Georgie Tanner

Georgie is an unwanted girl whose single greatest ability is the art of getting into trouble. She has almost no friends, she's been expelled from three schools, and no headmaster would want her in his school any more than he would like a poke in the face with a hot sausage. Then, one fateful day at St Mary's School for Particularly Difficult Children, Georgie and Thomas sink through a bottomless puddle into the land of Allegoria and discover what trouble really is!

Georgie was the first character that Justyn created for these books. Georgie's character was inspired by some orphans and street kids that Justyn met only months before starting The Magician's Daughter, while he was visiting in the slums of Brazil. Though these stories are set in the city of London, England, Justyn says that Georgie's tough and often misunderstood character is a lot like those street kids. She finds it hard to trust adults because they always seem to let her down, but deep down, she wants a family of her own.

Thomas Finnigan

Thomas is Georgie's best friend, well her only friend, but who's counting. Thomas is not the bravest or the smartest of people. In fact, when Georgie first meets him he has an impressive collection of bruises that were donated to him by the school bullies, the Beatie boys. But Thomas gets a lot braver when he encounters a fire-breathing, claw-shredding, drool-slobbering dragon named Sparky in The Magician's Daughter.

Justyn chuckles that in some ways, the character of Thomas is a little more like him when he was that age ... a nervous, skinny kid with a mop of floppy hair. "Sometimes when I write stories, I invent characters that are the opposite of me: bold, daring characters like Georgie, who charge into adventures and don't take rubbish from anyone. Then sometimes I invent characters that are more like me. Thomas is one of those characters."

Smokey the Terrible

Smokey the Terrible is a sneaky dragon that Thomas first befriends in The Magician's Daughter. His name used to be Sparky, until Thomas changed it to something more sensible. He lives in the dragon pit beneath the dungeon, where Pudgeton the dragon keeper feeds him and cleans out his dragon-litter tray on a daily basis. Urgh!

Justyn came up with the character of Smokey when he was trying to think of the coolest pet a boy could have. "When I was young, the coolest thing that could happen to a boy growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney was to have the biggest dog in the street. A dog that only obeyed YOU. Unfortunately, my mum had a thing for small poodles. But I remember dreaming of one day owning a black panther. Then I'd show them all!" Of course, the bigger and cooler a pet gets, the harder it is for a boy to control it. That makes for some good fun in the story when Thomas is trying to control a two-tonne dragon!

The Magic Book

Believe it or not, the Magic Book is based on the Walker family dog, "Shamps". Shamps is a mischievous little mut (yes another poodle) who plays hide-and-seek when it's time to be put out, is very fond of sneaking, sleeps on your bed and growls when you try to move it. Shamp's hobbies include guarding things and attacking the vacuum cleaner.

Max Mousewing: Agent MM

A little known story about the The Magician's Daughter is that Max Mousewing, aka Agent MM, was not in any of the early drafts. After completing the manuscript, Justyn felt there was something missing. The story had so many dubious characters that Georgie and Thomas needed a reliable ally they could trust. A comedy side-kick, so that it wasn't all doom and gloom. So he rewrote the story with a brand new character: Max!

Can you imagine the story without Max? There would be no secret agent training, no whump into a wall, no batty latin ... and no crazy disguises! For a bit of fun, drag some of the different disguises below onto Max. When you get them in the right spot they'll snap into position.

Making the plates

A printing plate is a thin sheet of aluminum that contains the words and the pictures of the book. The plates are fed into the printing press around a roller. This is how the words and pictures of a book get onto the paper. A single plate will print 16 pages of the book. Because the pages are double-sided, a second plate will print 16 pages on the other side of the paper, so that what flies out the end of the press is a single sheet of paper with 32 pages printed on it. Because they have to load new plates for each 32 page section of the book, they print each section separately and then put them together later.

The paper

The press prints on huge sheets about a metre long. A single sheet of paper will have 32 pages of the book printed on it, (16 pages on each side). For this reason, the number of pages in my books are a multiple of 32 e.g. (10 x 32 = 320 pages). This is why some books you read have blank pages in the front or in the back.

Printing ten thousand books requires around five tons of paper - enough to fill your bedroom from floor to ceiling! That's one reason I put so much work into my books. If I'm using that much paper I want to make sure it's for a good reason.

The printing press

At the top of the press is an ink bath, where the ink is scooped in. Rollers transfer the ink onto the plate that we have made. A special solution on the plate means that the ink will only stick in those places that we want it to. The plate then rolls against another roller called the blanket, transferring the ink onto it. The paper is then squished up against the blanket and that's how the ink transfers onto the page.

When the press is fired up, it can cruise at around 8000 sheets an hour. It prints thousands of tiny dots on the paper which make up the words and pictures. If you look at a book through a microscope you will see these dots. In fact there are 2400 dots per square inch.

The book cover

What about the colourful book cover? For that, they use a 4 colour printing press. From the combination of black, red, blue and yellow inks we can make any colour we want. This is why in the printing world they call it a 4-colour process, when to us there are millions of colour we see in the final product. As each printed book cover flies out, an infrared heater dries the ink, so that it doesn't smear against the other pages when all the pages are compacted down on top of each other. It gives off a fiery red light, seen in the picture above.

Making up the books

When the paper comes off the press it has 32 pages on a single sheet. So they have a machine that folds each sheet up to get the 32 pages in the right order. The problem is each 32 page section of the book is joined in one piece.

So they put all the folded sections together in order, one on top of the other, then glue the left side which will become the spine. (Look closely at the spine of a paperback book and you will see these different sections and the glue that holds them.) The book cover is clamped over the top while the glue is sticky. Finally they trim off the other three edges of the paper in what's called a three blade guillotine, which leaves free pages.

Finished

Here's the finished product of my book The Magician's Daughter, printed, folded, glued, and guillotined. I've got to say they've done a fantastic job! Now if only I knew how to sell books ... hmmm.