Janet Doolaege

I grew up in England, on the south coast, in the days when children could buy “penny chews”. These were popular children’s snacks that were like small squares of fruit-flavoured toffee, wrapped in paper. I am sure they disappeared long ago. As L.P. Hartley said, “the past is a foreign country”.

France has been my home for many years, a number of them spent in Paris, where I worked as a translator. Of course, life in a big city was very different from my schooldays in a small English town. I soon grew used to travelling on the crowded métro every day and buying fruit and vegetables in the street markets. Little cinemas in backstreets showed classic old films, while major exhibitions of painting were held in stately museums such as the Grand Palais. Something interesting was always going on, and it felt glamorous to be living there. However, Paris is a city, with constant noise, traffic and pollution, and I missed the countryside, birds and animals.

When I was growing up in a house with a garden, I had a dog, a liver-and- white Springer spaniel called Bob, but because in Paris I lived in a flat, I didn’t think it would be fair to keep a dog. Now I am married to Jean-Luc, and we have moved to a house some 50 miles south of the city, near the forest of Rambouillet. Over the years we have adopted a dog, several cats and, of course, birds, not to mention the wild birds and the hedgehogs that we feed in the garden.

I don’t think my writing is unique! I suppose I have my own personal style, as every writer does.

Ghosts and unexplained phenomena have always fascinated me. I am convinced that life is actually much richer and stranger than it seems in our humdrum everyday reality. I wanted to write a ghost story, and since I was familiar with the Paris métro, I felt able to describe the atmosphere convincingly in A Paris Haunting. I think people like to read about weird phenomena taking place in very real and recognizable places, and I’m also sure that in this book many readers care about the cat.

When writing a children’s book, I remember all the books that I myself loved as a child. Books from my childhood are like old and treasured friends, and I will never willingly part with them. When I open one from my very early years, in my mind I can hear my mother’s voice reading to me. It’s so important to read to children.

The legend behind The Story of an Ordinary Lion is a medieval one, but I believe I’m the only writer who has told it from the lion’s point of view. The idea came to me on a trip to Venice, where there are plenty of classical paintings of Saint Jerome with his lion, not to mention the winged lion of Saint Mark displayed everywhere. My friend Alain designed the attractive cover for this book. I’m grateful to my books’ illustrators, Alain, Paolo and Jean, and to my friend Marianne, who does the layout of the text.

The story Tobias and the Demon is set in ancient Mesopotamia because that is where it allegedly took place, according to the Apocrypha. I have added details from my own imagination, and again it is told from an animal’s point of view. It wasn’t difficult for me to write from the dog’s perspective, having grown up with a dog. I think Tag is realistic in many ways, even if a dog could not literally tell a story. However, neither could a horse, yet Black Beauty continues to be popular, doesn’t it? I think it’s normal to feel empathy with animals because we ourselves are animals. We are all part of nature. Alain has designed another fine cover for the paperback edition, and drawn pen-and- ink illustrations, too.

I was still living in Paris when Ebony, the blackbird, appeared on the scene. As I relate in Ebony and Spica, I rescued him from a cat when he was very young, and after that he was so tame that I couldn’t safely release him. Spica, the starling, had fallen out of a high nest when my husband found him and brought him home, and he, too became a house-bird, perching on my shoulder without any fear. Ebony lived to the ripe old age of 16, and Spica reached 14. These are great ages for relatively small birds, and they were such personalities that I felt they deserved their own biographies

Let me say straight away that Zoe, in Woman in Blue and White, is not me. Luckily I have been spared most of her experiences, and I don’t think I have any psychic gifts. I have been on holiday to the beautiful Greek islands, however, and I believe in social justice and equality between the sexes. I have tried to weave some important issues (violence against women, homophobia, addiction) into what is mainly a gripping story with a touch of the supernatural.

I have started writing a sequel to Candlepower, but some difficult times at home in the past couple of years have caused me to put it aside for a while. I’m hoping very much to continue and complete it.

The most heartwarming message I ever receive from a fan is, “I couldn’t put it down”. This must be what every writer wants to hear.

On days without inspiration, a good review is definitely something that peps me up and encourages me to go on writing. I think all writers need readers to react to their work and give them feedback, and especially to recommend their books to other people.