It impresses me that Oppel can create unique voices for so many characters, even though the conflicts they must meet are quite similar to those of the characters in other books. Although Nocturna's and Cama Zotz's names do not appear in the book, the story sets up the big conflicts the bats must deal with in the Silverwing trilogy. And they did.Īfter immersing myself in the Silverwing trilogy, it was neat to take a step back in time with Darkwing and catch a glimpse of the world that came before Shade and Marina. I got a letter from them, saying they wanted to take me on, and try to sell my story. I never heard back from Roald Dahl directly, but he read my story, and liked it enough to pass on to his own literary agent.

We had a family friend who knew Roald Dahl - one of my favourite authors - and this friend offered to show Dahl my story. It turned out to be quite a long story, really a short novel, and I rewrote it the next summer.

I started out writing sci-fi epics (my Star Wars phase) then went on to swords and sorcery tales (my Dungeons and Dragons phase) and then, during the summer holiday when I was fourteen, started on a humorous story about a boy addicted to video games (written, of course, during my video game phase). and on the opposite coast, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.At around twelve I decided I wanted to be a writer (this came after deciding I wanted to be a scientist, and then an architect). I was born in 1967 in Port Alberni, a mill town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia but spent the bulk of my childhood in Victoria, B.C.

Silverwing bat book