We chat with author Amelia Tait about Lily Tripp: Diary of an Accidental Time Traveler, which is the start of a brilliantly funny accidental time-travel diary series for tweens and follows a 13-year-old girl who tackles timeslip mishaps, laugh-out-loud embarrassing moments, and one unpredictable adventure after another.
Hi, Amelia! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a London-based journalist and a curious person – truthfully, probably in both senses of the word. I write articles about strange, fascinating and unique phenomena and people, from competitive eaters who’ve fallen in love to the inventor of novelty bubble bath bottles. My biggest hobbies outside of writing are: discovering new crisp/chip flavours in foreign supermarkets; making miniature food out of clay; eating blue raspberry candy; and pressing play on the Lord of the Rings trilogy and weeping from minute one.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
It feels silly to say I’ve “always” loved writing stories, because for the first three or four years of my life, I was really busy with the alphabet. But ever since I mastered that, I’ve loved writing – I actually have a self-portrait from when I was around 7; it’s of me sat at a desk with a giant pencil, captioned, “This is a picture of me writing a story”. I loved creative writing classes at school, especially the times the teacher read my work out loud (I still remember the times she didn’t!).
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly-Poly Pudding
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Phantom Tollbooth
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Come and Get It
Your latest novel, Lily Tripp: Diary of an Accidental Time Traveler, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Surprising, funny, historical, dramatic, different!
What can readers expect?
A typical tween coming-of-age story with a time-travel twist. Every New Year’s Day, Lily jumps back in time and lives in a different era. Everyone she knows – from her best friend Poppy to the love of her many lives, Ollie – comes with her too. But here’s the thing: Lily is the ONLY one who remembers that they haven’t always been Victorians, Romans, or hippies, and so she consequently often struggles to fit in. Lily deals with the kind of issues every 13-year-old girl deals with, from clueless crushes to friendship fallouts, but she has to deal with them while also figuring out what a “farthingale” is and how to avoid the town pillory…
Where did the inspiration for Lily Tripp: Diary of an Accidental Time Traveler come from?
I adored The Princess Diaries series when I was growing up, and I realised during the pandemic that I’d love to write a diary-style book for young people today. Because I’ve spent years looking for unique stories with my journalism, I knew I wanted to do something different here, too. I love history, so the idea of being able to take my protagonist to different eras excited me greatly. I wanted to show readers everyday life in the past.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
To get details about what life was like in different centuries, I consulted over 150 library books – I even interviewed 10 women who were teens in one of the eras that pops up in the book. That felt very fulfilling, and I loved learning more about their lives. Equally, I loved writing about Lily’s first crush – because it’s such a unique and special thing!
What’s your pitch to parents, caregivers, educators, and librarians to get this in the hands of readers?
This is a “hidden veggie pasta sauce” of a book. We all know it’s sometimes easier to get kids to eat their greens by blending them up and hiding them in tomato sauce, right? Lily Tripp is a book about history – with an important message about conformity – disguised by the tomato sauce of cute crushes, friendship drama and cliff-hanger chapters. I think it’s fun and I hope it’s funny – I really believe there’s something for a lot of children here.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that initially, at one point in the book, Lily ended up in 1349 – that is, the time of the Black Death. They say that writers should kill their darlings, but they should definitely also kill their bubonic plagues. I wasted a lot of time researching the period (ask me about what a lot of fiction gets wrong about this pandemic!), so it was hard to let it go. But I had to let it go – because it really didn’t fit with the tone of the rest of the book!
What’s next for you?
Lily Tripp is actually a trilogy, so I’m currently greatly enjoying working on book two! My dream is to write books for every age group in every genre – I’d love to be prolific!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I am really looking forward to the next book in Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures series. I think they’re unrivalled when it comes to modern children’s books. My favourite books I’ve read this year are Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns and London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe.
