Fresh from winning the Bath Children’s Novel Award 2025, Melanie Whitmarsh on finding her voice, honing her craft and querying agents.
What made you want to become a children’s author?
I moved to Spain seven years ago and started teaching myself Spanish from children’s books. Isadora Moon. Geronimo Stilton. The wonderful Barbara Cantini’s Mortina. Chris Riddell’s Ottoline books. I decoded the stories with a dictionary, word by word. Just like an early reader, I liked a page with a picture. And colourful text.
It was the first time I’d read children’s books since I was a child. Suddenly, I was back in the world of secret tunnels, trapdoors, treasure, escapes, friendships, villains, phantoms, maps, codes, haunted houses, amulets, magic, adventure. It was so much fun! I picked up Harriet Whitethorn’s Violeta y la Perla de Orient and thought to myself: Penelope Green and the Private Detectives. I had a title and a character . . .
What does the win mean to you?
It means the world. It’s a gold star on my CV. It’s a shot of encouragement and inspiration. It also means it’s time to work: time to sharpen the villain and tighten the ending.
But there’s something else too: in this competition, the shortlisted writers get feedback from child readers – the junior judges. And they pull no punches. Their feedback has been really interesting to read. They each turned a spotlight onto a different weakness in the story, and one in particular has given me a really good bone to chew over. I appreciate their insights very much.
Are you looking for literary agent representation?
Absolutely! But I haven’t started querying yet! That’s my next task. Who’s got some tips for me on query letters?! This week, though, I’m addressing the points raised by the junior judges. If you’re reading this – thank you very much! Each one of you has given me something very important to think about. Your fingerprints will be in the story.
Why did you enter?
I like to make a competition work for me. To use the energy of a deadline to propel me through my edits. Competitions make me work with a harder eye. Looking at it this way, the entry is the win. The work’s done. The manuscript’s better. Getting longlisted is awesome, but tightening the story beforehand was the goal. This shift of power has helped me in the competitions in which my entry went nowhere.
For me, the first competition was the most daunting, and it has taken several years to have the courage to enter one like Bath. But I like a deadline. All that drama and fuss. A date in the calendar. A point of connection with other writers. And a longlisting or a comment from an early-round judge is a lovely thing to celebrate.
Describe the moment you found out . . .
I was dreading the announcement. The clock struck the hour; I set my phone aside. I picked up a knife, sliced some pizza, made small talk at the dinner table. Then my phone began lighting up with notifications from my writing group – emojis of champagne and fireworks – and I realised that the news was something quite different. ‘You did it! You did it!’ cried my son, hopping around the kitchen. ‘I said you’d win! Didn’t I? Didn’t I?’ It was a wonderful moment of shock and joy and surprise and happiness.
How did your nearest and dearest react?
They’re delighted. My family have championed me from the start, and I’m part of a fantastic writing group.
Any plans for the prize money?
I went straight to the bookshop, of course! I bought Helen Garner’s How to End a Story. It’s a collection of her diaries, spanning twenty years. What excites me is how Garner dispenses with dates and context and transitions. Her entries are just gems on a plate. No chain, no setting, no velvet cushion. I’ll scribble something commemorative on the title page.
As for other plans, I’d like to invest in my writing. All the letters have rubbed off the left side of my keyboard, so a new laptop is an option. But is office equipment a dull idea? Perhaps a future research trip is more exciting. Or a fabulous trinket to mark the moment: like a tiny – spoiler alert – ruby. It’s fun to daydream. For now though, I’m not in a hurry.
Where, when, and how do you write?
I have a little room at the back of our flat. When it rains, water leaks through the old wooden windowsill and I have to rescue my books. There are dead spiders in the corners and silverfish on the walls. I wonder where my gothic vibe comes from. My desk is covered with books and illegible scraps of paper where I have noted down apparently important ideas. I work all day – between walking my children to school and picking them up. I like silence. I say the words aloud as I type and adjust them in mid-air.
I am excellent at procrastinating and can easily convince myself that reading a bit of Judith Rossell or Jakob Wegelius is a better use of my time than fixing that plot hole in Chapter 32. One of the Post-it notes on my wall says, Less fuss, more progress. Another says, It’s amazing how much you can get done when you knuckle down.
How many drafts did you write and what was the most difficult part to write?
I’ve been working on The Nighthawks for five years. The story has changed; characters have come and gone. I work in Scrivener, and have multiple versions of many chapters, but not multiple versions of the whole. I’ve rewritten the first act countless times, but the last two are largely in their original form. I edit as I go, so it’s hard to give a definite number.
I wasted at least a year faffing around with the beginning, instead of writing a full, loose discovery draft. To me, some parts now feel over-polished, even brittle. I sought feedback way too soon. I’m looking forward to starting a second project and being more efficient. Being messily efficient. The Nighthawks has been my classroom.
What’s your pitch for The Nighthawks?
Twelve-year-old Penelope Green is running out of time. Her father has vanished from a remote Antarctic whaling hut, leaving behind only a cryptic note about a bird. But if there’s one thing Penelope likes, it’s puzzles, and cracking this one might just save his life – and be her ticket home.
It’s full of mystery, creepy corners, and thrilling escapes. Any tips for crafting suspense?
I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer this! Lee Child says the key to suspense lies in the delay between question and answer. Ask a question. Stretch the interval. Create hunger. Parcel out some clues. Deliver the reveal. Is this cheating?
I like to create unease in the setting to amplify suspense. But I agree with Child: suspense is information management. Christmas Eve is way more exciting than Christmas Day.
When announcing the award, Clare Wallace said: “This is a beautifully voiced, fast-paced adventure full of truly child-friendly set-pieces and characters.” How did you find Penelope’s voice?
To begin at the beginning… I love the opening lines of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood and the image of T. S. Eliot’s yellow, cat-like fog in Prufrock. I had these in mind when I was finding my way into the narrative. I wanted to create a dark, moonlit invitation into the story.
But Penelope is a chipper counterpoint to this. She’s the north star in a world of shadowed corners, frosted hearts, and danger. I think she’s most alive when joshing with Tomas. And for that, I thought myself back to school: back to one friend in particular and the way we would constantly try to out-spar or out-wit or out-cut each other in conversation.
Clare also singled out your “careful balance of action and heart”. Any tips for achieving this?
What a question! Bear with me. One of the most devastating scenes in Casino Royale (2006) is when James Bond dives into the Grand Canal to rescue Vesper Lynd. But by the time he wrests open the elevator door, she has drowned. The scene isn’t heart-breaking because Bond didn’t save the girl: it’s heart-breaking because James couldn’t save the woman he loved. The emotional stakes give the action scene its power.
A lot of the heart in The Nighthawks comes from how Penelope and Tomas treat each other under duress. There’s a moment when their plane is freefalling into the Atlantic Ocean and they each try to comfort the other. It’s just half a sentence. Neither finds the right words. There isn’t time. But we see their intent before the scene explodes. Heart in an action scene has to be earned – set up earlier so it adds to the pressure instead of releasing it.
But I wonder if this question is also about having enough drama in the internal journey to balance the thrills of the external adventure.
If there’s one thing you hope readers take from your book, what would it be?
I’d just like to leave them with a sigh of satisfaction.
Fittingly, your website is called pageturnercliffhanger.com. Any tips for creating page-turning scenes and nailing cliffhangers?
This morning, I opened Caroline Lawrence’s The Case of the Deadly Desperados. All the answers to page-turning scenes are here. The book starts like this: “My name is P.K. Pinkerton and before this day is over I will be dead.” What a great line! The first sentence is a cliffhanger.
By the end of the second chapter, the desperados are closing in. P.K.’s in trouble. “I looked around the house. There were not a lot of places in that one-roomed cabin that I could hide. It seemed to me there was only one.”
Who doesn’t turn the page?
P.K. hides. But at the end of the next chapter, the desperados get wise. “‘Something here is different,’ said Walt. ‘Somebody has taken the milk off the heat. And I’ll bet they are still here.’”
We race on. The next chapter ends with: “Then I heard a voice yell, ‘There he is! Get him, boys!’”
It’s relentless! How’s a kid supposed to get to sleep?
How important is reading recently published children’s novels to you?
Very! I think it’s important to be an expert in your field. To know the landscape. To see which books catch fire with readers. To know what booksellers are recommending. To see who is handling what and how. It’s also fun! What a joy to read the new Jordan Lees or Thomas Taylor or Jonathan Stroud. What fun to sit down with Clarice Bean and call it work.
I’m also inspired by children’s literature abroad. European middle grade has a very different feel. Annet Schaap does wildly inventive things with transitions and point of view in Lampie, and Johan Rundberg’s ongoing Moonwind Mysteries series makes me catch my breath. Scandi noir for kids. The gore! I read it to my children and watched their eyes bulge.
You have studied with the Golden Egg Academy and worked with a mentor. What have been the most helpful aspects of both?
The first chapter of The Nighthawks won the WriteMentor Novel-in-Development Award in 2023, which gave me a year’s mentorship with middle grade author Lindsay Galvin. It was beyond cool. Suddenly, I was in a team of two. Monthly deadlines. In-line feedback. Someone with answers. The deadlines were crucial: they forced me to get the story down. I could take a learning point from March, and apply it to April’s submission. It was like on-the-job training. Now when I’m editing, I ask myself: what would Lindsay say? She’d tell me to keep the banter short, orient the reader at the start of the chapter, dig into the character’s motivations, write the high drama slow.
I discovered Golden Egg during lockdown and did three of their courses. The 12-week course, in particular, was an excellent primer for someone with only a reader’s knowledge of the book industry. It’s also where I found my writing group – and five years later, we’re still together.
What’s the most memorable article you wrote in your time as a copywriter?
I used to live in Jakarta, and wrote a shopping column for a magazine. It was awful. I had no interest in the subject and couldn’t find a voice. What I wanted to do was chew the cud with ordinary people and find their stories. In 2011, an editor called Bruce gave me the chance. I wrote about a man who made paper kites. Pigeon racers. Jamu sellers. Lobstermen. Salt farmers. Snake farmers. A boy who rented out puppies. It was the best time. One day Bruce sent me an email: ‘Your food story this month is one of my favourite pieces from all the years of the magazine – beautiful.’ I had found my voice.
In the last 25 years you’ve lived in Indonesia, Vietnam, Georgia, Albania, and Spain. How does living most of your life in someone else’s homeland show up in your book?
I didn’t think it did until you asked the question! For me, home isn’t where I live: it’s the people I live with. I see this reflected in Penelope, who is dispatched abroad and spends the story coming to terms with who, what, and where home is for her. Penelope’s parents choose work over home, and Antarctica over England. Like sailors, they’re more at home away. Characters like Tomas and Joan, however, are rooted in their communities, and Penelope is drawn to this. At one point, she describes Tomas’s home as a great big hug.
She is the outsider in the dark, looking through the window at the lamplit world within. That could describe me: the outsider wondering how to get home.
Lastly, our Junior Judges are hoping there will be more Nighthawks books to come – any plans for that?
This is really nice to hear. The Nighthawks has been designed so that it can branch out in different directions – if demand was there. But it works as a standalone, too: all threads are tied. I’m also developing other ideas: something about poisons and horticulture, and an alpine thriller.
Follow Melanie on Instagram at: pageturner.cliffhanger
Find out more about Melanie at: www.pageturnercliffhanger.com
Now Open for Submissions
