Steve Pratt speaks to a York author who’s slaying dragons with the pen rather than the sword.

TEACHER-turned-novelist Tim Murgatroyd can’t explain how he managed to get inside the head of the leading character in his debut novel Taming Poison Dragons.

“For some reason I found the voice of the main character came to me remarkably easily. Why that should be I have no idea – he’s a 12th Century Chinese nobleman,” he says.

Murgatroyd, on the other hand, is a 42-year-old English teacher at a school in York. But he does have a love of Chinese poetry, the inspiration for this first book. “That was where it all began,” he explains. “I read Chinese poetry and remember thinking I could do an amazing novel about a Chinese poet. Then I thought ‘I’ve never seen one’ and that was it, I was off.

“I have a huge collection of Chinese poetry that I’ve gathered over the years, so it must have been planting seeds in my mind. But I had no idea I’d end up writing a book about a poet.”

The novel is, to quote the press blurb, “a tale of poetry and war, political turmoil and reckless love during the Chinese Sung dynasty” that’s told through the eyes of exiled poet Yun Cai. Murgatroyd loved writing it and hopes that enthusiasm comes through in the book itself. Although he’s always written, he hasn’t had anything published before.

“I did a contemporary love story last time and it was considered by a publisher but not accepted. The difference with Taming Poison Dragons is the setting and characters. I think it’s very original,” he says.

“I love teaching but have always written poetry. I wanted to be a poet before writing novels. I hope I still have elements of a poetic style in the book, but that’s up to the reader to judge, not for me to say.

“Certainly, trying to get the voice of the main character – because it’s a first person narrative – I had to try to use poems in translation as a guide to the voice in some ways.”

He acknowledges that Chinese poetry isn’t for everyone, simply because of the way they’re written, with characters vertical on the page and the absence of linking words like you and the.

His interest was stimulated on discovering a slim volume of Chinese poetry in a second-hand bookshop.

Despite this interest, he’s never visited China. “I suppose I’ve been there imaginatively many times, but not physically,” he adds.

HE was lucky as the first publisher to be sent the novel showed an interest. That was Newcastle-based Myrmidon, whom he opted to contact after they had a novel longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He acquired a literary agent about the same time.

He believes the book got noticed because it’s different. He’s been unable to find anything similar on bookshelves, although adds “I’m sure someone will prove me wrong”.

“One of the problems with categorising this book is that it’s historical fiction and does have a racy story – war, family, historical epic, but it’s written in quite a literary style as well. When I wrote it, it was to write something that I would find entertaining.

“I did tons of research. I’d read large amounts of poetry and loved it, but I was researching as I was writing. All I did was read books about the Sung dynasty for about two years.”

He’s already at work on a sequel centred around descendants of the family in the first book and set during the Mongol invasion of China.

He has plans for a third one to complete the trilogy.

If the first book is successful, he’d like to see if any publisher would produce a volume of Chinese poetry.

“I’d love more people to read it. It’s very different to our tradition, it really says a lot about life. There are so many great poets as well.”

THE readers of his debut novel could well be pupils at the school in York where he teaches. “Some of my sixth formers in particular will be quite interested because I teach A-level literature. So we’ll see,” he says.

He had to fit in writing his book around teaching and family life, with music teacher wife Ruth and their sons, Tom, eight, and Oliver, nine.

“It did require real self-discipline because sometimes I’d have to write when I wasn’t really in the mood and I was tired. Marking is a killer if you want to do some writing.”

The title also proved a problem.

The publishers felt his original, How Clouds Float, was too ethereal and asked him to come up with another.

He chose Taming Poison Dragons, which comes from a Chinese saying meaning to grapple with your inner demons.

■ Taming Poison Dragons is published by Myrmidon, hardback £16.99 and paperback £12.99