Cornelia Funke
About Author
Cornelia Funke is the highly acclaimed, award-winning and bestselling author of the Inkheart trilogy, Dragon Rider, The Thief Lord and numerous other children's novels and picture books.
Born in 1958 in the German town of Dorsten, she worked as a social worker for a few years before turning first to illustration and then to writing. Her books have now sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages.
Author link
www.corneliafunkefans.com; www.doublecluck.com
Interview
THE GRIFFIN'S FEATHER
CHICKEN HOUSE
JULY 2017
After repeated requests from young readers, bestselling author Cornelia Funke has returned to her Dragon Rider novel to pen an engaging new story for readers aged 9+, featuring the young dragon rider, Ben, and many of the characters we met in his first adventure.
The Griffin's Feather takes Ben and his adoptive father Professor Greenbloom on a new mission - to find the sun feather of a Griffin, the only thing that can save the lives of three unborn Pegasi foals.
As well as plenty of adventure and jeopardy, The Griffin's Feather - like Dragon Rider - is a story about our environment and a call to save the many species that call Earth their home.
We asked author Cornelia Funke to tell us more about her latest book:
Q: Can you take us back to the first Dragon Rider book and tell us what inspired you to write that story?
A: It is so long ago, I can barely remember! I wrote Dragon Rider more than 19 years ago, after a TV producer had asked me to make my very first book, A Quest for a Dragon, longer (to quote him) for an animated adaptation. I explained that books can't be stretched like rubber bands and that I will try to write a new, better and longer version of the story.
When I went to work on it I realized that I didn't want to write the story for an animated TV series, bought the rights back and ...wrote my very first long novel, much encouraged by my late publisher, Uwe Weitendorf. The book changed my life in many ways, as it made me a true writer. Before I wrote this book I considered myself mostly an illustrator who wrote stories for her illustrations :)
Interestingly, I took my characters on a journey I never made myself. I only researched the places or talked with friends who had been to the Himalayas or Scotland. In retrospect I think it may have planted the bug of travel in my heart, when I was still quite an unwilling traveller:)
Q: Why did you decide to return to Dragon Rider to write a sequel and what excited you most about returning to this world?
A: I had tried several times as in every event readers asked me to write a sequel, but I always felt like repeating myself and I hate sequels that are weaker than the original. I want sequels to grow a world and story, not shrink it.
A few years ago I did develop an App for Reckless with artists in LA, to interpret my story with visual means without selling movie rights - a project that proved to be vastly important and inspiring for me both as a writer and illustrator.
I was so happy with the result that we decided to do another one of Dragon Rider - which proved to be far more difficult than Reckless. But - while we were working on Mission Volcano (which I have just turned into an audio play and the third Dragon Rider adventure), I suddenly felt such yearning to write about these characters again that I sat down and... wrote A Griffin's Feather. The story came as easily as if it had been waiting. I shouldn't forget to mention that it was for sure inspired by my two Alexandrian Parakeets, Marley and Mozart.
Q: In the story you have created MIMAMEIDR for Ben's new family to look after fabulous beings. Where does the name come from?
A: MIMAMEIDR is the name of a mythical tree from Norse mythology and I admit I am never quite sure how to pronounce it :) - I say MEEMUMIDRRRR.
Q: Do all the fabulous creatures in the story come from mythology? How much research do you do into areas like this before you start writing your books?
A: I did a LOT of research for this book - on Indonesian forests, animals, myths, on Indian birds and Norwegian myth, flora and fauna.... but of course I also invented many, many creatures myself. I like to play riffs on mythology, be inspired but interprete it with my 21st century eyes.
Q: Of all the fantastical creatures you describe in the Dragon Rider books, which would you most like to meet?
A: Oh that is so difficult to decide!! I named my company in the US Twigleg, which shows I always had a weakness for the homunculus. For the Volcano Mission I created another one based on Freddie Mercury:) But I also have a great fondness for Hothbrodd, the troll, and for Shrii, the griffin, and for Tattoo and Eugene, the four eyed crab and Eight and ...as you see, I can't really decide! :)
Q: Are your mythical creatures as real to you as the humans characters you have created?
A: Yes, of course. I am currently working on a sequence of paintings, that show my closest friends as mythical creatures. I think we all are. I guess Fox, my shapeshifting heroine in Reckless, is the strongest incarnation of that belief.
Q: Which of your secondary characters have you found the most fun to develop?
A: Lola Greytail is definitely an Alter Ego of mine, and Hothbrodd makes me want to write a dozen books about him. Luckily most of them will return in the next book, so I can find out more about them all
Q: You have many different settings in the book, including Norway and Indonesia. Why did you choose these settings and have you travelled there?
A: Funnily I have been to so many countries by now, but Indonesia is not among them - which means I did only work from research as I did with the Himalayas for Dragon Rider. But I very much hope to go in the next few years. And - I will set the next Dragon Rider book in Malibu and possibly New Zealand, to use places I know very well.
Q: You often have a message in your books that we should care for the world we find ourselves in, but did you want to make this message stronger in Dragon Rider?
A: I wrote the prologue for myself while I was working on the book, intending to not publish it, as I am very suspicious of missionary messages. But I forgot to delete it and my German editor loved it - as did everyone else who read it. In Germany, it became the most quoted passage of the book and as this world is in such a sad state, I do believe by now that I have to raise my voice for what I am passionate about.
All my inspiration comes from the natural world. I believe it to define our very essence and I intend to become more and more active for its preservation and protection. I just bought 10 acres in the Santa Monica mountains overlooking the Pacific that I want to keep wild and use as an inspiring place for young artists from all over the world.
I have also bought a property, here in Malibu, that will hopefully one day see workshops and brainstorms of creativity both on conservancy and artistic projects - and feed the connection between both.
Q: In The Griffin's Feather, why do you make the Griffins so ferocious and destructive, colluding with the humans in the destruction of their world?
A: I didn't want to paint this world black and white - here the evil and exploiting humans, there the noble fabulous creatures. I wanted light and dark on both sides.
We need more respect for the non-humans that share this planet with us, but not by romanticizing the natural world. We need to once again learn to understand it.
Q: Now you've returned to Dragon Rider, will Ben and the Greenblooms be heading off on more rescues and adventures? You've mentioned a possible graphic novel - The Volcano Adventure?
A: Yes. We call it Mission Volcano by now, and it will be published first as an audio play in Germany with the company I founded in hamburg with a very close friend of mine, Eduardo Garcia.
Everyone knows about my infatuation with voices and sound since Inkheart, and I vastly enjoyed doing this. We are still developing a visual interpretation, but I am not sure which format that will end up to be. I love it when stories find their now shape. Meanwhile I am working on the story line of the next book adventure.
Q: Where did you write The Griffin's Feather?
A: I wrote Griffin's Feather in my Writing House in LA, a small house in my garden stuffed with books and dragons and all the things my readers send me. But I just sold that house, so the next book will be written at 3Charms, the property I just bought in Malibu, where my writing house will be a rusty metal barn under Sycamore trees, on six acres of wild land that once was an avocado farm:)
I plan to soon have a few guest houses and studios to receive artists from all over the world and to collaborate and play with music and story together. As the world gets more and more nationalistic again, I want to connect my readers all over the world in whatever way I can.
Q: What other projects are you involved with and what are you writing now?
A: I am currently writing The Islands of the Fox, the fourth Reckless adventure, set in Japan, America and some other countries:) I am vastly enjoying it.
I am also working on The Colour of Revenge, a sequel to the Ink-books, and I am doing research for the next Dragon Rider, which I hope to start writing in January.
I am collaborating on a novel adaptation of Pan's Labyrinth with Guillermo del Toro and I just published the first picture book I wrote first in English and illustrated myself, The Book No One Ever Read.
Q: Are there any upcoming film projects for any of your books - an animation of Dragon Rider has been mentioned?
A: Yes, Constantin Films is developing the project in English. I will visit the studios in September. And my friends Volker Engel (whose special effects destroyed the White House quite a few times for Roland Emmerich:) and his wife Gesa are developing Ghost Knight as life action.
Q: What are your top tips for young writers to create fantasy settings that are believeable?
A: Never forget that every imagined world is a love song for this one, as only this world feeds our imagination - with all its beauty and terror.
RECKLESS: THE GOLDEN YARN (MIRRORWORLD)
PUBLISHED BY PUSHKIN PRESS
OCTOBER 2016
THE GOLDEN YARN is the third book in Cornelia Funke's powerfully-imagined MIRRORWORLD, the land of folk tales that lies on the other side of a special mirror. The series, for older readers, follows the travels, lives and loves of Jacob and his younger brother, Will.
In The Golden Yarn, Jacob and Will return to Mirrorworld through the mirror left by their absent father. Jacob and his companion Fox are following Will who is in pursuit of the powerful Dark Fairy - but why? And what are the strange 'mirror creatures' protecting Will?
Jacob and Fox travel across many countries and as they draw ever closer to Will, they are forced to confront their own relationship and the promise that is keeping them apart.
We asked Cornelia Funke to tell us more about the latest Reckless book and her plans for the MIRRORWORLD series.
Q: What was the starting point for the Reckless series and why did you choose mirrors as the entry point to the Mirrorworld?
A: Reckless had a very strange beginning. I caught a glimpse at the world it describes while working with my British friend Lionel Wigram on a script. I asked him for permission to use some of our ideas for a novel and discussed the plot and characters with him, while slowly making my way through the Mirrors. Even for Book 2 we still had some discussions that inspired vital insights into this world's texture. I had a far more literary approach to this world though, which we soon realized.
I loved the idea to work with local folk tale lore and have the new and the old times collide in Mirrorworld. The doors to it were at the beginning ... doors ... once even a well Jacob jumped into (I still love that idea, maybe I'll use it one day:); but at some point I realized it is a mirror he uses. To find out who made it took me another few years, and I am still not quite sure the Alder Elves aren't feeding me wrong information all the time to lure me away from their true secrets:).
Of course I re-read Lewis Carroll to make sure my Mirrors are distinctly different from his (though ... maybe all imagined worlds are behind the same mirrors?)
Q: As in your earlier Inkheart series, in Reckless you blur boundaries between fairy tales and real life. Do you feel that this reflects real life, that these tales are somehow always with us? Do fairy tales help us understand our true natures (ie through the mirror)?
Thank you so much for this question! For me fantasy is the most realistic genre because it takes the fantastic nature of this life and world seriously and allows us to scratch the surface of what we call reality (which mostly references the reality created somehow by humans).
And yes, fairy tales hold so much truth about human nature - very uncomfortable truth mostly - and they teach us to explore and grasp this incredibly complex existence through images - which allow us so many more layers of understanding than words, as they add our to subconscious perceptions effortlessly.
Q: You also explore the dark side of fairy tales in this series; are you bringing today's reader back to the tone of the original stories?
A: I very much hope so. Though I guess we are quite good by now at looking at the darkness of this world and our species. One just has to follow storytelling in TV - it is so much more honest about human nature and relationships by now, and about what we are capable of. A fantasy series like Game of Thrones has a far more realistic approach to history and mankind than many older fantasy dramas.
I think there was a (quite long) time when we liked to describe ourselves as far more noble than we are. Interestingly fairy tales (or maybe we should name them folk tales) always show our greed, for power or love, our wish for revenge, our ability to betray ... these tales are time machines showing us a feudal past, often even a past before Christianity, and when I read them it feels to me as if these stories strip us naked and show us as we are - afraid of the dark, of the forest, of winter and hunger - all this shaped us as human beings, but our modern times fool us so easily into believing that we are the masters of our destiny and this planet
Q: In the alternate world that your characters step into through the mirror, each country is characterised by its creatures and folk tales. Have you used regional tales / myths as the starting point for creating each of these countries and if so, how did you research them?
A: Yes, I have been on a journey around the world, travelling on the back of folk tales! By now I don't visit any country without reading some of its old tales first. They make us see the landscapes, that made a people, their forgotten gods, the creatures defining reality...
Q: You also bring humans into the world of fairy tales, although the result of human intervention is more warfare. Are you gloomy about humanity's impact on our world?
A: I think none of us can honestly claim that we are a useful and benevolent species. For being the most powerful creatures on this planet we have a devastating effect on it. One is often reminded of swarming locusts, watching our inability to respect the rights of all the other life forms on this planet. There is still hope that we will evolve to something slightly less selfish, but so far we are the great plunderers
Q: The magical (and dangerous) creations Sixteen and Seventeen - the Mirrorlings - are intriguing, how did they develop and what is their role in this story?
A: I have not the faintest idea yet. They came into the story and surprised me from the moment I perceived their presence. I think their maker doesn't know either what parts they will play. It's a dangerous thing to create something that's alive :). I do know by now that Will is hopelessly in love with 16 and she with him, but where that will go...???
Q: At the heart of this book / the series is the relationship between Jacob and Fox and what keeps them apart / together. Why is that so central to the stories and where did you want to take their relationship in this book?
A: Once again - no idea. I can't really imagine them living happily ever after together. But they may surprise me. I think it'll all depend on how much Fox manages to remain herself in that love and not loose part of her strength to love. I guess every woman knows that challenge. Maybe men do too.
Q: The relationship between Kami'en and the Dark Fairy has a more troubled passage and destiny looms large in this story. The entire plot is like a journey, moving towards the Dark Fairy's destiny, but how important was it for you to show how much character determines destiny?
A: I think their story is for me more about: can we decide to walk away from a great and defining love? We so easily perceive this kind of love as fate, something inescapable ... but does it have to be that, or do we sometimes break it by making it so important?
Q: Are the spiders, yarns and weaves in The Golden Yarn a metaphor for that process of writing, as well as the relationships / causality / interconnectedness they describe in the story?
A: While writing Reckless, I always feel like a story teller, not like a writer. In the Ink-books I was always also Fenoglio, who reflected on the magic and the mayhem of writing. Behind the mirrors I am a vocal storyteller and far more an acting part of the story. I am Fox. I am Jacob. I am the Dark Fairy and Kami'en. Of course I am also Nerron and Will and maybe even 16. I live their lives with passion and don't seek the distance of a narrator. For me Reckless is all about love. In all its varieties. But love perceived through the eyes of a woman - at the age of 57 :).
Q: There are many threads that need drawing together in The Golden Yarn; how complex was it to plot, with successive chapters often focusing on different characters. Do you keep a timeline / story arc for where the whole series is headed, not just the individual books?
A: I do, a very rough one though, and one that already changed again while working on Book 4 - changing vastly in fact! I feel like a traveller who tries to give herself a goal - to then realize, that the road once again lead in another direction! :)
Book 3 was I think the greatest challenge in the series, as the world opens up so widely and so many secrets are revealed, so many characters are acting separately to then somehow intertwine their story lines. So far Book 4 is more condensed. Which is maybe not a surprise as after the vast lands of Russia; it is set on the islands of Japan:)
Q: If you could step into Mirrorworld, where would you go?
A: I think I would go to California, to find out what the lands I have been living on for eleven years, look like behind the mirrors. But then I would travel on, like Fox and Jacob, to Europe, to Russia, to Japan and China, to New Zealand and Australia and onwards to the South Americas and Africa.
Q: Your series inspire dedicated fan followings - what have you been hearing from your fans of the Reckless books and what are they demanding?
A: My Reckless readers have a very special place in my heart, I have to admit. For two reasons. The series had a rough start all over the world and many readers were upset with me, because I didn't stay in Inkworld. Reckless defined me as a writer, as I had to decide whether to go the easy way and just continue with a hugely successful series or believe in the world I had found behind mirrors - which is in fact the same world, just 500 years later.
I decided to take the more difficult road (always a good decision!:) and to find the readers for this new journey, though they may be very different from all the Dragon riders and Ink worlders. It was, creatively, the most rewarding journey I ever took.
I just published A Griffin's Feather in Germany, my sequel to Dragonrider and publishers and journalists come to me and say: "I loved the first book, Cornelia, but heavens, this is so much better". I owe that compliment to Fox and Jacob, and to Will. They taught me things no other book did, and I can't wait to continue the journey behind the mirrors with them.
Q: What can we expect next for the Reckless characters? Do you have a title / pub date for book 4, and how many books will there be?
A: The book has a working title: I call it THE ISLANDS OF THE FOX and I have 100 pages so far, every chapter doing something I didn't expect!
They are all in Japan, or Nihon, as it is called behind the Mirrors, and my readers will meet at least two more Alder Elves, Krieger and Toshiro. They'll hear about the Kitsune, the foxes of Japanese myth and otherwise... they'll hopefully be surprised as I am while writing.
I plan to write six books, and would love Book 5 to travel to the Americas and Book 6 to Africa and then to Spain, BUT ... I hear the Alder Elves laughing.
Q: What are you working on at the moment and where do you write?
A: I just moved from Los Angeles to Malibu - not too far a move ... my old house is about an hour's drive away, but I can walk to the ocean, I have a work room to paint on big canvasses (something I have been wanting to do for quite a while) and as my son said: now your whole house, is your writing house, mum.
I am typing this, sitting on a balcony, the pacific ocean visible in the distance, the mountains of Serra Canyon on my right. I intend to bring the wilderness into my life over the next few years, to support nature education for city children, to protect and speak up for the natural world ... maybe because I described its beginning decline behind the mirrors and sharpened my eyes for this side:).
I work on four book projects at the moment : First there is THE ISLANDS OF THE FOX and a project Guillermo del Toro, the film director asked me to do: a retelling of PAN'S LABYRINTH, with additional short stories about certain motives of the movie. As the film is my favorite film of all times I couldn't say no and so far working on this has been utterly enchanting. It is also the first time I work only in English.
Then there is THE COLOR OF REVENGE, which is set in Inkworld five years after the events of INKDEATH. One Third is finished and I now put it aside to continue in January. The fourth and last project is research for the next Dragonrider adventure, which means reading folk tales of the Maori and the Native Americans of Alaska. As a friend of mine said: be honest. It's all one big story by now.
Q: Do you have any UK tours or events planned?
A: Yes, I do. I will be in Newcastle (Seven Stories) on the 28th October to do an event with Garth Nix (what an honor!); there is an event in Oxford at the Story Museum on the 29th October; and on the 31st October I'll be at Waterstones, Piccadilly in London.
THANK YOU for answering our questions, Cornelia!
PREVIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH CORNELIA FUNKE:
RECKLESS: THE PETRIFIED FLESH (MIRRORWORLD 1)
September 2010
Cornelia Funke's stories often blur the barriers between our world and that of folk tales and her new Reckless series also makes the transition from the real world to a magical place peopled by characters from old tales and mythologies.
In Reckless, Jacob and Will's father has gone missing. Then Jacob discovers a strange mirror in his father's study through which he finds a way into Mirrorworld - a world of folk tales, filled with magic. However, Mirrorworld is slowly becoming modernised and industrial-age technology is creeping in and distorting what it was.
Among the different creatures living in Mirrorworld are the Goyl, an aggressive people made of stone. The Goyl are slowly conquering Mirrorworld using a combination of human technology and ancient magic. When Jacob's younger brother, Will, follows him into Mirrorworld, an enchantment turns Will into a Goyl. Reckless is about Jacob's search for a cure for his brother.
Before she started to write Reckless, Cornelia Funke had been working with Harry Potter film producer Lionel Wigram on a version of The Nutcracker. Funke says, "That gave me the vision of a nineteenth century fairy tale world becoming modern. I decided to use that idea but to combine it with the Grimm fairy tales that I grew up with. Lionel agreed to work on the story with me and he is credited on the front page of Ruthless."
Funke admits that, as a writer, it was a challenge to have someone involved in the story from the beginning. She says, "We got together for four weeks, seven hours a day, to create the worlds and characters and then exchanged thoughts nearly every day. He challenged me from the beginning and as a writer, youre not used to that, but he writes film scripts and they are a collaborative process."
Since Funke writes in German, her cousin Oliver Latsch had to stay with her throughout the writing process to translate the pages as she wrote, ready for Wigram to read them and to discuss them. She will continue to work with him for the second and final books in the trilogy.
The world she creates in the first book draws on the dark fairy tales from central Europe and the Brothers Grimm, which Funke grew up with. She says, "I did quite a bit of research into the original folk tales and that revealed how much the Grimms had changed them."
The Grimms came from a very bourgeois time with certain ideals and this is reflected in the changes they made in how they wrote down the fairy tales. Women at the time were very restricted and so the strong female heroes of the original folk tales were turned into weak women by the brothers.
"I tried to include characters in my book that were closer to the original fairy tales where women were a unique and powerful force. One of these is Fox, a girl who chooses to take on the identity of a fox. She does not need to be rescued by Jacob."
Funke also shows the cruelty inherent in the fairy world through her depiction of Sleeping Beauty, who is slowly turning to dust within a ruined castle; the Prince who was meant to wake her never arrived.
There is also the cannibalistic witch who has been chased out of the forest although her gingerbread house remains, retaining all the darkness of its former inhabitant and the fear of the children who found their way there. She adds, "There were also far darker themes in the original fairy tales but this book is for children so we didn't want to use those."
Funke plans to write a trilogy about Mirrorworld and to explore different legends and stories in each book. She says, "The second book will be based around British folk tales and fairy tales when I visited the UK again to research them I nearly drowned in them, there are so many." The story will focus on Jacob and Fox as Jacob tries to find another cure, this time for himself. It will also deal with love and death, says Funke.
There is a pervading sense of loss throughout Reckless with Jacob refusing to admit to himself that his constant forays into Mirrorworld are part of his search for his missing father. There is also a sense of the loss of childhood as the two brothers begin to drift apart.
Funke says, "As we get older, we find so many wonderful things on our way, but we also lose them and we have to let go." Funke's husband died four years ago and her children are now either teenagers or have left home. "Finding and losing are so intertwined", she says.
The book also reflects the loss of the fairytale world itself as the modern world with its inventions and machinery begins to encroach. Funk explains, "Its a bit like the sense of change in nineteenth century writing and imagery, where the past is shown as something idyllic which it never was and there is a sense of loss in the process of change."
GHOST KNIGHT
ORION CHILDREN'S BOOKS
NOVEMBER 2012
Eleven year old Jon Whitcroft dreads being sent to boarding school in Salisbury, but it turns out to be even worse than he feared when he is set upon by a pack of vengeful ghosts threatening to murder him.... Can his friend Ella and the ghost of the knight William Longespee save him?
Author Cornelia Funke talked to ReadingZone about GHOST KNIGHT.
When Cornelia Funke visited Salisbury and its famous cathedral some ten years ago, she says that she felt as though the walls were talking to her. "It felt a bit like when I visited Venice and it inspired the story of Thief Lord," she explains. "It was as if the Cathedral was saying to me, 'Look at me, I have a thousand stories to tell!'"
Funke grew up in Germany and Ghost Knight is the first book she has set in England, although her writing is largely inspired by English writers. "All my favourite books are English, but I thought I just couldn't write about England. It's so steeped in the history of literature that I told myself I can't do it, but Salisbury was just so haunting."
She asked for a tour of the Cathedral and that is where she first heard about characters like William Longespee [an illegitimate son of Henry II] and Ela Longespee, his wife, alongside a host of other characters and places that feature in Ghost Knight. She explains, "I thought that here I have the chance to do another story that is placed in reality and to show children the magic of our world.
"We can't go to Harry Potter's Hogwarts, but perhaps I can give them a place that they can go to, Salisbury, where they can discover Longespee's effigy and kneel in front of it and imagine him coming to help them - just as he helps Jon in this story."
There are useful notes at the back of the book detailing the historical facts and stories that Funke draws on for Ghost Knight, and a tour now that children visiting Salisbury Cathedral can make to see the objects and places that she describes in the story.
While there were many characters and stories associated with the Cathedral, and one hundred ghosts she could have developed into a novel, Funke says there was something about Longespee that drew her. "I was so touched by this story about Longespee, a knight who was an illegitimate son of the king.
"He is a very interesting character. There are hymns about him, he was around when the Magna Carta was made and he lead the English fleet. I was fascinated by this character and so touched by his effigy - there was something very delicate about him and I thought, if I bring you alive, I have to do you justice, who are you?"
Funke wasn't sure whether to go back in history and set the story in the past or whether to make it contemporary but says, "My first image of the story was a boy running into the cathedral asking for help, calling the knight Longespee, so it needed to be a contemporary story."
Through Longespee, we find out more about the Medieval world. Funke had already researched this period extensively for her earlier novel, Ink World, but she needed to find out more about knights and warfare to write about Longespee.
She explains, "When you look into knights, you realise these weren't just knights in shining armour, they were war machines, and I am always fascinated by that. On one hand you have the warrior image of a man in a metal suit, fighting, and on the other, the image of knights as saviours and the sense that they would protect the weak - which they mostly never did.
"I am obsessed by the tales of Arthur and his Round Table but when you look at knights in reality and how they fought and died, it was really horrible and I wanted to show some of that through Longespee.
Another of the ghosts in her story is described as coming from a painted picture in Salisbury Cathedral school. Funke says, "I saw four or five paintings hanging in the hallway by the school chapel and one of them stood out for me, the boy looked so evil, and I came back to that and made him a character in the story. The painting is there - you can see it if you visit."
She adds, "I would love children to find these things. I still get children writing and saying they have been to Venice and found places from Thief Lord."
Funke warms to the theme of ghosts themselves. "I like ghost stories but I don't like horror, I hate to be scared like that. Ghosts are an incredible theme for artists, you can question the afterlife and what are we frightened of."
"I do believe in ghosts, although I have never seen one, but I know several people who have. I remember going to visit a private house, a completely normal residential home, and feeling such a dread that my husband and I wanted to leave. We both felt something really bad."
One of the characters in the story, Zelda, is based on the person who leads ghost tours of Salisbury shared a number of her stories with Funke. She adds, delightedly, "There are also people who hunt ghosts. Most people who deal professionally with ghosts say that 95% of haunting are magnetic recordings of strong emotional moments. Which explains why you could be somewhere beautiful but sense something bad happened there.
Ghost Knight itself is a gripping story with some quite dark sections and Funke is confident that it needs to be so. "The thing is with children, if you say it's a ghost story you have to get pretty scary, pretty dark. It doesn't work if you play with them, so I know you have to make it dark and on a page that's easier than in a movie. Sometimes they use these kinds of stories to practice these emotions, whereas as grown-ups we have emotional memories, so it's more real for us. "
When we spoke, Funke was visiting London both for her book launch and to visit her daughter, who now lives in London. She is used now to writing 'on the go' as her home is in Los Angeles in the US. "The most peaceful place for me to write is my house in LA but I often don't get to write there. I worked out that I wrote Reckless in 48 places.
"I can write anywhere now, but I still love my own place. I write in a small house in my garden in LA. There's a lemon tree in front and inside, there's a sofa if I want to sit and think, and a desk which has notes of what children tell me alongside piles of research material. All my bookcases are covered with doors so I can stick pictures and photos onto them. Reckless, book three, is all about Russia, so the images on the doors remind me where I am.
"Right now there is also a big ogre arm on my desk. That's because I am working with a team developing an app to make Mirrorworld real. They draw and sculpt everything that we use and I hope the Mirrorworld app will be available in December."
She keeps in touch with readers via her Facebook page where she puts updates about her writing so readers can see it and track the process of her books. "I do this almost every day, a brief update on my writing and what I am doing, and it gives you such a great dialogue with your readers. I still manage to answer all the letters I receive myself and I hope to keep that going."
Inkheart
Reckless III: The Golden Yarn
