他可是大名鼎鼎的哈伯柯林斯出版社童书出版总监 所以他写出来的童书好评如潮各种奖 他的故事里既有索马里海盗也有海地地震 更有无边无际的想象 童书专家写的童书怎么会差呢 尼克·莱克 Nick Lake 尼克·莱克出生在英国，因为他的父亲在欧洲议会工作，所以他是在卢森堡长大
尼克毕业于牛津大学文学专业，就职于英国哈伯柯林斯任童书编辑，业余写作
他目前已经是英国哈伯柯林斯童书出版总监
尼克·莱克创作了许多备受好评的YA小说，包括《血色忍者》三部曲、《在黑暗中》、《三号人质》、《会有谎言》等，并获得多项大奖
《出版人周刊》对尼克·莱克的采访 www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/64916-q-a-with-nick-lake.html Have you written any books that are actually set in England, where you live? Curiously, I have not. The Blood Ninja series is set in Japan, where I have never been. My first novel, The Secret Ministry of Frost, was set in the Arctic and I’ve never been there either. There have been some major stylistic shifts in the course of my career, but I suspect they will not result in a novel set in the U.K. I wouldn’t say never, and I don’t know that I could explain it, but, part of the reason I read books is to experience other lives. I don’t read much that is set in the U.K. now. I didn’t grow up in Britain. I grew up in Luxembourg, and all the television we had access to was American – American TV with Dutch subtitles – so all the dialogue I heard growing up was American. That’s my private theory, anyway. Can you say how you came to set a book in Arizona? Well, I actually have been to Arizona and I was inspired by an encounter with a coyote. I was there with my editor as part of a book tour, staying at a hotel north of Scottsdale, on the edge of the desert. The hotel had large grounds and lush gardens. We’d been drinking in the bar and when we parted, I went out to walk the grounds a bit. I may have still been smoking at the time. A coyote came skittering along the path, stopped, and looked right at me. It was one of those really weird moments, very intense. The coyote then ran off but he had implanted himself in my mind. We met a local couple for dinner the next night and they were really offended when I told them about meeting the coyote because they had lived in Scottsdale for quite some time and had never seen a coyote themselves. Okay, so I need to press you here because I’m not seeing how the coyote encounter itself resulted in this story about Shelby, who is deaf, and completely overprotected by her mother, until a car accident turns her world upside down. Well, it was only partly inspired by the coyote encounter. [A shape-shifting coyote appears in There Will Be Lies.] But the rest… I’m not completely sure I know where it came from. I mean, I have an idea. And I know that an author is supposed to have a story about how their book developed, and that the story they tell you is probably to some degree true, but I don’t think anyone should believe authors when they say they know where the story came from. Okay, that is not the most helpful answer I’ve ever gotten to the question, “Where did this story come from?” Well, I guess there is more to it than I have let on. I had a one-year-old daughter at the time and I was thinking a lot about children and parenthood and safety and the parent-child relationship. My daughter had been very ill when she was born and we spent a lot of time in the hospital and that fed into it, too. And the portion of the book about The Dreaming (part of the story takes place in a dream state Shelby enters that is infused with Native American mythology) actually came to me in a dream. I had a dream about Shelby but in the dream I was Shelby and the coyote took me to this ancient, mythic land where all these creatures wanted to attack me and the coyote protected me. Hostage Three also came to me in a dream. Both Hostage Three and There Will Be Lies are written in first person. How did you decide to write in the voice of an American teenage girl? Well, in Hostage 3, the main character, Amy, was initially a boy but I showed what I had written to my wife, who is my first reader, and she said, ‘This is not a boy, it’s a girl, and he’s not English,’ so I changed it to a girl and made her half American. And with Shelby, my challenge there was to make sure she sounded different than Amy. I worried about that because Shelby is nothing like Amy. She’s more naïve. More pliable. She believes what her mother has told her. Whereas Amy was full of snark. I got a lot of comments about her being unlikable, which was not my intent. I liked her very much myself. But it could be that those readers were adults and sympathized more with Amy’s father. My mother-in-law read it and said, ‘Oh, her poor dad.’ But it’s strange, this voice thing. I don’t feel like I choose it. This sounds so pretentious but, in some sense, the voices come to me and I just put them down on paper. The book I’m working on now is about a girl who lives in New Jersey who can hear voices and I’m thinking of these three books as some sort of trilogy. They are all thrillers, with a teenage girl narrating. Working on these books helped me work through something that was bothering me and by writing them, I think I’ve put that to rest. Can you explain a little more about what was bothering you? The next book, Whisper to Me, is a horror story, about a girl who hears voices, who lives in a small town on the Jersey coast where there is a serial killer at work. The voices she hears have something to do with the killer and she takes it upon herself to find the killer. Shelby, of course, can’t hear anything at all. I’m half deaf myself and hearing – or not hearing – is obviously something I’m very interested in. I have a master’s degree in linguistics and what I studied was acoustics and sound. There’s something about not being able to hear, not hearing the car because it’s coming at me from the deaf side, that makes one feel very uncomfortable. Although perhaps I have now said too much because I don’t want to spoil There Will Be Lies for those who haven’t read it. Nor do I! Although I think it is revealed pretty early on that Shelby is deaf. Yes, that is not the big twist. Actually, I wanted to have two twists. One, a third of the way through and one, two-thirds of the way through. I love books that have twists and I thought it would be cool to try to write one myself. I really wanted Bloomsbury to focus their marketing more on the twist and they were kind of adamant that we shouldn’t be telling people there were twists. I think the title itself puts the reader on high alert for twists. Right. And I think that just by telling people, ‘there is a twist,’ you are affecting their experience of the book. So, enough said about that. Are the books you edit yourself at HarperCollins all young adult books? We don’t have very clearly marked lines but mostly what I edit is what you would call middle-grade: Michael Morpurgo, Lauren Child, Will Hill – who is also a good friend, and my second reader, after my wife. When you write, do you find it difficult to shut off your editor self and get the story out? I don’t know that I have an answer for that. I do think no one is able to edit themselves, whether they work as an editor or not. I very much want another editor to read my work and see what I can’t see. On the other hand, I think both roles are extensions of the same thing. I don’t think they’re opposites. Although most of my time is spent reading submissions from agents, it’s not unheard of for editors to generate ideas and commission books, and to work on books that need a lot of work, or to help shape a story. Which role do you prefer? As an editor, you’re part of the creation. You can have lunch with the author but then it’s he who has to go away and write the bloody book. Being a writer I think, and hope, has made me a more sensitive editor but being an editor is easier. Let me get out in front of this and predict that the most quoted line from this interview will be, “Being an editor is easier.” I’ve done it now, haven’t I? Do you write before you come to work? Late at night? I live really far out in West Oxfordshire, very close to the Gloucestershire border. It’s about two and a half hours to London and part of that is a train journey. I have a particular seat in carriage B of my train, noise-cancelling headphones, and my laptop, and that gives me an hour and a half of uninterrupted time to write. I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old so I can’t write at home. If I don’t write in that hour and a half, it’s not going to happen. Finally, I have to ask you what you thought when the Printz committee called last year to tell you In Darkness had won their award? My book wasn’t terribly well known, and I was relatively new to writing, so I think winning the Printz was a surprise to everyone, not least myself. I didn’t know anything about the Printz. (In Darkness) had been shortlisted for the Carnegie. That’s what you’re aware of as an U.K. author. Then the phone rang and there’s this big “Hello! hello!” on the other end. I thought it was my colleagues, messing about. I literally said, ‘What are you talking about?’ and ‘Are you sure you don’t want to give it someone else?’ and they laughed and said, ‘Oh! You’re so British.’ The whole thing was a complete shock beginning with the thought, ‘How did these Americans have my number?’ After the fact, of course, I learned that there is no longlist or shortlist and, in fact, the entire thing is carried out with the utmost secrecy, but at the time I just didn’t know you could win a big prize over the phone like that while you are home working on a wintry January day. Amazing. 尼克·莱克 主要作品 《卫星》 出版时间待定 – Bloomsbury 有人把这本书比作青少年版的《火星救援》，但它更像是与传统从地球出发探索宇宙相反的模式，即从外太空接近地球
故事的背景设在外太空，三个15岁的孩子狮子、天平、猎户从小在月亮2号空间站长大，他们是美国宇航局“太空人类繁衍”计划中第一批诞生的“宇宙人”
但是他们必须回到地球接受另一部分的实验，看他们是否能适应地球上的生活
15岁是他们返回地球的时候
通过视频和电视，他们对地球上的生活已经很熟悉了，但是真实的身体反应和情感回应会和他们想的一样吗？ 《会有谎言》 2015.1.1 – Bloomsbury Childrens 获卡内基奖提名 谢尔比·简·库伯觉得自己一直过着正常的生活
她与单亲母亲无依无靠地住在亚利桑那州的凤凰城，并且在家里接受教育，但基本上还是过着一种少年人的生活：暗恋身边帅气的男孩；作业多得受不了；把冰激凌当午餐；还要干活儿
然后，谢尔比就出了车祸那是件让人震惊的事
但还不及另外一件事更让人震惊，那就是，她的母亲接她出院的时候，把她捆着塞入了一辆车里，并带着她们的所有家当，驶入了山里
如果那还不够的话，她开始能看见一些东西了——首当其冲就是一只会说话的丛林狼，这匹小狼想把她拽入一个有许多野马和被囚禁的仙女的世界，那里的一切都被一位邪恶的女巫统治着，而女巫的诅咒只有谢尔比才能打破
但是，这一切真的和她有关系吗？还是她的大脑在作怪……或者有什么更可怕的解释吗？谢尔比·简·库伯觉得她知道自己是谁
但恰恰就在七天之后，她将发现一个人可以错得多么离谱——关于这一切
《三号人质》 2013.1.3 – Bloomsbury 入选《出版人周刊》、《学校图书馆期刊》、《波士顿环球报》年度最佳图书 艾米的妈妈去世了，她富有的银行家父亲另取新欢
艾米陷入了青春叛逆期，她与父亲甚至周围的一切保持疏远的距离她希望让自己变得麻木，好忘却失去母亲的痛苦
她的父亲为了艾米与她的后妈相互了解，让这个家庭重新回到轨道上，他带着她们踏上游艇，开始环球旅行
但是这场旅行注定改变一切，这种改变突如其来——他们遇上了海盗，而且是声名狼藉的索马里海盗
富有的银行家被海盗命名为“人质一号”，他漂亮的妻子是“人质二号”，而艾米则成为了“人质三号”
没有了姓名、没有了身份，他们沦为海盗手里变现的财产，而索马里海盗该有多恐怖吓人呢？ 可是，海盗与艾米的想象和新闻中的不同，他们不打算滥杀无辜，他们只想拿到赎金，然后放他们一条生路
只是在拿到赎金之前的日日夜夜里，艾米与她的家人没有自由
从海盗踏上奢华的游艇那一刻，艾米就发现了长着一双灰色眼睛的男孩法鲁
他是海盗的一员，但是艾米觉得他不像海盗，似乎她和他之间流动一股特别的能量
在随后的接触中，艾米发现法鲁十分温和，甚至细致体贴，而他和艾米一样热爱音乐
艾米向法鲁说起了自己的妈妈，说起自己在学校的生活，说起自己的新家，以及藏着的心事；而法鲁告诉他，他的父母在索马里动乱中被暴徒射杀，他的哥哥带着他逃出来，为了活命，哥哥当了海盗，随后失踪了，他自己也不得不加入海盗
他的哥哥，那个支持他的音乐梦想的哥哥是他最亲的人…… 绑匪和绑票相爱，复杂得像罗密欧和朱丽叶的传奇一样
艾米不无自嘲地说“有些人会说这就是斯德哥尔摩症候”
但是爱情并非突如其来，两颗漂浮在海上的动荡的心灵注定相知相爱
可是，当艾米一家获得解救时，富家女和海盗小子的爱情会有怎样的结局呢？这是一场注定没有结局的爱情吗？或者像艾米对自己所说的，她只能向对妈妈一样的，把法鲁藏在心里，让他和妈妈一样成为她心里永远的人质？ 少年少女的爱情只是这部小说的一个层面
除此之外，通过法鲁以及其他人物的讲述，索马里海盗的情况跃然纸上
对于索马里的历史、政治、经济、文化，艾米从一无所知，只知道索马里海盗对国际运输造成的危害，到了解“这些人有着他们自己的故事，他们单纯，绝不是别人口里的盗贼
”生活的复杂、人性的复杂和无奈一一呈现在读者眼前，让这部作品充满了深度和韵味
《在黑暗中》 2012.1.5 – Bloomsbury Childrens 获迈克尔·L.普林茨奖 这是一个有关于暴力、恐怖的故事，也是一个有关于绝望和希望的故事
故事开始于2010年海地那场惨烈的大地震
十五岁的男孩肖迪在医院里治疗枪伤，地震来临，医院被夷为废墟
肖迪被压在了石块瓦砾之下他以为自己死了，但是知觉却慢慢恢复他呼喊救命，但是声音如游丝，没人听得见
一阵又一阵饥饿感来袭，他在恍惚中回想自己为何身在医院，为何身重枪伤，以及他是谁
他出生在海地的首都——太子港，住在贫穷、危险的贫民窟
他的父亲是一名牧师，但是因为卷入海地亲阿里斯蒂德派和反对派的斗争中而被杀害
父亲在他眼前倒在血泊里，而他的同胞妹妹、被他视为天使的玛格丽特在骚乱中被绑架
一时间失去亲人的肖迪发誓穷尽生命也要找到妹妹为了生存，他加入了亲阿里斯蒂德派的黑社会十二岁那年，在绑匪头领的教唆下，他第一次杀人
当阿里斯蒂德政府即将倒台时，肖迪挣扎着保住自己的性命，为了生存吃尽了苦头
可是妹妹依然毫无踪影
肖迪被困在废墟下时，他开始做梦，他梦见了两百年前的一个海地人——杜桑·卢维杜尔
杜桑原是奴隶出身的种植场马车夫，但是他领导海地的黑奴打败殖民者，赢得了海地的独立，创建了海地共和国
当拿破仑派出军队企图再次镇压海地民众时，杜桑再次领导海地人民将法国势力赶出了海地，最终赢得了独立和自由
在此，小说的主角转变为杜桑
作者借杜桑描绘了海地独立革命时期的种种独特的历史阶段和场景，也刻画了一个追求和平独立的革命领导者
但是无论他多么不愿意看到流血的场面，他必须用鲜血的代价与殖民者抗争
一天晚上，疲惫的杜桑做了一个梦
他梦见了一个小伙子，——他被困在海地的一片废墟中，而那是两百年后的海地…… 相隔两百多年，身为革命领袖的杜桑和黑帮小子的肖迪相遇了，而一部波澜壮阔且令人心碎的海地历史也在故事紧凑的情节里显现