When you're not writing, how do you spend your time?
In bed! My other interests are long-distance walking, great food, reading maps, taking photographs, cycling, painting, politics and travel. I've been travelling since an early age, hitchhiking locally from the age of sixteen, overseas at eighteen. I tasted liberty in mind, spirit and geography - at first to escape my father- and as a way of seeing other people and places. An interest in maps, food and photography sit together nicely. Eventually, I collected stories and experiences that made-up my Pilgrimage series. But there's a lot more stories to be told.
What is your writing process?
Obsessive. I have to 'be there', 'live it'. There has to be a central narrative idea that drives the story. It is an entirely messy process that only becomes itself through repeated editing, an obsessive amount. It is only finished when I am sick of it the fifth or fifteenth time. Writing for me is exciting, dangerous and painful. I cannot always tell what will happen next. The engine takes me there. However with 'Knowing Simone', set in C19th France, there is additional work in living in a time, place and culture so different from my own. Additional research have transitioned into a more solid planning process. Currently inspired by Emile Zola, a great storyteller.
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