Turning young guns into Top Guns

So, my interest in aviation happened very early. Then, as a teenager, I joined the Air Cadets, entered ADFA and the Air Force at 18, left school, and had an 18-year career as an Air Force logistics officer. I have kept my love of aviation at the forefront of my career, and I currently work in defence aviation for Boeing Defence Australia. I’ve been involved in fast jets, particularly the classic Hornets. I used to work as a squadron supply officer for 76 and 77 Squadron, as well as 81 Wing and Air Combat Group, so I’ve been very fortunate to be around some pretty exciting aircraft in my career, and I’m still involved in that world now, which is fantastic. So, I’m very, very lucky.

AA: What gave you the notion to write a kids’ book about aviation?

MH: I wrote the book that I would like to have read when I was between the ages of eight and probably 13, because there aren’t many fiction middle-grade books out there for kids about flying. Like, it’s incidental – it’s not a main plot point or a main feature of a lot of the middle-grade action books around – and I really just wanted to write a book that I would have liked to have read, or have been available to me, when I was growing up.

There are a lot of kids out there who love flying and go flying with their parents on weekends, and I think many libraries, books, and schools don’t understand how many kids share a love and passion similar to mine. So, that was really the inspiration for the book – I was thinking about what sort of book I would have liked to have read, and then going about researching and working out how to write that novel.

AA: Can you tell us a bit about what Jett Cooper is about?

MH: So, Jett Cooper is about a 14-year-old boy who actually wants to be an aerobatic race pilot – so, think about the Red Bull Air Races, but for teenage kids – and he wants this really desperately, and he’s being taught to fly by his father, who is an instructor. His dad actually enters him in the first-ever junior air race competition for kids, but they do that on the low down because Jett’s mum is always worried about safety.

When an accident happens, and it’s very close to Jett, his mum bans all things flying, so Jett has to work out a way to enter the competition, fly in the competition, and win it, because the first prize is actually a scholarship to the local flying academy, which will set him on the path to becoming the pilot that he wants to be. So, that’s really the main plot point, and the main feature of aviation throughout the book.

AA: Where did the character of Jett himself come from?

MH: After I decided that I wanted to write this type of story, he just walked into my head and said, “All right, this story is going to be about me, and you need to write this story about me”. I had a very strong sense of him as a character and what he wanted to do, so he must have been sitting there in the background for a long time waiting for me to realise that I was ready to write a story about him.

I also happen to be very fortunate: I’ve got four children, three of whom are boys, so I have been around teenage boys for a long time. My youngest son is 14 at the moment, so I have a lot of experience and observation. I watched them a lot as they were going through those teenage years, which helped me write Jett as he came more and more to life in the different drafts of the novel. He first appeared, and then I borrowed from my sons to get some of his more nuanced characteristics down pat.

I actually think there’s a fair bit of myself in there – I think that fascination, and that awe, and that love of being in and around aviation, very much comes from me; that is very much a part of who I am and who I was growing up. So, I think there’s a lot of Jett in me, and maybe a little bit of the book is me rewriting history, so that it would have been a little bit different if things had turned out differently in my life.

AA: Another important character is Jett’s best friend, Ella. How much of yourself did you put in Ella as a young girl who was also trying to prove herself on the flying circuit?

MH: A lot! I’m writing a companion novel now where Ella is my main character, so I’m really thinking about her now – not just for how she was written in Jett, because that’s very important that she doesn’t deviate away from that, but I’m actually now developing her more deeply as a character, and she is very much based on me in terms of being wanting to do very well at school, playing sport, and trying to be the best that she can be all the time – and also a little bit not so great at taking criticism. So, there’s a lot of me as a teenage girl in her, and she’s very different from Jett as well; even though they both have elements of me, they have very different parts of my personality in them, and they’re magnified a little bit.

Ella is very much like I was at school, wanting to do well, caring a lot about her school marks, and doing her homework – so, she’s very diligent, and she’s very conscientious, so that part of her very much draws from me and my experience at school. She was a nice character to write as well – I deliberately made her a better pilot than Jett because I needed to create obstacles for him; he needs challenges. That was a very deliberate choice as well: the level of competition that he faced needed to be realistic, and it needed to be aspirational for him, so he needed to want to be better technically at the flying that he does, and he can only do that if he’s got a really good opponent, and Ella is that opponent.

AA: What do you think is the hardest part of the research that you had to do for this book?

MH: Describing the flying – working out how to translate the visual spectacle of watching these races onto a page, that was one of the hardest things that I had to do, and it took me a very long time to work out how to do that. In the end, I just sat down and watched video after video after video of the Red Bull Air Races, and I talked out loud and described what I was seeing. I watched lots of videos, especially ones with cameras on the pilots inside the cockpits, and I really watched what they did – I tried to get their hand movements and see how they were using the stick, and whether I could see their pedal movements as well.

So, that took a lot of time to make sure that I didn’t lose momentum and excitement as I was writing the flying scenes, and that I was describing it very accurately, and I could give readers a sense of how fast and how dynamic that flying is, and reading it, watching it, and then narrating it to myself and refining that, helped me work out how to write that down and keep that exciting, so that the readers got a really good sense of what that was like as a pilot in those aircraft.

AA: How did you make this book appealing to middle-grade readers? What process did you use to make it exciting not just for boys but for girls as well?

MH: Well, I think having the two characters, so Jet and Ella, was really important to make it appealing for boys and girls. As I said, my next novel is focused on Ella, so that I’ve got the companion novels together. Ella’s story will be a little bit different – she’ll go to the academy and learn how to do formation flying, so it’s going to have a slightly different focus and a slightly different plot line. It’s important to have that balance, I think, of characters, so that kids can recognise themselves in that world; my aim is that hopefully for kids that want to fly, or who are fascinated and interested in aviation – and not just as air crew, but engineering, technical services, whatever that world involves – that they’ve got something there that they can read and have access to, if that’s something that they’re interested in.

I think one of the things I was very conscious of when I wrote it is that the first chapter of the book is set in the cockpit. It’s set with Jett and his dad, Jack, and that was very important, so as you enter the book, you get a sense of that world, you get a sense of the characters and also the difference of that world. The language in it is very much focused on aviation terms, so people are quickly introduced to the aviation world, including the measurements and the different things they talk about when they’re flying. That was something I hope kids really responded to: situating themselves in an aircraft at the front of the book, and then keeping that going as Jett works out a way to get into the competition and keeps flying.

I hope, too, that the conflict between Jett and his mum is really relatable with kids. I hope they can really experience and understand that the conflict he has with his mum is relatable as well, because we all know that sometimes the teenage relationship with parents is a bit fractious – it’s not all congenial, sunshine, and roses. So, I hope that allows kids to relate to him as well, because, yeah, that’s a big part of the book. That conflict between them and the grief they experience is very different, even if it’s about the same thing. That’s a very important emotional part of the book, and something I really wanted to highlight is that kids feel grief. They may feel it very differently from the adults that are still in the world. So, hopefully there are some of the elements I’ve managed to present to kids that they’ve really enjoyed.

AA: Do you think giving kids a book like this is a good way to get them interested in a career in aviation?

MH: Absolutely, absolutely. I think part of me writing the book is also a message that I want to send to kids: flying the actual aircraft is not the only way to be involved in aviation. There are many careers that you can have, even if you’re not able to be a pilot, but you want to be in that industry and around the aircraft. So, the book is one way to do it: to show people, to get kids interested in aviation, to give kids who are already interested another part of the puzzle, and to give them something that feeds their imagination and gets them even more excited and interested.

Even though I’m not a pilot, I love being in this industry. I have had a fantastic career, and there are many, many careers that you can have in aviation, even if it’s not flying. I work with engineers, supply people, contractors, and procurement agents; I work with other nations’ militaries as well, and there are many things we can do in aviation, even if we’re not directly sitting in the cockpit ourselves.

AA: What kind of feedback have you had so far from kids and from people in the industry?

MH: I’ve had fantastic feedback. I was just checking my Goodreads stats during the week, and the book is sitting at a really high rating of over 4 on average, so the feedback has been really good. A lot of the written feedback from those readers, kids and adults, is that they’re surprised that they enjoy a book about flying; they didn’t think that they would, but they’ve really enjoyed it. I work with fast jet pilots, and the ones who’ve read it have really enjoyed it as well. Then I’ve got other people in my circle who’ve read it and who are involved in aviation who have bought it for their grandkids, and their grandkids and their nieces and nephews have given me really good feedback, and they’ve really loved it.

So, it’s getting some really great feedback, which is lovely. I try very hard not to use the technical side of aviation as a barrier for people who aren’t in aviation. Still, I also try very hard to make sure that there is a balance of that, so that the people who are in that world recognise it enough, and so it’s nice to get feedback to say that it’s not a barrier, but also it’s a fantastic experience for those who are reading it.

AA: And the most important critics of all, what do your own kids think?

MH: My own kids are very proud – they have grudgingly read it, but I kind of had to force them, because anything that Mum does is a bit of a chore! But their feedback has been good, and my youngest son, my 14-year-old, has actually been a willing participant in some of my social media, so I’ve dressed him up in a flying suit and a helmet, and he has done some videos and photos for me to help promote the book. They’ve been talking about it at school with their teachers, which is really nice as well – so, they’ve liked it!

Jett Cooper by Melanie Hill is available through Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon, or at www.melaniehill.au.