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?

What's a child to do when they are friendless, but read?

At least, that's what I did when I was a child. I have no idea what lonely children do now, probably play computer games.

My family moved home several times, from one end of the country to the other. I was shy and did not enjoy my time at school. I was bullied. I had National Health glasses and sticky out teeth. Later I had braces to correct my bite. I was sad and lonely. I found respite in books. They became my friends. They offered other worlds into which I could disappear. I read voraciously.

 Muffin the Mule was a favoured TV programme of mine. It is not a show that Americans will recognise, but here in the UK, you could also buy a book. This came with a map of the garden where Muffin lived. I practically wore that book out.

Later The Hobbit became a much read favourite. It too, had a map. I like maps. They help a reader understand the geography of the story. They also enable a reader with imagination to create stories of their own, within the land that the characters occupy. I didn't get into Lord of the Rings until I was a teenager. Once I did, I was smitten.

I have to say though, for a young girl, growing up in the sixties, the books that occupied most of my time were the Chalet School series by Elinor Brent-Dyer, My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara and Enid Blyton's Famous Five.

Michael Moorcock's books then completely took over my world as a young teenager, as did those by a variety of SciFi authors. At school however, I was forced to read Jane Austen and Shakespeare. By now we were living just outside Stratford on Avon and I was going to school over the road from Anne Hathaway's cottage in Shottery.  My mother gave me Cranford by Mrs Gaskell, in an effort to encourage a love of the classics.

As I grew up SciFi gave way to American authors such as Eudora Welty and Henry James, albeit that he spent most of his life in Britain. I also became partial to Kurt Vonnegut, Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and John Steinbeck.

In my fifites now, I have come back to those books I discarded as a teenager - the classics by the Brontes, Austen, Gaskell etc... I am enamoured of the gothic writers, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley and Lord Byron.

Yes, for a lonely child, books open up worlds and offer friends by the bucket load. As an adult, they continue to deliver satisfying escapism from the drudgery of everyday life.

I am a reader and now, writer. Friends are, more often than not, books.

www.angelaelliottbooks.com