Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m an actor and director at a small theatre a few miles where I live in the county of Yorkshire in the UK. I did work as a project and business change manager – very pressured and very demanding – and when I escaped I started to write stories.
I have one full-length novel published with Crooked Cat and a short story published in an anthology by the magazine Ireland’s Own. So this is still quite a new venture for me.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My current novel is called Messandrierre. It is set in France in an area called the Cévennes, which sits on the southern edge of the Massif Central. It’s a murder mystery and features my central character and investigator, Jacques Forêt.
I’ve been captivated by France ever since I was a teenager and made my first visit there. Over the years I’ve travelled the length and breadth of the country and I now spend three months of the year there. It’s a vast country with incredible and diverse scenery, an interesting history that is inextricably linked with our own, a culture all of its own, fabulous food and wine and lots of sunshine. It just seemed to me to be logical to locate my book where I first had the germ of the idea for the plot.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
What a strange question! I don’t think I’ve got any. However, the other day I did make some gooseberry ice cream, which requires time and patience and not a great deal of intellect. So, whilst I was working in my kitchen I was mentally doing a structural edit of my current work-in-progress. Would that count?
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Wow! That is such a big question. I have always read very widely since being a child and my bookshelves are bursting and yet I keep on buying more books! Which probably makes me a bookaholic. But to choose who and what…The authors would be Shakespeare and Chaucer through to Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne and right up to date with D H Lawrence, Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, John Grisham, Minnette Walters and Peter James and an awful lot of others in between. As for specific books – an almost impossible choice – The Lost Girl by Lawrence, The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, the Gormenghast Trilogy by Peake, The Spire by Golding and I suppose, one of my earliest influences, Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on the follow-up book to Messandrierre. This story starts a few months after the end of the previous book. It is still set in the village of Messandrierre and the surrounding area. The central characters of Jacques Forêt and Beth Samuels still feature, as do some of the lesser characters that live in the village. There is of course a body and a murder for Jacques to solve, and there is a significant natural death, which changes the dynamics within the village.
I am also putting together an anthology of strange fairy tales – Tall Told Tales. I find it helps to have more than one writing project at a time so that when I get stuck with one I can free up my mind by working on the other and vice versa.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Promotion is something that I’m still learning about and I’m discovering new places to advertise/market my book all the time. Principally, I use my publisher’s pages, my own blog (which you can find at : http://jamesetmoi.blogspot.co.uk/), website and face book page along with undertaking blog tours, providing guest posts on other author’s blogs. I also go out and talk to reading groups and attend local literary events. But now I have found awesomegang, and I have added this place to my ever-growing list of outlets for promotion. So, I will be back with my next book.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Hmmm… I think there are far more experienced authors than me out there who can provide relevant and detailed advice. So I’ll just say, don’t ever give up.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
‘It’s your story, so just write it!’ I was given this advice when I was working on a very early version of Messandrierre. I had had some professional feedback which had sent me into an ‘I can’t do this’ spiral. But after a lengthy discussion with a writing colleague I realised that I needed to change the focus of my story rather then blindly follow the feedback I had been given.
Now, I have a page in my notebook which contains the advice I was given, and only those 7 words. When I reach a difficulty with my writing and start to doubt myself I just take out my notebook and remind myself of the best advice I have ever received.
What are you reading now?
I’m a collector of books so my current and most precious read is the third part of Patrick Hamilton’s trilogy ‘Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky’. On my e-reader I’ve just started reading ‘Sandlands’ by Rosy Thornton and for my local book club I have to read ‘Daniel’ by Henning Mankell before our August meeting. It’s not unusual for me to be reading two or three books at once, the first editions are my bedside table books because they are so precious, my e-reader is on my phone which is ideal for train and tram journeys etc and a paperback goes where I go as and when required.
What’s next for you as a writer?
To continue to build my readership base, to complete Merle, the second book in the Jacques Forêt series of stories. To self-publish my anthology of fairy tales and to keep on writing and spending time in France.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Another incredibly difficult question. OK…
I must have my complete works of Shakespeare with me. I’ve been learning, reciting and reading Shakespeare since I was 6 years old, so I couldn’t possibly give him up.
Freya Stark’s autobiographical tetralogy – Traveller’s Prelude, Beyond Euphrates, The Coast of Incense and Dust in the Lion’s Paw – is also a must because she was an incredible woman and a fascinating explorer. I’d like to take my Durrell, too – The Alexandria quartet. I love Lawrence Durrell’s narrative voice and have always wanted to meet him. Unfortunately, that is no longer possible, as he died in 1990 in Sommières in France.
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