Author Q&A

Where do you write?
Well I have a study so ostensibly there but really I write anywhere – at my desk during lunchbreaks, on my laptop in bed. I had to be flexible with where I write because it is about timing, of which I never have enough of as I also work full time.

Do you use a pen or a computer?
I used to be a complete stickler for the pen. But then self correction is just impossible in that way as is editing so I moved to my laptop.

When did you start writing?
I wrote my first novel when I was thirteen but if anyone ever showed it to me now I would cringe and die of shame. I have always written here and there but this is my first proper novel and I began it in January 2008.

What are the pros and cons of being a writer?
The pros are that you do the things you love. The cons is the publishing process – in trying to get a publisher, an agent, a deal. It’s all that which is stressful and terrifying and keeps you wide eyed and awake in the hour of the wolf. Luckily for me I love my publishers but I had to kiss a lot of frogs before I found a gem.

What writers have inspired you?
Daphne Du Maurier, Anne Frank, Alice Walker, Tolstoy, Wilkie Collins, Junot Diaz, Jeanette Winterson, Flaubert, the Bronte sisters, Anne Tyler, Tennessee Williams, endless endless lists of  better and more talented forbears.

How important is a sense of place in your writing?
It is everything, it is your world. Nothing exists in a vacuum, not even characters. Maybe that’s why I hate Waiting for Godot.

Do you spend a lot of time researching your novels?
Yes if they are set away from here and in a different time. Authenticity is everything. It is a total bore – I learned far more about the North American farming practises than I ever wanted to or needed to but it was necessary.

What distracts you the most?
Myself. Seriously my mind will wander and before I know it I will have written a mental shopping list, tidied the rooms, put a wash on, snacked on some chocolate. Funnily enough if I have music and noise it focuses me – essentially shuts up my inner voices. It is silence which is a killer.

Do your characters ever surprise you?
All the time.  They stop being characters and start being real voices that want to be heard. I often argue with them, sometimes even loathe them but I always miss them when I have finished with them. And invariably the ones people hate are the ones I love writing the most because they were the most honest, even at their worst.

How much of your life and the people around you do you put into your books?
I try not to actually. But nothing comes out of nothing. I think my obsession with the family dynamic definitely stems from my own unhappy upbringing. But I would never base a character on someone I knew – that would just be retelling not creating. Where is the fun in that?

What advice would you give to aspiring novelists?
Be prepared for rejection. It is hand in hand with this business. Be prepared to be knocked and knocked and then knocked again. But persevere, because nothing is better than the notion your story will have a spine and sit on a bookshelf other than your own. Whatever happens, whatever you do – whenever someone asks what you did with your life, you can show them this. It will also live on longer than you, so make sure it is something you can be proud of.

 

My five favourite books

Matilda by Roald Dahl
The first time I read this I realised I had found my fictional self. Sadly without the telepathic powers but it was daring to read a book where an adult admitted that sometimes, they don’t know better than the child they are meant to raise, and sometimes they are just as scared as we were of the dark and everything in it.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
The most haunting opening lines I have ever read and from the twist after twist, its subversion of the eponymous novel with a protagonist whose name you never know and its evocation of sinister and malevolent forces that both enthral as well as terrify. It was horrible putting it down and realising you had finished and that there would be no more.

A  Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Visceral, wonderful language. Complex, haunting characters. A story with a shocking ending, a heroine you feel both sympathy and disdain for. The first time I ever realised writing could be modern and beautiful and awful at the same time – like life.

Madame Bovary by Flaubert
Complicated women…I love to write about complicated women. Women you should hate but who you also love; women who are bad but also who are vulnerable. And it always galled me that my favourite evocation of this was written by a man.

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
So good. I mean seriously good to the point you have to stroke the cover when you are finished. I thought I would hate it – so not my kind of book. The central character is a fat comic book virginal nerd. But the writing just swept you away and by the end of it I wanted to flee to the Dominican republic. It also shows how it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.