Scottish orcas and British Lynxes
A conversation between Alex Mullarky and Nicola Penfold
Two childrens’ authors, Alex Mullarky and Nicola Penfold, discuss their nature-focussed novels.
Alex Mullarky: Nicola, Where the World Turns Wild is a beautiful story about escaping from hardship and returning to nature. It’s quite a personal tale about Juniper and Bear’s journey north through the wilderness, while its sequel, When the Wild Calls, tackles the systems of oppression in the city they escaped from. What prompted you to continue Juniper and Etienne’s stories?
Nicola Penfold: I always intended Where the World Turns Wild to have a sequel, I just wasn’t quite sure what it should be. Also of course it’s easier to sell a stand-alone; sequels need to earn their place. But after the first book came out, it’s consistently sold quite well, it’s been used in schools, and I’ve answered lots and lots of questions from students. The main one I get is ‘What happens next?’ So When the Wild Calls is my answer for these readers! It felt right to go back to that world and those characters, and give a bit more resolution. But also to write another adventure story in its own right, which I really hope I did.
Alex: Absolutely – Juniper and Bear leaving their refuge behind feels just as perilous as their journey to seek it out in the first place, not knowing what they’d find. I was so excited when I realised that the siblings were heading for Ennerdale in Where the World Turns Wild, as I grew up in West Cumbria and could see the hills surrounding Ennerdale from my window. I remember thinking about how wild and mysterious it looked when we first moved there. What is it about this valley that feels so special to you, and that makes it such a fitting location for the community the siblings are living in in When the Wild Calls?
Nicola: I love this connection between our work! I know your first story is set in Cumbria too and am very keen to get my hands on it! For me, Cumbria is holidays. My parents used to take me and my sister there every year, and we visited from Carlisle too, where my dad grew up and we had family. It’s still a place I go to regularly and I love how simultaneously familiar and wild it feels. It’s certainly a long way from London where I live now, which is very green actually, but always too bound by buildings to feel truly wild.
I actually picked Ennerdale in particular because it was a part of Cumbria I didn’t know. I’d never been, so could create it in my head just as I wanted it to be for the story. It seemed suitably remote. It was a valley and a lake. Also, it’s the site of a real-world rewilding project, so that felt in the spirit of my book, which is essentially about a rewilded world. Later on, I read that the name Ennerdale is Old Norse and can be translated as Juniper Valley, which felt a bit of story magic, because my character Juniper was well established by then. There felt no better home for her. I’ve since been to Ennerdale a couple of times, and that really helped my vision. I always like to visualise a place I’m writing about. Even if I change it in all kinds of ways, a few features in a landscape can be the anchor to keep it feeling real.
I’m imagining you feel this too in your writing, Alex. The island of Roscoe in The Edge of the Silver Sea certainly feels like a place you know very well – the landscape, the weather patterns, the flora and fauna. There’s a gorgeous moment where Blair sees an orca. How much of this is written from personal experience?
Alex: I started writing this story while I was living overseas, after my first four years living in Scotland. Originally it was set on a real Hebridean island, and I’d never been there either! Eventually I decided to make it more remote, which is when the island became Roscoe.
Over the years of writing I’ve been able to spend some time in the Hebrides, including a week on the tiny island of Colonsay where I felt like I was living on Roscoe. It wasn’t the original inspiration, but the single road around the island and the whalebones beside one of the beaches made their way into the book! Last year I also sailed around the Small Isles with Sail Britain, and these experiences really helped me bring the setting to life.
I volunteer for Shorewatch in Scotland, where we monitor whales and dolphins from the coast. To me there are few things more magical than seeing cetaceans in the wild, and I really wanted Blair to have a moment of wonder like that. I have been lucky enough to see orcas in the past and it was spectacular, although they were in New Zealand – I hope to see the Scottish orcas one day!
Ghost, the lynx who accompanies Juniper and Bear on their journey in Where the World Turns Wild, is such a great companion for them to have when they feel alone in the world. I love the idea of lynx returning to the UK. Why did you choose a lynx to fill this role in the story?
Nicola: I thought about a wolf or a domestic dog gone wild. I picked a lynx however, partly because I couldn’t think of any other stories that featured a lynx so prominently (there are a couple of others now actually, like Lindsay Littleson’s The Rewilders). Also, similar to Ennerdale, it was largely because I didn’t know much about them, but it was a chance to find out, and create the character I wanted in my story. Lynx are shy and elusive, they’re incredibly beautiful, and amazing hunters. Lynx can change a landscape because they change deer behaviour – deer stay on the move when a predator is around (the ecology of fear!) and are less likely to overgraze particular areas. So we get more trees and other vegetation springing up, which is great for rewilding!
Alex, I was really excited that in your book you talk about an overabundance of deer on Roscoe, and one of your main characters, Alasdair, is really big on this. You found other predators to deal with this of course! Do you want to talk about this too? Also your own lovely animal companion, Blair’s owl?!
Alex: Well, when Blair moves into her new home, she meets a bird who lives there too. Over the years this character has taken various forms, but it was only when I watched Wild Isles that I learned about the short-eared owl, a resident of the Hebrides that hunts by day. I knew I’d finally found the right bird for the story! Fortunately there are some that live at the Scottish Owl Centre, so I was able to study them in real life and even meet their youngster, Mac.
I didn’t know that lynx change deer behaviour, but it makes perfect sense! Deer are doing so well in Scotland that they’re causing issues, like browsing young trees and preventing woodland from spreading. In The Edge of the Silver Sea, it becomes a magical issue – the guardian of the deer, Cailleach, wants to protect them above all else. The human characters, on the other hand, are looking at ways to create balance in the island’s ecosystem. There are a range of perspectives from different characters that I hope will introduce readers to all the nuances of this debate.
I will be totally honest with you: I am always nervous about reading stories pitched as dystopian in case they negatively affect my feelings about the future. But I actually found these two books to be so filled with hope, action and solutions that reading them was an overwhelmingly positive experience. How did you strike the balance between portraying a deeply unjust world in the aftermath of a terrible event, and telling a story that was hopeful and inspiring for readers?
Nicola: I totally understand where you’re coming from with dystopian literature. I actually love it, but only when there’s light and hope. For me, the beauty of dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction – I think my book is a bit of both – is the worst has already happened, and you’ve got this world stripped back to basics. Just surviving can be a story in itself (which is maybe helpful for a debut writer, and this was my first book!).
But yes, in the first half of Where the World Turns Wild, and in When the Wild Calls too, the city is the archetype of dystopia! Unsurprisingly, I was influenced by books like The Hunger Games and 1984. I wrote about a trapped unjust society, where heavy surveillance is the norm, and extreme punishment looms large. Right from the beginning however, I couldn’t just write it like that. I think you need some beauty, otherwise it’s not a place readers want to spend time. For me this came from the glasshouses, which are the only places in the city where plants are allowed. And also, the excitement of knowing that outside the city, the world is truly wild again, and right from the start it’s no spoiler to say we know that’s where my characters are heading.
I wanted to show why the natural world is important in our lives. Also, the tenacity of nature – that despite all the terrible things we do to it, it can recover if we let it, and it’s the biggest weapon we have in the face of climate change. And that we need nature far more than it needs us.
Alex, your story is both so real – Blair leaps right off the page, straight out of Carlisle, an eco-activist wearing her rainbow pin badge, feeling huge FOMO as her best friend Libby gets on with life without her – and deeply enchanted. Roscoe is, in your story, a crossroads between the human and fey realms, isn’t it? Can you talk about this genre (how would you define it – magical? It brought to mind Susan Cooper for me) and how it helped you tell the story you wanted to write?
Alex: As an adult I don’t think I’ve written anything that doesn’t have a magical element, and fantasy is the main genre I read. I know that stories about other worlds can really effectively convey messages about the world we live in, but I always end up writing these in-between books. The Sky Beneath the Stone is a portal fantasy (there is an actual portal) but The Edge of the Silver Sea is a bit harder to define. When Blair crosses the Atlantic to the island at the beginning it feels a bit like crossing a threshold into another world, but as far as most of the human residents of Roscoe are concerned, it’s just an ordinary island.
I think, like Susan Cooper’s work, my books are inspired by our landscape and the folklore that inhabits it. If there is a term for this I’d love to know what it is. I know this sounds cheesy, but magic is real, and we are surrounded by it! I guess I try to communicate through my books that there is magic to be found in the more-than-human world, even if it isn’t literally the creatures of folklore.
Nicola, the events of your books take place fifty years after a deadly tick-borne disease was released by a group of renegade eco-activists to cull the human population in an attempt to allow nature to recover. In your Author’s Note to When the Wild Calls, you say that you felt “strange and uneasy” about writing a story with a deadly disease which came out just as the COVID pandemic began. Of course, the writing took place long before COVID emerged. The possibility of a vaccine then becomes a key theme in When the Wild Calls. How did the pandemic affect your approach to the sequel?
Nicola: I think without COVID and lived experience of a pandemic, the sequel might have been quite different. The second book was always going to feature a rebellion, but I suppose I hadn’t thought much about the disease itself, and what the end point for that would be. Wearing masks, social distance, vaccines – living through COVID taught us all these things, and they fell into my story quite naturally. It actually meant the disease could be more in the background too, I think, as I knew my readers would have this familiarity too. Although this second book is more dystopia, the city is a different place in this book as the wild is getting in. It’s more dangerous, but it’s more exciting too.
Alex: The tick disease was released by a group called the ReWilders. When we meet a former member in Where the World Turns Wild, he’s plagued by guilt over his past actions. In When the Wild Calls we see the growing presence of the Polecats, a group who are taking direct action to bring nature back and destabilise the city’s oppressive regime. I felt that the Polecats were a really powerful answer to the mistakes of the ReWilders, and showed activism as an essential force for good. Were there any movements or groups in particular that inspired the Polecats?
Nicola: Yes, I’m in awe of lots of activists, in this country and around the world. Movements like the Friday school strikes, Extinction Rebellion, Stop Rosebank, Just Stop Oil… I have to be honest that I was also watching The Last of Us at the time of writing, and the Polecats were also inspired by the rebel group in that, the Fireflies. The Fireflies have a slogan: “When you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light.” The Polecats use “Hope comes out at night,” and seeing this painted around the city shows Etienne he’s not alone and lifts him out of his despair.
Alex, in The Edge of the Silver Sea, Blair is a keen climate activist. I think she’d get on really well with Juniper. It feels like this is central to Blair’s character – did you deliberately set out to represent youth climate activists? I really did love the background thread about Blair’s mum too, and her reason for opposing Blair’s campaigning - that she doesn’t want it to be Blair’s fight. This is something I empathise with, for my own children and with young people generally – it’s not fair to put the burden of saving a damaged world on them. Adults seriously need to step up! Especially those in positions of power and big business. I’m sensing you share this feeling. Does this fuel your writing too?
Alex: I first started working on this story almost ten years ago, and although I was an environmentally conscious person, I hadn’t participated much in activism. A lot has changed since then! I got heavily involved in Extinction Rebellion while living overseas and have taken part in more local campaigns since returning to Scotland. I remember having a lot of trouble with Blair’s motivation for wanting to return to the mainland, and one day I sat down with pen and paper and thought about what really matters to me, and how that could inform her character.
It was a lightbulb moment when I realised she should be a climate activist – it fit the character perfectly. Fridays for Future wasn’t even on the radar when I started working on this book, but I attended a big school strike in Melbourne and it was one of the most moving, impactful protests I’ve ever been to. You’re absolutely right that those feelings fuel me too. I think that fiction is a powerful way of inspiring action, so I hope that the family members, friends and teachers reading along take something away from our books too.
In When the Wild Calls, the residents of Ennerdale have to consider whether to allow newcomers to join their community. As the world changes and more people escape the cities, their wild world will have to be shared again. I liked that while it was the subject of discussion, there was no clear-cut solution; it’s a great example of the nuance to issues like these. How do you approach topics like this in a way that’s accessible to your readers, who may be encountering them for the first time?
Nicola: This sounds like it’s swerving the question, but I do just think I try and write in character. I don’t have an agenda – these are such complicated issues, and these are no easy answers. I love wild places, and I love the freedom of creating a story where my characters can live somewhere so remote and beautiful. But if we all flock to the wild, there won’t be any wild places left, and I don’t begrudge the Ennerdale community for wishing they could be left in peace. I think in real life, the answer has to involve creating many more green, and blue, spaces, and interweaving them throughout towns and cities, to benefit people, wildlife and climate alike. Surely this is the only future that makes sense: less dystopia, more wild!
Alex: I completely get it! Actually, you’ve expressed what I was trying to get at in talking about the deer – you’re looking at the issue through the lens of different characters.
Reading through the blurbs of your other books, it seems they all present different visions of the future and I’m really looking forward to diving into more of them. What are you working on next?
Nicola: I’m writing a couple of different things right now. I’m trying something a bit more classical, and inspired by some of the timeslip stories I loved as a child, like Tom’s Midnight Garden. But I’m still grappling with the climate and biodiversity crisis too. The natural world is obviously a huge source of inspiration, but whilst things are in such danger, I can’t ignore this! I’m also trying a book for slightly older readers – so young adult – that’s complete climate-fiction, so pretty bleak, but I’m also finding it quite a beautiful thing to write, and it’s a love story too, so I will see how that goes. It’s fuelled by the same things as all my books so far – that we’re running out of time, that we can’t leave it to our children to fix it, that nature is the answer!
Alex, I’d love to know what childhood or in fact adult reading inspires your work? Also, what’s next for you in terms of books?!
Alex: Looking back, as a young reader I think I was heavily influenced by His Dark Materials and The Chronicles of Narnia. I read a bit of everything though, whatever I was given as hand-me-downs or that I could find in the library! These days I usually have some non-fiction going alongside my fantasy books, and I’ve recently loved Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs and How to Speak Whale by Tom Mustill.
Right now I’m working on my first book for adults, a timeslip (snap!) story about an activist and the forest she lives in. It seems like for both of us, as writers concerned about the climate crisis, these themes will always emerge in our work. But I do believe a good story has the power to create change in the world, and there’s no better reason to tell it.
Find out more about Where the World Turns Wild and The Edge of the Silver Sea.
Alex Mullarky is a writer and veterinary nurse who loves creating stories about nature and magic. Raised in Cumbria, they studied English Literature at the University of St Andrews, Scotland and Screenwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. Alex now lives on the edge of Edinburgh and can be found walking with their dog, swimming (sometimes with seals) and playing roller derby. Alex’s pronouns are they/them.
Nicola Penfold was born in Billinge and grew up in Doncaster. She studied English at St John’s College, Cambridge. Nicola’s worked in a reference library and for a health charity, but being a writer was always the job she wanted most. Nicola writes in the coffee shops and green spaces of North London, where she lives, and escapes when she can to wilder corners of the UK for adventures. She is married, with four children and two cats, and is an avid reader of children’s books.
Story Ideas and Resources for Writers
Green Stories has a list of resources for writers on their website. Just as some books/films product place products, we aim to ‘product place’ sustainable attitudes behaviours products and policies. The story doesn’t have to be specifically about climate change or catastrophic shortages, it can be any kind of genre – rom-com, crime drama, legal drama, children’s book, sci-fi etc. as long as it showcases sustainable technologies, practices, products or ideas in the background. Be creative and engaging with your writing.
You might choose to incorporate some of the following topics into your story – be creative this list isn’t extensive – you can include anything as long as it showcases sustainable behaviour.
Below is an example of one of their guides, about The Sharing Economy:
Think of all the stuff in your shed, or your attic, or at the back of your cupboard. Your house is probably full of items that you may only use once or twice a year, but is still taking up lots of space and you want to keep in case you need it. Think of all the resources and expense in every household having a drill for example, or large suitcases, bikes etc. Wouldn’t it be more efficient and save a lot of space and resources if we could easily just borrow stuff we only need now and then? What about an Amazon of borrowing rather than buying? Libraries of Things in every neighbourhood? Could the next John Lewis Christmas ad: be ‘Buy a year’s membership to sports department or fashion department for your friends and relatives?’
Useful Resources
Check out this post from My Green Pod, the brand that has made it impossible to buy or behave in a toxic way, about how “borrowing” is on the rise in 2022.
This blog takes imagines a world with no money at all
The sharing economy is a society where we avoid needless buying new. It looks at peer to peer sharing. A great example has started up in Crystal palace –a library of things where you can borrow rather than buy.
In the UK, Ikea are researching ways to shift their customers from a buying model to a borrowing model so they become members who borrow furniture and then return and upgrade rather than throw out. John Lewis are shifting towards fashion rental. The switch from ownership to swapping, borrowing and or renting is already happening, especially in fashion which is great news as the fashion industry accounts for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions -more than flights & fishing combined. By implementing platforms in which we can swap clothes and goods, we’re eliminating a lot of that carbon footprint, and saving money! Here are some examples:
Depop a platform to buy and sell clothes, also a lot of users are offering ‘Swaps’. Circos rent clothes for children.
No need now to own a car as more people are catching on to peer to peer car-sharing via platforms such as Drivy and Hiya car and making lots of money hiring their car out.
Story Ideas
Focus of story: You could have an entrepreneurial character who tries to establish a new way of accessing goods, launching a new business model whereby membership entitles you to access all kinds of goods on a loan basis, and membership can be earned through volunteering time, donating goods and/or subscription. The plot can focus on the individual struggle and risks the character takes and obstacles overcome to make it catch on. Or you can look at the true story of setting up the library of things and use that as the basis for a ‘based on true events’ kind of story.
Background of story: Imagine a society where there are no shops anymore – instead everything is borrowed from libraries. Instead of going shopping, you go borrowing. Everyone has access to everything. Maybe Christmas for your characters is a time of gifting a year’s membership to John Lewis’s Toy department or Marks & Spencer’s clothing. Your heroine in a romance can borrow a glamorous dress and jewellery for her big date. Your hero in a thriller can borrow a speed boat. A couple in a family drama can borrow best china and pressure cooker for a dinner party they are holding. So you can use this idea as the backdrop for any kind of story, and assume this is now established practice. Maybe it can be a rom-com but couples meet by sharing things.
Or you can set your story in the transitional period as we move from ownership to sharing and build a plot around how that affects your characters. For example this transition is likely to changes how we define ourselves – possessions are no longer status symbols and that might affect how certain characters respond to these changes. Those with very little are likely to love it, but those who like their conspicuous consumption may feel more put out.
Shopping: Shopping in general would be very different, as many items would be borrowed/shared rather than owned. But with everyday items like food, there may be no packaging so everyone has to bring their own container for food/drink they buy. These kinds of details can be in the background of your main plot and subtly plant the idea of a society that walks lightly on the earth without waste.
Explore their other pages on the Well-Being index, Personal Carbon Allowances, Sustainable food and more.
Habitat Press needs volunteers
Habitat Press is an imprint set up to support the Green Stories project and to publish competition winners by Denise Baden. The Press is currently looking for a volunteer with experience in indie publishing to help run the publishing press. Including:
update and maintain WordPress website
use email and social media marketing to promote books
create marketing content
This is a volunteer position for someone who cares deeply about the environment and believes in the ability of fiction to inspire new audiences, with some income available.