Your Questions Answered

TO ALL THE BUSINESSES WHO WRITE TO ME….

This is Phyllis Naylor speaking.  I do not use this website to sell books.  I do not use it to rank high on Google.  My heart does not leap in delight when I turn on my computer in the morning and find twenty new emails on this website telling me how much money, publicity, ranking, sales I could make if I just did X,Y and Z

My heart leaps in joy when I find just a comfortable amount of emails I can answer in a half hour, so that I can spend the rest of my time working on a new book.  I love hearing from readers.  I try to answer as fast as I can.  But my life would be a lot easier if businesses would respect what is important to me and what is not.

 

 

Question about Roxie

 

We have been reading your really good book Roxie and the Hooligans. We have some questions for you about the book, and we decided to choose just one to send today. Why did you choose to dump trash in the ocean? It can be bad for animals to put trash in the ocean. For example, a straw could go in a sea turtle’s nose and get stuck in there for hours or plastic loops like for Gatorade can get stuck around their necks and kill them. Instead of dumping trash in the ocean, you should pick up the trash. We would love to hear your reasoning for including trash-dumping in your book. Thank you so much for writing it!

Best,
Ms. Mack’s Class

You are absolutely right!   I can remember a long time ago when I heard that barges were dumping garbage in the ocean  I couldn’t quite believe it.  Then I was told that it was food garbage, and that it disintegrated in the water, so was not harmful in a great big ocean.  But trash DOES go into the water along with food garbage, and I’m afraid I just forgot about all that when I wrote the story, concentrating instead on what would happen to Roxie next.  Thank you and your class for reminding us all about pollution.  For many years now I have been carefully separating  my food garbage from other trash, and I wish I could have put in  a plug for protecting our oceans when I wrote that book.

 

Autograph

I’d like to receive an autograph. I don’t know where to write my letter too however. Do you have an address? Thank you kindly.

send it to 401 Russell Avenue, Apt. 713, Gaithersburg, MD  20877

 

Boys Against Girls

Hi, Phyllis. Your Boys Against Girls series was a staple to me in grade school. If the setting (houses on both sides of a river with a bridge) is a real place from your life, where is it? If not, what was your inspiration?

It is  indeed a real setting, Buckhannon, West Virginia.   My husband lived there as a boy.  He lived in the house that I used for the boys in my story, and when he was in college, he crossed a swinging footbridge to get to the other side of the river.  We visited there several times after we were married–one of his college professors bought the house and was living in it after Rex’s parents died. And there really is a trap door in the cellar of the bookstore.  I asked permission to climb down in the cellar while I was picking up material for the series.

 

How can I find a scene I remember in the Alice books?

Go to the top of this page and look for the category that says “Just the Facts.”  You will find EVERY ALICE BOOK listed, divided into chapters, with  the  main happenings in each chapter described.  This is your gift from the publisher.  In editorial terms, this is called a bible.  The copy editors use it when they want to look up a certain incident and need to know the page number.  We thought that Alice readers would appreciate having this too, and you will be amazed at how long this is, and how detailed.   Enjoy, enjoy!

 

Visualizing Witches

Dear Phyllis.

We are two old high school friends, and now film colleagues, in Denmark who are writing you to ask your permission to make film(s) out of your series of books about witches. We have decided to initiate our conversation without any practical considerations since we wanted to ask you personally, if you would consider to work with us, before starting any business proposals or practical considerations. Hence, following are two personal statements for you to understand the deep wish for us both to visualize your books in a Danish context:

I grew up in a co-housing community and was a frequent visitor in my best friend’s house. I remember her father, Jørn E. Albert, typing away on his typewriter in the basement of their house, day and night, translating books from English to Danish. When I was 12 years old, just after my mother moved out of our house to realise her dreams of becoming a psychotherapist, I read your book “The Witch’s Sister”. We found it in my friend’s dad’s collection of books that he had translated. I was completely drawn into the universe of Lynn and Mouse. The way they explored witchery and the unknown together through old books and spying on the world around them. Creating conspiracy theories and trying to understand what was going on. And digging into whether there was more between Heaven and earth than meet the eye.
Only now, as a grown up, I realise that it was not just the scary and breathtaking story about two girls and a potential witch that made me love the books. It was also the story of a family with a mother who was suddenly much less present than before. And the development from being a child to becoming an adult. My friend and I could never really agree on which one of us was Lynn, and which was Mouse, but I do remember that I had glasses. And we both had big sisters. Whom we spied on and who behaved strangely, just like Judith.
We were probably not your typical readers. Or maybe we were? We read the books so many times, while eating bread with jam like Lynn and Mouse. And when we were done reading them, we started listening to them as audio books. About a hundred times. And then we began reading them aloud ourselves, while recording it on our tape recorder. Over and over again. The amazing thing was that we still got scared. But we loved it. At night when I had to go home, my friend had to follow me halfway up the dark path and then we RAN home in opposite directions, screaming.
Maybe getting to know a story this well was the seed to start creating my own stories. I imagined everything in your books, saw the images in front of me and today, I make films. Re-reading the books as a grown up and mother of 3, I suddenly see them in a different light. I identify with the mother. I understand that she needed to find a place out of the home to work. I understand her need to create. Being a mother and an artist can be a hard combination. And this is a layer of your books that I would love to explore more in the film version of the witch books.

Best Regards, Katrine (Director)

Your books have been with me from childhood, and from the beginning of my career, I have had a profound wish to visualize them and make them into movies. I am more experienced now – I know how to write scripts, and my wish has never lessened. I would like a broader part of the world to know how great your books are. I hope it would be possible to try it out – perhaps only in a small country like ours. Just to show your universe to a younger generation, without losing the magic of the books.

Kind regards, Ine (Screenwriter)

I believe I answered this once.  A number of people have written to me asking for movie rights, but we have never been able to trace the ownership of these rights, once they were bought by the Blue Marble program on TV.

Hello to you from the past

Not a question, just a hello. In the 1970s you sold articles/stories to Jerry O’Malley who was the editor of “Catalyst” magazine for youth. I was a copy editor there at Christian Board of Publication in St. Louis. We married on his 40th birthday, March 18, 1973. He thought very highly of you. We both read “Crazy Love.” I am glad to find you here and I wish you well! Jerry died in September 2015. We had moved to Carbondale, Ill., to work at Southern Illinois University. Best wishes!

I remember Jerry so well!  He was one of my favorite editors.  I’m so glad that you had 42 years together, but I’m sorry to know that he’s gone  Not in our hearts however.  Thank you so much for getting in touch with me.

Thank You :)

I am a 14-year-old kid who started reading your books in elementary, they really helped me a lot and I find them really enjoyable, so really all I want to say is, Thank You!

Thank you.  I’m glad you enjoyed them!

whats your favorite dog

do you have a dog and if you do, can you tell me if it is a girl or a boy and tell me it’s name!

I grew up with a springer spaniel named Pepper.

art

how do you get good at art?

I’m not an artist–I do the writing, and someone else does the covers of my books.  I would guess that you get good at art the way you get good at anything–practice, practice, practice and get all the instruction and help that you can.