Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Greetings all. I’m Carly Rheilan, a British author, mother, wife, mental health nurse, youth worker, canvasser, putter out of recycling and slayer of stinging nettles.
I’ve written four books, all of them much darker than I thought when I was writing them. (I didn’t even realise I was writing “crime” – I just thought I was telling stories. Other people told me they were “crime”, albeit a bit off-genre. And everyone, everyone, told me they were terribly dark. I had not seen this. I thought they were all about redemption – in fact I know they are – but yes, they go to dark places, and always there are secrets and lies.)
Asylum is the only one I’ve published so far – tells the story of Cabdi, the survivor of a massacre, and Mustaf, a trafficked child
Later this year, I plan to publish the others.
– Cats Cradle tells the story of a relationship between a child and a paedophile
– Birthrights is a story about a childless psychiatrist seeking a fraudulent motherhood
– The Angel, written in the wake of the Shipman crimes, explores medical homicide.
I always answer emails (carlyrheilan@freepeoples.space) but I don’t like hanging out my life on the internet, so if you want to know more than this interview tells, you will have to write and ask me.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Asylum is a book about two refugees from Somalia. Long ago, a family of Somali children crossed our paths and virtually moved in with us. At the time I was much too busy trying to sort out their healthcare and birthdays and school uniforms to stand back and think about where they had come from or how they had got here. Much later, it troubled me and I started to research the history of that country. It swept me up, in horror and awe.
Asylum is also a book about the trafficking and abuse of vulnerable children. It is a book about Britain, as seen through the eyes of a man whose world is closer to the stone-age than to mine. It is a book about hope and resilience and battling on when the world has ended. It is a book about surviving. Of course, these are things I think about.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I don’t know. How would I know what’s unusual? I’m not very sociable. I don’t know any other writers.
One thing that’s important to me is to find the place in every person where they are the hero of their own life. Much of my career, both as a nurse and an academic, has involved working with people who have committed appalling crimes and done terrible things – but all of them had a narrative where they only did what they had to do, where they were somehow, however tortuously, in the right. I think that’s true of all of us. I don’t believe in villains, not really.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
George Elliot and Jane Austen – when I was writing my darkest book, the Angel, I imagined I was writing a world like theirs. William Saroyan – an almost lost and forgotten author, of profound compassion and beauty. John Grisham – I want to be able to tell stories as he does. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist who wrote about his patients with more humanity and understanding than anyone I ever read. The 2016 Labour Party Manifesto – “for the many not the few”. What’s not to like?
What are you working on now?
I’m tidying up Birthrights, which was the first book I wrote, back at the turn of the millenium. It’s strange going back to it. At the same time I’m fighting off the characters from the next book I’m writing – whose working title is Stiltskin, after RuItmpelstiltsken. It must be a terrible thing for a maiden to be locked in a room and told to spin straw into gold. We cannot blame her for the compromise she made, but still, it was a terrible compromise.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I wish I had one. If you know the secret, feel free to tell me.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
ABSOLUTELY only do it if doing it makes you feel better or live more happily with other people. Any other reason will end in disappointment.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
The secret of life is compost.
No, actually I never heard anyone giving that advice. That’s the advice I give everyone else.
What are you reading now?
Ten Myths about Israel by Ilan Pappe – an Israeli political dissident who writes about Palestine.
Ghana Must Go by Taiye Salasi.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Bed.
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?
Be off with you. Did you never do survival skills? Unless it’s the kind of desert island that includes a deserted hotel and a deserted daily buffet and an infinite supply of handcream and suncream and toilet roll, the only book I’ll want will be one with a lot of pages I can use as kindling. And the other thing.
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