In Gabrielle Prendergast’s new high-interest accessible novel for teen readers, sixteen-year-old Poppy and her brother are home alone when a nearby wildfire builds and threatens to burn down their farm. Hear from Gabrielle about what inspired her to write Under Fire and how her writing process differs depending on what audience she’s writing for.
What inspired you to write Under Fire?
My first inspiration was to write about a massive earthquake, which I did in Aftershock. But I like writing sets and trilogies, so it made sense to do a trilogy of disasters. I chose a flood for Flash Flood, and a wildfire was an obvious choice for the third book. Interestingly I lived through a pretty bad wildfire season in Australia in 1994. It was called “historically bad” and made world news, but now it seems fires like that happen every year, somewhere.
What drew you to writing novels with a climate disaster focus?
I’ve always loved survival stories, and I’ve noticed that a lot of reluctant or struggling readers (I like to call them undiscovered readers) are often tempted with books like Hatchet or the I Survived series, so I wanted to offer them something like that.
Your books often have complex and heartwarming sibling relationships at the heart of them. How do you craft those compelling relationships?
I have three sisters, and we’re all quite close in age, so close sibling relationships are very familiar to me—the good and the bad! Usually, the siblings I write about are mirrors of one another in many ways, rather than very similar. With my real sisters, I’m very like one of them, but the other two are more like mirrors, but they are nothing like each other!
What was your favorite part about writing Under Fire? Do you have a favorite scene or character?
I always like writing the final conflict scene, the big push, where the hero or heroine usually has to face up to something very challenging alone. I think the scene like this in Under Fire is particularly effective because Poppy is so exhausted that she has a kind of mystical vision. I love when I’m able to sneak a little magic into reality-based stories.
Throughout Under Fire, the stakes keep getting higher—and at one point, Poppy doesn’t think she can keep going. How do you decide how far to push your characters?
The limit does not exist. You know that expression “God chooses the strongest warriors for the toughest battles”? I keep pushing my characters as long as it makes sense for the story and for them. But I make sure they are strong enough to survive.
What do you hope readers will take away after reading Under Fire?
I hope they will take away that people are often stronger than they think. I also hope they’ll have some insight and empathy into what it’s like for people caught up in natural disasters or violent conflicts.
You also have a picture book, Go, Sloth, Go!, coming out in the spring! How does your writing process differ depending on the age group you’re writing for? How does your process differ when you’re writing a hi-lo novel or a regular novel?
When I write picture books, I always think about what the shared experience of the child and the caregiver will be. How will the book work in a “read-to-me” situation? For my other books, I don’t think as much about how they might work when they’re read out loud, though I usually read them out loud to myself as part of my process. The main thing that differs when I write hi-lo is that they need to be shorter and very contained. So I outline them very carefully and in quite a lot of detail. My other books are much longer, and the writing process is much looser. I make a lot of stuff up as I go along. I had no outline at all for The Anxious Exile of Sara Salt!
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Reading should be fun, but there are so many kinds of things to read that everyone should be able to find something they enjoy. Whether it’s long epic fantasy or hi-lo novellas, or graphic novels, or audio books, or cookbooks, or websites, or videogames or magazines, find something you like to read, and read that.
Gabrielle Prendergast is the award-winning author of numerous books for children and teens. She won the BC Book Prize for her YA sci-fi novel Zero Repeat Forever and the Westchester Award for her YA novel Audacious. After years of working in social welfare and the music and film industries, Gabrielle began writing books when she became a mother so that she could work from home. She is the author of Aftershock and Flash Flood in the Orca Anchor series. Gabrielle lives in East Vancouver.