In the world of children's fantasy novels, including those by celebrated New Zealand author James Norcliffe, there are a few recurring themes. Yet alongside a sense of self-discovery, trust (and its flipside, suspicion) comes another: a musical motif that refuses to fade.
Part Grimm's fairy tale, part classical mythology, part outdoor adventure, Norcliffe's latest work, The Enchanted Flute, was inspired, in part, by a piece of classical music, Syrinx, written by Claude Debussy in 1913.
"I'd known that little piece of music for a long time and it is singularly mysterious," the current University of Otago College of Education/Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence acknowledges.
"It probably kicked it off a little bit. I had this image of a girl picking up a flute and I thought it would be curious if it only played that one particular piece. The question of 'why only this piece' then arose and from there the story developed."
That story centres around Becky, a girl living in suburban New Zealand who, having stumbled across the instrument in question, finds herself embroiled in a struggle for power in the magical realm of Arcadia, where she and friend Johnny are variously courted, chased and captured by a range of fantastical characters, including Faunus, otherwise known as the Greek god Pan.
One myth surrounding Pan involves the origin of his flute, made from lengths of hollow reed.
Pursued by the amorous Pan, water nymph Syrinx ran to a river's edge and asked for assistance from the river nymphs. In answer, she was transformed into hollow water reeds. The god, unable to identify which reed Syrinx had become, cut seven pieces (or according to some versions, nine), joined them side by side in gradually decreasing lengths, and formed the musical instrument bearing the name of his beloved.
"The story of Syrinx is often described as a rather lovely explanation of the whole woodwind school of music," Norcliffe says.
"It is rather a smutty little story, really. This Pan is chasing this girl to have his wicked way with her ... but I needed to contextualise it through the eyes of a girl, Becky, who isn't quite so impressed by the story as her music teacher is.
"The story chimes with her because her own father had been a sort of Pan, falling for a girl in his office. So that has a resonance in the background. However, I'm writing for kids so I don't want to explore that too much.
"I don't really write young adult novels. They are pitched at a level below that. I find I'm more comfortable writing for that 10 or 11-year-old area. As characters get older they tend to get into much more heavy and difficult relationships. I'm basically a storyteller and fantasy writer."
Norcliffe, also an established poet whose work has been published worldwide in more than one hundred journals, has won a range of awards, both for his poetry (including the Lilian Ida Smith Award 1990 and the NZ Poetry Society's international competition 1992) and his novels for children.
The Assassin of Gleam won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for the best New Zealand fantasy novel of 2006; The Loblolly Boy won the 2010 junior fiction category of the NZ Post Children's Book Awards; and its follow-up, The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer, has been named a finalist in the 2012 Junior Fiction category of the NZ Post Children's Book Awards.
Norcliffe took up his writing residency in Dunedin in late February, leaving wife Joan [Melvyn] to tend the garden at the couple's home at Church Bay, Lyttelton Harbour. That's when she's not editing books or working - as he does, too - at Lincoln University.
"She's coming down at Easter. She has had to have someone come in and mow the vast, hilly lawn."
A month into his Dunedin posting, Norcliffe is satisfied with progress.
"I'm staying at the Robert Lord Cottage, which is wonderful.
"The trustees decided to do it up because it had been quite cold and noisy because it is in student party central. They spent time putting in double-glazing, insulation, a heatpump and soundproofing. It's really nice.
"It's a six-month residency, which is wonderful because I am what I call a binge writer. When I get an idea, I have to keep the whole thing in my head at once.
"At some point all the answers will come to me; I will see the story, but I have to have a complete story there. It is fleshed out in my mind. I don't write copious sketches.
It is like I'm taking dictation when I'm writing, like watching a movie in my head. Once I get to that point of writing down that first draft I haven't had to do a lot in terms of reshaping the format."
However, Norcliffe did strike early problems with The Enchanted Flute.
"I found I'd got to about 50 or 60 pages having written in the first person, through Becky's eyes. I was a little uncomfortable doing that and also realised that I'd have to stick with her even though I wanted the kids to split up later - that would have been difficult structurally, so I took the whole thing back to the third person."
With The Enchanted Flute completed, Norcliffe is currently tidying up two books, including an addition to the Loblolly series, "telling the story of the very first loblolly boy". (A loblolly boy's job sometimes involved helping naval surgeons dispose of amputated limbs.) "I'm having a great deal of fun with it at the moment."
Norcliffe has also recently completed the draft of "a cunning little book that may never see the light of day".
A fantasy story which crosses into reality, he says he was able to write it quickly because it is entirely imaginary.
In comparison, his third Loblolly book, set in the time of the War of Jenkins Ear (a conflict between Great Britain and Spain that lasted from 1739 to 1748), has required him to fact-check "all the time".
"I've got to make sure I'm not using too many anachronisms. I referred to the ship's surgeon as a 'sawbones' but when I checked that I discovered that term wasn't used until about 1885 or something. So I have to take this a little more ... carefully."
Read it
James Norcliffe's The Enchanted Flute (Longacre/Random House) is out next month.
