Dale Smith Interview

Dale Smith is an Author, best known for his Doctor Who Book, The Many Hands. I'm sure some of you will have this book as its one of the well known Doctor Who Books. His full name is Paul Dale Smith, but he goes by the name Dale Smith because there is already an author call Paul Smith. Dale was very nice and let me interview him, I asked him a load of questions and you can see these below.

1. When did you start writing professionally?
My first professional writing is a toss up between a radio play that was broadcast when I was sixteen, and two Doctor Who short stories that were published in Doctor Who Magazine around the same time. It depends who I’m talking to which I say it was. Before that, I’d been writing for the amusement of myself and my teachers for a good few years, but then finding out that you could get paid for it . . .

2. What was the first story you ever wrote as an author?
The first novel I wrote was the Doctor Who book Heritage, with the Seventh Doctor and Ace. I’d had a few more plays performed before then, and that gave me the confidence to send an idea off to the BBC. Before that, I’d sent an idea for a sequel to The Curse of Fenric off to Virgin, which starred a young boy very much like me who turned out to be incredibly brave, powerful and IMPORTANT. That one died a death very quickly.

3. Are there any bouandries when writing a Doctor Who novel, incase you ruin the main Doctor Who story line?
If you’re writing something particularly new, then the production team will sneak you in to see a preview of some of the episodes: Mark Michalowski got to do that for both of his books, because both times he was writing a new companion. Unfortunately, The Many Hands was set in a season that had already been on TV – in the middle of Blink – so there was no excuse for me to get any sneak peeks. Other than that, the editor (Justin Richards) generally steers you away from ruining what the TV show is doing: I had a couple of ideas turned down because a future episode was going to include something vaguely similar – an idea that had Romans in, for example, was nixed because Justin new the TV show was planning to do The Fires of Pompeii. Was that what you were asking?

4. Would you be able to tell us how you got some of your ideas for the Doctor Who novel you wrote, The Many Hands?
The main idea behind The Many Hands was wanting to write something set firmly in the tourist bits of Edinburgh: I spent quite a few years visiting the festival, and fell in love with the city in the process. So I started doing some research and found out about the three generations of Alexander Monro, and then Mary King’s Close, and everything started to come together.

5. How did you come to write a novel for Doctor Who?
Because I’d written Heritage for Justin Richards before the new series kicked off, he remembered me when he was thinking of who he should get to write that particular book. Now that Doctor Who is such a big thing, they don’t let people they don’t know write the books any more: if you wanted to get to write a Doctor Who book, you’d have to have written something else already that you could show them. Which would be good practice anyway, I suppose.

6.Tell us a bit about the other stories you've written?
Aside from the ones I’ve mentioned, I’ve written a few short stories for Big Finish and a novella called The Albino’s Dancer for Telos’ Time Hunter series. At some point, that one’s going to get made into an audio book: they’re working their way through the series, and I’m quite near the end.

7. Are there any plans to write another novel for Doctor Who or anything else?
The way things work these days, you have to wait for the BBC to ask you to write a Doctor Who book: I’m always willing, just waiting for the call. But there are other things you can do: Stuart Douglas and Paul Magrs willing, I’ve got a short story in the next Iris Wildthyme collection, and hopefully an article about Dr Who fans and the internet coming out next year. Plus I’ll be doing something at the Lass O’Gowrie’s Novelcon next month.

8. Did you always want to be an author as a child?
I’ve been writing stories for longer than I can actually remember, so I always knew I’d keep doing that. It was something of a surprise to find out that people would pay you money to do it, but if I’d have known that when I was a child, I definitely would have wanted to be a writer. As it was, I think I just wanted a bedroom of my own, rather than a part-share in one with my brother.

Big thank you to Dale for giving up his time to do this for us.