Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with John Tarrow
Book Title: The Stranger’s Guide to Talliston
Released: 07/11/19
Genre: YA Fantasy
Interview by Heather L. Barksdale
What inspired you to write “The Stranger’s Guide to Talliston”?
Tarrow: When I started getting ready to leave my family home, I realised quite early on that the house I wanted to live in and the one I could afford were very far apart”. So at midday on 6th October 1990 I stepped into a three-bedroomed, semi-detached, ex-council house in Essex and started what grew into a twenty-five-year project: To take a the UK’s most ordinary house and transform it into a wonderland of inspirational locations, each set in a different time and place.
It was quite a brave undertaking, but made more so because I could not even wire a household plug! But one tool I did have was my imagination – and that turned out to be the thing I needed to reimagine my entire world. Not being a builder or an interior designer, I “wrote” the rooms. I created characters and visited actual places to research and create each setting. What started as a just a project to create my perfect place to write in the smallest room of the house grew into a transformation of the entire property!
When it was finished, The Times called it “Britain’s most extraordinary home” and a publisher was interested in telling that journey in a non-fiction book. I told them I wasn’t that kind of writer – so what they got instead was a fantasy adventure about a boy trapped inside the labyrinth of rooms of the house.
How did you come up with the names of your main characters?
Tarrow: For me, names are the most important thing about any character – including the house of Talliston itself.
The origins of the name ‘Talliston’ came years before the house that now bears it. I was writing a fictionalised story about my childhood camping holidays in Cornwall, about discovering an overgrown garden beyond the rhododendrons that bordered our campsite. Here my brother and I played at Captain Scarlet, James Bond and explored the woods made stories, named sites such as Doubleditch and The Lost Log, and glimpsed a mansion beyond a wall we could not go. I wanted a name for that unreachable house, a name that suggested a magical world hiding in plain sight. That name was Talliston.
Names means a lot to me and I agonise over place and character names far more than I do the plotting or story arc of my novels. In the case of Talliston, I wanted a name that evoked age and mystery. A name that implied an entire magical world hiding in plain sight. The eventual title is made up of two root words shared across many cultures.
Tallis from talisman (mid 17th century Arabic ṭilsam, an alteration of Byzantine Greek telesma ‘completion, religious rite’, from telein ‘complete, perform a rite’, from telos ‘ultimate object or aim’. Talisman are object thought to bring fortune, protection or magical abilities to the wearer. Tallis also means ‘wise’ in Persian as well as ‘woodland’, forest’ or ‘from the woods.’ In Welsh, the name is linked to the legendary bard, Taliesin meaning ‘shining brow.’ Ton from Anglo-Saxon English being added to the end of a place name signifying an enclosed settlement in or near a wood.
So Talliston means ‘the hidden or secret place in the wood’ or, read another way, ‘the ultimate ritual at the heart of the forest.’
Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?
Tarrow: It’s a pretty rare thing for readers to be able to actually visit the fantasy world of a novel – especially as the house came first so the descriptions and objects in the book are a perfect match. This is not Harry Potter World where they are reimaginings of J K Rowling’s text designed for the films. And it all started because I wanted a house that was beautiful and functional, but also allowed me to go on adventures without ever leaving home!
It’s great to watch people enter the house after reading the book, and see them notice the various objects that are key to the boy’s journey through the magical doors. But that said, the book is its own thing, too: a tale of adventure with high stakes, intrigue and a central theme of an ordinary boy being transformed into something far greater on a spiralling quest into the unknown.
If "The Stranger’s Guide to Talliston" was adapted into a movie, who would you like to see cast to play your lead characters?
Tarrow: Thirteen-year-old Joe would be tough to cast. Most of the people who I’d have liked to have play him – Jamie Bell, Tom Holland – are all too grown up now. I think it would be great to have a massive casting call just like they did with
Harry Potter to find a new Daniel Radcliffe. Joe is both very ordinary, but quite extraordinary, so would need to have an actor that can start out very unassuming, meek and yet show signs of inner resolve that would manifest on his hero’s journey into the labyrinth.
When you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?
Tarrow: I don’t think I suffer from writer’s block. Writing is something that I have been doing since I was six years old, and I write to relax. It is not a chore for me. I have my perfect place to write – a 1920s detective’s office – that is what you’d get if you took Fox Mulder from The X-Files back to 1929 New York. Once the coffee is poured, the music is on and I sit at my rolltop desk, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world!
Everyone should have that space… most of my writer friends who find it hard to write are the ones that do not have a
designated space to work in. Every writer needs a sanctuary – a creative space that they love to be in – and that can be closed off for uninterrupted writing!
Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?
Tarrow: In my book, to be a writer is everything. To be known as a writer is nothing. If you learn nothing else, learn this – and your heart will be in the right place when you begin. I’d also say that the things that helped me the most when creating a novel are:
1. Know the ending before you begin.
2. Spend more time focussing on your characters than anything else.
3. Write what you know and, more importantly, what you love. You’ll be working on this long and hard so make sure it’s something you totally and utterly believe in.
4. Write in the same way you’d train for a marathon: at least every other day until you’re bushed.
5. Never think you’re not good enough. Whatever you do, whatever your passion or creation, do not copy: have your own unique voice.
What is your favorite genre, book, and/or author?
Tarrow: Without doubt the book that sits top of my all-time favourite list is Shadowland by Peter Straub. Straub is best known for his collaborations with Stephen King, and for horror, but for me Shadowland is his masterpiece. The premise of a magician’s house in the middle of the countryside with locked doors that lead to some amazing and impossible rooms that couldn’t possibly fit inside its walls, and of two friends who are being trained in the arts of real magic… it’s the inspiration for Talliston and a story I would have wanted to write. But then again, if I did, I couldn’t have it on my favourite list!
What are you working on next?
Tarrow: The sequel to the original novel is done, but the pandemic has delayed its release a little. It’s called The Stranger’s Guide To Ringthorne and is both sequel and prequel to The Stranger’s Guide To Talliston. This new story revisits many of the original thirteen locations but in entirely different moments – plus adds two dozen new rooms in its extraordinary expanded universe. Starting in Elizabethan Essex, The Stranger’s Guide To Ringthorne goes deeper into the mysteries, adventures and heroes battling to save the last magical places on Earth.
This new adventure starts on Twelfth Night 1590 as thirteen-year-old Bríane races to save her grandmother from execution for crimes of witchcraft. Only one thing can prove her innocence; a magical grimoire owned by the town’s dark and sinister lord. In the attempt the girl loses the precious book at a crossroad of all worlds called The Forest of Doors. Can she locate the spell book in time to save Old Mother Moore from her terrible fate? Or will she fall victim to the wood’s dark and dangerous puzzle of doors and rooms?
The third book in The Stranger’s Guide series is already started and will cover even more rooms and adventures for another teenage hero.
Learn More About the Author and “The Stranger’s Guide to Talliston”:
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