You can buy the book at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hooks-Daughter-Heidi-Schulz/dp/1910002216/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430043800&sr=1-1&keywords=hooks+daughter and i'm very excited for the second book Hooks Revenge: The Pirate Code,coming out in Hardcover in September,which I hope is also released in the UK.
Jocelyn has some very strong personality traits, are you similar to Jocelyn? If not, who did you base her character on?
I think parts of Jocelyn come from me. I certainly don’t like being told what I can and can’t do, and am always happy to prove people wrong in that regard. However, for the most part, Jocelyn is her own character. I spent a lot of time thinking about what Captain Hook’s daughter might be like. With every revision, she became more solid. I quite like who she turned out to be.
If you can decide, who was your favourite character to write about?
Oh, that’s so hard! I loved writing Jocelyn’s headstrong determination, Roger’s heart, the sweet, if somewhat unhinged, devotion of Mr. Smee, and the hunger to prove themselves in Jocelyn’s crew. It’s so hard to pick just one. However, I will say, the narrator has the best lines. If I must pick, it will have to be him, just because his surliness was so much fun to write.
If Hook’s Daughter came to the big screen, who would you like to play Jocelyn?
I’d watch Amy Poehler in anything. Don’t tell me she’s too old to play a tween girl—she has incredible range. In fact, can she just play all the roles?
When did you get the idea to take a well-known story (Peter Pan), and add a new perspective to it with Jocelyn?
When my daughter was young, she was obsessed with Peter Pan. We spent many, many hours “fighting nasty pirates” together in Neverland. I think the start of any good story is a question, and one day I wondered, “What if Captain Hook had had a daughter?” The thought was so interesting to me, I had to write this book to find out the answer.
When my daughter was young, she was obsessed with Peter Pan. We spent many, many hours “fighting nasty pirates” together in Neverland. I think the start of any good story is a question, and one day I wondered, “What if Captain Hook had had a daughter?” The thought was so interesting to me, I had to write this book to find out the answer.
Are there any plans for a second book? I would be keen to find out how Jocelyn gets on in her second adventure!
There is a sequel coming out in the U.S. this fall. I’d love to see it become available in the U.K. as well. Fingers crossed!
Did you make a conscious decision to have the reader not know who the narrator was? (I kept changing my mind throughout!)
That narrator is wily, isn’t he? I know who he is, and if you get the chance to read book two, you’ll likely figure it out—there are some strong clues there. But yes, I intentionally chose to keep his identity under wraps. It felt true to his suspicious nature. He wouldn’t want to spill all his secrets in one go.
I loved the roommates Priscilla Edgeworth and Nanette Arbuckle. Do you think Jocelyn would ever have got on with them?
Thank you! I love them too—such little villians! They are horrible to Jocelyn for such different reasons: Prissy because of jealousy and Nanette because she needs Prissy’s approval. I can relate to both of those feelings.
It’s hard to say if the three girls would ever have become friends, but it’s possible. People change so much on the way to growing up. Sometimes petty jealousies are outgrown and allegiances do change. If I ever write more of Jocelyn’s story I definitely want to bring them all together again—and then we’ll see.
What was your writing plan for Hook’s Daughter? Did you research into the original plot?
I had already read J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan and The Little White Bird multiple times when I decided to write Hook’s Daughter, but I certainly reread and relied heavily on them while working on this book. I was also inspired by Andrew Birkin’s nonfiction title, J.M Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Real Story Behind Peter Pan.
Many other authors and incidents from history helped to round out the story—Jane Austen, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, Robert Luis Stevenson, and of course, Ferdinand Magellan all played a role.
As for a plan? I didn’t really have one. I just wrote and rewrote until I had the best story I could possibly write. It was a lot of hard work, but I’m very proud of it.
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