THE INVISIBLE writer By Muriel Cooper Photos Gary Sissons
J
ames Aitchison calls himself the invisible writer because you probably haven’t heard of him, despite having 201 books, 264 poems, 104 short stories and 20 essays published, with over three million books sold. However, you might recognise one of his pseudonyms. James Lee, David Carrick, Mike Rader, and T.N. Roman, among others. His two series, written for readers from year levels six to twelve, Mr Midnight and Mr Mystery, are wildly popular in Singapore, where Jim lived for many years, and in surrounding Asian countries. They’ve been translated into almost every Asian language and are studied in universities and taught in schools there. Jim has won an Australian Arts in Asia award for his contribution. Now, ‘Mr Midnight: Beware The Monsters’ is a series on Netflix, and it’s a lot of fun. While Jim uses his real name for poetry (he is published in several anthologies, and in one, A World Full Of Poems, he is in the company of the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Emily Dickenson), he uses pen names because, as he says, "People won’t let you out of your genre, so if you’re Agatha Christie you have to write crime, if you’re Enid Blyton, about cucumber sandwiches, so I change my name to suit the audience. In the children’s books – the horror stories for Asia – no one could pronounce Aitchison, so I called myself James Lee because that’s East/West. In another, I called myself T.N. Roman. No one knows what it means, but it’s a typeface – Times New Roman.’ He says, laughing uproariously." Jim was born in Sydney and went into advertising in Melbourne, writing copy. "It was great fun, going to ‘In Melbourne Tonight’ and doing the commercial rehearsals. Hal McElroy (Picnic At Hanging Rock, Blue Heelers, Sea Patrol) was my offsider. Hal and I used to take these trays of cold Noon Pies, and we’d be so hungry we’d eat three or four of them before we got them into the prop cage at GTV 9." continued page 30...
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28 | PENINSULA
February 2024
