Interview with: Author ELIZABETH SPELLER

You are an award winning author, poet, non-fiction writer AND a blogger!  You obviously love writing, when did you start?

I started as soon as I could write at all. I was an only child until I was seven and I was taught at home until then too – so because I was quite isolated, I wrote my own imaginary worlds.
Tell us  a bit about you and the journey you have been on to get where you are today?

Well, I had quite lively teenage years – lots of truanting and parties - though I was bright and did well when I was actually at school. I had children when I was very young, living in late cold war Berlin,  was a single mother and then had bad depression. However an admission to hospital made me reconsider my life and my future and I came out determined to get some qualifications and sort out  my own and my children’s life.
I applied and, amazingly, was accepted by Cambridge university and did well so went on to post-grad studies but then sold a book about the subject of my academic work - though written for  a general market.  Even now I think how  incredibly lucky I was getting this chance for a new start.

Which do you prefer, fiction or non fiction writing?

I don’t think they are that far apart really. In travel books and non-fiction history you are trying to recreate a place or a period in history just as you are trying to invent a convincing background in a novel. And I always tended to embroider things - even in non-fiction!


Do you ever experience writer’s block? If so, how did you get over it?

I haven’t – yet!! I do get writer’s inertia and I succumb far too easily to other diversions!

Do you work with an outline, or just write?

I usually have a setting and an idea of the central theme in mind plus a start and an ending, but once I start writing  the story and characters  take off in their own direction and never end up going where I plan! 

Is there any particular author or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult?
Like a lot of children I loved the Lion and the Witch and The Wardrobe by C. S Lewis and I also was captivated by The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner. My favourite stories were ones which fed my imagination-even though I was sometimes terrified! I particularly liked Victorian tales like The Little Princess and The Secret Garden where children were orphaned, mistreated and unloved but everything ended happily! 

As an adult there are so many books I’ve loved as a reader but  also learned from as a writer. One of my favourites is Virginia Woolf’s  Mrs Dalloway. But I also enjoy good detective fiction from the Golden Age to the goriest forensic based whodunits.

Can you tell us about your challenges in getting your first book published?

I was writing for various magazines - some more salubrious than others! I was also writing copy for holiday brochures and even television shop labels. But I was introduced to my fantastic agent, Georgina Capel, and she sold my first book. It was non fiction and she said when, after four non-fiction books, I said I’d written a novel her heart sunkl! However it has sold the most of any of my books.

If you had to go back and do it all over, is there any aspect of your novel or getting it published that you would change?
Lots of things I’d do differently-though mostly small things.  As a writer you are always learning. Above all, I‘d try and write a bit shorter in length.

How do you market your work? What avenues have you found to work best for your genre?
I have a very good publicist at Little Brown (my publishers) but I think Twitter has been the real revelation and revolution. When I wrote my earlier books it wasn’t really significant - and I think it does work better for fiction than non-fiction - but now Twitter and a website mean I can promote and get feedback on my books. Also, in a profession where you work alone all day, it’s a way to keep I touch with the world and new friends and not become a total hermit!
Have you written something you love that you have not been able to get published?
Not really. I’ve been lucky. Though I still love writing poetry and of course that is very hard to publish and impossible to live on!

Can you tell us about your latest novel, 'The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton'?
This book is set in a very mysterious, still not really understood, area of Britain, around the prehistoric standing stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire. Laurence Bartram and William and Eleanor Bolitho, who all appeared in my earlier novel, The Return of Captain John Emmett, are staying in a large traditional country house, helping with its restoration, but in a village where all the men, including the heir to the estate, have been lost in the Great War.  The house has further sad history - the unresolved disappearance of a five year old child from before the war. When a body is found on the estate, Laurence Bartram finds himself drawn into events of the past and discovers a great any current secrets and some strange connections between ancient history, the catastrophe in the war and the fate of the lost child.

Is anything in your book based on real life experiences or purely all imagination?

The events are mostly imagination but the psychology of how people react in certain circumstances: love, loss, fear, secrecy - are not much different to real life! But I know the area well. When I was a student at Cambridge University we stayed near Stonehenge and explored the ancient burial mounds and remains and the place and its mysteries has always fascinated me.

What was your favourite chapter (or part) to write and why?

I liked the end! In fact I liked the ends of both novels.  It would be a spoiler to say why, but I am very keen on endings which leave reader thinking and don’t necessarily tie everything up tidily.

How did you come up with the title?
With difficulty! I had a working title which the publishers didn’t like. Then we settled on Kitty Lytton but late in the day someone said it sounded like ‘Kitty Litter’ (!) so back to the drawing board. 

What project are you working on now?

I’m writing a novel about a single day in the first World War: July 1st - the middle day of the war and the opening day of the battle of the Somme, the worst ever for British military losses. (There were nearly 60,000 casualties.) I follow four quite different men from widely diverse backgrounds: two British, one American, one French, through the day and as their lives cross, the question is who will survive it and how and how the day changes them and others. Laurence Bartram has a small part in this book too.

Are there certain characters you would like to go back to, or is there a theme or idea you’d love to work with?
As a side line I do ghost blogging (writing the blogs for a powerful businessman who has neither the time nor aptitude to write his own). This sometimes involves telling him what he should have read or seen at the cinema/theatre, or even what he should have thought about events. I’d love to write a screenplay where a hard-up, idealistic young woman ghost blogger re-creates a tough, insensitive businessman as her ideal man on his blog and he eventually (after much clashing of world views) he tries to become this man. It would be a sort of thinking person’s RomCom.

What has been the toughest criticism given to you as an author? What has been the best compliment?
Difficult question!  It’s always tough if people don’t like bits an author especially does like!  If people say a book is slow or boring-then I feel I’ve failed-as any book should primarily entertain. If they say it’s not clear whether it’s Literary Fiction or a Whodunit then I want to say, why can’t it be both? Why are we so stuck on labels? Best compliment has been that my settings are an absolutely convincing portrayal of post Great War England.

They say that to see the world with complete honesty one should look to comedians, artists and poets, what do you think emerges naturally from your work?

Probably a strong anti-war conviction. When I was younger I was a pacifist; now I accept war is sometimes unavoidable but believe the damage done to individuals and communities is incalculable and enduring.

All poets have several words that come up over and over again, words or sentences that they just can’t help but use in their work. What are 3 of your absolute favourite words?

Melancholy. Shimmer (of heat). Interstices. 


Name your 3 favourite poets or writers. What about their work are you most drawn to? What about their work are you most inspired by?

I love the poetry of Louis MacNeice and gave the title of one of his poems to my own memoir – “The Sunlight on the Garden”. But I also love the opening to his long poem “Autumn Journal” It is a perfect evocation of the end of a hot summer – in this case written In 1939, so everyone knew another war was about to come. I like the work of John Fowles, especially The French Lieutenant’s Woman, as it made me see how historical novels could be just as innovative as ones dealing with contemporary topics and I’ve just finished Alan Hollinghust’s The Stranger’s Child which also plays with ideas of history and memory.

Do you have any advice to give to aspiring writers?

Always carry and notebook and pen, eavesdrop a lot, and read and read and read.

Thank you ever so much for allowing Magic Cat Press to interview you. Is there anything that you would like to say to your readers and fans?

It has to be THANK YOU! I don’t think most authors are that driven by money (they’d chose another career if they were!) but being widely read is what we all dream of. And I love hearing from readers.