TPL Teens

Tim Wynne-Jones has written thirty-five books including adult novels, picture books, short story anthologies, middle-grade and young adult novels. His collection of short stories Some of the Kinder Planets won'the Governor General’s Award as well as the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. His novel The Maestro won Tim his second Governor General’s Award and was short-listed for the Guardian Prize in the UK. The Boy in the Burning House won'the Edgar Award and the Arthur Ellis Award and was also short-listed for the Guardian Prize. Blink & Caution won an “Arthur” as well as Tim’s second Horn Book Award.

His work has been published in Japanese, Korean, Danish, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan and Hebrew. Tim was named to the long list for the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Award. In 2012, Tim was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. His newest novel, the Emperor of Any Place, came out in the fall of 2015. And his new picture book, Secret Agent Man Goes Shopping for Shoes is out this summer.

Tim is Online

  @tim_wj

Tim’s website is at: www.timwynne-jones.com
 

The Emperor of Any Place

Other Works

 The Maestro

(1995)

 The Univited

(2009)

The Boy In The Burning House

(2000)

A Thief In The House of Memory

(2004)

Some of Tim’s Favourites – and a few hilarious stories

Music

I would say that music is the single biggest influence in my life. When I’m feeling down, I usually find some really, really sad music and get good and depressed. I love that! (Like right now I’ve got my earbuds on – or do I mean in? — and I’m listening to Yo Yo Ma play Ennio Moriccone’s “Gabriel’s Theme” from the movie The Mission. Gasp, sob sob…. Except I’m not sad, really. Just thoughtful…)

I like up music, too, of course. What am I listening to these days? Well, I’m loving the very, very up musical Hamilton. What’s not to love about the American Revolution as hip hop! Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote and starred in the show on Broadway and he’s brilliant. I’ve just started listening to his first musical, In the Heights, which is the happiest music imaginable. Love all those Latin horns!

I’ve sung in bands a whole lot and written lots of songs, mostly rock, but lately more jazzy stuff. (I also wrote some songs for the TV show Fraggle Rock, way back when.) Anyway, as much as I love musicals and classical music and jazz, I try to keep up with pop music, too, and here’s who is on my playlist pretty regularly these days:

• The Franklin Electric (Especially “The Strongest Man Alive”)
• Coldplay’s Ghost Stories (Especially “A Flock of Birds” – so achingly sad)
• Death Cab for Cutie’s Kintsugi (Especially, “No Room in the Frame” with the world’s smallest and perfectly brilliantest guitar solo.)
• Aesgir’s In the Silence (Especially “Sooth This Pain” – more sob, sod stuff)
• Montreal’s very own Half Moon Rise. (I’ve got both their albums but I still love the song “Nerve” best of all. Check out the video where the guy plays keyboard and drums at the same time. What the…?)
• “Carter and Cash” by Tor Miller (I want to use two lines of this song in my new novel!)
• “Rebel Without a Cause” by Fiona Bevan. (She’s just so cute with all those bubbly curls!)
• Shawn Colvin’s Uncovered (Especially her version of Robert Earl Keen’s beautiful song “Not a Drop of Rain.” Shawn is one of my favourite singers, ever. She could sing jingles and I’d buy the album.)

Books

Here’s the truth: I read a lot of murder mysteries and thrillers. A lot. I don’t think I ever got over that adolescent adventure high thing. So Ian Rankin, Lee Child, Peter Robinson, Harlan Coben, Michael Connolly, and Tess Gerritsen have been among the writers I’ve been cozying up to, lately, way into the night. I also can’t resist Bill Bryson. His latest, The Road to Little Dribbling, isn’t his best by a long shot but it’s still a lot of fun. I do read “good” books as well, most recently NW by Zadie Smith. What do I mean by “good”? Well, books that are recognized as literary, I guess. Which doesn’t mean they have to be boring, but it usually means that the writing will be the best part of it, rather than the story. That said, NW is amazing. I literally found myself gasping at turns of phrase Smith uses and the incomparable pictures she weaves. The characters are complex and good and stupid and right sometimes and wrong others and… well, all too real. You can’t help aching for them. It also happens to be set in the part of London where my daughter lives and so I know the area, a bit. But oh, how Smith brings it to humming life.

Here’s a list of favourite young adult titles I’ve read in the last couple of months:

• 100 Hundred Sideways Miles, by Andrew Smith. I was blown away by The Marbury Lens. The new book isn’t half so surreal but he’s such a genius at weird!
• Hot Pteredactyl Boyfriend, by my good friend Alan Cumyn. How does he do this? Make a character who is simultaneously a boy and a raptor. Amazing!
• Calvin, by a very dear, old friend, Martine Leavitt. Both she and Alan are on the faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I’ve been teaching for fourteen years in the Writing for Children and Young Adults program.
• Nest, by another good friend, Ken Oppel. I love all of Ken’s books, especially Airborn, which I’ve read three times. I don’t usually reread books but this one took me back to being a kid, somehow.
• MARTians, by Blythe Woolston. Yep, that’s the way you write it. Because it’s about the aliens who work in shopping malls – the aliens who are us!
• Black Helicopters, also by Woolston – so freaky! A home-grown terrorist.
• This is the Story of You, by Beth Kephart. Such a lovely person and a beautiful writer.
• Symphony for the City of the Dead, by my pal M. T. Anderson, whose novel, Feed, is one of my fave books of the last ten years or longer. Symphony is also stunning. It’s nonfiction, a look at World War II from a whole other perspective.
• The Murdstone Trilogy, by Mal Peet. When I met Mal in England, he was considered a YA writer and Murdstone was his first “adult” book. The term is kind of dumb, really. This is certainly an adult book good enough to be a YA book! It’s riotously funny and dark. My favourite of his books is Tamar, which hugely influenced my last novel, The Emperor of Any Place. Mal died suddenly last year. A huge loss.
• Bomb, by Steve Sheinkin. This guy writes amazing nonfiction. Talk about a thriller and yet every word of it is true!)

Toronto

I lived in TO for many years and still love it. Wait, I have to revise that. When I left the city I couldn’t wait to get away. We moved to the country and I realized I was burnt out. I really needed the country. The peace and quiet. Now, many years later my kids have grown up and they all live in cities: my daughter in London, England, and my two boys in Toronto. We love visiting them there and are thinking of moving back…well, one day. What places do I particularly love in the Big Smoke? Read on:

The Saint Lawrence Market. I just love wandering around — the busier the better. Is there anything more wonderful that a display of six gezillion cheeses? And all that fish. I love to cook and the market is such an inspiration. I love having lunch downstairs at Quik Sushi. They don’t just serve sushi, either: you can get big bowls of noodle soup and dumplings and kimchi. Yum!

The ROM. I’m one of those people who loves “The Crystal”, no matter how impractical it may be. And yeah, I get that it looks a bit like a cancerous growth. But I also really love the old museum and just wandering around lost in the miracle of the world…

And behind ROM is Philosopher’s Walk, which is a secret place no matter how many people know about it. When I first moved to Toronto as an undergraduate, I didn’t know anybody and this was the place I loved to go and just people watch and be lonely in a beautiful place!

Good friends of mine live down in the Distillery and it’s fun to walk around there and just look at expensive stuff I’ll never be able to afford. Of course, I can afford a coffee at Balzac’s, and if it’s warm enough to sit outside to drink it that’s a bonus. 

Harbourfront is fun, too. I love to watch the glassblowers and then walk along the lake ogling the boats.

Spadina! What a treat. Bento boxes. More dumplings. (Okay, full disclosure: I’m a food junkie.) But I also love Gwartzman’s. I can’t believe it’s still there. When I was an art student (around the time dinosaurs still roamed the streets) it was my favourite place in the world. I don’t do much art, anymore, but I still love the place. I recognize some of the dust! My first band had a regular gig at a club called the Paramount. It’s now an LCBO, but whenever I walk around down in that part of town, I can remember those days of striped bell-bottoms and paisley painted cowboy boots and an afro almost as big as my ego!