I guess I was a bit naive when I started The Lady's Slipper. I loved writing it, and thought I'd be able to lick the first draft into shape quite quickly, but the actual redrafting and editing phase took a long time after the initial draft. The actual crafting process came much more to the fore.I valued the editorial advice a lot. I think self-publishers miss out on that ability to dialogue with an editor. Also I guess I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and probably I could have gone on forever reworking and playing with it. The characters always have so much more to reveal than you bargain for! They grow under my scrutiny.
Every writer thinks their work is unique. What sort of a writing style do you think you have and what is the book you most wish you had written?
It is difficult for me to imagine myself next to other published writers as it is all so new, and I admire other writers so much. And I have yet to see The Lady's Slipper in a bookshop! But books I have wished I had written about the period of my novel are Restorationby Rose Tremain, and Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Both are darker books than mine is,and both give a masterful evocation of the seventeenth century.
What is it about this particular period that draws you to it? When is your next novel or work-in-progress set?
I think it is just that it was a time of settling after the upheaval of the English Civil War, aptly called "the days of shaking" and the subsequent Puritan repression. Everything had been thrown up in the air - the monarchy, religion, english justice. And the country was still waiting to see what might come of it all. Everyone was vulnerable to the rapidly changing environment, but new found freedom from Puritan rule made people a little wilder than they might otherwise have been. Allegiances shifted from day to day. It was also a time of great social and scientific experiment.
I am working on another book linked to the first through one of the characters. It is set in Restoration London. It is taking longer than the first to write because of the research. London life is extremely well-documented, and I don't want to make any glaring errors.Sometimes I curse Pepys!
What inspires you to write? Is it an idea, a character, a theme, or something else?
I like roots in something specific - an object for example, or in the case of The Lady's Slipper, a flower. (Oh dear, just noticed the unwitting pun, all this orchid mania is obviously getting to me.)Then I let ideas gather around that. It builds up in layers. I am a great fan of the spider diagram type of arrangement, and also quite fluid and scruffy notebooks. And real history. One of the seventeenth century houses I visited was lost on a bet in a game of cards, and then won back. The Ace of Spades (the winning card) is carved on everything, even the chimney pots. You couldn't make that up, so it makes an appearance in the next book. But once I get going, its the characters themselves and their situation that inspire me, they demand a journey and an ending.
Thank you, Deborah!
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