Today I have the great pleasure of welcoming my friend and fellow-writer, the fabulous Yvonne Marjot, as my guest. Yvonne's latest novel, The Ashentilly Letters, is due for publication this coming Friday (18 November).
Welcome, Yvonne!
Hello Sue,
thanks for inviting me to visit your blog.
What
prompted you to first start writing? What was the first thing you wrote?
I
can’t remember I time when I didn’t make up stories and poems. I got into a
heap of trouble as a child for “telling stories” (adult speak for making up my
own version of events). It didn’t feel like lying – just making the story more
palatable.
After
a while, it dawned on me that I couldn’t get into trouble if I invented the
worlds within which my stories were set. I wrote the beginning of my first
(unfinished) novel aged fifteen, and thirty years later, after life and kids
had intervened, I went back to writing and paid proper attention to the task.
Four novels and a book of poetry later, I can’t imagine not writing. I’ll be
doing it on my deathbed (hopefully in many, many years from now). One day I may
even finish that first, lost, novel.
Can you
summarise your latest work in just a few words?
The Ashentilly Letters is the third book in the sequence that began with The Calgary Chessman
and continued with The Book of Lismore.
Each book tells the complete story of a fictional archaeological
discovery, along with developments in the lives of my protagonists, Cas
Longmore and her son Sam. This time they are separated by family problems, but
life continues to throw up surprises, one of which has been lying in the ground
for almost 2000 years.
What was
the inspiration for this book?
From
the beginning I wanted one of my Cas Longmore stories to be about Romans in
Scotland. So little is known about the Roman presence north of the border
(although we’re learning more all the time). I wanted to pay homage to one of
my favourite childhood books, Rosemary Sutcliffe’s The Eagle of the Ninth, by sending my family of archaeologists to
the east coast of Scotland to rewrite the history books. Also, I wanted Cas to
go back to her New Zealand home, because there are (some wonderful, and some
terrible) surprises awaiting her.
Did you do
any research for the book?
Heaps.
It’s a great way to avoid the writing part – writing-avoidance is an important
strategy to maintain my sanity. Some of the most readable and useful references
are quoted at the end of the book, in case you’d like to read up on the
subject.
What does
a typical writing day involve for you?
There are no typical days. Sometimes, when I know
my boys are going to be away for the weekend, I set myself a target and treat
Saturday as just another working day. Other times, inspiration will strike in
the bath, or the bus, and I’ll be scrambling for paper and a pen to get it down
before I forget my train of thought. In the end, though, it always comes down
to hard work – I have to make myself sit at the screen and write – and write –
and not stop until I’ve written enough.
Do you
plot your novels in advance, or allow them to develop as you write?
I’m
a seat-of-the-pants writer. I like to know something about my main characters,
and I need to have an idea of how the story’s going to end, but the first draft
writes itself – I’m just the channel through which my characters tell me what’s
going on. Later I go back and tidy it up – they can be incoherent at times –
but I never allow myself the delusion that I’m in charge.
What can
we expect from you in the future?
I’m working on a trilogy of ‘fairy’
stories – which is to say, stories about some real people whose life is
seriously inconvenienced by various activities of the Fae. Puck is in the
garden, and there’s mischief afoot.
I am also about to self-publish a
book of my short stories, to give new readers a taste of my writing before they
decided whether to buy any of my novels.
Don’t forget to follow me on Facebook
or Twitter to get news of upcoming books, and Crooked Cat is a great way to find out about great
writing by a whole range of authors.
Yvonne
Marjot was born in England, grew up in New Zealand, and now lives on the Isle
of Mull in western Scotland. She has been making up stories and poems for as
long as she can remember, and once won a case of port in a poetry competition
(New Zealand Listener, May 1996). Her first volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, was
published by Indigo Dreams Publishing, and her novels are published by Crooked
Cat.
You
can follow her work via the Facebook page The
Calgary Chessman, @Alayanabeth on Twitter, or on the Wordpress blog The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet.
