Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I was born in the North of England, in a place sandwiched between Snowdonia, the Irish Sea and the Pennines. I now live in London, enjoy the better weather but hanker for wild places and have nostalgia for the warm-hearted people of the North.
I spent many years working in online technology, latterly in the video games industry and I’m fascinated by science, technology and futurology. My books are her creative response to the exponential growth of technological innovation in the era of climate change.
I’ve written two books, ‘The Boy Who Fell from the Sky” and “Silverwood”, the first two in the “House Next Door” trilogy. I’m currently working on the third, “The Moon at Noon”, which will be out, hopefully, before the end of this year.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“The Boy Who Fell from the Sky.”
About 10 years ago, I started reading The New Scientist. I worked for many years in online businesses and I love technology – I’m a typical gadget geek. But reading The New Scientist I was being fed this weekly diet of the wonderful and miraculous.
Really, before then, I had no idea of the pace of scientific innovation that is going on around us and the crazy stuff that physicists think up, like string theory and multiverses. I just fell in love with the ideas. I discovered there’s this whole community of people who think about the future, the futurists, or futurologists. I started to read their books and their blogs and anything I could get my hands on, really. The New Scientist also covers climate change quite closely. I wanted to know more, so I read a lot about the subject, books by people like James Lovelock and James Hansen and started to become more and more concerned.
I enjoy books like The Hunger Games and Divergent. I also love books like Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking and Chuck Wendig’s Heartland Trilogy. They are all exciting, deeply engaging dystopian action adventure series. Literary catnip.
So I wanted to write something similar, something fun but also something that brought a bit of this science I’d been reading into the mix.
I liked the idea of exploring possible futures based on the non-fiction I’d be reading. Fiction has always been a good way of testing out “what if” scenarios, our old version of virtual reality. In my stories, I am trying to do that. I don’t write “hard science fiction”, but I try as best I can, to explore versions of what might happen based on good sources.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
That’s an interesting question. I write the first draft really quickly and then agonise over the re-writes over weeks and months. I’m not sure if that counts as an unusual writing habit. I’m a very visual person. I like to draw what I imagine, so right now, I’m drawing Mathew’s world in a web comic. You can take a look at it here http://juleowen.com/the-boy-who-fell-from-the-sky-graphic-novel/
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I studied literature and so I was weaned on the literary canon. I always like magical realism, but probably because of the inherent prejudices against science fiction and speculative fiction amongst literary types, I was late to the genre. The first books in that I read were Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake and I was drawn to Ursula Le Guin because one of my more enlightened professors had mentioned her name to me. Then I discovered Philip K Dick and Iain M Banks and I was hooked! These days I tend to read a lot of young adult stuff. I love Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series and Chuck Wendig’s books, but I read a lot and very broadly.
What are you working on now?
“The Moon at Noon”, which is the third in the “House Next Door” series. This is where readers will find out who August Lestrange really is, Mathew has a challenging adventure and some big surprises and Clara plays a much bigger role in this book. It will conclude Mathew’s story, but it won’t conclude the books I write about the world I’ve created. So there will be more in the future about the Kind, the people Mathew meets in “The Boy Who Fell from the Sky”, Dragomirov will make a reappearance, as will George and Clara and you will eventually learn the full story of August Lestrange’s people.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Oh heavens! I’ve only just started. I’ll let you know in a few months.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
1) Read. A LOT. Read widely, but most of all, read your own genre, obsessively. Seriously. If you don’t/won’t/can’t do this, then this is not your thing.
2) It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I know a lot of authors, traditionally published and indie authors. There’s no such thing as an overnight success.
3) It’s really hard work. Get over it.
4) Find a really good editor and love them like a member of your family.
5) The first draft is not your novel. Your novel is what happens to your first draft after more re-writes than you can possibly bear. This is one for me. It took me a long time to get this.
What are you reading now?
Lauren St John’s wonderful “Operation Rhino”, the fifth book in “The White Giraffe” series. It’s an astounding feat of storytelling – a book that deals unflinchingly with rhino poaching, but is palatable for kids and really exciting! It’s for 8-12 year olds and big kids like me. (I said I read widely).
What’s next for you as a writer?
Finishing the series and then starting on the next three books, which will be set in the same world I created for Mathew but much further into the future. They will tell the story of the mysterious Lamplighter from “The Boy Who Fell from the Sky”.
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?
3 or 4 books would be torture. You’ve thrown me into a terrible panic!
I would probably take:
1) My collected Shakespeare, because that has an eternity of reading in it
2) Wuthering Heights because I can read that a million times and still see something new in it
3) Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell because I would like time to understand how Susanna Clarke managed to pull it off.
5) I’ll cheat here and say the Terry Pratchett Discworld Collection because I’ll need something to cheer me up
Author Websites and Profiles
Jule Owen Website
Jule Owen Amazon Profile
Jule Owen’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Twitter Account
Pinterest Account