?
The first one, I’d probably say ‘epic’. I like it when things feel really big. I try to make some jokes, so ‘funny’. ‘Magical’. We’ve got to have ‘magical’ in there. Hopefully ‘emotional’ as well, because there’s some bits which you can relate to and make you feel lots of emotions. And what’s the last one? I feel like I should say ‘long’ because it’s a lot of words. It’s over half a million words. To be honest, I just had a lot to say about bloodthirsty unicorns.
I recently took the online elemental test. I got a unicorn called Midnight Hours Revenge with the Spirit element. Have you taken the test?
I have taken the test. I also wrote the questions on the test, and it’s very hard to get Spirit. So you’ve done well!
When I did the test, I tried to get Spirit, and then I actually got Earth every time. So I think that I am an Earth wielder, which I’m very happy with… they have inner strength.
Which person in Skandar would you most relate to, and why?
Oh, that’s a good question. Me and Skandar are from the same place in the UK, from Kent, and I used to go to Margate with my grandad all the time, so we have quite a lot in common. I also grew up with just my mum, and he grew up with just his dad as well.
I also really like mayonnaise, which is why Skandar has it all the time, and he has Jelly Babies which are partly to do with me as well because I have type one diabetes. So when I have low blood sugar, I have to eat Jelly Babies.
What were your favourite books when you were ten (which is how old I am now), and do you think they affected how you write now?
They definitely did because I think that Skandar is based on lots of my favourite books when I was your age – I think in many ways they’re the books that I enjoyed most in my life, because it was a time when I was wanting to find out more about the world and also who I was as a person.
One of my favourite series when I was ten was His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, I just remember reading Northern Lights and wanting to be Lyra and imagining if I had a daemon all the time.
I also loved some books by Jonathan Stroud, who wrote the Bartimaeus sequence. And The Roman Mysteries, by Caroline Lawrence.
Are you planning on writing any other children’s books?
I would love to write some more books, I have lots of ideas about what other books I could write. I would like to write a bit more about the world of Skandar. There’s lots of ways I could go – I could go back in time, or I could do another one that’s after the end of the Spirit War. So I think I’ve got some decisions to make.
For anyone who wants to give story writing a try – what advice would you give them?
I think I would give them the advice that sometimes it’s quite hard, and the authors find it hard as well. Because someone told me when I was younger, they were an author, and they said they found writing easy all the time. So when I found it hard, I thought, maybe I can’t be an author. But actually, if you find it a bit hard sometimes, that’s good because it means your imagination’s working really, really hard, and you’re trying to get what you’re trying to say down onto the page.
You’ve just got to keep trying and keep practising it because you never know what could happen in the future. And if you really like an idea, then it’s probably a good one because we all like similar things, don’t we? And so if you like it, I reckon there’s going to be someone else who likes it as well.
Skandar’s Secrets with A. F. Steadman, EIBF Courtyard Theatre, 23 Aug, 10.15am
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