Michelle Lovric is the Australian-born author of several books for adults, but her latest novel, The Undrowned Child, is for younger readers. It's a wonderful tale of Venice, monsters and mermaids with unladylike tongues. Michelle's website is www.michellelovric.com and the new book's website is www.undrownedchild.com. Michelle spends her time between London and Venice.

gr: Why did you decide to write a book for children after so many books for adults?

ML: Quite simply, I was asked. A friend of mine, a brilliant German editor, asked me to try. Within two hours, I’d written three chapters and it had become obvious to me that this was exactly what I had always wanted to do. My adult novels do include an element of magical realism in some cases, but I’d missed out on the freedom to write fantasy about Venice, which had been straining for years to release my imagination into uncharted waters. I loved every minute of writing the book, and its sequel.

gr: You say on your website that you were very good at history at school. Can readers learn anything about history by reading The Undrowned Child?

ML: People can learn that history repeats itself if we forget it. Bajamonte Tiepolo, my villain, was a real historical figure, as was the old lady with the mortar-and-pestle, who brought down his revolution by throwing it on the head of his standard-bearer. If Tiepolo had succeeded, the whole history of Venice would have been different. Democracy would have died. And, interestingly, the 700th anniversary of that conspiracy is coming up in June. Along with some Venetian writers, I have been trying to awaken interest in marking the occasion. Even Venice doesn’t have that many 700th anniversaries! When Tiepolo failed, his palazzo was razed to the ground and a Column of Infamy was erected to mark his crimes ‘for ever’. But it now languishes unseen in a dungeon of the Doges’ Palace. I think it should be brought back on display … to help Venice remember what she must not forget.

Venice is living history, of course. Nearly all the places in The Undrowned Child are real and mostly still visitable. That’s why the publishers kindly included a map with a key at the front of the book. You can walk the walk. I took my editor on that very walk earlier this year, as if the book was a monopoly board.

At the end of the book, there’s a section on what is true and what is made up. I don’t mind slightly changing history to suit an exciting plot. However, I do think it is the historical writer’s responsibility to point out any discrepancies and wilful acts of artistic licence. But only after the read has enjoyed the story and finished suspending disbelief. Not before.

gr: Why did you set this story in Venice? Why did you set it in 1899? 

ML: In general I find Venice offers all the springboards for fantasy that any writer could ever want. Headless butcher who eats children? – yes, of course. Mysterious statue known to express political views? – certainly. A constant brooding danger? – how about a city that could be drowned at any moment? Of course, I have added ‘baddened magic’ to the real historical setting, to intensify the frightening encounter between good and evil in The Undrowned Child.

I find it difficult to conceive sustained mystery, suspense and danger in the era of Google and mobile phones. Even the invention of the telephone made many delicious plot developments seem forced. There are other picturesque advantages to setting a story a hundred or more years ago. No cars. No airports. No McDonalds. No supermarkets with their ghastly corpse-light. There is no prescriptive packaging around the food. What your characters eat is visibly good, bad or maggoty.

Contemporary novelists often feel they have to write conversations to reflect life. This means nearly everyone talks in grunts and monosyllables. If you set a book in the past, your characters can speak in sentences. They know the subtle joy of the semi-colon. They can say, ‘And I said …’ instead of ‘I’m, like …’

gr: You say on your website that you have a photographic memory for words. What are some of your favourite English words and why?

ML: I tend to like words that look and sound beautiful. I’m addicted to picturesque slang, so there’s always some archaic slang dictionary open on my desk. I like words and phrases that work hard. Slang does that, stretching language. Like ‘gormy-ruddles’ for intestines or ‘a splatherer’ – someone who talks too much. At the moment I am looking at Parisian slang from the nineteenth century for some French villains in a new book. A fellow-writer accuses me of using ‘milky’ too much.

gr: Do you think that learning to write stories is a good skill to have? Why?

ML: The combination of imagination and discipline must help in every walk of life, even with day-to-day conversation. Writing helps you to become aware of the duty to communicate clearly, and also alerts you to what I think of as a duty of entertainment. If you write well, you tend to speak well, and you learn to self-edit, sticking to what other people will be interested to hear, rather than rambling self-indulgently off into the raspberry bushes while everyone glazes over.

Moreover, writing stories is also about inhabiting other people’s points of view. Being able to do that is a prerequisite of civilised relationships.

gr: Can you give us some good advice for someone starting out writing?

ML: Draft and draft and redraft. And put it away, and then read it again, redrafting once more. A first draft is really just a rehearsal for a novel. Would you put on a pantomime after just one run-through? You owe it to your readers to work really hard, to refine, to knock out all the repetition, to make every word count. After all, readers grab their precious reading time from between work, eating, housework, family life, socialising, surfing the net: you have to make it worthwhile for them. It is an honour to have people’s undivided attention. That’s what they give you when they read you.

There’s also a commercial angle to redrafting. Few manuscripts are published, compared to the millions that are written. You want to give your manuscript a chance; to make it the best it can be. Agents and publishers are spoilt for choice. If they see a manuscript that needs tons of work, and have another one on their desk that is nearly perfect … which are they going to go for? They’ll make the same amount of money either way, so they will go for the book that costs them less of their own valuable time.

Because of the length of time it takes to produce a good piece of work, you also need to make sure you choose a subject that has staying power. You need to still be vitally interested in it two years along the line. You need to feel that you have something to learn in the writing of it.

gr: Why do you like cats? Do you have any good cat stories you can tell us? Your London Cat is a bit grumpy. Any reason why?

ML: I like cats because they are beautiful, mysterious, clean and eccentric. I enjoy their pomposity. Anyone who has a cat has an unwitting comedian in the house. For The Undrowned Child website, I’ve been interviewing real Venetian cats and their owners. Some interesting stories have come up … like Teo the flying cat, Martin the cat with the curly tail, Romeo the Latin lover, and so on.

Why is Rose la Touche of Harristown grumpy? Could it be that her name gets her down? Also, I keep leaving her to go to Venice where I have another life, and have relationships with a number of other cats. (Rose, of course, is never left alone, even for one night – she has her beloved catsitter Thomas.)

gr: What kind of books do you like to read?

ML: I like to read books written before 1820, as I find the language so delicious. I read a lot of non-fiction from that time as I set my books then. At the moment I am busy reading children’s and young adult fiction, to see what my peers do, to see what is allowed. I am constantly impressed with the craft that goes into a children’s book.

gr: How many books do you read each month?

ML: I’m a really fast reader. For research, I can sometimes read up to fifty books a month, but I suppose I read between four and ten novels, just for pleasure.

gr: Can you tell us about your next book about Teo?

ML: The Mourning Emporium is set at the time of the death of Queen Victoria. Venice too seems to be dying, under a crippling invasion of ice and the onset of a terrible sickness, the Half-dead disease. When one of her old enemies, a Vampire Eel, winks at Teo from under the ice, she begins to realise that the end of Venice’s enemy, Bajamonte Tiepolo, has not proved as final as she had hoped.

Teo and Renzo end up on a floating orphanage called the Scilla (which really existed in Venice). The salty-tongued Venetian mermaids, the wise Professor Marìn, Signor Alicamoussa and other characters from The Undrowned Child play their part in the second book too.

But there are also new friends – a supercilious ship’s cat called Sofonisba, a tribe of London mermaids, a gang of London street children who also work as professional mourners – and sleep in coffins – and a very sentimental English bulldog named Turtledove.

And Teo and Renzo need all the friends they can get, because in this adventure their enemies include a colossal squid, spying cormorants, Ghost-pirates and, worst of all, a beautiful woman called Miss Uish, whose character is not beautiful at all.

The Mourning Emporium also casts a satirical eye on the trade in quack medicines peddled to women in Victorian times, and looks into Victorian Britain’s morbid fascination with death and dying.