An anonymous interview

Looking through my files, I found these interview questions. I forget what, why, who, where or when I did them, but here they are with the answers.

WRITING AND YOUR BOOKS:

1.    In 140 characters, what is your book / series about?

18th century Covent Garden prostitute solves crimes - short enough?

2.    When did you start writing?

Is this a trick question? I was about four. I was an avid reader. Writing just seemed a natural progression. At first it was just my name but I soon progressed to whole phrases. Ummm. I guess it’s not a trick question. I started writing in 1988. I was 31. My son had just been born. I wrote a ten minute script for Channel Four, which was brand spanking new at the time. I was short-listed and I just thought ‘I can do this’.

3.    What is your next project?

Never just working on one project at a time. Always got three or four on the go at the same time: French wartime tearjerker, 18^th century prostitute solves crimes, ghosts in Paris and Marseilles, 17th century PParisian poisoner.

4.    What is your long term writing ambition?

To build up a body of work that will stand the test of time.

5.    How have you found the publishing process?

It’s a bloody nightmare. Agents are like gold dust and it's not getting any easier. Self-publishing on Amazon has become the slush pile. I still want to do it the old-fashioned way. I would work my socks off for an agent who believes in me.

 

6.    What did you learn from writing your first book?

To finish it.

7.    What two books would you take to a desert island?

John Steinbeck’s Grape of Wrath, and The Grifters by Jim Thompson.

8.    What was your favourite childhood book?

Muffin the Mule – it had a map. Love maps

9.    What are your three top writer tips?

Forget about waiting for the muse to hit. Just write every single day – good, bad or indifferent.

If you want to be a writer, quit saying it and just do it.

Finish what you’ve started.

10.  Why should people buy your book?

Because you can escape into another world and experience all the horrors, shocks, and excitement of that time. Because it sets your imagination free and allows you to be someone else for a short while. Because it’s a detective story and you love trying to work out ‘who dun it’.

11.  Do you plot or do you free-style in your writing?

I learned to write scripts for TV and film before coming to novels. I plot pretty much every damned thing and then I freestyle it.

ABOUT YOU:

1. School lover or school hater?

Hated every moment of it – except for art.

2. Who is your greatest supporter?

My son, Jacob.

3. Twitter lover or Twitter hater? Why?

Used to hate it, then I loved it, now I hate it again. Worldwide Chinese whispers.

4. What is the best TV series you have seen lately, why?

The Musketeers. Handsome pointy-bearded men. Do I need any other reason?

5. Do you blog about anything else other than writing? If so, what?

I blogged about going to California in 2010. I have a website for the fountain I am rescuing along with the lovely people of the Friends of Priory Park.  On the whole though, I find it hard to blog. I'm too busy writing novels and scripts to blog much.

http://ariaje.wix.com/stpaulsfountain

6. What is your life motto?

Never give up

FUN TRIVIA

1.    Favourite flavour of ice-cream – I don’t eat ice cream

2.    Crisps or chocolate? – both but also neither – I don’t eat chocolate or crisps. I used to, but chocolate upsets my stomach and crisps are all fat.

3.    Tea or coffee? – I don’t drink either. I don’t do caffeine. I drink redbush and herbals. Aren't I boring?

4.    Wine or water? - Water

5.    Camping or glamping? – What the hell is glamping when it’s at home? I’m strictly a hotel only girl these days.

6.    Must your socks always match?  Oh yes, it is slothful to be otherwise dressed.

7.    If you were to have 5 famous people (dead or alive) to dinner who would they be? – Johnny Depp, Tom Waits, Marquis de Sade, now those three would have a ball together. James Boswell and Dr. Samuel Johnson.No women, sorry.

8.    If you could relive one moment from history, what would it be? Any of it. All of it.

9.    If you were Noah, which animal would you have left behind and why? – Humans. Do I really need to say why?

10.  Tell us an amusing secret that nobody else knows (fun not serious) – I intend on buying a derelict castle when I make my first million. When I make my second million I might be able to afford doing it up.

11.  Who would you most like to have a good rant at and why? – Women doing their make-up in public. Cheesh, finish your ablutions at home will you?

10 libertine and risqué novels you just have to read

If you are an avid reader, like I am, then you really need to check out these libertine and risqué novels. Strictly speaking, the libertine novel had its origins in France. Its heyday ended with the French Revolution. However, there are many brilliantly written novels from other parts of the world, each of which touch on the same subject matter. Here's my top ten selection, which should grace every avid readers shelves.

The 120 days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade

Where to begin?  He wrote this book in 37 days, whilst locked up in the Bastille in 1785 for sexual deviancy and blasphemy. His name is the reason we have the word 'sadist'. He wrote many other books, some just as scurrilous as this one. 120 days remains a work of supreme endeavour. You do not want to leave this off your shelf.
Read more

Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery by John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester

Sodom is an obscene closet drama published in 1684 and attributed to the randy old Earl of Rochester (played, quite wonderfully in the film Libertine, by Johnny Depp). In the play, the king is called Bolloxinian and the queen, Cuntigratia. Aside from the obvious, the play is actually also a satire on the court of Charles II and his toleration of the Catholic Church.

Read the play

Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland 

Even randy little James Boswell called this book 'a most licentious and inflaming book'.  Ever since its publication in 1749, it has been shrouded in mystery and controversy. It was written whilst he was in debtors prison. It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books of all time.
Read more

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

Moll Flanders was one of the first novels written almost as social commentary. It follows poor Moll through her career in crime and prostitution, and her eventual transportation to the colony of Virginia.
Read the book

The Story of O by Pauline Réage 

An absolute classic of the erotic genre. Precedes Fifty Shades, and is way better, by 57 years. A beautiful young French woman, her lover. A splendid mansion near Paris. An elite secret society. Sexual fantasies abound.
Read the book

Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence

DH Lawrence wrote, “I want men and women to be able to think about sex, fully, completely, honestly, and cleanly,”  in his introduction to Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The first edition was privately printed in Italy, and it wasn't available at all in the USA until 1959 - and yet it is undoubtably a classic.

Read more

Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau

Mirbeau was a French journalist and playwright. The Torture Garden was published in 1899 at the height of the Dreyfus affair. The book sought to expose the corruption of colonialism and civilisation, wrapped up in deliciously tortuous S&M, all of which takes place in a beautiful Chinese garden. Not for the faint at heart.
Read the book

The Awakening by Kate Chopin 

Photo: Kate Chopin

First published in 1899, The Awakening was contentious, right from the start. It explored female sexual desire and feminism. Insofar as it is almost exactly the same story as Ibsen's The Doll's House, it suffered from having been written by a woman who had already scaled literary heights. The Chicago Times Herald said of it: "It was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the over-worked field of sex-fiction".
Read the book

The Well of Loneliness by Radcliffe Hall  

When this novel came out in 1928, the then editor of the Sunday Express said that he would 'rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel." That said, there is only one, rather obtuse, sexual reference in it. Few critics rate it as a classic novel, however, it is a classic in terms of storyline, being the first novel of its kind to explore Lesbianism. Read The Guardian's report here
Read the book

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Tropic of Cancer was "notorious for its candid sexuality". Published in 1934 in Paris, it was banned in the States and led to obscenity trials in the 1960s. It was not banned in the UK but the only copies that could be had were smuggled in. 

Read more



Read Angela Elliott's book, The Finish, which is first in the Venus Squared series of novels about an 18th century Covent Garden prostitute on Amazon, Kobo,  ibooks and Google Play