Christelle Dabos was born on the Côte d’Azur in 1980 and grew up in a home filled with classical music and historical games. She now lives in Belgium. A Winter’s Promise, her debut novel, won the Gallimard Jeunesse-RTL-Télérama First Novel Competition in France, and was named a Best Book of the Year by critics and publications in the US, including Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Publishers Weekly, and Chicago Review of Books. A Winter’s Promise was also named the #1 Sci-Fi/Fantasy title of the year by the editors of the Amazon Book Review.

Welcome to the Hive, Christelle. Congratulations on your latest novel. Let’s start with the basics: tell us about Here, and Only Here – what can readers expect? 

Have you read the Mirror Visitor series? Well, my new book is completely different! Here, and Only Here takes us deep inside a school considered to be THE school – a microcosm with its own rules and taboos, rights and wrongs, those at the top and the bottom of the social hierarchy, and everything is constantly changing. It’s a place where anything is possible: there is a student who can walk on the ceiling, a mysterious liquid driving people insane, and toilets that open into Hell…

Give us an insight into your characters? What kind of characters can we expect to meet? 

There is Iris who wishes she would blend into the background, Pierre who doesn’t know how to be anything except a scapegoat, Madeleine who is going through an identity crisis, Guy who has formed an alliance with a very unusual new girl and a Top Secret Club which… well, no one really knows what they’re doing exactly. Among themselves, they speak about ‘

quantum physics. We follow each character in turn, in the first person, deep inside their thoughts and inside their skin.

One thing is sure, none of them will be the same by the end of the story.

For each character, I was inspired by a legend: the Invisible Man, the pied piper of Hamelin, Joan of Arc and even Robin Hood (but none of them are like Robin Hood).

Tell us a little something about your writing process – do you have a certain method? Do you find music helps? Give us a glimpse into your world!

I’m a homebody! I can only write on my sofa, surrounded by cushions, with a chocolate break every two hours. I don’t set an alarm in the morning, and I don’t follow any kind of routine. I type on my computer and my keyboard, and I play my piano. I tend to reread my writing (maybe too much!), but I like to make sure the setting is perfect, and I spend a lot of time trying to find THE right word. I have a complicated relationship with plans: without them, I feel lost, but with them, I feel suffocated. I therefore try to have a wider vision of the journey my story will follow, but this can be susceptible to change if my characters send me off in another direction. When I’m stuck on a passage, I go for a walk in the small Belgian village where I live, and I often return home with an idea! I also regularly go for long walks on my own and ask myself thousands of questions out loud and try to come up with the answers.

I also have a playlist of original tracks from films, anime and video games, which I use to immerse myself in the correct atmosphere for the scene I’m working on. Even silence, with just the humming of the fridge behind me, also works well!

Speaking of worlds, tell us about your worldbuilding? What inspired you to create the School of Here? 

I remembered my own school, in the south of France, with its yellow-painted walls, green shutters, its front gate which would have looked more at home in front of a fortress, its glass shards on the walls, big student lounge and outside toilets which I didn’t like at all. I won’t lie, it was a little like a prison!

That is why the term ‘Here’ quickly became part of the story. Inside those walls, I lived in a completely different world and beyond that front gate, everything seemed less real.

If you were transported into the School of Here, what kind of student would you be and how do you think you would fare?

When I was at school, I was most like Madeleine, minus her horrible attitude – or maybe I kept that for my family. I was glued to the same classmate, even if we didn’t realise it, I drew rosettes with my compass and I was utterly convinced that before the end of the school year, a miracle would happen (or two).

Above all, I was someone who didn’t dare: I didn’t dare give my opinion, say what I was feeling, speak about what I dreamt of, share if I disagreed with something, or express myself, whether I liked it or not.

It’s funny to imagine the 43-year-old Christelle of today, with all her life experience, going back to school. Just because I dared!

Your book explores themes of friendship, family and fitting in—how important was it for you to represent these coming-of-age issues? 

I don’t remember a single lesson from my years at school. I don’t have a single memory of the subjects that I learnt by heart – dates from history, styles of writing, chemical formulas, equations.

No. For me, I learnt the most outside of the classroom. Everything is changing: your relationship with yourself, your body and others. When we’re young, we are surrounded by games: we play with marbles, skipping ropes, balls, we have fun playing ‘what if’, and we don’t take a single thing seriously. But in the school playground, how do we create bonds with others? What do we talk about? At 13 years old, I didn’t find it easy to talk to people, and I found myself at odds with the other teenagers who were more interested in their own sexuality than in comics strips. Your family relationships also change, misunderstandings are born, and gulfs begin to widen. To put it simply, everything suddenly becomes more difficult. That’s why, in Here, and Only Here, it was important for me to evoke this kind of union between the childhood we have left behind, and the aftermath where we don’t know what’s happening.

We see such varying opinions from authors when it comes to the time of editing their books. How have you found the editing process? Enjoyable, stressful or satisfying?

I move between each of these states.

Knowing that my book has already convinced an editor is motivating. I’m willing to edit it as much as necessary if it’s in the story’s best interest!

Then comes the moment of reading, re-reading it and re-re-reading it to the point where I’d love to just throw the whole computer out the window.

Then the text goes to print and that’s the time when I can finally relax, knowing that’s it; my story is going to turn into a book and live its life. I’ve cut the cord! Generally, at this stage, I’m floating on a little cloud, completely detached from the process, and everything is much calmer. Then I’m asked if I’m worried about the reaction I’ll receive from the public, for which I have my own philosophy: “Ah, I can’t control it, so I might as well not worry!”

Then publication day approaches. This is when I start to pay less attention to my philosophy. My sleep becomes disturbed, I’m highly sensitive. What if readers aren’t welcoming of my new book? What if no one likes it? What if, what if, what if?

At this point, the book is published. The first reviews roll in. Some of them reassure me, some of them hurt me, and I know that it will take a few weeks before a general review becomes apparent, whichever way it may fall. These are the weeks in which I will feel constantly ill, on high alert, and incapable of writing.

And when I’ve finally found serenity, I send a new book to my editor, and we’re back at the beginning!

We always appreciate a beautiful book cover! How involved in the process were you? Was there a particular aesthetic you hoped the artist would portray?

You know the phrase ‘never judge a book by its cover’? Well, I’ve learnt that yes, readers do judge books by their covers! At a time when e-readers dominate, physical books have to be attractive. As an author, I’m consulted on my choice of cover, and the editor might listen to what I have to say, but they will be the one to decide. I loved my covers for the Mirror Visitor series, which were beautifully illustrated by Laurent Gapaillard. But I knew that for Here, and Only Here, we would need to use different kinds of graphics, and bring forth the craziness of this school.

Are there any particular authors who have shaped and influenced your work? 

I only realised it recently, but for Here, and Only Here, I was strongly influenced by magic realism. I studied south American literature in Nice, and I found it fascinating how these two separate forms (realism and magic) could coexist so naturally, without one seeming more real than the other. Among the most well-known works in this genre are One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende.

But the book that without a doubt inspired me the most was A House in the Country by Jose Donoso. Almost the entire book is told from the point of view of the children in the family, left to their own devices in a big house. They invent their own rules and defy authority to survive.

Can you tell us anything about any upcoming projects? 

A graphic novel adaptation of the Mirror Visitor by Vanyda is currently in the making. It’s a project that fills me with joy! I’m not directly working on it myself, but I am in close contact with Vanyda, who sends me her progress every now and then. She is very loyal to the story but also brings her own personality to the project.

Other than that, I’ve finished a new book, which is currently sitting with Gallimard Jeunesse, my French publisher. It’s a little early to say much about it, but according to my editor and my agent, it’s a mixture of the Mirror Visitor and Here, and Only Here. Watch this space!

Tell us a book you’ve recently read which you think we should all read?

This summer, on the recommendation of one of my readers, I devoured the comic book series Locke & Key, written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez. It’s been a long time since I was quite as blown away as I was with this series. After the murder of their father, Tyler, Kinsey and Bode Locke move with their mother to an old ancestral home called ‘Keyhouse’. The house is filled with secrets, but also keys. For the Locke children, these keys are the catalyst to an exploration in all senses of the term (geographic, historical, familial, self). I found myself immersed in so many themes. It’s both uncompromising and full of emotion. I really recommend it!

Finally, what is the one thing you hope readers take away from your writing? 

I think of each of my books like a mirror. As an author, I leave a little bit of myself inside my books. Each emotion that readers feel when reading a book comes both from the story (which is indirectly and symbolically the author’s), and the reader’s personal story. It’s there, at this precise point, in this emotion, that we find each other. Each story that I’ve written has been a kind of catharsis for me, not necessarily in line with a trauma, but old memories – which I’d thought were locked away – were reopened during the writing process. Writing gives me an opportunity to finally embrace that which I’d been avoiding. If my reader experiences this same emotion while reading my book, then I think that the main thing has come across.

Thank you so much for joining us! 

Thank you!

Here, and Only Here is out this week from Europa Editions! You can order your copy on Bookshop.org

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