1. Why do you tell stories?
I had a mostly rural childhood, and it was a time when stories were our evening entertainment, once the washing up was done. They were a way of keeping touch with family and social history, and of making sense of the world. I suppose I just never stopped finding the telling of stories interesting.
2. Describe your novel, Murmurations, in one sentence.
Murmurations is a novella told in eight connected stories, and records the shifts in individual lives that carry over into the lives of others.
3. When and where do you write?
At an old table, set in front of a window that looks out on the garden. In spring and summer there are swathes of pale pink roses, which is soothing, and birds visit the birdbath and water bowls all year round. But I also tend to carry whatever I’m working on around with me, usually as a file in Dropbox. If I find myself in a waiting room, or in a cafe alone, I’ll open the file on my phone and make small edits, so in a way I’m always working. But mornings are by far the best writing time. I try to schedule appointments and administrative tasks for the afternoons.
4. What are three things that sustain you as an author, or while you’re writing?
1. Like most writers, I have a special relationship with hope. The world is never waiting for my next book, so I need to remain hopeful during the writing, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to go on with it.
2. Silence is important, and a certain amount of order. I can’t work in a mess, or if there’s a lot of jarring noise, though cafe noise doesn’t bother me – it’s like a cocoon, of sorts.
3. The work of other writers sustains me; reading them makes me strive to improve my own writing, to create something beautiful and lasting.
5. Name three books that you couldn’t live without.
1. They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
2. Earthly Paradise, by Colette
3. The Complete Stories, Katherine Mansfield
Bonus question:
What book are you shy to admit that you’ve never read? War and Peace, and all of Proust!