Six of A Story: Lynne North and Gertie Gets it Right (eventually)

Our author today, on Six of A Story, is Lynne North.

About Lynne: I live in the north west of England and work as a data analyst for one of the local Health Authorities. I have been a prolific reader all my life, and for many years have spent the majority of my free time writing. As well as being educated up to degree level, I have completed courses and received diplomas from ‘The Writing School Ltd’ and ‘The Academy of Children’s Writers.’

My aim in life has always been to write, and I‘ve had a sideline of freelance writing for more years than I like to admit to having lived. This has mainly involved published articles in such magazines as ‘Prediction’. I have also completed two children’s novels, published by YouWriteOn in conjunction with Legend Press in December’08. I am currently working on a fantasy novel for adults, and another very different children’s humorous fantasy.

 Gertie Gets it Right (eventually) is a children's humorous fantasy novel aimed at the eight years of age to young teen market. It also has a growing fan base of adult readers!
Gertie Grimthorpe comes from a long line of witches. Unfortunately, she hasn't really got the hang of it. Being blonde haired, blue eyed and free of warts isn't much of an advantage.
Try as she might, Gertie's spells fall flat. She manages to give her bat-headed umbrella the ability to talk, but then wishes she hadn’t when all he does is complain and insult people. Even finding an owl to be her Familiar doesn't help. Then again, he is extremely shortsighted…
Gertie is sent to The Academy to improve her spell casting skills. She soon has a best friend in the form of Bertha Bobbit, a big girl, with a matching appetite.
Add to that a Moat Monster with a flatulence problem, the weirdest array of witch's Familiars possible, and a warlock determined to ruin Gertie's chances of success, and the story unfolds.
Not to mention the demon...

Can you tell us more about Gertie's heritage? How long does her family tree stretch? And - is Gertie an only child?

Gertie comes from a very long line of witches, and she is an only child. For the purposes of the book, we don’t go further back than Gertie’s gran, apart from a few mentions of other relatives. Gertie’s Ma and Gran are important characters in the tale, and Gran in particular is a very colourful one. I thoroughly enjoyed building Gran’s character, and in her own cantankerous way she soon took over and kept me well in my place! I hope that readers of ‘Gertie Gets it Right (eventually)’ will love Gran as much as I do. She has a heart of gold, but tends to keep it well hidden apart from when she is with Gertie. Gertie seems to have the ability to melt all hearts. Gran is protective, easily irritated, a deep thinker, and very funny!

What is the bat-headed umbrella's name? Does she carry him with her everywhere? Or is the umbrella in place of a broom for riding?

The bat-headed umbrella that Gertie gives the ability to talk is called, Bat. Uhm, I know. Gertie is not terribly inventive. Gertie does carry Bat everywhere with her, to a degree. Unfortunately, though Gertie gave Bat the ability to talk, she can’t do much about what he chooses to say. He gets Gertie into a few awkward situations with his comments. Bat says exactly what he thinks, without any thought of the consequences. Gertie is very tempted not to take Bat to the Academy with her, and indeed goes without him at first. When she visits home for her Birthday however, he persuades her he is a reformed character, so Gertie takes pity on him and carries him along. This might not be the most sensible thing she has ever done…

Gertie doesn’t use Bat as a broomstick. The broomstick comes later during one of her many incident ridden lessons at the Academy. Nothing comes easily to poor Gertie. The first problem is to get the broomstick off the ground, instead of digging into it.

I've thought up some silly ways she could have found her shortsighted owl to be her familiar. One of which is, did she just pluck him out of a tree?

You don’t know just how close that is to the truth. I’m impressed! Gertie meets Owl in the woods where she is helping her Ma pick ingredients for her spells. Owl’s introduction is a dull thud as he hits a tree. As you say, he is short-sighted. Gertie immediately takes pity on the poor owl and decides he will be perfect as her familiar, once he gets over his concussion. Gertie’s mum isn’t quite so sure. Neither is Gertie as time goes on. Though she loves Owl dearly, he proves to be more of a hindrance than a help to her spell-casting.

What kind of Familiars are you including in your story? I don't want to ruin the surprise, but I'm curious as to which way you went with this. Are they mythological familiars, or something more like everyday creatures, or inanimate objects made lifelike?

The familiars I use in my book were thoroughly enjoyable to create. They are everyday creatures, in a sense. I do however turn their personalities on their heads. Without giving too much away, we meet a cat with a god complex, a chameleon who has a problem with colour blindness, a depressive rat, a vulture without any patience to wait for his ‘food’ to die, and a praying mantis with the look of a trained assassin. That is to name but a few. Is that enough to be going on with, do you think?

This warlock that doesn't want Gertie to succeed must have some sort of an agenda. Can you enlighten us at all on this?

Fang comes from Gertie’s village. He has always been the pride and joy of Vile Vale with his perfect warlock looks and his evil ways. He is destined to be called to the prestigious Academy on his own merits. Gertie’s way is somewhat through the back door, as I explain in the book. Fang resents Gertie creeping into his limelight, and especially resents her growing popularity with the teachers at the Academy. He ensures his friends make life difficult for poor Gertie, and that everyone knows she was not clever enough to get into the Academy because of her witchy talents. Gertie has to learn the hard way how to make sure Fang doesn’t encourage her to give up. We also see Fang experiencing his own problems as the story progresses…

Not mentioning this demon, which has me curious as all else. But, I'm curious about Gertie's spells. Are they done with a wand or a twitch of the chin? Or are they something that is supposed to just be vocally invoked?

Well now, that is almost a yes, yes and yes! There are no wands involved though, and casting spells is not an easy matter. The process has to be learned in a series of ways. Gertie has to learn ‘The Grimace’, vital in attracting attention, ‘The Point’, in order to focus her spells, and ‘The Voice’ for casting them. The grimace is particularly difficult for a pretty blue-eyed, blonde-haired little girl. Gertie is at a disadvantage before she even gets to try. The voice and the point don’t come much easier, as she has never been forceful and struggles to get the hang of it. She sometimes also has problems seeing the purpose of them. A lot of spells seem to be aimed at punishing others by giving them warts etc, and Gertie can’t quite understand why she would want to harm anyone else. Though perhaps Fang comes close…

The demon has a big part to play in the culmination of ‘Gertie Gets it Right (eventually)’, but I think I’ll leave the reason for that to the readers to find out…

Where You Can Find Lynne North

http://tinyurl.com/4yhzhsp Gertie Book UK

http://tinyurl.com/6l283k2 Gertie Kindle UK

http://tinyurl.com/6cu7l4h Gertie Book USA

http://tinyurl.com/5trs9p6 Gertie Kindle USA

http://www.lynnenorth.co.uk/ Website

http://lynnenorth.co.uk/blog/ Blog

http://www.facebook.com/#!/Lynne.North.Author Facebook page