Q&A with Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin, Authors of November/December Kids’ Indie Next List Top Pick “The Bletchley Riddle”

“The Bletchley Riddle is told by a brother and sister who deal with their mother's puzzling disappearance in opposite ways. Full of humor, family, the basics of code breaking, and an actual WWII code-breaking site, Bletchley Park,” said Stephanie Ledyard of Interabang Books in Dallas, Texas.

Bookselling This Week: In past interviews, you've each talked about your individual writing processes, so I was curious to hear how challenging — or maybe not challenging — it was for you to adapt those processes and work together to build this.

Steve Sheinkin: Did people warn you, Ruta, that it was going to be really hard to collaborate with someone?

Ruta Sepetys: They did. I don't want to speak for Steve, but honestly, it was an incredibly joyful, fun experience. Not only that, but I grew a lot from this experience, working with Steve — who's this master of nonfiction — and learning from his process.

SS: I feel the same. It did exactly what people always say, which is to step out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. I have this tried-and-true system that I use for my nonfiction, and it just wouldn't have worked for this. I had to think in a different way in terms of creating twists and turns in the story and really getting emotionally in the character, and it was uncomfortable, but no doubt it made me a better writer.

RS: I think it helped that we have a similar sense of humor and a similar work ethic. Steve and I both clock in in the morning and sort of keep office hours. It might have been harder if we worked on very different schedules. But because we had the same hours, it felt that we had constant access to one another.

SS: We would plan things out on these Zoom meetings. We didn't have a master outline, but we would see far enough ahead to each write a few chapters.

What I realized very quickly is that when Ruta said she was going to write the next chapter, she meant today. I didn't mean today, not at first. Getting started, for me, is always the hardest part. I want to think about it. I want to outline a little more. That was also going out of my comfort zone. No, don't outline it. Just write it. Write a draft today.

RS: It was because I was so excited. We'd have these epic zooms! I'm a pantser, not a plotter, and all of a sudden, we would have what I thought was a detailed outline.

Steve's like, “No, it was like a beat sheet.” But I thought, “My goodness, this is great. Now I know what I'm doing.”

SS: It made it more fun. Fun is not usually a word I associate with writing. It’s rewarding, but it’s hard work. But this one, maybe because of that instant feedback and gratification, I thought, “Oh, I'm gonna see if I can make Ruta laugh with this chapter.”

That's, again, not typical of the toil. If I'm just sitting in this room for six months drafting something, I just don't get that.

BTW: I'd love to hear a little bit about the research for this book. Were there any details that you felt you needed to adhere to, or that you were compelled to stay true to? Was there something that you wanted to include but you weren't able to?

RS: Oh, we’re such research nerds.

SS: We were such sticklers for history. That's actually another thing that I just didn't know. I mostly write narrative nonfiction, so I know I'm not going to make up anything. So what are the parameters for fiction?

Some people said, “Well, just rearrange stuff at your pleasure, and make whatever you want happen. It's fiction.” And that's not Ruta's approach, which I really respected. We really wanted to stick to the real events. Fortunately, you don't have to make anything up to create this incredibly high-stakes story.

Just to give an example, Winston Churchill visited Bletchley Park. We thought, “That would make such a great epilogue to the story!” But then we found out that was in 1941, so it wasn't in our timeline.

That was the kind of thing where people said, “So what? No one knows that — even people who know a lot about World War II.”

And Ruta shook her head and said, “No way.”

RS: No way. We're writing for young readers, and we want to spark their interests so they will research, but we also want to give them something that's as close to authentic as possible. So yeah, we were sticklers on that.

And we visited Bletchley Park! We flew to London and we scouted out locations where Lizzie and Jacob's apartment would be. Then we got on the train and went out to Buckinghamshire, just like they would have. We showed up at the small Bletchley train station and walked with our bags — we didn't get an Uber — just like the codebreakers would have.

SS: It was like walking back in time, and it struck both of us that this is how so many stories begin. So many stories begin with kids being whisked away to some magical (slightly scary at first) place, and that's what happened to our characters. They're whisked away, in this case, to this mansion that had this Wonka-like codebreaking factory.

You can really get that sense today. Of course, you'll see ads and new cars, but if you just focus on the mansion, and the little lake, and these huts that they recreated around the grounds, you really feel like you're walking back into 1940. That was really powerful. We had written a lot of it before, but we re-imagined all of it once we were there.

RS: When we walked in the mansion, it was like walking onto the set of a BBC drama. Everything is so perfectly preserved and every volunteer that we came upon had a certain niche of knowledge related to Bletchley, or a certain time period, or a particular codebreaker. Every bit of it was just magical.

We also explored the surrounding village to determine where these people would live. We worked with Dr. David Kenyon, who's the official research historian for Bletchley.

SS: When I meet people like that, I feel like a kid meeting a grown up. He's not even that much older than us — if at all — but he just looked so dapper. We quickly bonded, because we were obsessed with getting this stuff right.

We skipped all the obvious things because we’d read stacks of books about it. I think he appreciated that we wanted to know really, really specific things like, “Where was the pigeon loft?

We were asking things like that just aren’t in any book. “Can you show us exactly where?” “Where was the tennis court?” “Where was the hedge maze?” (They had a hedge maze!)

There are just a few people in the world who have thought about this more than us, and they were all there.

RS: Dr. Kenyon got just as excited as we were when we said, “Look, it's important to us to really incorporate some of the more underrepresented stories of Bletchley. Particularly the women.” (It's estimated that at the end of the war, 75% of the workforce there were women.)

He was very passionate, and it felt like he was grateful that we had done that research. Then he opened up and started sharing more interesting details.

For example, Steve had mentioned that Ian Fleming, the writer of James Bond, was there at Bletchley. Dr. Kenyon told us that Tolkien had been interviewed as a potential codebreaker. He told us of a roster that listed people who were interviewed or recruited, and next to Tolkien's name, it said, “keen,” in parentheses. And we were trying to figure out, did that mean he was keen to be a codebreaker, or was that referring to the pronunciation of his name?

We're also very grateful to all of the authors of nonfiction who have written about the Battle of Britain and Bletchley, because our work stands on the shoulders of nonfiction. The author Michael Smith zoomed with us and helped us work through some plot points.

SS: That was incredibly valuable. Not only is he the unofficial expert of Bletchley history, he was an intelligence officer (as many great spy novelists throughout history have been). And it almost felt like giving us permission sometimes. We’d ask, “Could this really happen?” “Oh yeah, I could see that happening.” I think that gave me a lot of confidence when he said, “Yes, yes. Actually, that is clever. That could happen, definitely.”

RS: As you might imagine, there are people who have devoted many years of study to Bletchley, and I've seen some people say, “Oh, I thought I knew a lot, but these are some new details and I really enjoyed it.” Our British publisher presented the book to Bletchley Park, and they appreciate it and are excited. So it's just wonderful.

BTW: Some of the facts that were in fiction books I read as a kid, are the facts that still stick with me. So having everything in your book be factual, it's just very valuable.

RS: Thank you for saying that. I felt that today at one of the school visits that we did. We were sharing that the great codebreaker, Alan Turing, cashed in his life savings and put it into silver bars when it looked like German invasion was imminent. He buried them outside of Bletchley. Later, he wasn't able to find his treasure. This is an actual fact, and when we told the students that, you could see them realize, “Wait, the silver's still there.” They wanted to research that. And even as an adult, those are the points that I also really gravitate toward,

BTW: So, if I understand right, you each took one of the main characters and wrote those chapters?

SS: Yes, exactly. I think we fell into a kind of a sibling relationship pretty easily. We both have brothers and sisters, so we know what that's like. We broke up the story into parts. Ruta thinks we outlined everything, and I think we just made it up as we went along. The chapters are short, but we would each write specifically from our character's point of view and then pass it on.

BTW: Was there anything particularly challenging about each of your characters?

RS: For me, it was really important that I capture the voice of this character. I wanted it to come organically. It was challenging, but I listened to interviews of some of these females who worked at Bletchley Park. And I realized there was a precocious feeling. I mean, imagine you're working there at 14 years old and you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act — you are very precocious. Trying to capture that voice was a little challenging, but once I heard her, then there she was.

SS: I think of myself as a creative writer, but this was creative in a different way. There was the obvious challenge of “All right, he has to be a codebreaker. He has to sound like he really does understand all this stuff.” (So he's essentially much smarter than I am in this way.) That's a challenge a lot of writers take on, but it's not something I had ever done.

But the biggest challenge, for me, was unexpected. Ruta and our editor, Chelsea, had some comments like, “I really want to know a little bit more about what he's feeling.” That's something that I just don't deal with all the time. In nonfiction, when you have that kind of source material it’s great, but a lot of times you don't. In this case, it's up to me to make it up. It has to feel right and real for this person.

RS: Steve really had the herculean task because he was writing the codebreaker and had to present the information about codes, and ciphers, and how the actual Enigma machine works in a way that a young reader not only can grasp it, but get excited about.

That is really hard. And then we’re saying, “Oh, great, and what's he feeling?”

Steve, I bet sometimes you were like, “Look, he's feeling like he needs to win the war.” Yet he managed to do it all!

For me, it was a bit of an exercise in vulnerability. In the beginning, it was like, “This is Steve Sheinkin!” But then along the way, we began to edit each other. Then Steve would say, “Okay, here. Put this into Lizzie speak.” And in one of my chapters, I would say, “How would Jacob say this?”

So we did go into each other's chapters. I loved that. I thought that that really benefited the book in general.

BTW: That is so cool. Any idea what you will be working on next, either together or separately?

SS: I know the next thing. I have a couple graphic novels that are being drawn right now, and that takes a very long time. It's just a huge job. The next thing that will come out is my next narrative nonfiction book, a middle grade Wild West crime story.

RS: And my next project, that I've been researching for years and years, is a YA novel about historical stigma. It’s about millions of innocent human beings who became prisoners of prejudice because they were diagnosed with a disease that was thought to be very contagious. They were exiled to remote islands because they had Hansen's disease, which we later realized is not as contagious as everyone thought.

BTW: Those both sound very exciting. I have one more question. Would you tell us a little bit about the role of books and indie bookstores in your life?

RS: My career as an author was built by indie bookstores, teachers, and librarians working together. Meeting indie booksellers who then arranged school visits for me helped me build relationships with teachers and librarians. They handsold my books to their customers who they knew had a cultural connection or personal interest in these topics. It's such a foundational element of my entire career.

SS: Same. I mean, I've gotten good at sitting in this room and writing, but that's doesn't get you a career, because no one would necessarily know. It's because of librarians or booksellers who make those connections and think, “Oh, I know who might like this kind of book.”

And just to put it over the top, my local indie is Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga, where my wife has worked since they opened. She's the events manager there. So we're not diversified at all in our family holdings. We're just all in on the indie book world.