Danielle Binks

photo credit: Janis House Photography

Danielle Binks is an author and literary agent from Melbourne, Australia. The Year the Maps Changed was her debut novel and has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award and was a Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book. She has since written her first young adult novel, The Monster of Her Age, and has edited and contributed to Begin, End, Begin, an anthology of new Australian young adult writing, which won an Australian Book Industry Award.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

My original title was Operation Safe Haven which in 1999 was the official name given to the Australian Government's plan of flying in refugees of the Kosovo War, and housing them at eight different 'safe haven' locations around the country. In America, it was called Operation Provide Refuge. The second-half of my book very much focuses on the Kosovo War, and a young girl whose world is expanded and turned upside down when she befriends a pregnant refugee woman who is part of 'Operation Safe Haven' and comes to her small Australian town ... but my publisher correctly pointed out that the book is also about this young girl - Winifred 'Fred' - and the changing landscape of her family (her mother who died when she was young, the new partner her father now has - and the young son she brings into the equation and their family home), at the same time that she learns exactly how often the map of the world changes, and not even the ground beneath our feet is exactly rock-solid. It was my publisher who said 'Operation Safe Haven' makes it sound like a middle-grade mystery, but The Year the Maps Changed hints at the turmoil and bigger conflicts - both internal and external - within, and I am forever grateful for her poetic mind that came up with that title.

What's in a name?

My protagonist is the 11-going-on-12 year-old Winifred 'Fred' who is also sometimes called 'Winnie' by her family. I called her Winifred in part deference to my paternal grandmother whose name was Winsome. I couldn't quite bring myself to name her fully after my grandmother, but her having the nickname 'Winnie' is a little wink-wink for my family especially. I think names have power, and the various nicknames Fred has is something she actually muses on at one point, in this excerpt: I was named after my nan — Pop’s wife — who I never met. Fred is Pop’s nickname for me, Freddo is Luca’s, and Winnie was Mom’s. I once asked Pop why they couldn’t stick to one name for me, and he said he didn’t know, but maybe they all wanted to have little pieces of me, all to themselves. Lately I’d been wondering what piece Mom took with her when she died, and I’d been thinking about the Winnie I would have been if she hadn’t.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I think she'd be surprised that we chose to write about our hometown, and an event from 1999 and our own childhood - heavily fictionalised, but still, inspired by real events. I think she'd worry that people would find our hometown boring, but I'd like to assure her that what Stephen King once said is true; "The stories we hear in our childhood are the ones we remember all our lives." And I'd break it to her that 1999 was a very long time ago now, and for kid's today it's very much historical fiction about an important time in world politics that is sometimes overlooked or forgotten - but that is maybe more relevant than ever to examine, because something else Stepehn King once said is also true; “Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.”

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Oh, I find endings harder to produce because by then I've got so much more on the line (all those thousands of words!) and I don't want it to all be for nought on a wasted opportunity by sticking my landing. But I stress and labour over my beginnings more. In fact, I can't begin writing a new thing until I love my opening line. I hinge an entire project on my having the perfect opening line; one that I love and can quote in my sleep like poetry. To this day, the opening line/s to The Year the Maps Changed is one I'm proudest of (Maps lie. Or at least, they don’t always tell the truth. They’re like us humans that way.); it ended up being a book that took me five-years to write (a lot of that was procrastination) but the opening line was what I wrote on Day 1 of Five Years and it never changed, it was very much my North Star and guiding light. I often thought; "Well I have to finish this manuscript, because I can't waste that opening!"

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Fred is the same age I was in 1999. We live in the same part of the country; on Victoria, Australia's - Mornington Peninsula. And I guess in a way, we both lived through Operation Safe Haven when refugees of the Kosovo War came to our back door. I took the bare bones of my childhood history as the story, and there's a fair chunk of myself in Fred for that reason ... but I always say I gave her my worst attributes (she's stubborn, can be selfish, sometimes lacks empathy) but I made it so that Fred learns at a much faster rate and overcomes herself, she learns and grows much better and faster than I did at her age.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Oh, movies. It took me a while to realise that Middle Grade was my sweet-spot for writing, but then I look back at the movies that really imprinted upon me and I can see their inspiration in The Year the Maps Changed - it's a lot of Stand By Me (which is also Stephen King's influence on me), The Goonies is in there somewhat, Now and Then was a life-changing movie for me ... it's all there; we are a product of the things we love and what influenced us, and that's the movies for me.

Visit Danielle Binks's website.

--Marshal Zeringue