A Conversation with Yvette Edwards

Yvvette Edwards was born in Barnet and grew up in the London Borough of Hackney. She continues to live in East London with her family. In an interview with Words of Colour, Yvette told how she first started writing after the death of Elvis Presley when she was 10 years old. Her mother and relatives at the time wailed as if a family member had died, so it was a way of working through the grief and trauma. She is a lover of stories of all kinds, and can sometimes be spotted frequenting the cinema and theatre, or wearing sunglasses and crouched low in shady corners suited to eavesdropping.

Yvvette only started to take her career seriously at 40 years old. Her first book, A Cupboard Full of Coats – the story of Jinx whose mother was stabbed to death in their East London home – made a big literary impact and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It went on to garner numerous other nominations, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Writers’ Guild Awards, the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and the Waverton Good Read, and won the Kirkus Best Book of the Year Award.

Yvvette Edwards' second novel, The Mother, tells Marcia's story.

Marcia is heading to the Old Bailey. She's going there to do something no mother should ever have to do: to attend the trial of the boy accused of her son's murder. She's not meant to be that woman; Ryan, her son, wasn't that kind of boy. But Tyson Manley is that kind of a boy and, as his trial unfolds, it becomes clear that it's his girlfriend Sweetie who has the answers Marcia so badly needs and who can - perhaps - offer Marcia some kind of hope for the future. But Sweetie is as scared of Tyson as Ryan should have been and, as Marcia's learned the hard way, nothing's certain. Not anymore.

The novel is about a 16 year old boy who is stabbed and killed by another 16 year old boy. The book follows the trial of the boy accused of his murder and the narrator is the victim’s mum. Yvvette said that ‘A couple of things happened in 2011 that made me interested in young people and violence with the continual stabbings and shootings in the media, week in and week out. I wanted to have a better understanding of where that propensity for violence comes from in young people, and why a 16 year old can so easily write off someone’s life and, in the process, write off their own…What was his upbringing? What shaped him? How did he come with the value system that he has? The mother in my novel has a lot of those questions and throughout the novel and court case she gets to explore them.’

The Mother has been described as 'stunning' and 'masterful' by author Irenosen Okojie (Butterfly Fish) for its depiction of the harsh realities facing families who have lost children to knife crime. You can hear Yvvette Edwards as she is interviewed by Joy Francis, journalist and executive director of Words of Colour Productions, Thur 31 March 2016, 7pm-9pm Waterstones Piccadilly, about her unconventional writing journey, why it took 40 years for her to commit to a career as a novelist, the challenges of writing authentic female characters of colour and her love of editing. Book here.

We thank Yvvette for participating in our Conversation and wish her every success with her new novel and look forward to seeing more of The Mother in the future.

1. Tell us of your journey as a writer

I never seriously believed I could make a living from writing. I never met anyone who did till after my first novel was published. Yet reading and writing have been my favourite hobbies from as far back as I can remember. I wrote because I enjoyed it and I found the process to be cathartic. It was my refuge throughout my formative years and into my adulthood. I wrote about whatever caught my attention in that instant and I didn’t edit when I got to the end. Occasionally I sent these bits of unedited work out into the world, and when they came back with rejection letters attached, I wept, put them to one side, and started work on something else.

Then, in the run-up to my 40th birthday, I found myself really thinking about my life. I hadn’t particularly carved out a career for myself, and I had no ambitions to. The only thing I really wanted to do was write. I decided it was time to either focus on building a practical and realistic career, or do the writing properly so that maybe I could earn a living from it. I reduced my hours at work and wrote A Cupboard Full of Coats. When I finished the first draft, I edited it. The rest is history.

2. How do you see your role as a writer and what do you like most about it?
I write because I love reading and stories of all kinds. I want to write the kinds of novels that I enjoy most, the ones that take the reader on an emotional journey. I want to be so deeply immersed when I read that I experience the journey and understand the characters enough to empathise with them, even if I don’t agree with what they do. I am particularly interested in strong and fully-fleshed female and Afro-Caribbean characters, perhaps because I am a woman and my family are from the Caribbean, and too often they are presented as caricatures and stereotypes. If I have a role as a writer, maybe it is stripping that back to reveal the real people beneath, giving true voice to people we do not hear enough from - if at all - in modern literature.

3. Have you ever created a character who you dislike but find yourself empathising with?
I don’t think I dislike any of my characters and that may be because I always empathise with them. To be able to write about them, I have to understand where they have come from and what’s shaped them and once I know that, I’m empathising. I don’t generally see things in terms of black and white. My mind inhabits the grey areas between. Most people are not simply good or bad, but degrees of both. I don’t always support the choices my characters make, but that’s what people are like in real life; they don’t always do what you want them to do or act the way you’d like them to.

4. Last October, GW organised #diverseauthorday. What has been your experience of writing about characters of colour?

I may be about to run away with First Prize on this question! A Cupboard Full of Coats, although it’s based in Hackney in East London, doesn’t have a single white character in it. I didn’t plan it that way. I created characters I identified with, and because there are not that many characters in the novel, it just happened they were all Caribbean or of Caribbean descent. My newest novel, The Mother, which is also London based, has a wider cast of characters from all walks of life and is, I think, very representative of London’s diversity. Again, that wasn’t a result of conscious intent, but I like to think that one of my strengths as a writer is realism. It’s impossible to ignore the fact that London is an incredible social mixing pot, and The Mother reflects this.

5. If you could be transported instantly, anywhere in the world, where would you most like to spend your time writing? And why?

I would have to be comfortable, so a house with a large veranda, comfy chair and footstool. I’d want access to lots of good local wine and natural produce. It would need to be close enough for my family and friends to pop by for a visit, and so I could travel back and forth to London easily. It would have to be somewhere hot and breezy, so on a coast somewhere. I would need there to be movement in the ocean, not stillness, lots of crashing waves that I could see and hear all the time. Somewhere along Portugal’s Silver Coast, where the winds are high and the waves perfect for surfing would be ideal.

I have an affinity with water, I don’t know why, maybe because I am Piscean. I have difficultly quieting my mind sometimes, but it would be possible in that setting. In my dream writing place, the writing would flow, and if it didn’t, I’d simply doze.

6. What is the one book you wish you had written?

Toni Morrison’s Beloved. It is such a complex, profound, lyrical, heartbreakingly beautiful novel, a book for re-reading. Every time I re-read Beloved, my understanding of the novel increases and I discover in the writing something else to admire. It is a magnificent achievement that will forever stand the test of time. If I had written Beloved, I would probably have spent the rest of my life laughing aloud and patting myself on the back.

7. What advice do you have for would be novelists?

Read! Read a lot and widely. Read novels you love and ones you don’t. Learn what works for you as a reader and what doesn’t. It’s important to be as specific with yourself about what you admire in the writing as what you don’t. Experiment widely with your reading and your writing. Try different styles and genres. Write regularly. Approach writing passionately and recklessly. Push yourself out of your comfort zone. And finally, enjoy the process. If it feels like a slog for you, it’s possible it may feel like a slog for your readers.

8. What are you currently working on? What can we look forward to reading?

I have a few ideas I am mulling over and refining in my mind, but it’s too early to discuss them at the moment. In the interim, my newest novel, The Mother, is being published on 7th April in the UK (and 5th May in the US). It is the story of a sixteen-year-old boy, Ryan, who is a stabbing fatality victim. The story is told by Ryan’s mother, Marcia, as she attempts to understand why her son is dead, hold the remainder of her life together, and attend the trial of the young boy accused of his murder. It’s my attempt to explore some of the issues around young people and crime in society today, and I like to think it’s both timely and relevant.

The Mother - Published by Mantle, Pan Macmillan on 7th April 2016

You can follow Yvvette on Twitter: @YvvetteEdwards

A Conversation with Antonia Honeywell

Antonia Honeywell will be appearing at the Finchley Literary Festival. 

Literary Delights: Sat 25th June 1.30-5.30pm
Trinity Church Centre, 15 Nether Street, N12 7NN.

See more here.

Antonia Honeywell read English at Manchester University, and began her career in the Education Department of the Natural History Museum in London, working with school groups and running creative workshops. She went on to train as a teacher and led departments in a range of schools from a single-sex grammar to an Ofsted-failed inner city comprehensive.

Antonia has four small children, and although she tends to keep them out of her writing life, they’ll inevitably creep in somewhere – usually in the form of tips about writing in spite of them. Though she means that in the nicest possible way. If you look on Antonia’s website, you will see what she and her children are reading from day to week to month!

The Ship is Antonia's debut novel. However, no novice writer is she, having written many novels and with a fierce determination to be published. Letter after rejection letter, she received. Of that time Antonia says:

“For me, the moment I left my metaphorical ship was the moment I decided I was going to carry on writing, even if I never, ever got published.”

The Ship could be described as a dystopian novel. It is set in a time in the not too distant future or possibly an alternative reality. One that could have been a horrible nightmare, if the financial crises in various parts of the world in the nineties had not been contained.

The reader sees an Oxford Street that burned for three weeks. A Regent's Park that has been bombed; and a British Museum occupied by those with nowhere else to go. The Nazareth Act has come into force. If you can't produce your identity card, you will be shot. Lalla, 16, has grown up sheltered from the new reality by her visionary father, Michael Paul. But now the chaos has reached their doorstep.

For as long as she can remember, Lalla’s parents have been talking about the Ship – the vessel that will lead them to a better place along with five hundred carefully selected ‘worthy’ souls. Once on board, as day follows identical day, Lalla's unease grows. Where are they going? What does her father really want? What is the price of salvation?

The Ship was chosen as one of The Independent’s best young-adult fiction books of 2015. featured in the March 2015 issue of Elle Magazine, and was selected as Prima Magazine’s Book Group Choice for February 2015. Antonia was selected as one of Amazon’s Rising Stars of 2015.

The paperback is out on 10th March when Antonia will be at Waterstones Islington talking about the books that inspired her in a free, open to all event with wine and fairy cakes (7:30 pm start) and would be delighted to see you there.

We wish Antonia all the very best with The Ship. A trusted source has said the new novel is fantastic and we can't wait to read it.

1. Tell us of your journey as a writer

I’ve wanted to write for as long as I’ve been able to read. I wrote my first novel when I was eight, one wet playtime at primary school. It didn’t occur to me that I could be a writer, despite the fact that I wrote constantly and was (still am) a voracious reader. Writers were some kind of mysterious ‘other,’ touched by some magic or privilege I didn’t have access to. It probably didn’t help that for a long time, my favourite authors were dead. I worked in museum education, then went on to train as a teacher. I kept writing. I always wrote. But it didn’t occur to me to submit to agents or push my work at all. I honestly believed that, if the work was good enough, a miracle would happen. When I finally submitted my first novel to agents, I got six rejections and genuinely thought I’d given it a really good go. I thought I was being brave and pragmatic by putting that novel aside and writing another. I know now that six rejections is nothing. It took many years and some significant changes in my life to open my eyes to the fact that simply writing wasn’t enough to make me a writer. I did a writing course. I started telling people that it’s what I wanted to do. I asked for feedback. I began, not only to write, but to work at writing. Ten years of rejections and setbacks later, I held the first printed copy of The Ship.

2. How do you see your role as a writer and what do you like most about it?

Over and above all else, I have to write – not in answer to some mystical calling, but because it’s my work. If I don’t create the time to write, and use that time productively, I have no right to call myself a writer. I think it’s important to be open about that. If I’d known any writers when I was growing up, it wouldn’t have made me a better writer, but it would have dispelled the sense that publication wasn’t for people like me. I love meeting readers - not just people who’ve read The Ship (although that’s wonderful) but people for whom reading is as necessary as breathing. But I also love meeting aspiring writers. It’s not only children who need role models and a sense of possibility if they’re to nurture and develop their ambition. Aspiring writers need to know that the vast majority of published writers waded in all that shed life-blood too, and that not a drop of it is wasted.

3. Have you ever created a character who you dislike but find yourself empathising with?

Yes indeed. Michael in The Ship is a good example of that – I find the way he reacts to the breakdown of society abhorrent, and yet I understand his drive to keep his daughter, Lalla, safe.

4. GW recently organised #diverseauthorday. What has been your experience of writing about characters of colour?

I really enjoyed writing Patience in The Ship and creating the story of her African farm and the fate of her family. Initiatives like Diverse Author Day and Diverse December (now renamed Read Diverse) have encouraged me to pay a great deal more attention to my choice of reading, too. I think all writers have a responsibility to reflect diversity not just in the main characters and the stories that are specific to them, but in the supporting cast too. Diverse characters need to be a part of the landscape, as well as the central figure.

5. If you could be transported instantly, anywhere in the world, where would you most like to spend your time writing? And why?

Geographically, I’d like to be exactly where I am, here at home. But while I’ve been writing this, I’ve taken in two parcels, fielded a telephone call from youngest child’s school, loaded the dishwasher, put the supper on and helped my mum unfreeze her laptop and (unrelated) make a doctor’s appointment. Another child needs an Egyptian costume for tomorrow and another forgot to take their homework in to school this morning… So I’d like to be right here, right now, but with a human shield who would deal with all those things and bring me a cup of tea now and then.

6. What is the one book you wish you had written?

Oh, that’s an impossible question! I’m tempted to say Cold Comfort Farm because it never fails to make me laugh, or Nineteen Eighty Four, which was the first novel that made me connect the world of literature with the world in which I was living. But those novels belong to their writers – you cannot have the same relationship with a book you’ve written as with one you’ve read. So I think I’ll continue to be grateful to all the incredible writers out there for the books I love, and be very glad that I wrote The Ship.

7. What advice do you have for would be novelists?

Only this: as long as you’re not giving up, you’re getting there.

8. What are you currently working on? What can we look forward to reading?

I’ve just finished the penultimate draft of a novel I’ve wanted to write for a long time. It centres on the relationship between a young care leaver and an elderly Polish refugee who owns a Dolls’ Hospital that no one ever visits. It’s currently being read by a trusted specialist; I’ll expect some rewrites as a result and then hand it over to my agent and cross my fingers. In the meantime, I’m working on a children’s novel. I’m not under contract for either, which is both exciting - all that possibility! – and scary, too. Exciting and scary – that’s writing in a nutshell, isn’t it?

Thank you so much for having me.


The Ship by Antonia Honeywell, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson
You can follow Antonia on Twitter: @antonia_writes

A Conversation with Josie Pearse

Josie Pearse gained her PhD from Cardiff University with her thesis, Writing and Not Writing on the Cusp of Life and Fiction. She specialises in helping writers make books from life experience.

Josie has taught creative writing for most of her life. She has been a writer in residence and has worked at all levels of skill. As co-founder of Pearse & Black, she runs closed groups which support writers working on long projects and runs site-specific one-off workshops.

She bases her approach simply on the principle that you learn to write by writing and guidance. And for a writer at any level of skill, the knowledge of your process – including what your block might be trying to tell you – can be an essential tool for sustaining the writing of a whole book. Josie helps each writer master his or her process.

Josie Pearse lives in London and has written 3 historical novels so far. La Basquaise and Undressing the Devil were published under the pseudonym Angel Strand by Ebury Press. The third is sitting on a shelf having a rest after it’s eigth rejection.

Thank you to Josie for taking part in A Conversation with... and we wish her well with her novel writing and future publication.

Tell us of your journey as a writer

In New York city in my twenties I joined a small writing group in a poet’s loft, just to see if I could do it. I read out my first story and the poet told me ‘never underestimate the power of what you write’. I felt like a fairy godmother had tapped me with a wand. I’d found something I could do. As a teenager, I’d been asked to leave school, so hadn’t had much of an education and I thought I was pretty stupid.

Writing always mirrors my self back to me… and it took ages for me to like what I saw then… I was very timid as a writer when I was young.

Also, I was mute for a year as a child. I had been in a children’s home, and then adopted, lost my own mother. I think my silence gave me a private place I could form my own narrative.

Writing is not being silent but somehow it equates. My writing comes from silence and I need to listen - and scribe what I hear under the surface. My PhD was 100,000 words long… a lot of listening to myself.

How do you see your role as a writer and what do you like most about it?

I like communicating how-its-done to people, encouraging writers - and helping them move their ideas forward. Everyone’s voice is an orphan until someone really hears it.

I really enjoyed being a Writer in Residence at a migrant and refugee charity a few years ago. Sometimes I would scribe for people who could not read or write because they hadn’t been to school. Maybe there just wasn’t a school in their village. They’d speak of things that would blow your mind - or at least overturn a few preconceived notions. I’d like to do that again. We published collections of them when I worked at a college a long time ago. Finding the money to do that these days isn’t easy. Some manage it though.

I don’t see my own writing as playing a role. I just follow it, put one word after another. At some point, most days, I end up at the desk, typing nonsense.

I used to be more idealistic about it…even writing Black Lace. Most people think that was just commercial but I, and other women I knew, were writing the female experience of sex which, in the early nineties, was new to the mainstream. Yes that’s the 1990s I’m talking about not the 1890s! I really wanted my writing to give women courage to speak from their own experience, and not have to fit, all pert, into the male gaze.

Have you ever created a character who you dislike but find yourself empathising with?
That’s happening right now. I’m working on an adaptation for television. I’m modernising a nineteenth century short story and the lead character is…she’s difficult to like. I was just wondering whether I really want to live with a character I don’t like. Perhaps I’ll find a way in to her through something stronger, like disgust which is an intense emotion at least. Intensity is good for writing.

Last year, GW organised #diverseauthorday. What has been your experience of writing about diverse characters?

I have a thing about wanting to represent adoptees in a realistic way…I get fed up of every TV crime show having a care-leaver or adoptee as the serial killer. In life 16% of serial killers are adoptees. What about the other 84%? No one studies them! I’d like to see a drama about one of the 84%. Just imagine it… ‘he came from a completely normal family,’ said the psychologist. The questions you’d be left asking would be much bigger. Paradoxically, in this case, diversity is about taking the negative gaze off a minority.

If you could be transported instantly, anywhere in the world, where would you most like to spend your time writing? And why?

Kandy in Sri Lanka - a side road near the Temple of the Tooth. About three months in a shady office overlooking the street, with an open window. I’d go over to the hotel across the street for a beer at the end of the day. Why? I can’t think of a reason why not.

What is the one book you wish you had written? 

Middlemarch.

What advice do you have for would be novelists?
The only ‘would be’ novelist is the one who hasn’t put any words on the page yet. Put words down. Make sentences. Now you’re writing a novel, if that’s what you want. Otherwise it might be a short story, a script. Whatever…you’re writing. That’s great. Keep going.

What are you currently working on? What can we look forward to reading?

I’m working on a series of historical novellas. I finished the first one. But the second is going slow. We’re on a ship going across the Atlantic, one of the characters would probably be diagnosed as depressed now, or bi-polar and she’s made the crossing bigger to write than I thought it would be. It’s her behaviour and the the other passengers reacting to her that needs a lot of thought at the minute. In fact, in the first novella, her mania was very ugly. She’s exactly the kind of character you asked about before. I can’t say I like her now but I have tapped into a source of deep compassion for her, so she’s become more complex which is more rewarding to write.

Meanwhile you can read this if you like, I like this story The Woman Who Makes Love to Storms

Who is your favourite literary character from childhood and why?

When I was tiny I liked Tom, who became a Water Baby (by Charles Kingsley) I was fascinated by the idea you could grow gills. And I had a beautiful book based on the Russian myth of the Firebird. I wanted to fly. I lived in the back of a second hand shop and so much of my reading was from the for-sale rack. When I began to choose my own I read a lot of adventure books with ‘chaps just out of uniform’ as the hero. Pulp, I guess. Until I discovered Monica Dickens and then I was back to wanting to be part animal. But my headmistress told me I would look like a horse if I kept reading Monica’s horse stories. So I started on Enid Blyton and liked George, of course, the adventurous one who wore shorts.

You can follow Josie on Twitter: @jojowasawoman

A Conversation with Allen Ashley

Allen Ashley is the author or editor of 13 books comprising one novel, three short story collections, one book of essays and articles, one poetry collection (“Dreaming Spheres”, PS Publishing 2014, co-written with Sarah Doyle) and seven anthologies of short stories as editor. 

In 2006 he won the British Fantasy Award for “Best Anthology” with “The Elastic Book Of Numbers” (Elastic Press, 2005). He is co-host with Sarah Doyle of “Rhyme & Rhythm Jazz-Poetry Club” at The Dugdale Theatre, Enfield. 

Allen is a committee member of the British Fantasy Society and is singer and lyricist with the indie rock band The False Dots. He works as a creative writing tutor with five groups currently running across north London. He also works as a critical reader for a reading agency.

Thank you Allen for joining us in conversation and we wish you lots of success with your writing and music.

Tell us of your journey as a writer

Like so many others, I have written since I was a child. Stories, songs, cartoon strips, silly versions of well-known rhymes… I think I made my first submission to a magazine when I was 14 or 15. I had an acceptance when I was about 16 but it never actually saw the light of day. I think all authors who have been doing it for a long time will have plenty of these “shaggy dog” stories of promises of publication and apparent breakthroughs that never actually appeared. On the other hand, back in the 1990s I once received a £100 “Kill fee” when a publisher reneged on their contract to run a short story.

My most reprinted story is “Dead To The World”, which first appeared in the award-winning British independent press magazine “Fantasy Tales”. This was then reprinted in book form in the anthology “The Best Horror From Fantasy Tales” (Edited by Stephen Jones and David Sutton, Robinson Publishing) and gave me the boost at the right time to keep going. There’s that Biblical quote about the road to righteousness being covered with stones, thorns and all sorts of hazards. That’s the writing road, actually. Still, after all these years I now have 13 books to my name as author or editor, 150 stories published, countless non-fiction articles and poems. I won the British Fantasy Award in 2006. I have also been short-listed on five other occasions.

How do you see your role as a writer and what do you like most about it?

I don’t limit myself to one tiny area of the broad writing field. I continue to write, submit and get published regularly. Nowadays, I do a lot of work as an editor, which I absolutely love. I sometimes quip: “Let the authors do the work!” but, in truth, the two great thrills of editing are: discovering a new voice and helping them on their way; and being sent something outstanding that one couldn’t have written oneself.

My great passion is short stories. As I’m not likely to write a “New York Times Bestseller” any moment soon, I earn my living as a critical reader and a creative writing tutor. As some of you reading this will know, I am currently running Novel Focus Group for Greenacre Writers. I also host poetry and spoken word events. Plus I am the judge for the annual British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition – currently open until 30 June 2016. Details here 

Have you ever created a character who you dislike but find yourself empathising with?

No.

You’re probably going to want a more fulsome answer than that. OK, I created a character called “Ben Grocott” in my story “Life and Trials” (collected in “Somnambulists” by Allen Ashley, Elastic Press, 2004). This was something of an epistolary story, told via school reports, police reports, the judge’s summing up and so forth. Grocott is shown to be a bully, a thug and a cop killer but some reviewers felt sorry for him calling him “troubled” even though he’d instigated all of the trouble himself. My point: no author can be truly in charge of the characters they create.

Last year, GW organised #diverseauthorday. What has been your experience of writing about diverse characters?

I have successfully written many stories from perspectives that are markedly different from my own white male point of view. I have written stories focused on women, on characters of colour and on characters who are physically challenged. My story “A Chip Off The Bloc”, for example, is narrated by a lesbian secret agent for the royal guard battling against a bunch of male pirates.

However, my understanding of “Diverse Author Day” and similar initiatives is that the focus is on encouraging and supporting authors from communities perhaps not fully represented in the broader writing world. As a tutor, I work with authors of varying ages, backgrounds, genders and abilities. All my groups are open to writers wherever they come from; the only requirement is a willingness to improve.

If you could be transported instantly, anywhere in the world, where would you most like to spend your time writing? And why?

I don’t have a specific fantasy place in mind. Over the years I have taught myself to write (and edit) successfully under all sorts of conditions. Somewhere quiet without distractions is, of course, the ideal. I’m lucky enough to have a study at home where I can settle myself. But I’ve written on buses, tubes, trains, etc. Libraries as well, of course. I find that a good walk can help; a beach walk is excellent in this regard. However, I once wrote a whole poem on the walk from the bus stop to the office I was working at back then. It was a slightly musical piece, too, so I did well to keep it in my head all day until I was able to get home and record it on (showing my age!) a cassette recorder.

What is the one book you wish you had written?

This is a slightly difficult question because to have written many of these pieces I would have to have been a different person – i.e. I would have to have actually been J. G. Ballard or William Burroughs. So if I say “The Atrocity Exhibition” or “Cities of the Red Night”, it’s a slightly nonsensical answer because only those guys could have produced those classics.

Of course, there are loads of books, poems, songs and individual stories that I would be proud to have written. Envy should serve as an inspiration. As an editor, one of my great thrills is to receive a story that makes me think: wow, I wish I had written that.

What advice do you have for would be novelists?

My standard response is one that is perhaps never going to make anybody rich but here goes anyway: Find your own voice. Who wants to be a tribute act? Going through the phase of writing just like your idol/s is a natural part of the learning process, of course; but, ultimately, for you to be fulfilled you want to write in a manner and on subjects that are pertinent to you.

There’s a lot of general advice that I would give to writers: learn the necessary skills, research your markets, edit thoroughly, join a writing group and, perhaps most importantly, don’t expect overnight success. It’s a hard slog. Forever.

What are you currently working on? What can we look forward to reading?

I am very pleased to confirm that I will be launching the revised, updated version of my novel “The Planet Suite” at Finchley Literary Festival on the evening of Friday 24 June. I will be reading from the book, be interviewed by Sandra Unerman and conduct a Q & A. As a Finchley boy, I’m really thrilled about this and I hereby advise everyone to attend!!!

I’m hugely busy otherwise with various projects. As mentioned before, I am the sole judge for the British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. I have also guest-edited an issue of the magazine “Wordland”, which should be released soon. I am working on a new editorial project for the British Fantasy Society aimed at new and emerging writers. Plus I have five creative writing groups on the go.

Who is your favourite literary character from childhood and why?

I can remember changing schools when I was about six. There was only one book available to me in my class in the new school that I hadn’t already read and it was a selection of Grimms’ “Fairy Tales”. I really liked the character of “The Brave Little Tailor” who kills some flies – “Seven with one blow” – but is believed to have slain a giant. Something in that has remained with me, even if it’s only the bluffing element!

You can follow Allen on twitter: @AllenAshleyUK

A Conversation with Joanna Campbell

Joanna Campbell’s first novel Tying Down The Lion has just been named as a contender for the Guardian’s Not the Booker prize award 2015. The Guardian pioneered this award in an attempt to select a ‘reader-judged’ winner and Joanna is among 70 on this year’s list.

Born in 1960, Joanna grew up in Hayes, Middlesex. She studied at Exeter University to obtain a degree in German and has taught both German and English as a second language. Her love of reading began at the age of three and remains today. Her passion for books has led Joanna to write over recent years and her ability to observe people and remember the little details has been invaluable in her writing.

As well as having many of her short stories published in magazines, Joanna has had her fiction shortlisted in many competitions including the Bridport, Fish and the Flannery O’Connor Award. A collection of Joanna’s prize-winning short stories, When Planets Slip Their Tracks, will be published later this year.

Tying Down The Lion came from a short story Joanna had written, 'A Temporary Uprooting', which was frequently short listed in competitions. It follows Roy Bishop and his half-German wife Bridget, accompanied by their daughter Jacqueline and Grandma Nell, as they take a road trip to Berlin in the summer of 1967. Berlin at this time is divided by the cold war and is recovering from the devastation caused by World War Two.

Grandma Nell has a dislike for foreigners, including her German daughter-in-law, and Jacqueline observes and records the interactions between the family members during their travels.

Tying Down The Lion is a book about division but also about reconciliation. It shows the necessity of family love and understanding. There is warmth and humour mixed with the reality of the prejudices and bigotry which inevitably came in the aftermath of WW2.    

The following conversation gives us the opportunity to know Joanna a little better and we wish her every success with the book.

Tell us of your journey as a writer

I started writing seriously about seven years ago, but there has never been a time when I haven’t invented people. My earliest memory is staggering around the garden with a stick, pretending to be a lame, elderly man. I did this regularly for a long time, presumably wanting to discover how it might feel to be in someone else’s skin. I was always cripplingly shy and craved time alone to make up other lives.

When I was a little older, I wrote stories and poems to amuse friends because I didn’t feel I could hold their attention any other way. When I was seven, I made a guitar from a piece of cardboard, composed a dozen poems to ‘sing’ and staged a solo Eurovision Song Contest to an audience of one—the girl next door, bribed with a sherbet fountain.

As an adult, I couldn’t find a job I loved because I always wanted to work by myself. I was terrified of teamwork because if the process ever ground to a halt, I was sure I would be exposed as the faulty cog in the machine.

I was in my late forties before I thought of sending my stories and poems to magazines and competitions. An initial boost came when I was a runner-up in a competition run by Woman and Home magazine.

Although I have never written with a particular publication or competition in mind, once a story is finished and polished, I check to see where it might fit best. When ‘The Yellow Room’—a beautiful, high-quality literary magazine founded by writer and editor, Jo Derrick—published some of my first stories, I felt I had set foot on a path that I had always wanted to find and follow. It seemed to lead me to buried treasure and I haven’t been able to resist unearthing more and more ever since.

How do you see your role as a writer and what do you like most about it?

My role is to entertain the readers; for my words to move them, either to laughter or tears—hopefully in all the right places. If even one person is stirred by what they see on the page, then that is enough for me.

It is thrilling to be shortlisted in a competition or to be one of the winners, but to hear someone say they were gripped by my story or that they laughed out loud, or shed a tear, is the real prize.

Positive feedback is the greatest accolade of all and the knowledge that I have added some value, however fleeting, to someone’s life is my favourite aspect of being a writer.

Have you ever created a character who you dislike but find yourself empathising with?

Bridget Bishop, the narrator’s mother in Tying Down The Lion, made me bristle at first. She is enveloped in her own past and preoccupied with her quest to go ‘home’ to Berlin. However, as Bridget led me deeper into her story and took me into the past, she revealed the depth of her suffering and the disconnection with her roots had damaged her ability to notice how much her new family in England needed her.

I met her as a fragmented person with a confused sense of self, and readers will find out if a more complete woman emerges in the end. What I have learned from Bridget is that we are all on a quest to establish our own identity, and should try to understand—rather than feel alienated by—each other’s missions.

If you could be transported instantly, anywhere in the world, where would you most like to spend your time writing? And why?

There are two places. One is the garden of the house in Middlesex where I grew up. I’m sure it was quite ordinary, but it seemed magical when I was a small child, with its low walls and little steps that led to different levels. It was a perfect place for solitary games of make-believe and therefore endless possibilities. It is without doubt where, after inventing my first characters, I began to think, “What if…?”

The other place is a high-ceilinged apartment on the top floor of a once-grand town-house in the former East Berlin, where I once stayed on holiday. The shabby building still showed remnants of its former grandeur and the street below had become bohemian and bustling with life since the fall of the Wall. The apartment was steeped in history, evoking both the luxury of a golden era and the barbaric slicing into flats that followed during the years of communist rule. The preliminary ideas for Tying Down The Lion acquired a real shape there.

But my favourite place of all to write is my home, a small cottage in a quiet Cotswold village. If I were told I could never leave it, then providing all my family were there too, I would be content.

What is the one book you wish you had written?

I am having difficulty choosing between two, so if I may, I would wish I had written either Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons or Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns. I love both these novels for their eccentricity, the rich characterisation and wry, natural humour. I have been kept from reading many a new book by my longing to return to these and re-read them all over again.

What advice do you have for would be novelists?

In one word—finish!

Seriously, the first stage of writing a novel is like hanging out the washing on a bright day with a decent breeze. Every peg brings pleasure. The sheets are billowing and the shirts are swelling. The outlook is hopeful.

But after a while, the sky darkens and a storm lashes at your laundry-line. If you battle through the downpour, you will bring it all in—eventually. However, after that, worse is to come. You will actually become the wet sheets and dripping shirts as each of them is fed—slowly and painfully—through a mangle.

Beginnings are easy and full of hope, but you have to rise to the challenge when the clouds gather. Progress can be painful and slow, but it will be worth it. I spent five years writing and researching Tying Down The Lion, but a beautiful dawn chorus heralded the final words as I typed them and made every moment I spent putting myself through the wringer absolutely worthwhile.

What are you currently working on? What can we look forward to reading?

I am currently promoting Tying Down The Lion and also thinking of ways to promote my short story collection, due for release later this year. This is so different from writing! I am naturally quiet and shy, so thrusting my book at people seems a world away from where I should be. However, it can be a lot of fun too and I have made new friends, both online and in ‘real life’, as a result. All my family have helped me with ideas for publicity and been so supportive that I wonder how I would manage it without them.

I am also writing a novel I started two years ago that is now nearing the end of the first draft. There will be many more drafts to come, but it is beginning to feel less shapeless. I have changed the structure three times, settling for four different viewpoint characters with alternating chapters, and I feel comfortable with it for the first time.

This new novel is about a family who experience a tragedy and must find their way through the dark times that follow. Only the reader is aware of a potential new disaster lying in wait.

The characters have reached the stage where they are leading me and dictating the course of events. I am looking forward to seeing how it ends and hope they all find what they are searching for. I won’t know until I reach their final chapter.

Thank you so much to Greenacre Writers for inviting me to join in this conversation. I have so enjoyed answering your questions.

You can follow Joanna on twitter: @PygmyProse
Tying Down The Lion is published by Brick Lane Publishing

A Conversation with Harry Parker

Image courtesy of Gemma Day

Harry Parker will be appearing at the Finchley Literary Festival. 
Meet the author - Church End Library: 
Fri 24th Jun 2.00-3.00pm 
See more here.

Harry Parker grew up in Wiltshire and was educated at University College London. At twenty-three he joined the British Army and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009.

Harry's creative side was present from an early age and mainly took the form of drawing and painting. Although he did write some black comedy while in the army, it was an army-funded Arvon creative writing course in 2013 that took his writing to a new level. Writing from his experiences as a soldier, Harry's debut novel Anatomy of a Soldier, took shape.

Harry now lives in London. As well as playing with some ideas for a future novel, Harry attends art school and still loves to paint. He has also completed a post graduate course at the Royal Drawing School and likes to sea-kayak in his spare time.

Anatomy of a Soldier is different from other war novels in the form it takes. Both sides of the conflict is told through a variety of inanimate objects which makes for a very unusual read.

“Captain Tom Barnes is leading British troops in a war zone. Two boys are growing up there sharing a prized bicycle and flying kites, before finding themselves separated once the soldiers appear in their countryside. On all sides of this conflict, people are about to be caught up in the violence, from the man who trains one boy to fight the infidel invaders to Barnes’ family waiting for him to return home.

We see them, not as they see themselves, but as all the objects surrounding them do: shoes and boots, a helmet, a trove of dollars, a drone, that bike, weaponry…and the medical implements that are subsequently employed.

Anatomy of a Soldier is a moving, enlightening and fiercely dramatic novel about one man's journey of survival and the experiences of those around him. forty-five objects, one unforgettable story" -
Faber and Faber.

We wish Harry every success with Anatomy of a Soldier and good luck with his future writing and with life in general.

1. Tell us of your journey as a writer

After I left the Army I had a desk job I wasn’t enjoying very much. I have always practised visual art – drawing and painting – so my wife said I should give it up and do something more creative. I went back to painting but also started writing. I attended a weeklong Arvon course in Devon and the early ideas for Anatomy of a Soldier formed. I set aside a few months and treated writing as job, working nine to five every day. I wrote the first draft in 12 weeks – and then the edits, pursuing agents and the roller coaster of finding a publisher started.

2. How do you see your role as a writer and what do you like most about it?

I still feel like a novice and that my role is to get better; to write another book. While working on Anatomy of a Soldier, I felt a responsibility to tell as good a story as I could, but also one that was true to the subject matter I was investigating. When I paint, I always want to depict something about the world that is new and surprising in the hope that an audience would look, acknowledge and understand – to think, ‘God, I’d never thought about it like that before’. I suppose I also aspire to do this with my writing.

I enjoy using my imagination to create a new world or person or feeling or situation. That, and the thrill of the keyboard melting away and the scene pouring out of my head onto the screen… it’s not always like that though.

3. Have you ever created a character who you dislike but find yourself empathising with?

When writing Anatomy of a Soldier I wanted to write the story of the enemy – the insurgents that plant the bomb that injures the main character. They are on the other side of the conflict and while it might have been easier to dislike them, to dehumanise them as evil for their actions and motives, it was important to me to try and give a balance – why are they involved in the conflict, what are their fears and pressures? It was easy to empathise with them once I’d humanised them.

4. GW recently organised #diverseauthorday: do you think literature accurately reflects the diversity of culture we have today?

I suspect there has never been an easier time to write. Laptops and the Internet mean that anyone can sit down and give it a go… it’s easier to redraft and perhaps we have more disposable time than people did in the past. But it’s easy for me to say that as a white middle-class man who has had a good education. Those opportunities are sadly not available to everyone: inequality in literature probably reflects inequality in our society.

5. If you could be transported instantly, anywhere in the world, where would you most like to spend your time writing? And why?

Just to the library to write. I find it difficult to write if there’s anything too interesting going on. But can I please be transported somewhere for a touch of research? Maybe one of Vladimir Putin’s next cabinet meetings or the next time they are making a breakthrough at CERN.

6. What is the one book you wish you had written?

I’m not sure I can answer this – there are so many. A book I read recently which left a huge impression on me was Pincher Martin by William Golding. The writing is brilliant, mirroring the subject matter so that, for example, you are breathless when the main character is drowning. It has such a powerful way of describing the way we experience the world. It’s also unsettling: the ending is shocking and reframes the context of the whole book.

7. What advice do you have for would be novelists?

A few things I try to remember: write a book you’d like to read yourself and haven’t read before; and, never hold onto the words too tightly – a phrase or sentence you love and have cherished probably needs to be cut, it will stick out from the rest – cherish the story or idea and let the words support that. Everyone is different though, as all readers are, and what is important to us will be different – advice is never as useful as just writing to find your own way.

8. What are you currently working on? What can we look forward to reading?

Every time I tell someone what I am writing the idea wilts a little and I don’t want it to die. It’s important that I keep it to myself for now, but there are no soldiers.

Anatomy of a Soldier is published by: Faber and Faber

You can follow Harry on Twitter: @harrybparker

A Conversation with Vaseem Khan

Vaseem Khan was born in London in 1973. After obtaining a degree in Accounting and Finance at the London School of Economics he worked in Mumbai, India for ten years. On returning to London in 2006 he joined the Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London and still works there today. Throughout his working years, encouraged by his love of great literature, Vaseem has always found time to write.

His debut novel The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra was published in August 2015 to excellent reviews. It is the first in the Baby Ganesh detective agency series and Vaseem is currently working on books two and three.

It was his experiences in Mumbai that were the inspiration for the series, Vaseem told Claudia Winkleman on BBC Radio 2’s Art Show earlier this month. On arriving in Mumbai he was greeted with the unusual sight of seeing an elephant wandering down the centre of the road. This vision stayed with him and a passion for elephants developed – after cricket and literature of course!

As Inspector Chopra, forced into early retirement, is dressing for his last day at Sahar police station his wife Poppy informs him that he has inherited an elephant. On arrival at the station a large crowd is gathered: a young man has died and it is thought that he drowned whist drunk. His mother believes he was killed and does not trust the police to investigate her son’s death as they are a poor family.

During the ensuing days, Chopra feels a certain desolation as he finds little of interest to fill his time. The young elephant is refusing to eat and he discovers that the new inspector is refusing a post mortem to establish the cause of death of the young man.

Ashwin Chopra, a principled and honest man, wishes to do what is right for the elephant and the dead boy so he seeks knowledge on how to care for baby Ganesha and commences his own investigation into the boy’s death.

Chopra’s enquiries take him to some of the darkest places of the city as he realises there is more to the young man’s death than was first suspected and Ganesha proves to be of valuable help in the search for the truth.

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra is a well written book, easy to read and very entertaining with wonderful descriptions of the vibrant city of Mumbai. We wish Vaseem good luck with the novel and look forward to reading the next in the series, The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown.

Tell us of your journey as a writer:

I wrote my first novel aged 17. Of course, I thought it would be a runaway bestseller. I sent it off, sat back and waited for the contract. Instead I got my first rejection letter! I wrote for 20 years before an agent accepted me. I had a great career in the real world in the meantime, which made it difficult to find time to write but I kept at it. I don’t think you can decide to be a writer. The American author John Irving once wrote that a defining moment for him came when another novelist pointed out to him ‘anything else he did except writing was going to be vaguely unsatisfying.' So I think the first thing that any writer needs to do is make the mental adjustment from saying I’d like to be a writer to saying – I am a writer. That’s what I did!

How do you see your role as a writer and what do you like most about it?

For me a writer’s role is to transport readers to a different time, place or situation and then to immerse them in the plot of the particular novel they have written. Personally, I think a writer’s principal job is to entertain. I have read books which have been incredibly erudite and complex but somewhere along the line the author has started to write for him/herself rather than the reader. I have tried to keep my Baby Ganesh detective agency series – beginning with The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra – light, charming and entertaining.

The best thing about writing for me is bringing characters to life. I loved creating Inspector Chopra and his elephant sidekick baby Ganesha, shaping their personalities and their behaviour. After a while you realise that you can predict how they will react in any given situation – that’s when you know your characters have truly become real.

Have you ever created a character who you dislike but find yourself empathising with?
In the third novel in my Baby Ganesh agency series – which I am still writing – we will meet the Queen of Mysore, a eunuch who runs a group of other eunuchs. She is someone who is involved in petty crime and is ruthless in her dealings with others. And yet she cares deeply about the eunuchs under her wing. She has suffered greatly in life which has shaped her views about the world. Eunuchs are at the margins of Indian society and suffer from prejudice and abuse. So although the Queen is not the most likeable of characters nevertheless she is someone I do empathise with.

If you could be transported instantly, anywhere in the world, where would you most like to spend your time writing? And why?

I would love to spend a couple of months in the High Arctic! I have an idea to write a crime novel set in the High Arctic – where temperatures can fall to -50C, where night lasts four months, and polar bears are forever on the prowl. As I was thinking about this I thought what an amazing place to actually write. The very northernmost communities of Inuit natives live simple lives, with very little intrusion from the sorts of things that continually distract us in the West. Of course, their lives aren’t easy battling against the elements. But I like to picture myself in a warm cabin, surrounded by the sounds of an eternal winter, with nothing to do except write. And if I need inspiration all I have to do is go out into some of the most incredible scenery on earth!

What is the one book you wish you had written?

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. This is the best book about India that I have ever read. It is the book that made Salman Rushdie famous and was voted the ‘Booker of Bookers’ meaning it was voted the best Booker prize winner over a 40 year period! Why do I wish that I had written it? This book introduced me to magical realism as a literary concept, and showed me how it can be brilliantly used to illuminate real events from history. The book tackles India’s transition from the Raj to an independent nation, and vividly animates Indian life during that period through the eyes of the protagonist, Saleem Sinai, a boy born on the stroke of Independence with amazing gifts – telepathy and an incredible sense of smell!

What advice do you have for would be novelists?

Write, write and then, when you’re absolutely sick of it, write some more. I think perspective is what most novice writers lack. The real question any writer should ask themselves is ‘am I good enough?’ In other words: is my writing of a sufficient standard to put together a coherent, well written novel in the genre I want to write in? I estimate I wrote over a million words before I was published, completing half-a-dozen novels, garnering more rejection letters than I care to mention. Looking back at my early work I not only cringe but can see how I have now become a vastly better writer in terms of the actual quality of the writing but also in terms of pace, plot and characterisation. Unless you are one of the lucky ones who hit instant success your road as a writer will be similar. Never give up.

What are you currently working on? What can we look forward to reading?

I like to work on a lot of things simultaneously. I have just completed the draft for the second in the Baby Ganesh agency series The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown – which will be out next spring. [This book is now published] This book is about the theft of the world’s most famous diamond – the Kohinoor – which was originally mined in India. The Kohinoor is currently part of the British Crown Jewels. In the novel the Crown Jewels have been brought to India for a special exhibition. A daring robbery sees the Kohinoor stolen and Chopra and Ganesha called in to try and recover the great diamond.

I am also currently writing the third in the series (no title yet) where Chopra and Ganesha are on the trail of a kidnapped Bollywood star. And I’m also fleshing out the plot for the fourth episode when they will be travelling outside of Mumbai to Chopra’s native village in Punjab, north India, to try to unravel the mystery of Ganesha’s origins. So keeping busy!

You can follow Vaseem on twitter: @VaseemKhanUK

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra is published by Mulholland Books – An imprint of Hodder and Stoughton