Where did your love of books/storytelling/reading/writing/etc. come from?
I have just always read. I remember reading with my parents as a child at bedtime, writing stories in a friend’s treehouse, and sneaking into the library at lunchtime to read. I remember when we read books aloud as a class, I would hold a finger in the book to mark the class’s progress so I could read ahead and flip back when it was my turn to read.
Tamora Pierce was probably my first great love affair with reading and I still cherish those books. For adult fiction I love Jennifer Fallon, and fans of her Hythrun Chronicles will notice her influence upon The Owlbear and the Omens. Nowadays I have settled on Diana Wynne Jones as my favourite of all time; her ability to transcend genres and seamlessly blend mythologies makes my heart so happy.
I have always written, in one form or another, but resisted chasing the dream of being a writer; I knew it would be near impossible to find success. Eventually though I simply had to see one story to its conclusion. A piece written during my undergraduate degree didn’t sit right as a short story and instead became the creative component of my doctoral exegesis completed in 2019. I still hold hope that that manuscript will get picked up by traditional publishers one day, but no luck yet.
There is a unique experience in re-reading one’s own work, like looking into a time capsule of the things that influenced you at the time of writing. There is a scene in The Owlbear and the Omens where a lord makes a surprise appearance at an event and his men exclaim, ‘it’s Lord Bastian! Lord Bastian has come to see us!’ At the time of writing, I was playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance and as the player character, Henry, approaches groups of soldiers they exclaim, ‘it’s Henry! Henry’s come to see us!’ The line always made me laugh and so it found its way into the book.
I most recently read The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins and fell in love. It’s a sublime piece so meticulously pieced together that really shows the dedication and craft of the writer. When writing we are often told to ‘trim the fat’ and ‘kill your darlings’, meaning to cut out any unnecessary padding or things that simply don’t work for the narrative. The Library at Mount Char is streamlined and honed to precision. Absolutely everything in the book is necessitated by everything else, like a piece of clockwork engineered to peak efficiency. The story unfolds beautifully with information delivered at just the right pace and enough left to the reader’s imagination that nothing breaks the suspension of disbelief. The blurb doesn’t do the book justice; if I had to describe it in one sentence, I’d call it ‘a dark fantasy uncovering the mysterious disappearance of the curator of a reality-bending library, a man who predates much of humanity, and the power vacuum left in his place.’
My debut The Owlbear and the Omens is available on Amazon to purchase as an ebook or paperback or read through Kindle Unlimited.
Categorisation! The thing I love about Diana Wynne Jones is that she wrote across multiple genres and it is something I endeavour to do also. However, there is so much ‘procedure’ in the commercialisation of literature that if a book sits between categories it seems to fall between the cracks. The Owlbear and the Omens is many things – low fantasy, political thriller, reverse harem – that might cause someone to ‘judge it by its cover’ so to speak. The biggest issue I’ve had with this novel is readers expecting erotica from a reverse harem where the trope is instead played for political machinations. Every component of the reverse harem is plotted for gain, be it politics, resources, or even silence.
Let’s Add Some Fun!
I was a physical copy girlie for years, then I moved house repeatedly over a short period. There’s only so many times I can carry huge boxes of books into and out of trucks and up and down stairs before I start to second guess my choices. I’ve now pared my collection down to just the favourites (still in a box at this point, oops) and buy ebooks instead. If I really love a book, like The Library at Mount Char, I will buy the physical copy too.
Tea, and perhaps a bit too much. Every day starts and ends with tea. Usually just a simple English Breakfast with milk, sometimes a green tea, sometimes a lapsang souchong. I like peppermint tea for tummy aches and chamomile in the evenings, but ninety-nine times out of one hundred, you will find me drinking a regular English Breakfast with milk. Usually tepid or even cold, because I can’t keep track of time.
Silence, absolutely. I can tolerate a little light music and background noise but I would much rather sit in silence under a blanket letting the book unfold in front of my mind’s eye with a cup of tea to my side – gone cold, of course.
