I sat down with Lyndsey Reeve to discuss her debut novel The Race for Excalibur. Lyndsey is a former student at the University of Pennsylvania now studying at King’s College London, and is the debut author of The Race for Excalibur, a children’s fantasy novel centred on the Round Table as a modern organisation.
What inspired you to write this book? Where did you get the idea?
I always liked the stories of King Arthur growing up and I always had them in the back of my mind. You know if I wrote a children’s book, I always wanted to incorporate them in some way. But I can’t pinpoint when I had the idea exactly, but I always thought it would be cool if the Round Table was a modern organisation in the 21st century. I went to the Tower of London last summer, and I saw all these little kids that were so excited about it. I thought it was neat to kind of think about taking a historical place and making that the setting for the Round Table.
I know that you are currently in the process of writing a Young Adult fantasy book, how is writing a children’s book different than writing for an older audience?
I feel like it is not all that different. For children, obviously, you have parents and librarians that are going to monitor what kids are reading, so you have to be sensitive to that. But for both of them, telling a good story is the most important thing. So that is my priority, and then as I tell that story, there are themes I need to adjust. But I think kids are smart and they can handle complex situations.
Why did you choose Philadelphia where you studied at UPenn as the setting of your book?
I feel like London or Wales might be a natural setting, but I had never lived in either of those spaces at the time, so I thought it would be better to pick somewhere that I was familiar with. I always think it is cool in books when you can visit the places from the story, I think that’s fun for readers. And Philly is such an interesting city, and I knew that at the Art Museum they had a Knight exhibition with arms and armour, so I thought, you know, maybe my protagonist’s dad could work there, and that’s how I sort of built around Philly.
Do you see any of yourself in the main protagonist Henry?
He is very inquisitive and curious about the world around him and as a writer, you have to be that. I also think that he has a big imagination because when he first finds out about the Round Table, I mean he is thrown for a minute but pretty quickly he folds into the world and accepts it and sort of rolls with it. But also it is fun to write someone quite different from myself because it helps me slip into the world more easily, too. I am not projecting my own reactions to things on him, he does his own things.
Why do you think people, and children especially, are so drawn to fantasy stories?
I think part of it is the escapism element. It’s fun to be in an adventurous story, especially for kids who have to go to school and listen to their parents, so to get to read about characters that don’t have to play by the same rules and don’t have as much adult supervision, I think is fun. Most fantasy is life or death stakes, so everything is elevated, and all the emotions and experiences of the characters are magnified which makes it exciting.
How did you manage to write a book while being a full-time student-athlete at the University of Pennsylvania?
I think it was definitely a demanding endeavour. But I think part of it is that I felt so passionate about the book and so excited that it forced me to write it. So anytime I would be watching Netflix or just relaxing, I tried to devote that to the book. But also, I got a lot done over breaks; over Christmas and over the summer I wrote a lot, just trying to get as much done as possible. Another thing is I would think about the book throughout the day, as I was running errands, or listening to music, I used that time to think about the scene I was going to write next. So that way when I did have the time, I knew what was going to happen and didn’t have to sit there and be like ‘okay now what happens next.’
Did you try to somehow overlap your studies and your book? Like, did you take a class that you knew would help you write or were they completely at odds?
I took a King Arthur English class during my time at UPenn, which was useful because the work that I did for that class was also research for the book. I took a lot of things I read in that class and weaved them in different places in the story. The squires are meant to be sort of the next generation of Round Table Knights. I also study International Relations and War Studies and try to have my writing have a historical feel. I try to make it semi-historically accurate as far as the sword fights and the action scenes. And I never want someone to read it and be like ‘this is so insanely far-fetched.’ That’s part of it, using my studies in any way I could to enhance the book.
Still talking about your writing process, do you set yourself a number of words to write or it depends on how it flows?
Last November, I did the NANOWRIMO; it is supposed to be 1,700 words a day which equals a full novel, and most of them are garbage. I didn’t finish the book in a month but it definitely helped. I think like 1,500 words is a good goal if you’re going to have a productive writing day. But most days I write less than that, and how I do it is by revisiting the chapter I wrote before, making some revisions to get myself back in the story, and then I’ll draft something.
You are faced with a blank page, how do you start writing?
I like to think of the concept first, before the characters, before anything else. So for The Race for Excalibur, modern Round Table, hunting for a magic sword. And then I like to have a playlist that helps me during the brainstorming process, either for the general vibe of the book or specific characters sometimes. I try to never be in a situation where I have a totally blank page because you can always edit something but if you don’t have anything to edit, I mean you’re just going to be so critical of yourself. The only thing you have to compare your writing to is already published books and it’s not going to be on that level in the first draft. And if that means spending a week just planning, and just thinking about the book, and listening to music and imagining different scenes, that’s sometimes what I have to do to be able to write it. I am not making stuff up as I sit down.
I know that you are in the process of writing a second book that is not a sequel to The Race for Excalibur, what is it about? Is it similar in any way to your first book?
I think it’s similar in the fact that it’s historical and based on folklore. But a completely different world, and completely different characters. It’s meant to be YA historical fantasy and it’s based on the sailing superstitions during the Golden Age of Piracy. There is this idea of a Jonah which is this person cursed by the ocean, and that was something people believed in at the time, that some sailors were cursed and they needed to throw them overboard. I took that idea and I made the Jonah into someone who has powers over the ocean, so the ocean is mad at them for that. It’s sort of like a pirate adventure where they’re trying to rescue their friends who have this ability. It’s similar in that lots of big action scenes, fast-paced dialogue, and a treasure hunt in a way, but also darker, and scary because the ocean is evil and there are some horror elements.
What is the future of The Race for Excalibur?
It is all revised now, and it’s ready to go. My agent is getting our marketing materials ready to go on submission to publishers, so hopefully, we sell it! You know, it’s up to the publisher on how many books they would want to buy. I mean I envision it as a series, I have plans for a series, I have an outline for a series. I would like to take it further following the same characters as they go on different quests and adventures. But yeah, I am not going to get into writing the next one until I have confirmation that this one is going to do okay.
Do you work in total silence or listen to music, if so, what kind?
I do have playlists, like I said, one for the general tone of the book and another for specific characters. Sometimes when I am writing, lyrics are distracting, so I don’t necessarily listen to it while I’m drafting something for the first time, but definitely while I’m editing a scene. I also like to listen to instrumental music, like soundtracks from movies. So now that I am writing a pirate book I have been listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. And same thing for Excalibur, I kind of listened to folksy music because they’re knights.
How did you find writing in the voice of a 12-year-old boy?
The first thing is the book is written in third person, so while his thoughts are in there I’m still able to do setting descriptions sort of in my own voice. But honestly, I think it made me a better writer because kids have no patience for scenes that move too slowly so had to make sure that the pace was moving.
Talk to me about the publishing process. You had this great idea, you thought it was viable – did you just look up how to query an agent online?
I kind of put the cart before the horse, because I was researching querying before I even finished drafting the book because I was so excited about it. And that’s the thing while you’re writing you feel so impatient for somebody to read it, even if it’s not in good shape yet, you want to share it with someone. I didn’t know anyone who worked in publishing or was an author, so I had to do a lot of the research myself. I feel like the great thing about wanting to have a career in writing is that all of the information is available for you online; everyone has to go through the same process of querying an agent so you’re on even footing. If you put in the work, and you research how to do it properly, and you write a good book, you can get somebody interested. It might take a long time; it didn’t happen as quickly as I wanted it to. I spent a couple of months querying, but yeah, I did research on how to formulate it; I used websites like Publishers Market Place and Query Tracker, and also read a lot of blog posts from authors who had done it in the past. It’s really difficult to take something that you spent months of your life on, years maybe, and distill it into two paragraphs when you know the whole story. It was tricky but I just persevered, did a lot of research before I sent a single query: don’t rush into it, and cast a wide net I guess.
Are you the kind of writer where you knew exactly what direction you were racing in and you had the plot thought out, or do you write and let the muse take you and try to clean up everything that broke while you wrote?
I do like to have an outline before I start to write. I’m not strict about it, if I have an idea for a scene before I’ve written the outline, I’ll write the scene. I usually like to do it in flashcards, so I plan out what’s going to happen but it’s not perfect. I’ll put a brief description of the scene on the flashcard but of course, once I actually start writing, sometimes I realise ‘okay this scene isn’t flowing into the next one’, or ‘the logic of this doesn’t make sense’ so I have to backtrack and figure it out.
Is there a character that you found the most natural to write? That you identified with? Or maybe someone you didn’t identify with at all and that made them so much easier to write?
I think there are pieces of myself in all of the characters, definitely not one that I super relate to but I think the easiest one to write is a character I don’t relate to. I have a secondary character called Arlo who is a squire at the Round Table who’s been there much longer than Henry. He has all the skills and is impatient with Henry, and just kind of cocky. But he was so easy to write because he has such a strong personality, and so everything he said was a little bit of a subtle dig at Henry. Their arguments and interactions were so easy to write because there was always conflict there.
Your book echoes Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson, is this something you read when you were younger and got inspiration from for your book?
Yes definitely! I read it when I was eight or nine and loved it. I think the idea of bringing mythology or folklore in my case, into our world is an amazing concept. I also like how Percy Jackson is set in modern America, they don’t go to Philly but they go to NYC and California. I think part of what makes using folklore and mythology work so well is they’re just infinite stories. My King Arthur professor was telling us that the Round Table works so well as a storytelling structure because it’s one central organisation, but individual knights can go on infinite quests and with Greek heroes, it is the same thing.
What is the one thing you really wanted to say with this book?
The first thing is I never want to sound like I’m trying to moralise my readers. It’s meant to be a good entertaining story and I want kids to draw different things from it and that’s why there are different ways to be a good knight. That’s part of modernising the Round Table, it’s more diverse in terms of abilities and people that are included. For me, I feel like a big theme of the book is having a quiet sort of courage; being brave isn’t necessarily about charging into battle, or feeling super confident, but can be about trusting the people around you, leaning on your friends. That’s something I hope readers can take away.
After working closely with her literary agent, Lyndsey’s revised book is on submission to publishers, and sure to fly off the shelves soon.