My headmaster told me to study law. No way. I
wasn’t going to be a lawyer (lots and lots of money). I was going to be a
writer (dry crust in a freezing garret.)
I did, a long time later, sneak in and take a
law degree with the Open University, but fortunately I found a publisher before
I could fall from grace.
In a way, I suppose I’ve always been a writer,
beginning as a small child, by disappearing into fantasy worlds of my own
devising, even if I never wrote any of it down. So, as an adult, I got down to
work by writing fantasy, because it had to be better than the real world. I was
definitely not going to be a lawyer or anything else serious and lucrative. I
was going to be a writer or nothing. I did manage to squeeze in a few more
temporary careers (library assistant, restaurateur, craftswoman, civil service
clerk) while spending thirty years honing my writing skills. I graduated from
fantasy to science fiction and eventually to crime. It’s not such a big leap as
it sounds. I didn’t switch from unicorns to Belgian detectives in drawing rooms.
Rather, I switched from psychological dramas set in imaginary worlds I had created
to psychological dramas set in a real world that I had slightly re-arranged
What particularly fascinates me is not the fine
details of a crime but what led a person to commit it, how others responded and
what long-term impacts it had. I enjoy weaving history into a story, because
nothing happens in a vacuum. Situation arise out of a vast forest of previous
situations, and an infinite choice of paths lead on from them.
My first novel, A Time For Silence, is split between two time zones – the 1930s and 40s, and the
present day, allowing me to explore the long-term consequences of a crime and
also the inability of one generation to understand the lives, beliefs and
attitudes of another.
My second novel, Motherlove, looks at three women anticipating motherhood in 1990, and two
daughters in the present day wondering who their mothers really are and how on
earth they’ve finished up where they are.
My third novel, The Unravelling, deals with a woman rediscovering memories of an event in her
childhood that she has blocked out – an event that is still having
repercussions on many lives decades later.
These three novels are published by Honno, and I am about to bring out, all on my own, a
small book of short stories, Moments
of Consequence, including ones to accompany each of the three novels and give
them a little more background colour. I also hope to bring out a fourth novel
next year, another psychological crime mystery, but this time with a slight
paranormal twist.
Thank you, Pauline!
ReplyDeleteLovely interview, ladies. Thank you Pauline and Thorne.xx
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