Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I have published five novels, all available as ebooks, Eileen McHugh, One On One, A Search For Donald Cottee, Mission and A Fool’s Knot, and a set of travel stories, Voyagers. Mission and A Fool’s Knot are set in Kenya and look at cultural difference and similarity. A Search For Donald Cottee is a parody of Don Quixote set in a Benidorm caravan park and One On One describes an encounter between old friends whose life paths diverged, one into the media and one to become a billionaire recluse. I have also ghost-written a sports book based on rugby league, a sport known in the north of England, Australia, New Zealand and just a few other places. There are details on my website http://www.philipspires.co.uk
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Eileen McHugh – a life remade – is a novel about a sculptor whose creative life ended in the 1970s. She left no work, but now an archive of her notes and sketches has come into the possession of Mary Reynolds, who is determined to resurrect the artist’s life and reconstruct her work. She contacts people who knew Eileen as a child and as a student in London. Via these partial memories, she recreates the artist and her work and follows her on a hippie trip to Thailand that proved significant.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I need a pen or pencil in my hand. Even when I am writing directly onto my PC, I have a pencil through my fingers as I type. Everything is written longhand on scrappy paper and then typed. A lot gets changed in this process, so it’s really a first edit as well. It feels like doing things twice, but I think things are refined in the process.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Usually the strongest influence I the last book I read. Ngugi wa Thiong’o is always there. As is Lawrence Durrell, for some reason. But there are so many… Atwood, McEwan, Rushdie, Tremain, Evaristo, Grass. I am always looking for something that is much more far reaching than mere plot. Bill Warren’s Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism changed the way I think.
What are you working on now?
Currently, my time is being spent on promotion. I have just finished Eileen McHugh, a life remade, and because of the book’s theme, it has to be free. I have another idea bubbling away, as it has been for some years. I would like to imagine the composer Leos Janacek awaiting his death and confronted by all the females, real and fictitious in his life. I also have a Spanish edition of Eileen McHugh almost ready to go. Until one tries to translate, one simply does not realise how much of what we say or write is idiomatic.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
If I could answer that one, I would not be spending most of my time on promotion. I would already have it taped. I think we all are condemned to dribble away at whatever we can find. My own website at http://www.philipspires.co.uk is the most convenient, but how to break out on one’s own contact base… I keep trying. Eileen McHugh was published a month ago and it’s free. It’s been downloaded about 1000 times thus far.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write because you want to write, to communicate and, crucially, to express yourself. Fame, money, market, genre and popularity will all take care of themselves by passing you by. Just get on with it. Build another shelf.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Communicate. And reject anything formulaic. What’s the point of repeating the already mass produced?
What are you reading now?
Susan Sontag’s essays on criticism from the 1960s, Against Interpretation. I have just finished Mary Beard’s history of Rome, SPQR, which was magnificent. I wish I could write like that.
What’s next for you as a writer?
In theory, it’s the Janacek described above. I cannot wait to pitch the composer’s wife against Elena Makropoulos, who is bored after 337 years of life, Olga Janacek, the composer’s daughter, who died of pneumonia in her early 20s, Katya Kabanova, with her guilt-ridden religion and Bystroushka Sharp Ears, who is a vixen, shot by a gamekeeper but for ever proud of her brood, though she delighted in killing chickens for fun.
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?
Several large encyclopaedias. If it really is a desert island, I can rip them up to build shelter and find a way of burning the rest.
Author Websites and Profiles
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