1 – Can you start by telling us a little about your current book?
This Is Our Undoing is my debut novel and is a speculative, near-future story about a woman who has fled a dangerous past to make a new life for herself as a scientist in the wilderness of the mountains in Bulgaria. When an old enemy is killed and both the State and his teenage son seek vengeance, she must find a way to protect her family from harm whilst also fighting not to become a monster. It’s a novel about the choices we make as individuals when the world around us is full of darkness, and how those small choices still matter, how fighting to stay true to your own inner moral compass still matters. It’s full of forests and folklore, vengeful children and the legacy of trauma, and was released at the beginning of August with the independent Scottish publishers Luna Press, who’ve been absolutely wonderful and made this whole debut experience a delight.
2 – Are you a plotter or a panster?
A plotter. I’m a scientist by training so I gravitate towards anything that allows me to draw graphs! I’m also endlessly fascinated by the psychology of my characters and do quite a bit of planning (drawing graphs) to help me explore the arc that each character will follow and how they all fit around the novel’s core themes. I also do a fair bit of reading before starting to write, especially around the history and folklore of whatever setting I’ve chosen to help fill out my sense of the world and its society. Being an ecologist, the natural world always has a really strong presence in my writing, so I’ll often do a bit of checking up on that too (which often involves looking through reams of old fieldwork photographs and feeling forlorn/old!).
That said, despite all that planning, I still think you have to write your way into each story. You have to let yourself discover it and adapt your plans as your understanding of it changes.
3 – Savoury or sweet?
Sweet but only if it’s chocolate. I’m not fussed about cake or biscuits, but I think I’d go into a decline without chocolate.
4 – Three books to a desert Island. Go!
Okay so I have to admit to having lived on small desert islands for months on end as a conservation researcher, so I feel like I’m coming to this with a bit of an advantage! It was always horrible having to choose the few books that would fit in amongst all the field equipment, which is one reason why I am so enamoured of my Kindle. If I’d had that (and a way of charging it!) when I was doing fieldwork it would have spared me so much book-starvation! So anyway…
Comfort book – The Shadow Of The Moon by M. M. Kaye. It’s a childhood favourite that’s sufficiently chonky and re-reading it feels like a hug, which you need occasionally when you’re alone in the field.
Useful book – Where There Is No Doctor. It got me (and the people in my care) through a few dicey experiences in one piece so no desert island should be without one!
Mental workout book – A Collected Works of … someone. Oscar Wilde, Ursula le Guin, Maya Angelou, Patricia K. McKillip. I don’t really mind, the key thing would be to have a foreign language edition. It slows you right up & you improve your language skills at the same time!!
5 – Star Wars or Star Trek?
(whispers) Neither?
I’m sorry. Shall I leave now? I guess if I had to choose it would be wars simply because I’ve watched some of them and liked them. Where-as trek I’ve watched maybe one or two episodes and … yeah, I won’t finish that sentence in case you’re a trekkie! If I had to name a ‘classic’ space opera thing that I had genuinely loved I’d say Firefly.
6 – If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
I’ve no idea! I like the idea of proper old-school elemental witchy-type powers. Healing would also be a lovely gift to have, right? Every power must come with a dark side though, mustn’t it, and the dark side to healing might prove useful when the zombie apocalypse comes!
7 – Music or Silence when writing?
Music. And it generally has to be stuff I know fairly well so I don’t get too distracted by it. I’m listening to The East Pointers right now.
8 – If you could live anywhere in the world, and take everything that you love with you, where would you choose?
I’d probably go back to Latin America somewhere. I miss hummingbirds.
9 - Your favourite karaoke song?
I think (and the memory is very blurry for reasons I won’t go into) that I did karaoke once when I was a student, and I have no idea what the song was! For someone who has performed as both a singer and a dancer, I am inordinately terrified of the thought of karaoke, which makes no sense but there we go! It’s not remotely the same but one of my favourite songs to perform was always Leonard Cohen’s Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye because it’s just so sad and beautiful.
10 – One piece of advice to an aspiring writer?
Read widely. Read outside your own genre, read outside your own identity, read books that challenge you and books that you think are beneath you. Reading is like travelling, it broadens your horizons and deepens your understanding of where you come from, which will help you push yourself to be a better writer.
11 – You win £1 million, but you must give half to charity. Which charity do you chose, and what do you do with the rest of the money?
Oh crikey. That’s an impossible choice isn’t it? Médecine Sans Frontières, probably. They’re usually the first in and the last out of disasters and warzones, and carry on fighting when everyone else has long since lost (or never had any) interest (Mediterranean refugee crisis, anyone?). I think the biggest issue facing us globally is the perfect storm of wealth imbalance and climate change, and any charity that is fighting to mitigate or undo some of that needs support.
With the rest of the money … move house, maybe, to be a little closer to the wild. Put some in savings for my daughter’s university costs, some in a pension fund for me (dull but vital), buy the cats some dreamies and give the rest to a conservation charity.
12 – Horror films, yes or no? If so, any favourites?
Honestly… no. I have far too over-active an imagination as it is, I don’t need anyone else trying to scare me! You know that rule about not dying in your dreams? Yeah, I get murdered in mine a lot. Like actually being hunted then violently deaded, so my warped little subconscious doesn’t need any encouragement! I also, for the same reason, read very little pure horror, although I do adore a bit of gothic horror and dark suspense like Laura Purcell’s books. I love stories that play with tension and the shadows more than the terror and blood, if that makes sense.
13 - What are you currently working on?
Editing a book which I can’t say too much about! Also slowly (subliminally?) planning a novella that I think wants to be written, expanding out from a short story about ghosts, loss, vengeance and Icelandic beaches. Also also, trying to decide on which bit of my novel to read at FantasyCon, my first in-person author event at the end of September, which I am equal parts thrilled and terrified about!