Separate Lives
What can you tell our readers to whet their appetite about your new book Separate Lives?
If your readers would like to ‘try before they buy’, they can read the first chapter at www.random-on-sea.co.uk — and hopefully they’ll decide they’ll want more! However, in a sentence, Separate Lives is a modern ‘love triangle’ told from three different first person perspectives.
Where did your inspiration come from for the novel?
I was partly inspired by the town where I live on the south coast, which is the model for the book’s ‘Random-on-Sea’, and partly by my own experience of moving out of London with my family to live ‘a different kind of life’—however, the rest is pure fiction!
You have written a memoir about divorce and now about infidelity, so what makes you want to write about relationship dissolution?
Like most people, I’m very interested in modern relationships— friends, extended families, partners, children—and obviously in fictional terms it’s a very rich seam to mine and always has been.
How much has your career in journalism aided your own writing?
When I started writing Separate Lives it didn’t take long to discover that writing journalism and writing fiction are very different disciplines. Having said that, nearly 30 years of writing anything at all is going to stand you in good stead if you decide to write a novel—and, like most journalists, once I get in the ‘zone’ I’m a fast writer.
You have written for numerous international publications, so how does this compare to novel writing?
I’m quite (OK, very!) impatient, so I love the buzz of journalism: getting the commission, doing the research, meeting the deadline and then seeing it in print soon afterwards. Writing fiction is different. I didn’t tell many people that I was writing a novel until I was about halfway through, so I had to manufacture my own ‘buzz’ and a deadline!
Who are your favourite authors?
This is such a hard one to answer because there are so many! I like a lot of American fiction, particularly Anne Tyler and Richard Ford, and I just finished Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding (despite not having the faintest idea about baseball!), while my favourite novel of the last couple of years was probably Curtis Sittenfeld’s The American Wife. However, aside from Jane Austen who has permanent place on the bedside table, the book I return to every few years is Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca—it’s just a perfect piece of storytelling; an emotional thriller.
What advice can you give to aspiring writers who want to tackle the troubles of everyday life?
The cliché ‘write about what you know’ holds true. People will believe in your characters if their voices feel authentic— and while that doesn’t necessarily mean making their voices your voice, it does mean rooting them in reality. Obviously if you want to write sci-fi thrillers, none of that applies!
What was your writing background before journalism?
I’ve always written. As a kid in the 1970s it was diaries, short stories and poems (typical only child!) and I wrote my first ‘novella’ when I was about eight or nine. I mashed-up two of my favourite genres (pony books and ballet books) and the heroine had to choose between competing in the gymkhana or committing to the barre!
When did you decide to branch out from journalism to novel writing?
About two years ago I left my job at the Observer (where I had been on staff as a columnist, feature writer and critic for 15 years) to go freelance. Without the pressure of weekly deadlines I knew that I probably had the space and time to have a serious crack at writing a novel.
Have you another book in store for us in future?
Yes! I’m working on the follow-up to Separate Lives at the moment. If all goes according to plan, it will be out next year.
Female First Lucy Walton