Who am I kidding?

Do you ever go to book festivals? There is one every autumn in Wimbledon which attracts some big authorial names - William Boyd, David Nicolls, Andrew O’Hagan, Alistair Campbell.  And when I was promoting my book Living the Life More Fabulous I was invited to speak at festivals in Oxford, Glasgow, Henley, Leeds and at The Theatre by The Lake in Keswick. I enjoyed these events enormously, not least because afterwards I got to sign books for a long line of the most elegant and glamorous women ever seen at a book festival!

This experience taught me that a really great interviewer is the key to that success. She (it was always a ‘she’) needs to have done enough research to be able to ask you questions that work both for you and the audience. 

One of my best interviewers was Janet Ellis in Oxford. She was professional, astute, well prepared  and asked me some insightful questions. After a long career in broadcasting, Janet is now a successful published author herself, so I was delighted when she read my debut novel, Like A Bird Without A Song and wrote me a lovely quote* which has been printed on the back cover.

Maybe at some time in the future, if (a big if) my book is successful (define success!) and I am once again invited to a book festival somewhere, these are the answers I would give to those questions I think people might like to hear.

How would you describe the genre of your book? 

I’d like to say simply that it’s a human interest story but it has to be pigeon-holed as a romance because there is a couple, Finn and Evie, at the heart of it and they fall in love. I have had a few people say ‘I don’t usually read romance but I loved this.’ Which is somehow very gratifying.

Who is your target reader? 

I could say literally anyone who likes a compelling page turner, but that’s hopeless when you are writing, because you need to have an ‘ideal reader’ in your head. An individual who you think will love what you are writing. So, in my mind, my Ideal Reader is an interested, engaged active reader, female, probably older, likes to have a good book on holiday or before sleep, which packs a satisfying emotional punch with attractive, likeable and believable characters.

Did you base any of your characters on real people you have met?

No. I wrote very detailed back stories for all of my characters, even the more minor ones. None is based on a real person, living or dead. But in Finn, the gorgeous aspiring actor, who is an ambitious drama student at the start of the book, I had in mind several Irish actors - Cillian Murphy, Aidan Turner, Colin Farrell, Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal. I also thought of some of those amazing Welsh actors - Antony Hopkins, Richard Burton, Michael Sheen who, like Finn, came from backgrounds that didn’t support their thespian aspirations.

How do you select character names?

This is the best fun ever. Once you have the name, the character starts to reveal itself.  I was conscious of how names are more fashionable at certain times, so I was careful to think about that too. And I also decided to put the names of all my grandchildren into the story. So, for instance, there is mention of a consultant gynaecologist called Freya Roland - my granddaughter’s first name and the surname is a construction to evoke a person who was once very significant and important in my life.

What message or themes were you hoping to explore with this work? 

This is about a couple who meet and fall madly in love when they are young, idealistic and ambitious - he as an actor, she as a doctor. Events conspire to cause a rift and they meet twenty years later at the height of their careers, but also when they are both disillusioned and unsure what the future holds. Neither is happy and nor do they want more of the same. There are themes of love and loss, grief, ambition, parenting, friendship, changing societal attitudes and, of course, whether there is such a thing as enduring love.

The Writing Process  - how and when do you write?

I’d like to say that I have a perfect writing room (shades of Virginia Woolf) into which I disappear at nine on the dot. I then write for four hours and emerge for lunch and a walk with the dog. But that would be a lie. I don’t even have a dog, let alone a writing room. I also have other demands on my time. So. I often write late in the day. I start at nine at night, rather than in the morning. As a night owl, my brain is often clearest at that time. Trouble is, nothing interrupts or diverts me like the need to eat - so sometimes I am still at it five hours later, having barely moved. And that is, mostly, how I wrote Like A Bird and am now writing book two Once I Had A Secret Love.

Why did you centre the book on Dublin?

Loads of reasons. I wanted a cultural misfit for my two main protagonists. Finn is Irish and Evie is English. I have the softest of soft spots for Ireland and Irish people. I have a very dear, very close friend who lives in Dublin who helped me with the Irish cadences and expressions and locations. She was my first reader and an essential part of the early process. I have also stayed in the city several times. In 1970, my honeymoon was spent touring the country by car, and in 1994, after my marriage broke up, I did an amazing ‘Turning Point’ course in Dun Laorghaire and subsequently lived for two years with an Irishman I met on that course. I have visited every place I mention in the book, and yes, I did celebrate New Year’s Eve in Key West in the USA once, like Finn and Evie and yes, it was with someone I thought of as my anamchara or soulmate.

Any surprises from writing the book? Things that you discovered about the process of writing characters?

The biggest surprise was how the characters take over. Not just your every waking thought - in the bath, in bed - but how they write the next bit for you. Or you write something for some unknown reason and then it becomes obvious why that is significant fifty pages later. I’ve heard authors mention this phenomenon before and always poo-pooed it. But I get it now. If the characters are authentic and coherent and you have a deep understanding of who they are, it becomes very obvious as you write how they will respond to what is happening in the story.

What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started writing this book? 

How much joy I would get from the whole thing! It started in total secrecy because I was a bit embarrassed about even daring to write a story, a novel, a book. Who are you kidding? I’d often think in those early months. Then I enrolled Siobhan in my process and she started to say that she was enjoying it, or had laughed out loud at something Finn had said - as if he was a real person, not a figment of my imagination. I gradually gained in confidence as more people read it and more and more people - both my Super Readers and professionals like my editor - said they loved it. The day that Tara Loder who was editing the book emailed to say: “this is one of the best romance novels I have read for some time.” I punched the air and did a dance round my sitting room in pure joyous celebration.

How do you feel now the book is finally published after all these months of build-up to this moment?

Elated. Amazed. Grateful to all the many, many people who have supported and encouraged me along the way: My friend Siobhan; Mel Cronin, a Super Reader who lives in Dublin, who has also been helping me in more ways than I can say - and who appears in the book as the ‘eloquent celebrant’ as she styles herself in real life; my core of Super Readers who have Zoomed into calls three times a week to hear readings and give me feedback, They live in Italy, Spain, Sacramento, Boston, North Carolina, Bermuda and Ealing, Putney and Fulham… I could go on. To all of those who have been part of the story - I am both honoured and grateful for your love for the book and your generosity towards me with your time.

So my beautiful little fledgling bird has now flown the nest, with her song restored . So, please join me in lifting a glass and saying the Irish toast: “Sláinte “ and, as might also be said in Ireland, let’s say to the book Like A Bird Without A Song:

 “May you have the strength of the wind and the lightness of the sky.”