Highlights from the Triskele Lit Fest

When the Triskele Books' one day Lit Fest came to a close in September, we knew that the conversations generated across the five panels were far too good not to share with a wider audience.

Thanks to sponsorship from Matador Books and sound engineering expertise from Live Box (who overcame some significant challenges in the form of noise intrusion from dance classes in the room above) we were able to record the panels and upload the videos to our YouTube channel.

Here are some of the highlights from the day, which we hope will tempt you to delve into the videos to watch the discussions in full.

Sci Fi and Fantasy

We kicked off the day with a lively discussion with Sci Fi and Fantasy authors Felicia Yap, CS Wilde, Jeff Norton, Eliza Green and Yen Ooi, chaired by Jack Wedgbury from Matador.

The panel showcased the vast range of modern Sci Fi and Fantasy. Felicia's upcoming Yesterday is a thriller about a murder being investigated in a world where most people only remember yesterday. CS Wilde's A Courtroom of Ashes is a fantasy about a lawyer in hell. Jeff Norton's MetaWars explores what happens when humans retreat from the real world into a digital one. Eliza Green's Becoming Human imagines humans competing for resources with another race on a distant planet, while Yen Ooi's Sun; Queens of Earth harnesses the powers of dreams to provide energy.

Between them, they reveal their inspiration and discuss how SFF liberates them to explore big themes from what it means to be human to the destruction of the Earth, but to view them through a personal perspective.

What do an oyster card, an iPod, a set of Bose headphones, a paintbrush and a passport reveal about their writing processes?

Romance

In the second panel of the day, Triskele's Liza Perrat talked to Romance writers Isabel Wolff, Charlie Maclean, Sareeta Domingo and Carol Cooper.

Isabel is an accidental novelist who began her fiction career when a newspaper column about the singles scene was turned into a novel. She has since written ten more novels.  Charlie Maclean's Unforgettable is a 'Sliding Doors' type story that explores the consequences of asking someone on a date ... or not. Sareeta Domingo's The Nearness of You, about a young woman falling in love with her best friend's boyfriend, also examines themes of bereavement and depression. Carol Cooper's multi-stranded narratives follow an array of couples at different stages in their lives.

They explore how far a Romance novel can play with the RWA's definition of "a narrative centred around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make their relationship work." They consider the role of sex in a romance novel - does it have a place in moving the plot forward and revealing character, or should the author keep the bedroom door closed? When men write Romance, does it get 'elevated' into a different category? What happens when you try writing in the dark?

And a pocket watch, a photograph, some music and a bottle of bathroom cleaner reveal surprising secrets about their writing process.

(With apologies for the poor quality of sound in the audience segments on this video)

Crime and Thrillers

Next, Ben Cameron of Cameron PR talked to Crime and Thriller authors Kate Hamer, Adam Croft and Chris Longmuir.

Kate Hamer's The Girl in the Red Coat is a dual narrative about a mother and her lost child. Adam Croft's Her Last Tomorrow is also centres round a missing child, but in this case the father receives a ransom note with an impossible demand. Chris Longmuir's Devil's Porridge is a historical crime novel based around the first policewomen in Scotland, guarding a munitions factory during WWI.

They contrast the challenges of the different types of stories they tell, reveal the horrible secret of what Devil's Porridge really was, explore the new concept of Grip Lit, and explain how a bottle of perfume, a literary award and the scan of one's unborn child continue to inspire their writing.

The empty seat at the end of the row belongs to Nigerian author Leye Adenle, who was prevented from getting to the Lit Fest on the day. Catriona Troth caught up with him a few weeks later and you can read her interview with him here. 

Historical Fiction

In the last genre based panel of the day, four very different authors discuss Historical fiction with fellow author Jane Davis.

Orna Ross's Her Secret Rose is a fictional account of the real life lovers WB Yeats and Maud Gonne. Radhika Swarup's Where the River Parts looks at the largest displacement of people in human history, following the Partition of India, through the eyes of a young Hindu woman. JD Smith's Overlord series takes us all the way back to 3rd Century Syria and the life of Zenobia, the warrior queen who nearly toppled the Roman Empire. Alison Morton's Roma Nova series is an alternative history in which the Roman Empire survived into the 20th Century.

The four authors reveal why the chose their particular stories to tell, the different challenges and responsibilities of writing history from the recent and distant pasts, how to create a voice appropriate for a different time period , and the discovery that surprised them most in the course of writing their books

And an index card, a bracelet, 'the only book I have ever defaced' and a photograph of a Roman gladius reveal secrets about their writing process.

Preserving the Unicorn - conversations with literary authors and their editors.

The last panel of the day was a discussion with literary authors and their editors, chaired by Triskele's Catriona Troth. Sunny Singh discusses her novel, Hotel Arcadia, and the fascinating role her Dutch translator played in honing the manuscript. Alex Pheby and his editor from Galley Beggar Press, Sam Jordison, discuss his novel, Playthings, the fictionalised story of Daniel Schreber, of one of Freud's most celebrated case studies. And Rohan Quine and his editor Dan Holloway take the lid off the process of editing Rohan's latest novel, Beasts of Electra Drive.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Sunny reveals inspirations ranging from Dante's Inferno to Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. Alex  explains how his novel grew out of frustration with blinkered 20th C analysis of Scheber. Sam  describes how he absorbed the emotional impact of the book and imagined telling a reviewer, "I've got this book and it's going to destroy you," before deciding "of course we've got to publish it."  And Rohan describes his book  as a 'love bite to the world,'  while Dan calls it 'a beautiful spectacle compiled of horror.'

Part way through the conversation, Alex Pheby threw a provocation to the audience. "All forms of masculine activity are vile and pernicious and should be weeded out." Sadly, time ran out before the implications of this could be explored. After the event, though, Orna Ross came up with some great questions for Alex. We hope to get the chance to put those questions to him in the new year. If so, we will publish his responses in Words with Jam.

Gillian Hamer In Conversation with Claire Fuller

Claire Fuller

Claire Fuller is a novelist and short fiction writer. For her first degree she studied sculpture at Winchester School of Art, specializing in wood and stone carving. She began writing fiction at the age of 40, after many years working as a co-director of a marketing agency. Claire has a masters in Creative and Critical Writing from The University of Winchester. Claire lives in Winchester with her husband and two children.

Her first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days is published in the UK by Fig Tree / Penguin, by House of Anansi in Canada, Tin House in the US, and will be published in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Israel and Turkey in the coming months.


Welcome to Words with Jam, Claire! What made you choose the content for your first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days?

I set out to write the type of novel I like to read. I like rather dark stories that make the reader work by not laying out all the answers; where you have to read between the lines to discover what has happened. And in fact, where there can be several possible answers. I hope I’ve achieved that with Our Endless Numbered Days.

You're a businesswoman in 'real life' - what fuelled the desire to write? 

I gave up my ‘businesswoman’ life last August to write full-time, but before that I ran a marketing agency for twenty-three years. I’ve always been creative (my first degree was in sculpture) and I suppose writing is another outlet. I stumbled into writing when I was forty. On a whim I decided to do NANOWRIMO one November and wrote just over 50,000 words in that month. From there I started writing short stories and reading them out at a local event, and then I decided to study for an MA in Creative and Critical Writing.

Your debut novel Our Endless Numbered Days (see my review here) was published by Fig Tree Penguin. Can you give us a brief resume of your journey to publication? 

I finished writing Our Endless Numbered Days early in 2013 and sent it out to about twelve literary agents. I had a rejection and then a couple of requests for a full submission, and one of them got back to me very quickly and asked me to go up to London. I met with Jane Finigan from Lutyens & Rubinstein and we just clicked, so I signed with them the next week. Jane and I worked on editing the manuscript for about six weeks, and then she sent it out to twelve editors in publishing houses. She started hearing back from them very quickly, and we received three offers from UK publishers, so the novel went to auction. At the same time, Jane’s colleague sent it out to their foreign associates and offers started to come in from other countries. After about two weeks Jane brought the UK auction to a close, and Fig Tree, an imprint of Penguin won. It was incredibly exciting, and the whole thing totally unexpected. The novel has now been sold in nine territories.

I worked with my editor at Fig Tree on more revisions, as well as her Canadian and US counterparts. And nineteen months after Penguin bought the novel it was published.

Did you always want to be published? Or did you just want to write? 

I didn’t start writing until fairly recently, but I’ve always wanted an audience for my writing, so in that sense I’ve always wanted to be published. But of course at first my audience was literally people listening in a room, or people reading my work on my website or in anthologies.

What are your earliest reading memories? Or the book of your childhood?

Some of my early reading memories are going through my parents’ bookshelves without censorship. My Mum wasn’t a great reader when I was growing up, but I really remember a German book she had about childhood illnesses, and being fascinated by the gruesome photographs. From my Dad’s shelves I read Small Tales of a Scorpion by Spike Milligan, which is a book of poems about mental illness. I also remember somehow being allowed to take out James Herbert’s novels from my local library when I was very young. Perhaps that’s where I got my love of dark literature from.

Are there any other genres you'd like to try?

I’d like to try writing a ghost story. I read a lot of ghost stories when I was much younger and was terrified by them. I’m not sure it works in quite the same way for adults – I’m not so easily scared, but I’d still like to have a go.

What three novels would you take to a desert island?

A good question! Do I take the books I love the best, the books I know I ought to tackle, or those I would get succour from? Perhaps I’ll have one of each:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. I re-read this often, and still find new things in it.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. This book has been on my ‘to be read’ list forever.

Collected Poems by John Donne. Some of these I remember off by heart from school, and still love. I’d like to learn some more. What better place than on a desert island?

How do you start to develop a new character?

I don’t normally start with just a character. I have a person in a location and with a particular situation happening to them, and then see how they react. Sometimes I have interviewed my characters, by writing them questions and having them answer, but mostly they develop from the situations I put them in. After a while, when I’m in the middle of writing I can tell if I’m making the character do something that wouldn’t come naturally to them and I’ll have to go back and rework some scenes.

How important is location to you in your writing? 

Incredibly important. I need to be able to visualise where my characters are; the space they are living in – right down to details that might not get mentioned, such as the layout of a house, what’s outside, what they keep in the cupboard under the stairs. Knowing all this helps me imagine them living and interacting with their surroundings. It helps with the atmosphere of what I’m writing, with the smells and sounds around them.

What advice would you give to up-and-coming authors?

Keep writing. Even if you don’t like what you’ve written, keep writing. You can’t revise and edit, and improve unless you’ve got something on paper.

Secondly, share your work. Get someone else to read it. Join (or form) a writing group. If want your writing to be published it is going to read, so you might as well start now.

And thirdly, read.

Where did the idea for Peggy Hillcoat and her story (Our Endless Numbered Days) come from?

It came from a news story in 2011. A teenager called Robin van Helsum appeared in Berlin saying that he had been living in the woods with his father for the previous five years and his father had died in an accident. Eight months later it was discovered that Robin had run away from home and had made his story up, but for a long time everyone believed him. It made me think what if he had been living in the forest, how would he have survived, what would have brought him out and what would have taken him there in the first place.

Do you have a new book in the pipeline? If so, can you tell us a little about it?

I’m revising and editing my second novel at the moment. Like Our Endless Numbered Days it’s also about a family in crisis, but a completely different family, in a different place, with a different problem. There is a lot of nature writing in it (which is something I love to read), but this time it’s set by the sea rather than in a forest. My editor hasn’t seen it yet, so I’d better not say any more.


Website/ Twitter links
www.clairefuller.co.uk
@ClaireFuller2
www.facebook.com/ourendlessnumbereddaysbook