International Authors: Universal Themes
While mainstream publishing plays safe with predictable
stories and heroines who repeat the same familiar tropes, where are today’s
most ground-breaking authors? The answer is that they are self-publishing. Now,
seven of the most prominent female entrepreneurial authors have brought their
work together in a limited edition compilation of novels: Outside the Box: Women Writing Women.
The project is the brainchild of Jessica Bell, an Australian
writer living in Athens, Greece. A literary author and the Founder/Publishing Editor
of Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Jessica wanted to showcase the most exciting
fiction being released by authors who are in full charge of their own creative decisions.
“I couldn’t imagine collaborating with a finer group of writers,” Jessica said.
“The authors in this box set are at the very top of their game.”
The collection will be published in e-book format on February 20 (pre-orders from January 12) and available for just 90 days.
The box set introduces a diverse cast of characters: A woman accused of killing her tyrannical father who is determined
to reveal the truth. A bookish and freshly orphaned young woman seeks to escape
the shadow of her infamous mother—a radical lesbian poet—by fleeing her
hometown. A bereaved biographer who travels to war-ravaged Croatia to research
the life of a celebrity artist. A gifted musician who is forced by injury to
stop playing the piano and fears her life may be over. An undercover journalist
after a by-line, not a boyfriend, who unexpectedly has to choose between her
comfortable life and a bumpy road that could lead to happiness. A former
ballerina who turns to prostitution to support her daughter, and the wife of a
drug lord who attempts to relinquish her lust for sharp objects and blood to
raise a respectable son.
Jane Davis said, “This set of thought-provoking novels
showcases genre-busting fiction across the full spectrum from light (although
never frothy) to darker, more haunting reads that delve into deeper
psychological territory.”
But
regardless of setting, regardless of whether the women are mothers, daughters,
friends or lovers, the themes are universal: euthanasia, prostitution, gender
anomalies, regression therapy, obesity, drug abuse, revenge, betrayal, sex,
lust, suicide and murder. Their authors have not shied away from the big
issues. Some have asked big questions.
Orna Ross (founder-director of The Alliance of Independent
Authors, named by The Bookseller as one of the 100 most influential people in
publishing) selected Blue Mercy, a complex tale of betrayal, revenge, suspense, murder mystery - and surprise.
Joni Rodgers (NYT bestselling author) returned to her debut Crazy for Trying, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a Discover Award finalist.
The stories behind some of the stories in Outside the Box
Carol Cooper
on One Night at the Jacaranda:
One Night at the Jacaranda is the first novel I’ve
created that got as far as the hands of readers. There’ve been other efforts: a
coming-of-age novel set in Cambridge, a children’s story about a stray dog, a
novel about a teenager coping with disability, and the chronicle of a female
surgeon in training. She never reached the top as she spent too much time
horizontal (like the manuscript, still languishing in a drawer somewhere).
Now I see that I was trying to fit into particular
places on bookshelves. By contrast, One Night at the Jacaranda, although it’s
contemporary women’s fiction, doesn’t nestle quite as neatly into a genre.
The idea came to me out of the blue. I was on a
flight to the USA, on my way to my father’s funeral. As I sat sipping a
much-needed gin and tonic, the idea for a story about a group of single
Londoners popped into my head. There’d be a struggling journalist, a lonely
lawyer, a newly single mother of four daring to date again.
I covered paper napkins with scrawled notes which
eventually developed into the novel. Finally I’d embarked on creating the kind
of book I’d want to read for pleasure. I wasn’t thinking about marketing
angles. I just wrote.
All the characters are made up. I don’t know where
ex-con Dan came from, and I’m glad I never had an au pair as manipulative as
Dorottya, but some of the influences are obvious. Although the stressed doctor
in my story is male, he takes on many of the frustrations I face in my day job.
Ditto the single mother, the freelance journalist, and the young man diagnosed
with cancer are all people I relate to.
I like to pretend that the story has nothing to do
with my father. For one thing, it would have been far too racy for him. He’d
have choked on a Harrogate toffee by page four.
Yet things fall into place when a parent dies, so
his influence is there. The deeper message of One Night at the Jacaranda is
that the characters can’t find happiness with someone else until they confront
who they themselves really are.
Over the years I’d authored and co-authored many
non-fiction books. The leap to writing fiction required new skills. But it was
refreshing to write what I wanted to write, without worrying about word counts
or thinking of appropriate illustrations. My experience in journalism shows, I
think, in my short scenes, cutting from one character to the next.
Medicine has a huge impact on my fiction. You can’t
put your patients in a book, but doctoring teaches you to observe. It’s no
surprise that many great writers have been doctors. While I can’t pretend to be
in the same league as Somerset Maugham, Michael Crichton, AJ Cronin, Khaled
Hosseini or Abraham Varghese, I’m grateful that my work brings me into contact
with such a wide range of people and situations.
Roz Morris on
My Memories of a Future Life
'I was always fascinated by tales of regression to
past lives,' says the author Roz Morris. ‘I thought, what if instead of going
to the past, someone went to a future life? Who would do that? Why? What would
they find?
‘Another longtime interest was the world of the
classical musician. Musical scores are exacting and dictatorial - you play a
note for perhaps a sixth of a second and not only that, there are instructions
for how to feel - expressivo, amoroso. It's as if you don't play a piece of
classical music; you channel the spirit of the composer.
‘I became fascinated by a character who routinely
opened her entire soul to the most emotional communications of classical
composers. And I thought, what if she couldn’t do it any more? And then, what
if I threw her together with someone who could trap the part of her that
responded so completely to music?’
Jane Davis on
An Unchoreographed Life
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I was gripped by a 2008 court case, when, in an
interesting twist, it was ruled that a prostitute had been living off the
immoral earnings of one of her clients. Salacious headlines focused on the
prostitute’s replies when she was asked to justify her charge of £20,000 a
week. But the case also challenged perceptions of who was likely to be a
prostitute. The answer turned out to be that she might well be the ordinary
middle-aged woman with the husband and two teenage children who lives next door.
Whilst I was writing the novel, it became especially
relevant when change to the laws governing prostitution were proposed and
became headline news.
I grew up within the footprint of Nelson’s paradise
estate. The story of his mistress, Emma Hamilton, has always fascinated me.
Born into extreme poverty and forced to resort to prostitution, she later
became a muse for artists such as George Romney and Joshua Reynolds and a
fashionista by bucking the tight-laced trends of the day. Cast aside by an aristocratic
lover, she went on to marry his uncle. Completely self-educated, Emma
continually reinvented herself, mixing in diplomatic circles and becoming
confidante of both Marie Antoinette and the Queen of Naples.
But Emma’s story is unusual. I had a clear understanding
that, had I been born in another age, the chances were that, living in London,
I would have been either a domestic servant or a prostitute - but quite
possibly, both. Prior to 1823, domestics under the age of sixteen didn’t
receive a salary. They worked a sixteen-hour day in return for ‘bed and board’,
a very generous description of what was actually on offer. And, in return, when
they reached the age of sixteen, they were cast out onto the streets.
During my research, I used the Internet extensively
to source personal accounts, diaries, blogs and newspaper reports. How did
sex-workers come to the attention of the police and social services? What were
the main reasons they ended up in court? (The answer was generally tax evasion
and financial crime, things I knew about from my day job.) How did sex workers
see themselves? How did they view their clients? How did this perception change
if they stopped? I also consulted The English Collective of Prostitutes, who
very kindly allowed me to quote them in my fictional newspaper article.
And then I began to imagine what life was like for
the child of a prostitute. There was nowhere I could research that hidden
subject. And it is always the thing that eludes you that becomes the story.
Kathleen Jones
on The Centauress
The Centauress was inspired by a meeting with an
extraordinary Italian sculptor who was officially female, but was very open
about the fact that she was a hermaphrodite. She appeared to revel in her dual
sexuality, although there was an underlying note of tragedy in the stories she
told about her life. I began to wonder what it must be like to be born without
any specific gender identity and what it might mean for relationships. Almost by accident, I was present when she was being interviewed for her
biography and there were a lot of discussions about the ethical questions her
life story raised; how much the biographer should tell and how to protect the
people she’d shared her life with.
When she died, her story wouldn’t let me go. Meeting
her had changed my life – as she had changed many people’s lives, not always
for the better. Fictional episodes started writing themselves in my head, often
centred around one of her reminiscences.
I kept thinking ‘what if?’ and gradually the novel began to take shape.
Fiction can often be closer to the emotional truth of something than factual biography.
The Centauress is set in Istria – a very beautiful
part of Croatia that used to belong to Italy and has the turbulent historical
background I needed for the novel. The family of my main character, Zenobia,
has been torn apart by conflict. Living in Europe means living every day with
echoes of a violent, recent past; sharing your village or street with people
who may have betrayed your relatives, or be relatives of someone your family
also betrayed. Just below my house in Italy, at the bottom of the olive grove,
is a memorial to six young boys who were dragged from their houses and shot,
only a year before I was born.
As a
biographer myself, I’ve often felt uncomfortable ‘eavesdropping’ on the most
intimate moments of someone’s life, so
it’s not surprising that my narrator, Alex, became a biographer researching the
life story of celebrity artist Zenobia de Branganza, who is the Centauress of
the story. Alex has to struggle with the problems of her subject’s desire for
honesty and the wishes of friends and family not to have their lives exposed.
Alex has her own private tragedies, because the novel is also about surviving
some of the worst things that can happen to you. It’s this knowledge that
enables Zenobia to trust Alex with her most intimate revelations. And the message she gives to Alex is that it
is possible to heal and that you must always be ready to accept happiness and
love when it comes your way.
If you were
Queen of Publishing for a day, what’s one thing you’d change about the industry
as a whole?
Orna: The reason I love self-publishing so much is that it’s democratising and
it encourages diversity. Readers and writers together are now creating new
genres and books that London and Manhattan would never have published. If I
were Queen of Publishing for a day, I’d make it much more diverse. I’d love to
see a greater variety of voices at every level of the industry.
Jessica:
That’s a tough one. Can it stop being such a popularity contest and get back to
its roots? Focus on the writing, not how many followers the author has on
Twitter? In an ideal world...
Roz: I would ask for more literary awards to
open up to new writers. Not just to indies, but to all the new talent that
comes along. Too many literary awards are given on the basis of pre-existing
fame. If those authors genuinely wrote the best book of the year, then they
deserve the prize, but otherwise we should give awards to the genuinely
surprising, interesting and wonderful - not the usual suspects. Sometimes the
best book has been written by Hilary Mantel, Julian Barnes or Neil Gaiman - but
sometimes it’s been written by someone relatively unknown. And those are the
books that awards should be finding for us.
Carol: Although it should be obvious that there’s more than one way to
publish quality books, some people in both camps sadly take up entrenched
positions. Those in traditional publishing especially tend to snipe at the
other side, and the antagonism does nobody any favours. We shouldn’t be at war,
because in the end it’s all about the reader. I’d like to bring in a lot more
enlightenment and a bit more peace, but I may need more than a day to achieve
it.
Kathleen: I’d ban accountants
from the commissioning meeting! Books should be accepted on literary value
alone; it’s the only way to get a quality product. Readers quickly tire of
being sold ‘the next best thing’. They want variety, good stories, original,
surprising prose - they deserve the best, not some publicist’s idea of what
they can be conned into thinking is the best. Not only that, but many of the
books they buy purporting to be written by celebrities are in fact written by
someone else - usually a professional writer whose own work has been rejected
but who needs the money. To pass off a book in that way is fraudulent - at best
a con trick. We need to take the fake out of the fiction industry and writers
need to be free to write the books they want to write and readers want to read.
Jane: The options for those wishing to publish are now wider than ever
before, so I don’t think it’s the publishing industry I would change. It is the
perception of publishing and the value that we place on books and art that I’d
like to target. This year, I’ve been out speaking to librarians and booksellers
trying to encourage them to stock – and read – more indie titles. If Andrew
Lownie’s prediction is right, over 75% of books will be self-published by the
year 2020. Any outlet that refuses to stock indie titles will be doing readers
an enormous disservice by restricting choice. The other thing I’d like to be
able to do is to get out there and sell my books for the listed price. I hear
parents talk about spending £120 on trainers for their children - something that
will be outgrown in 6 months. People will fork out over £50 to see a band play,
they’ll happily pay £2.45 for a coffee or £3.60 for a pint of beer, and yet
they throw up their hands in horror at the idea of paying £8.99 for a
paperback. Is the real issue that readers’ needs are not being catered for?
£8.99 may seem a lot of money for something you don’t enjoy. I found the
results that Kobo have collated about books readers give up on half way through
very telling, with The Goldfinch and Twelve Years a Slave topping the list (the
books readers were told they should be reading), whilst the book they were most
likely to finish? Casey Kelleher's self-published thriller Rotten to the Core.
Joni:
Oh, Lord, I’d tell everyone to
take the day off and read a book. That’s the single most important thing
writers can do—for ourselves and for the book culture at large—but we leave
ourselves so little time for it.
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