Hi Jemima, thank you for sitting down with me today for an interview. Before we start, I have to say that I was very impressed with your website – how much information you have provided about your younger years; when you began writing; why you didn’t continue until later in life; your career; your guinea pig pets (love the photo) and what you’re doing in the writing world today! Definitely an inspiring tale and I smiled my way through everything, so thanks!
Since your author website contains practically everything a reader/fan might want to know about you, for this interview, I’d like to focus on your writing.
You mentioned in your bio that you first began writing when you 
were eight. What prompted this? Did you, or your family, read extensively and you just woke up one day thinking that you would write a story? Had the desire to write been there all along, but you opted to wait until you mastered cursive/penmanship so it would look neat and pretty? (That’s actually a ‘page’ from my childhood). Or, was it something entirely different?
I know I read a lot, so I expect I just started writing because that seemed to be what happened. I recall that writers were fairly common among the parents of kids in the books I read, so the concept that someone had to write a book took hold early on, and I did write to Enid Blyton (Famous Five, Malory Towers, Noddy) to say how much I liked her books (the Adventure series, early on) and got a typed postcard in reply. For the record, the only other author I’ve ever written to is J. K. Rowling, after Deathly Hallows, and yes, I got a reply from her, too!
I don’t remember how it fit in with the handwriting issue, but I did get a certificate for handwriting that most people in my class entered, sponsored by the chocolate makers, Cadbury. It’s among my school certificates still!
Awesome. I hope you received some chocolate with the certificate as well!
As a child, you wrote a book titled The Little Stream. You’ve compared it to the story of Smetana’s Vltava which, of course, makes me wonder if you brought the ‘drama’ of the entire suite into your story? (The castle, the river, the spurned maiden, etc.) Or, was it similar only to the river (Vltava) piece? Either way, was there some form of ‘happily ever after?’
Well, it wasn’t very long! I think it’s eight pages (sixteen sides) about the size of a digital compact camera. It mostly concentrated on the passage of the river through the landscape and its development from a babbling brook into a wide estuary. Maybe there’s a bit of Siddhartha in it, but I only learned about that in my late teens, and finally read it about 8 years ago.
Do you ever regret that you didn’t write books sooner, due in part to the unkind words from a ‘friend?’ What advice would you give to new, or aspiring, authors should they wind up in a similar situation?
Yes. When I look back on the amount of writing in other ways, particularly event reports for my sport, I realise I was always telling stories. My sporting achievements might have been greater had I not gone off into a reverie of how I would write the report of this event while I was halfway through it!
I always had stories in my head. Most people have imaginary friends, I don’t know whether most people enact adventures with them in quite the way I did. I also created lands, drew maps (one place had a railway timetable), and had a whole load of adventures with my imaginary team of horses. So my advice to anyone else in that situation is, don’t keep it to yourself, write it down.
Of course, I was completely untutored in writing. I think this is something where the craft can come later; the creativity is important. There are parallels with painting here. Who would teach a child to paint starting with the colour wheel? Or maybe some people are and that’s why so many people believe they can’t draw.
And my friend was right – the book I had started to write was rubbish. But that’s the whole point of learning anything. Early attempts may well be rubbish. Very few people are perfect at anything they do straight away. We all have to hone our craft, skill, expertise… and learn more about the world and life too, if we are writers and want to make our stories believable.
Your next phase of writing was articles and event reports for newsletters (is that a newspaper?) and magazines. How did you get accepted on as a writer for these publications? And what prompted your desire to write them? Any absolute favorites that added to the family photo album?
If in doubt, start your own magazine 😉
No, join a club…
Writing event reports is something most clubs and societies have trouble finding volunteers for. And many clubs had newsletters that were circulated to the members to keep them informed and involved. These days, some of those have gone online as a website or Facebook page, but most also have physical (or PDF copies) of a magazine format for members who prefer to get things by mail. So I wrote for, and edited, one newsletter off and on for ten years (with other equally talented writers contributing too, but often filling the gaps myself).
Then there’s the event reports for the local newspaper, or the national sports magazine… I never wrote fiction for newspapers or magazines… although a lot of the event reports were somewhat fictional!
Okay, so eventually, (to quote you) “the characters jumped into my head with stories that needed to be told…”
Where were you in life when this happened? What triggered the ‘release?’ Was it some random experience? Maybe a dream – or a television program? Your cute, furry, guinea pig pets?
Entirely the guinea pigs, Fred and George, who were named after the Weasley twins, of course. I’d changed jobs, moved home, and was self-employed again. I needed company and I chose guinea pigs. I was fascinated with them, and watched their behaviour and interactions with each other, wondering about their personalities (I’d been in human resources before I’d retrained for environmental research), and I dubbed them the Philosopher (Fred) and the Engineer (George) way before the writing started. Well, six months at least, which is a long time in a guinea pig life.
Then Hugo and Victor turned up, with totally different personalities… and we 
were doing a silly story on the guinea pig forum, writing one paragraph at a time, and somehow I just took that off into a whole new area and decided they needed a book. Three books, with the titles as they are today. And then I started writing them.
Alright, let’s talk about your Princelings books. I’ve read the series ‘about’ and all the books look like they’ll be a fun adventure read. Can you provide a brief, series overview here for readers?
As one of my reviewers neatly summed it up: we are in a feudal world with advanced technology running on strawberry juice…
At first, there really isn’t much in the way of advanced technology, but due to the curious circumstances of the first book, George gets the idea to develop a new power source running on strawberry juice, which is a project that runs in the background of the second and third books, and then promotes change that occurs in society over the rest of the series.
The series starts with two innocents using their friendship and their brains to solve problems, and the problems get bigger, and more acute as the series goes on, with an ever-growing cast of characters, some of whom pop up again in unexpected places. The big question, is how are they ever going to deliver the promise made at the end of the first book, when everything in their world is changing?
Now, I could be wrong, but it does seem that you pulled some of your own life experiences into these tales? How did you go about incorporating your business and environmental wisdom into these books while still ensuring they’re interesting reads? Are there any messages within the pages that you hope readers will take away with them?
Ah-hah! Well, I do try to show how living within our own resources might lead to having a more enjoyable life, but it isn’t easy, especially when kids are so bombarded with ways of spending money. In a way, I just write being me, and the experiences I’ve had make me who I am. And they do say ‘write what you know’ even if it does have to be translated into appropriate settings for younger readers at times. If there is a message, I hope it is ‘use your brains, and work with your friends’
Let’s focus now on one specific book: The Princelings of the East. Again, can you provide us with a teeny synopsis? What was your inspiration for this book? When you were done with the writing – did the manuscript match your initial vision or had it changed? I imagine if your characters embodied some of your pets’ personalities they might have given you some ‘attitude’ and just done their own thing. *chuckle*
Two young princelings (of the royal line but unlikely to inherit any titles) 
realise there is a problem with energy disappearing when it’s most needed, so they set out to find what to do about it. They encounter strange businessmen, princes and barkeepers, and have to work out who of these powerful people are allies, who are not, and how to solve a nationwide problem. Both trust and time are of the essence!
The inspiration came from the story we were writing online, which I mentioned earlier – we had linked universes with a tunnel between castles, and the world at the other end ran on strawberry juice. I know that was my invention, so I felt free to use it myself.
I was extremely satisfied with the book once I’d finished it (although I did improve it later, in the 2nd edition), but what I learned in the process is that characters do things of their own accord, if they are good enough characters. If you let them make decisions because of who they are, they take you down paths that may be different from those you’d imagined – and a whole lot better!
Last question – it looks like you’re currently working on book two of your BookElves Anthology, as well as book two of your Viridian System series. Would you be willing to provide a tiny tidbit of information about one or the other? (Or both)? Enough to whet our appetites? *smile*
The BookElves are a group of twelve great authors of middle grade type books, who come together to do things that help promote each other. The idea of the Anthology last year was both great fun, and well-received by our readers, so we decided to do another this year. Seven of us are currently working on short stories to go in this year’s book, which is scheduled for 12th November. Titles tend to include the words Christmas and Adventure quite a lot, so if you like Christmas adventures you may like the book!
My Viridian System series is for grown-ups, although there’s not much to offend older teens. I suppose anyone allowed to read James Bond would be ok with them, although it’s a science fiction series with more in common with Star Trek than a spy series. My heroes Big Pete and the Swede are asteroid miners looking for a vacation, and finding trouble, and the first in the series will be out in January 2016 – The Perihelix. There’s a Sampler of short stories available for 99c from 28th September. I’ve already started the second book, because I couldn’t stop writing about them, and various ideas I wanted to include are better written down straight away these days, before I forget them!
Thank you again for sitting down with me, Jemima. This has certainly been fun and I’m looking forward to reading my copy of The Princelings of the East.
It’s a pleasure, thank you for having me.
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Fred sat staring at the tunnel, lost in thought. George waited. This might take a while. He could hear soft sounds of crackling flames in the fire on the other side of the wall, and in the distance the occasional pitter-patter of footsteps echoing down the corridors. He wondered what would happen if they ventured out of this castle into the tunnels. When he had been out in the marshes, he’d never gone a long way from home; the castle was always visible in the distance, light glinting on its spires. He’d never been out overnight, either. He identified a strange feeling inside him. They might be on the edge of a Great Adventure, but he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t rather be safely tucked up in bed.
Fred stirred. “We need to go and investigate this Great Energy Drain,” he said. “We must find out whether it is a widespread phenomenon, and whether the causes are known.”
George nodded; this was elementary procedure for an investigation. “And then?” he asked.
“And then,” answered Fred, “we shall come up with some ideas for how to solve it.”
“Good idea!” said George, knowing that you can never know exactly how you are going to do something until you have made the preliminary investigation and tested out a few theories. But the aim was set, and all they had to do now was decide… to go or not to go?
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About the Author:
I’ve been writing since I was 8 years old. I still have a small booklet I found in my mother’s box of treasures, written in a very childish hand, entitled The Little Stream. It reads very much like the story of Smetana’s Vltava, or The Moldau as it was called when I was young, so I must have been into classical music at an early age (I blame my brothers’ influence).
My early fiction attempts failed for want of suitable inspiration: I couldn’t get characters or plot that seemed interesting, and my first attempts were derided by a ‘friend’. I had the bug for writing, though, and wrote articles and event reports for newsletters and magazines whenever I got the opportunity. My career in business and in environmental research kept me chained to a desk for many years, but also gave me the opportunity to write manuals, reports, science papers, blogs, journals, anything and everything that kept the words flowing. Finally the characters jumped into my head with stories that needed to be told…
I now live in a village in Norfolk, UK, with my guinea pigs, the first of whom, Fred, George, Victor and Hugo, provided the inspiration for the Princelings stories.
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*****
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Thank you for the wonderful interview and for participating in the Tour. Victoria at My Family’s Heart
Thank you so much for participating in my blog tour, Charline. I really enjoyed your interview, and it got me thinking!
Was great to have you, Jemima. Loved putting the questions together and then learning the answers. 🙂