Category: Author interviews

Wheel of Fortune

I have the huge pleasure of welcoming Claire Dunn to my blog today, as part of a tour for the first book, Wheel of Fortune, in her new series: The Tarnished Crown. I asked her about how the series came about, and what writing the first title was like.

Why did you choose to set your new series in 15th-century England?

It was inevitable. It stems from a life-long fascination for the Wars of the Roses – the 15th-century conflict that dominated English political life for over 30 years, and was driven by powerful personalities whose names resonate down the centuries. Men such as Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (the ‘Kingmaker’), George, Duke of Clarence (he of the butt of Malmsey), and Richard III – remembered, unjustly, for all the wrong reasons. Women, too, make it into public consciousness: Elizabeth Woodville – queen to Edward IV – and Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s wife. Historical figures are often rendered into bare, memorable essentials – kingmaker, fickle brother, wicked uncle, she-wolf, temptress – stripped of the nuances that make them real people. And it is the real people  and what motivates them that I find interesting. It is too easy to reduce historical figures to their component parts rather than see them as multi-faceted, yet we relate to people, not attributes, not labels.

What did the characters come to mean to you?

One of the reasons I like writing series is the chance to get to know the characters – both real and imagined – really well. When we first meet Isobel Fenton in Wheel of Fortune she is a young girl with limited experience of life. By the end of the book she has encountered people and events that alter her expectations and the way she views herself and the world. She hasn’t changed, but her relationship with the world has. 

Sometimes my own relationship to my characters changes over the course of writing a book. In Wheel of Fortune, I gave the Earl specific – rather unlikable –  traits; but as I grew to know him my attitude towards him shifted. The man became more complex, with his own values, interests, hopes, anxiety and doubts. He became real and, instead of disliking him, I came to understand why he acted the way he did. 

The Earl is a character of my imagination, but the challenge for a historical novelist is to integrate the real with the imagined in as seamless a way as possible so that a character’s situation and experiences represent the reality for many of those living through a period of turmoil like the Wars of the Roses. Good or bad, for all their faults, people were trying to live out their lives as best they could in a time of hardship and uncertainty. Are we not trying to do just the same now? Faced with similar circumstances, how would we react and what decisions would we make?

How did you go about researching such an enormous topic?

Research is something I relish. Not only is it vital to ensure the accuracy of what I write as far as is humanly possible, it can also suggest new plot lines. Research is like travelling down a long corridor lined with many doors behind which lie endless  possibilities waiting to be discovered. Finding the key to those doors is another matter. Research can be a hard slog through primary sources both physical – visiting castles or museums to understand the built environment, for example – and the written and pictorial – manuscripts and paintings, indentures and parliamentary records. Much research, though, is checking on who did what, when and where – not easy in some instances when the historical record contradicts itself. Gaps in knowledge have to be filled, which sometimes feels like a leap of faith.

Could you give us an insight into how you approach your writing?

Writing is a roller-coaster experience with many ups and down along the way. I ‘write’ one way or another every day, whether it is researching, editing or tackling the next chapter. Some days I will manage only a few hundred words, but on others, several thousand.

Writing can be a slog or the biggest high you can imagine, but most of all it requires what the writer Elizabeth George describes as ‘bum glue’ – the ability to sit down and work at the book project, day by day, until it is completed. That is no small task in a busy life where writing is only one aspect of being an author. A writer nowadays also needs to be media savvy, understand marketing, negotiate contracts, attend events…the list goes on. Is it worth it? You bet it is when you hold your new book baby for the first time and it gazes back at you. And then you open the crisp new pages and meet once again all the friends you have made over the preceding months and remember why you are an author in the first place.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book: I share a short review over in the Woman Alive book club Facebook group, which you can access here.

Claire Dunn (C.F. Dunn) is an award-winning English novelist of historical fiction, mystery and suspense. Born in Lincolnshire, Claire spent her childhood moving from place to place with her Forces family, an experience which she believes helped fuel her imagination. It is as a child that she discovered a fascination for the past that led to an abiding interest in the Wars of the Roses and a lifetime of research.

Following a degree in Medieval History she founded and ran a school for neurodivergent children and young people – students whom she describes as inspirational. Embarking on her writing career, she returned to her historical roots with Mortal Fire – the gold medal-winning first book in The Secret of the Journal series (read Claire’s reflections on writing that series here). Claire is currently working on a major new historical series called The Tarnished Crown set during the turbulent period of 15th-century England known as the Wars of the Roses.

She now lives and writes by the sea in Dorset with her family, assorted animals and overworked  coffee machine. 

Book 1 in The Tarnished Crown series – Wheel of Fortune – was launched through Resolute Books in May 2023. Book 2 – Sun Ascendant  – is due for release through Resolute Books in the autumn of 2023.

The story behind Burrowed

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I am delighted to welcome Marissa Mortimer back to my blog as part of her tour for her new book Burrowed.

Burrowed is my latest Young Adult (YA) novel, set on the fictional island of Ximiu. I love using island settings – perhaps because it’s limited so it means I don’t have to invent entire continents!

Tackling grief in Burrowed

I had been thinking about grief and how we look at the different people who seem to live forever and how those we love get taken too soon. It’s not always like that, but it can certainly feel like it. Even Asaph, when writing Psalm 73, complains about the way bad people seem to have such smooth lives and even their death is peaceful. Until he saw into God’s sanctuary. As Christians, we comfort ourselves that our friend or relative is now with Jesus, it’s all for the best etc, but deep down we can still question, ‘Why? Why him, why now?’ Of course, this can come with a lot of guilt as well.

Losing people can make the light leave your world for a while. So while thinking of this theme and the prospect of writing a YA novel, I found the picture that is now the cover of Burrowed and it spoke to me. Life might feel grey and stormy, but there are still so many blessings around us, so many light moments and beautiful blessings, touches straight from God’s heart, and it’s easy to lose sight of this when grieving. It’s tempting to wallow in our sadness and ignore the beautiful moments or maybe even feel guilty for feeling a moment of joy. Grief is so complex, as it’s not a linear process, so some days can be filled with more bright moments than others.

The sustainability theme

Thinking about the island, I thought about sustainability and how going Green can have implications. I was imagining hidden people wanting the old resources. One way to achieve this was by making the island give up those old resources. What if the hidden people had bad intentions and weren’t satisfied with asphalt? That was an interesting research point as well. Tarmac can’t be reused; asphalt can. I grew up in the Netherlands where we use asphalt, so I have always seen road surfaces being recycled. My editor grew up around tarmac, so wasn’t familiar with this – when I talked about tarmac being reused, we had to look into it and change it to asphalt.

Finding the main character

I don’t normally write books in the past tense, as I’m a bit of a Pantser; I write and plot at the same time, simply allowing the creativity to flow. More recently, I have become a little more of a Plantser, which means I now like to think a little more about items I want to include, verses that come to mind or characters and what they might struggle with. Knowing I wanted a teenage wannabe detective, I decided to make her my main character. Not only that, I was going to impersonate her. A lot of her teenage attitude and ideas were edited out, but I still had a lot of fun writing from her perspective!

Enjoying the various elements in Burrowed

I loved all these different aspects, as it’s what makes writing so interesting. The different story ideas, as well as some dubious characters, made the story grow until it turned into a book. It blessed and helped me too, having to look at my character’s grief and how people supported her. I feel more encouraged to look for and enjoy moments of God’s blessing during difficult days.

Maressa Mortimer is Dutch but lives in the beautiful Cotswolds, England with her husband and four (adopted) children. Her debut novel, Sapphire Beach, was published December 2019, and her first self-published novel, Walled City, came out in 2020, followed by Viking Ferry, a novella. Beyond the Hills, the second book in the Elabi Chronicles, was released in 2021. Burrowed is her latest novel and it is available now.

Maressa is a homeschooling mum as well as a pastor’s wife, so her writing has to be done in the evening when peace and quiet descend on the house once more. She loves writing Christian fiction, as it’s a great way to explore faith in daily life. Her books can be found on her website and you can follow Maressa on both Instagram and Facebook @vicarioush.ome

Home Truths with Lady Grey

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I am thrilled to welcome Katherine Blessan to my blog, as part of her blog tour for her latest book. She explains a little as to how she crafted Home Truths with Lady Grey. First, here is a little taster as to what it is about:

When normally capable, career-minded Jennifer crumbles under a debilitating disease, she struggles with no longer being in control of her life. In the meantime, Mona, a family-oriented mother of Iranian heritage, finds out that her husband is gambling and hiding the truth from her. Can she move beyond betrayal to action?
When Mona goes to work for Jennifer as a carer, Jennifer is initially defensive, but the two soon discover that despite their differences they have so much to learn from one another. Will Mona discover how to balance the conflicting loyalties of family and self? Will Jennifer learn to let others in? And most importantly, will they both survive?

How the idea of Home Truths with Lady Grey came about 

I was walking home from work one day, and the idea of two very different women came into my mind. One of them was physically fit, independent and a little racist (Jennifer). The other was going to be a foil to the first character – from a BAME heritage (which I pinned down eventually as Iranian), and a much warmer, personable character (Mona). The story developed around these two women with all the conflicts and themes emerging over time. 

What the writing process was like

It was a long process that began in 2015 and ended last year. I didn’t write constantly throughout that time. Other writing projects took my focus, for example screenplays and two long ghostwriting projects.

I alternated writing the story between Jennifer’s and Mona’s point of view. Mona was written from the third person limited. Later, I found out that this was the ‘right’ thing to do as Mona is Iranian, thus I couldn’t be accused of what’s known as cultural appropriation. Jennifer’s voice was deliberately written in the first person. I wanted readers to understand her and empathise with her as she goes on this journey from prickly independence into vulnerability. But I knew that she might be more difficult for readers to warm to than Mona. However, the more I wrote from her perspective, the more I enjoyed her and actually found her easier to ‘spend time with’ than the more likable Mona!

My first draft was very much Mona and Jennifer’s two separate stories. They didn’t really meet until the end of the novel. My most astute beta readers [people who read through a first draft and give feedback] told me that this wasn’t working. I had to figure out a way to weave the two stories together more effectively. I did that by inserting little vignettes of Mona and Jennifer’s time together throughout the novel in a way that linked to the themes of each chapter.

The reader’s experience

Because reading a novel is a such a personal experience, every reader will take away slightly different things. But I do hope that readers will take away something of the frailty of the human condition, and be reminded of the importance of gratitude, friendship and openness. As a Christian, I also hope that the readers will take away something of the power of God to break addiction, which can be seen through Mona’s husband James’ story.

Katherine lives in Sheffield and is married to Blessan, from Kerala, India. As well as writing stories that touch on social issues and explore the space where cultures cross, Katherine is a social entrepreneur and English tutor.

Previously, she lived and worked in Cambodia, a rich experience she draws on in her writing. She set a previous novel, Lydia’s Song, in Cambodia – it was a category finalist in the Indie Book Awards, 2016.

Home Truths with Lady Grey is available from 20 April, but can be pre-ordered on Katherine’s website.

Hope for the hurting

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I am delighted to welcome Liz Carter onto my blog today. Her beautiful new book, Treasure in Dark Places: Stories and Poems of Hope in the Hurting, which I had the joy of endorsing, is out today. I am thrilled that she agreed to share a little about the writing process and what life was like for her while she was writing it. Like the experience I had while writing my latest devotional, Liz was, at times, in deep despair and isolation when putting this book together. Wrestling with our own circumstances, looking to the Bible and trying to find some sort of sense for ourselves but also to bring hope to others is at the heart of much of the writing we both do. She is such a talented writer, weaving honest reflections with thought-provoking imagery. I commend her book to you wholeheartedly – it would make a wonderful Christmas present. I would definitely describe it as ‘hope for the hurting’. Here are her answers to a few questions I posed to her.

Tell me about the writing process during the isolation of shielding

When I first received the shielding letter back in March, I was shocked and fearful, the words ‘at risk of severe illness’ pounding through my mind. When I began to get into the swing of shielding, though, I thought I had it sorted, I thought I had a plan: I would finish the book I’d been working on for a while, a book about our identity in Jesus and God’s back-to-front kingdom. I told myself shielding wouldn’t be a huge issue because I was used to being isolated at home for long periods when ill with my lifelong lung condition. But I simply didn’t take into account the mental toll the whole thing would take, and how being separated from my family would send me into some dark days and darker nights. It felt as if the words were slipping away, as if this was not going to plan. It was as if a door was slammed in my face and I broke into pieces, already battered by isolation. 

Then I started to write some poetry about the pandemic and about the darkness I found myself in. I’d written so much before about living in physical pain, but this time the pain went further into my mind and the words began to flow in the most unexpected direction. At around the same time a couple of friends suggested I collected together some of the stories and poems from my website into a book, and so the idea for Treasure in Dark Places was born – and then grew so much wider, with mostly new material written over the painful time of shielding.

Was writing this new book a form of lament for you at times? 

Definitely. I found that words were pouring out that seemed almost too sharp, too vulnerable, too real at times, and they were words of lament. They were words that were birthed in struggle and that sat there in the pit with me, like the words of so many of the Psalmists who were never afraid to lay out their stark agony before God. Many of these Psalms have been a huge help to me over years of living with pain, and their words spoke even more deeply to me over these months, with their honest agony and their call to remember and to praise within the storm. 

I think that as Christians we often forget how to lament, or even feel that lament should not be given a place in our prayer lives or in our corporate worship. We’ve somehow inherited the twisted idea that we should only, ever, be living in great joy, unaffected by the sadness around us, in a kind of damaging triumphalism that leads us to feel as though we are letting God down when we turn to sadness, anger or other big emotions. But the Bible gives us permission to express those things in big loud voices, to shout out our pain, to cry out our struggle, to weep at the feet of Jesus when it all gets too much. For me, my writing this summer was a long lament and a choice to turn to God in the midst of it, so some of the poems in the book are more melancholic, and others turn more quickly to hope.

Treasure in dark places - hope for the hurting

How different was it to write the poetry and imaginative prose sections?

I found that in many of my stories I turned to poetic devices and phrases within the text at times, in order to echo the poetry. The main difference is that with the stories I needed to stop and consider the form, the overall framework and the beginning, middle and end – not so much to plan in depth, but to take more time to shape the piece. However, with the poems, they were more free-falling, the words hitting the page where they wished to and generally staying there in some form. Some of the poems are written in rhyme or with rhyming elements, and this took more thinking about, but they were generally born out of words that tumbled out rather than any great planning on my part!Writing poetry and short stories is very different in terms of how I approach the piece, yet in this book both come from a deep place of hope, the hope God imbues me with even when it hurts.

What do you want readers to get from spending time with your new book?

My prayer is that readers will get a glimpse of the hope we find in Jesus through these pieces, that they will unearth the treasures that are sometimes only to be found in the deepest darkness. I want readers to know they are not alone in their struggle, that it is okay to struggle as a Christian and that they are not somehow failing God or anybody else when life is tough. My poems and prose ultimately point to Jesus, who went through the very worst of suffering and understands our pain more than anyone else ever could, and so stands with us within our darkness, allowing his light to puncture through and flood us in his incomparable love.

PS Liz and I are both part of the Association of Christian Writers, and both write monthly posts for their More than Writers blog. Liz wrote one about how she was feeling on the eve of publication day, and I wrote one suggesting ways we can support one another as writers. Do take a look if you are interested.

Liz Carter is an author and poet who writes about finding gold in the mess of life. She lives with long-term lung disease and has written Catching Contentment: How to be Holy Satisfied (IVP) and an accompanying study course. Her new book, Treasure in Dark Places: Stories and poems of hope in the hurting, is out now and available in paperback or ebook at online stores.

On writing a memoir

Penelope Swithinbank has just had a week-long official blog tour to launch her new book Walking Back to Happiness. I am thrilled that she agreed to guest blog here to talk about what it was like to write the book…

“Good artists copy; great artists steal” Picasso.

Austin Kleon, the young American writer and artist, uses Picasso’s line to illustrate how we ‘steal’ ideas from everything around us, and advises us to focus on how to transform, remake, improve, thus unlocking our creativity. And, he warns, ‘computers have robbed us of the feeling that we are making things’ (steallikeanartist.com). Simply using pen and paper can help us to be more creative. 

You often don’t know what you think of something until you write it down and describe it. I discovered that as I sat and wrote my journal each evening after completing the daily steps of a long walk. We were backpacking across France, my husband and me, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, partly to celebrate our retirement and partly in an attempt to heal the pain of a broken marriage.  

Each evening, after a shower and change of clothes, and hopefully, tea or something stronger, I used a good pen and a beautiful journal to record the day’s experiences –  places, people, conversations, thoughts, feelings. Someone once said that genius can write on the back of an envelope but mere talent requires a fountain pen and excellent paper. It certainly helps.

Margot Asquith, a well-known hostess and socialite, as well as wife to a prime minister, published a work in the early 1920s, based on her extensive diaries. When complimented on it, she is said to have replied, ‘Keep a diary, my dear and later on, perhaps, the diary will keep you.’ 

It was not in my mind to keep a diary in order to write a book about the 330-mile walk. But when the God-given prompt came, the daily accounts were there to be enlarged and rewritten. And for the most part, I wrote it chronologically – it was, after all, an account of getting from A to B. 

Chronological seems easy and straightforward; but it can come over as dull and predictable. Sometimes it’s good to ask if there is some other way to write a memoir. For example, Penelope Lively’s autobiography, A House Unlocked, has the ‘umbrella’ of her grandparents’ house in Somerset, but her life story is told using different objects in the house. Rather than the ‘cradle to the grave’ autobiography, she has a more kaleidoscopic approach to time. In Moon Tiger Lively has Claudia say, ‘Chronology irritates me. Shake the tube and see what comes out.’  So there are some flashbacks in my book, and some pointers to what has gone before. 

I tried to remember to ‘show not tell’. Significant sounds or smells, or the response of the body – the ‘sand between the toes’ image where you make the reader actually feel what your words are bringing to mind.  Or describing the colour as if to a visually impaired person, and the sound to the deaf. Margaret Forster, writing about Daphne du Maurier’s father in Daphne du Maurier draws the reader in with noting that at a certain theatre, ‘Gerald du Maurier was scoring an immense success, the night his new daughter was born, in a light comedy entitled Brewster’s Millions.’ Much more interesting than merely ‘Daphne’s father was an actor.’

So I was noticing what had happened each day; I used the senses; I used the weather. I used people, conversations, a sense of time and place. I used my own reactions and feelings, because this is memoir, after all. And later, when I was writing the book, when there was a danger of it all becoming too serious, I added humour to lighten the touch. 

Morning by early morning, I sat up in bed, writing desk across my knees, and I typed my story. I made myself do it for a couple of hours every weekday for several months. Until it was done, and I’d reached nearly 60,000 words, and the story had reached the Atlantic. Then I sent it to my beta readers – a few good friends, some acquaintances who would be honest, my (grown-up) children – and a professional editor.

It cost £100 for that edit (www.thebooklab.co.uk). And it was worth every penny!  The editor divided the story into ‘blog size’ sections within chapters of different lengths. People have short attention spans, he said; people are busy. A short section can be read quickly without the need to concentrate for too long. 

Then he took out all my erudite words. He told me it read like something from Brideshead Revisited, the book I had been reading while in France. I took that as a compliment! But he reminded me that the majority of people are not going to plough through that style of writing. I had to remember my target audience, their likely preferred writing styles, their vocabulary. This was for the normal market, not professors of literature. Fewer adverbs, plain English, making every word earn its place. And he removed all the descriptive speech words, such as ’retorted’ or ‘cried’, and put back the basic ‘said’ or ‘says’.

Lytton Strachey, a great biographer of the early 20th century, advised the writer to ‘aim at a brevity which excludes everything which is redundant and nothing that is significant’. That much at least has not changed!

Eventually came the final edit. I found it helpful to print it in a different font and different colour, to trick the brain into being more objective. And then, I went to a writing day organised by the Association of Christian Writers, something I’d booked several months earlier, never guessing I would have a manuscript waiting to be revealed. The editor had recommended a particular publisher; to my surprise, the co-publisher was one of the speakers that day and I was able to talk with her, whereupon she asked me to send her my manuscript immediately. The rest, as they say (and you should never use clichés, of course) is history. And an answer to prayer.  

Penelope Swithinbank is an avid walker and spends a lot of her time stomping in the hills and valleys near her home outside Bath. She is a chaplain at Bath Abbey and a spiritual therapist and counsellor for clergy (and some normal people too). Since becoming a vicar nearly 20 years ago, she has worked in churches in the UK and the USA, and has led pilgrimages in the UK and in Europe. She and her husband Kim have been married for more than 40 years and have three children and six grandchildren. Penelope rarely sits down, loathes gardening and relaxes by walking,  reading, going to the theatre or playing the piano. She is the author of two books, Women by Design and Walking Back to Happiness and is currently working on her third, due out in 2020: Scent of Water, a devotional for times of spiritual bewilderment and grief, especially after bereavement. She also contributes to Bible reading notes for Scripture Union. https://penelopeswithinbank.com

A fascination with the macabre

While researching an article on Christian fiction, I came across many different authors with fascinating backgrounds – some quite unexpected. Peter Laws is one such writer. He is an ordained church minister who writes horror fiction. Here he talks about his journey to become a published author, why he writes horror and what he thinks of Christian fiction. While you may not agree with his conclusions, Peter certainly shares some interesting thoughts…

I’m an ordained church minister who had an idea for a novel about ten years ago. It was a horror thriller. I didn’t see it as a Christian book, but rather that I was simply a Christian who wrote a novel. So I sent it to secular literary agents, and was delighted to find a London agent who wanted to represent me. 

It actually took another five or six years to get a book deal. I’d write a novel, my agent would send it to all the big publishers, they would say they really liked it, but they weren’t sure how to market it. So I would just write another one, and try again. I got another agent, and she’s been great though there was still some rejection at first – par for the course in writing. In 2016 I was close to giving up on fiction, and so wrote a non-fiction proposal instead. Amazingly, my agent called to say that I’d been offered a two-book fiction deal by a publisher called Allison and Busby. Then, not long after, she called to say that I had also been offered the non-fiction deal from Icon Books. 

Since 2017, I’ve had four books out in shops (three in my fiction series and the non-fiction). My latest novel (Possessed) comes out in shops next February from (Allison and Busby). My books were released in Germany last year in translated editions. My non-fiction comes out in Taiwanese this year, and it also came out in hardback in American shops last Halloween, from a US publisher called Skyhorse. 

You don’t tend to find my books in Christian bookstores, but you will find them in Waitrose, at airports sometimes, in libraries etc. They’re out in audio, paperback, hardback, eBook. It’s been pretty exciting to find myself on trains or in random cities where strangers have come up to say they’ve read my stuff. I’ve spoken at various literary festivals, been a guest on a lot of radio, including Radio 4, discussing my books. So it’s been a real blessing and thrill.     

Why do I write horror stories? Because they interest me. I’m drawn to mystery, the supernatural and high-stakes drama. And there is little more high stakes than murder and death! My books are usually found in the Crime fiction section of Waterstones, even though I’m more of a horror guy. Crime fiction is the most popular of all genres in the UK, and so it makes sense for me to be pitched there, and my books certainly do belong on that shelf. However, I do thread themes of the supernatural into the books, and there’s a lot of exploration of religious ideas. 

I write what I think is relevant to not only me, but also to our world. I’m particularly interested in how evangelical Christians appear scary and deranged to many everyday people. It’s easy for us to see ourselves as normal everyday folk in the church, but for many, the idea of full-on Christians is terrifying. That is rich picking for writing scary novels. 

That’s why my novel series features a character called Matt Hunter. He’s an ex-vicar turned atheist professor who spends his time debunking the Christian faith, while also helping the police solve religiously motivated murder. In book one, Purged (Allison and Busby, 2017) he’s on the trail of a Christian serial killer who thinks the most effective way to evangelise is to baptise people then murder them immediately afterwards. That way they are fast tracked to heaven, with no risk of backsliding. 

I find such topics interesting, exciting, but they also give a lot of scope to ponder deep and profound issues, both theological and philosophical. My books are dark, but they also have a pretty strong sense of humour throughout, because I like to have a laugh in amongst scary things. 

What do I hope reader will glean from my books? First and foremost I want them to be entertained. There is something very noble about pure entertainment, and I think Christians can sometimes dismiss it as trivial when it’s not. I’ve even heard some preachers say that escapism is dangerous…I think that’s nuts. Escapism is an important way that human beings relax, but also how they assess some deep and profound ideas too. So while my books are designed to thrill, excite, scare and amuse (my stuff is classed as commercial fiction) it also raises some really deep ideas, especially about Christianity.

I’ve had a handful of Christian readers who struggle with the idea that the hero in my books is an atheist and the killers are often religious. They assume that Matt Hunter is going to drop to his knees and convert at some point. That is not my aim. I think as Christians we need to respect other worldviews, and atheism is perfectly reasonable, even though I don’t ascribe to it. Ironically, I get many messages from atheist readers, thanking me for respecting their view and giving it the space to be. They then seem really interested in my faith. However, that is not why I’m writing these books. It’s not a method of conversion in my mind, but a form of entertainment that may or may not provoke thought on all sides of faith and none. 

I don’t see myself as writing Christian fiction, because to me, and I might be wrong, that sounds like fiction that is aimed at Christians. I write for anyone and everyone, so it’s just plain old fiction to me. If people see Christian fiction as a glorified conversion tool, then that’s up to them, but that’s not where I’m coming from. Some people think I must be writing horror and crime thrillers as a way of swinging into the darkness, and scooping up lost souls. Then I’ll swing them back into the church world and will hopefully start reading nice stuff instead. That is totally not where I’m coming from. 

There is a value in the morbid and macabre: my non-fiction book The Frighteners: Why we love monsters, ghosts, death and gore makes this point. In that book I travelled around Transylvania, Rome and the UK meeting people who sleep on mortuary slabs, and self-proclaimed vampires, and I also went on werewolf hunts, stayed over in a haunted hotel, was blind driven to a remote mansion by the BBC where they threw spiders on me and put me in an electric chair. It was such fun. It was all to show that gritty or macabre subjects are an inherently human preoccupation, and that there are actually great benefits from pondering them. I think when the Church warns people off such things, they’re misunderstanding what it means to be human.

Peter Laws is an author, journalist, film critic and public speaker. He is the creator of the Matt Hunter novel series. He’s an ordained Reverend with a fascination for the macabre.  Peter writes a monthly column for the print magazine The Fortean Times and also hosts the popular podcast and YouTube show ‘The Flicks That Church Forgot’, which reviews scary culture from a theological perspective. His acclaimed non-fiction book The Frighteners was released in the UK and US in 2018. He also regularly speaks and preaches at churches and events.  Find out more at https://www.peterlaws.co.uk

Writing as a piece of history…

Writer Paul Alkazraji is guest blogging here today as part of the blog tour celebrating the release of his new book The Migrant. He reveals his journey into writing as well as some of his writing methods…

When I became a believer, just after graduating from Bath University in the late 80s, I wanted to communicate something of the Christian faith to others through writing. Things really began to flourish after I took a correspondence course with the London School of Journalism in Freelance Journalism.

From the mid-90s onwards, I relished the freedom of pursuing the subjects and the people who interested me – drawing out what other believers had to say about their life, faith and work. I very much enjoyed formulating a range of questions, giving people space to talk and then eeking out the gems of their experience for others to appreciate. 

One person I interviewed was the Oscar-winning animator Nick Park. In A Grand Day Out Wallace and Gromit build a rocket in their cellar, and then embark on a holiday to the moon in search of cheese.

The source of his inspiration, Nick told me, was his family’s inventiveness. ‘My parents built this caravan from nothing, just a pair of wheels,’ he said. ‘They built a box on it and decorated it inside with furniture and wallpaper and all seven of us went on holiday to Wales in this thing.’

Nick Park and a little friend. 1996, Bristol.
Photo by P. Alkazraji.

To the question of whether or not his work is Christian, he replied: ‘The potential for making films is in the creation; I’m just playing a role in that. It’s part of God’s cultural mandate to be creative, and to do things which are pleasing to him. Being constantly challenged by the Gospel to live freer, and creating things in a loving way: I think these are very Christian things to do.’ I thought that was a memorable answer. 

A story that was a turning point for me was when I was invited to Albania in 1998 just before the Kosovo Crisis. We flew to Athens and drove up through the interior of Greece in the summer heat. My colleague felt anxious enough about our safety that he mentioned he’d been on the lookout for a bulletproof vest for me. More than any mild anxiety, I felt an odd affirmation that I was entering the zone of true reporting if such a thing were necessary.

As we drew near to the Albanian border and asked for directions, several people looked at us as if we were crazy, making the gesture of firing off rifles above our heads and shouting, ‘Pam, pam, pam!’ The country had only recently emerged from a phase of violent chaos. But as things transpired, we were untouched and unthreatened throughout our week in Albania.

The story, about a missionary couple, made a great feature forThe Christian Herald, and two years later I returned for five weeks to write the couple’s biography, Christ and the Kalashnikov, for HarperCollins.

In one incident in the book, a knock came on the missionary couple’s hotel door late one night as Albania was beginning to open up and break apart. Feeling very apprehensive, they were led to a stone cottage in the city’s old quarter dimly lit with a single light bulb and a candle. There they met a handful of old men who were the only remaining members of a church started before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Their leader spoke: ‘He says that they have kept their faith secretly for over fifty years, and word reached him today that the Gospel had been preached on the streets of his town for the first time since the Communists took control. He has been praying for this day for years. He says that he is ready now to die with contentment… They were the youth group,’ the translator said. Writing can sometimes lead you to feeling you’ve been given a little piece of history to record. 

One of the ways I worked on my first novel The Silencer, which I wrote after living in Albania for a decade, was to do close observation work in the places where the story is set. The Silenceropens with the main character, Jude Kilburn, sitting in a taxi-van as it speeds along an Albanian mountain road. I rode the very route several times, noting down visual details, and also trying to be hyper-conscious with all my senses.It’s quite draining, but the results, I hope, can be quite immersive for the reader. 

‘Whitewashed, stone walls, holding back the mountain dirt behind them, streamed past stencilled with logos and sprayed with graffiti: ‘Albanian Exhausts’, ‘Geri’, ‘LSI’… Then came a café plastered with Nescafe posters, a man selling ice cream from a scratched refrigerator, and an old man bobbing side-saddle on a mule laden with white sacks, flicking its rump with a stick…’ Chapter 1 The Silencer 

On the way to Athens doing research for my new novel The Migrant, I used audio notes, the video mode on a phone, a traditional journalist’s notebook, and collected seemingly inconsequential memorabilia like subway-tickets to help add those ‘apt particularities’ later that bring a place to life with authenticity. 

The Migrant is about Jude Kilburn, a pastor now, who takes on the responsibility to care enough for another person in his village, a young man, Alban, that he is ready to go the extra kilometre, over 500 of them in fact, to Athens to see if he is safe.

The reader is taken on an adventure into Greece, arriving in the capital as far right political groups march through the streets and anarchists clash with riot police. 

‘Jude turned back and ran. A nausea rose up from his stomach to his throat and his hands prickled with pins. He saw the amphitheatre of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus shaking below him on his left as he pounded along, and then, through the haze of smog and the water in his eyes, the vast rubble of buildings that was Athens.’ Chapter 16 The Migrant

It is a story about someone struggling with what his pastoral responsibility should be, and how far, like ‘The Good Shepherd’, he should go for that one sheep who wanders off. I have met many young men in Albania who have, in reality, made similar adventurous journeys into Greece in search of work, and returned to tell their stories of danger, of some financial success, but also of disappointment. 

There is redemption in The Migrant, as that is so centrally a part of my own worldview as a follower of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit assists the characters at crucial moments. As Jude searches for Alban on the Acropolis, he remembers the words of an old Demis Roussos song: ’My friend the wind…he tells me a secret.’ The secret is that Alban is very close by on Mars Hill. But can Jude get to him in time? Well, that secret, I’m afraid, is kept hidden in the pages of the novel. 

The author Paul Alkazraji in Albania.
Photo by Andrew LaSavio.

Paul Alkazraji worked as a freelance journalist in the UK from the mid-nineties. His articles were published in many Christian magazines, while his travel articles were also published in The Independent. His first book, Love Changes Everything, a collection of testimonies, was published by Scripture Union in 2001. His second book, Heart of a Hooligan, was published by Highland Books in 2000. His third book, Christ and the Kalashnikov, was published by Harper Collins in 2001. 

From 2004 to 2010 Paul was editor and publisher of Ujëvarë magazine in Albania. His thriller, The Silencer, was published by Highland Books in 2012. His new novel, The Migrant, was published by Instant Apostle in February 2019. You can read the first chapter for free here. Buy the full book here.

Asking the right questions

I am delighted to welcome Rachel Jones to my blog – her piece fits well within the Unmasked: stories of authenticity series, but she also provides us with an insight into how she went about researching her new book.

When I finished writing Is This It?,I felt a little bit sad. I felt a whole load of positive things too – grateful, relieved, satisfied. But also sad. 

Why? Because I’d miss the conversations. 

Is This It?explores twelve different emotions that are common in our 20s (and beyond) – from self-doubt to dissatisfaction and decision paralysis. The book grew out of my own experience of what some people would call a ‘Quarter-life Crisis’: a period of anxiety and uncertainty over where your life is at and where it’s going. (A bit like a mid-life crisis, but when you’re younger and therefore can’t afford to compensate with a sports car!) 

During the research and writing process I was on a year-long scavenger huntfor ideas, experiences and anecdotes from anyone who was in their 20s, or who had been once. I was a woman obsessed. Nobody was off-limits – old friends, church acquaintances and anyone unfortunate enough to sit next to me at a wedding. No topic was off limits either. Rather than enquiring about work and weekend plans in that period of post-church chit-chat, I started asking questions like: ‘I’m writing a chapter on loneliness this week. Do you ever feel lonely?’ 

Or, ‘I’m asking everyone about this at the moment, but have you ever struggled with doubt?’ 

Or, ‘Tell me about your experience of dating your husband. When did you know he was the one?’ 

Or, ‘What are you feeling discontent about at the moment?’

I’ll admit I was, at times, a little toointense. Those who saw a lot of me began to roll their eyes or raise an eyebrow whenever ‘the book’ came up. They knew what was coming. 

But here’s the thing: people were wonderfully honest with me. As part of the book project I had meaningful connections and real conversations with a whole range of people I wouldn’t have otherwise. It was fascinating. And I’m so grateful for it – first, because I trust that diversity of experiences made the book a whole lot better. And second, because I reaped the benefits of better, richer, deeper friendships as a result. 

It’s ironic, because during my own ‘Quarter-life Crisis’ I don’t think I spoke to many people about it. For months I felt a vague yet persistent sense of unhappiness. I was bored of life. I didn’t especially like where I was working, and I especially didn’t like where I was living. I felt a little bit lost, a little bit lonely, a little bit like I was looking for something, but I wasn’t sure what. But I didn’t really talk to anyone about it.Maybe they weren’t asking the right questions. Maybe I wasn’t giving the right answers. Maybe I didn’t have the guts, or the vocabulary, to be authentic. 

So writing and talking about my experience had been wonderfully freeing. That’s why I was so sad when the book project was over. 

But here’s the thing: we don’t need to be writing a book to have these kinds of conversations. We don’t need an ‘excuse’ to be vulnerable, or invite others to be vulnerable with us. We don’t have to have a special reason to be authentic with others. The Bible gives us reason enough: ‘Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice’ (Proverbs 27:9).

So here’s what I’m increasingly seeking to do, and what you could seek to do too:

  • Ask the right questions. Sometimes we need to be more intentional, and a bit braver, with the kind of questions we ask one another. Of course, this will depend on the kind of relationship we have with someone, and we need to be sensitive to their individual needs and personalities. Sometimes, though, it’s good to bite the bullet with real, direct questions. Other times, it’s interesting open questions that are more effective. (‘What are you thinking about right now?’ can result in interesting answers…)
  • Give authentic answers. This is way harder than asking the questions! So much within me wants to give the impression that everything’s fine and I’m quite a nice person really than be honest. Authenticity will only happen if we’re confident of who we are in Christ – if it’s his approval we rejoice in the most. And it helps me, too, to remember the benefits I’ve reaped from being honest in relationships in the past. So all I need to do is take a deep breath…and say something truthful about myself. 

Rachel Jones is the author of Is This It? and the award-winning Five Things to Pray series, and an editor at The Good Book Company. She’s a member of Chessington Evangelical Church, where she’s involved in children’s work and leading Bible studies for young adults.

The spirituality of the 1920s

I love Fiona’s Poppy Denby Investigates series, and have interviewed her and had guest posts from her when each new book has come out. Having already asked her about how she goes about writing a series, I asked whether she would come up with an idea for a guest blog, so that I could help her celebrate the latest title: The Cairo Brief. I wasn’t expecting what she sent through, but here is a fascinating explanation as to why she decided to include a séance in the book…

“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, you might see and hear things that have no apparent explanation. Do not… I repeat, do not… try to apply a scientific mind to them. […] There are some things you need to take on faith. The metaphysical world is one of them…” Lady Ursula at the start of a séance in The Cairo Brief, book 4 in the Poppy Denby Investigates series.

 

I spent my early Christian years in a community that treated even the slightest whiff of the occult – even comic depictions of it – with immense suspicion. I remember as a teenager walking out of the film Beatle Juice because I feared the devil would get his clutches into me. When I discovered that Arthur Conan Doyle was a leading spiritualist, I burned my treasured copy of the Complete Sherlock Holmes; something that to this day I regret.

Since those fearful times in the 1980s my faith has changed, and the paranoia about a demon behind every bush has all but gone. This does not mean that I do not believe in the reality of satanic forces in the world – and I still won’t watch a full-on horror film such as The Omen – but my views on how those satanic forces operate, and whether or not they can ‘get their clutches into you’ if you read or watch certain things, have matured.

Nonetheless, I’m aware that there is a broad spectrum of views on this in the Church and that it would be prudent, in a book from a Christian publisher, that my editor and I pause to consider whether or not the depiction of a séance would be appropriate. We both did. 

Firstly, séances were a marked cultural expression of the time. From the mid-1800s to the early 20th century, the spiritualist movement was in its heyday. For some it took the place of conventional religion with spiritualist churches (starting in the USA) soon spreading around the world. Academics and leading literary figures – like Arthur Conan Doyle – attempted to prove the existence of the paranormal, using quasi-scientific methodologies. Then there were those who didn’t take it very seriously at all, simply going along with the ‘fashion’ of playing occult parlour games.

Like my heroine Poppy – and many others of the time – Arthur Conan Doyle had lost loved ones during the war. It was as a result of that that he started trying to contact the dead, and, along with his second wife Lady Jean (an automatic writer), began leading séances. This was useful for me as one of the recurring themes of the Poppy Denby books is the dark shadow cast by the Great War and how individuals and society have been cut to the core by the horrors it unleashed.

The second reason we decided to include the séance was that the rise of alternative spiritualities in the 1920s was a result of the loosening of power of the established Church. That was something that I have been exploring through all of the Poppy Denby books. Poppy, the daughter of Methodist ministers, questions what it means to be a Christian in the new ‘modern’ world.

The post-WWI years saw the breakdown of cultural Christianity and the increasing separation of Church and State. As the State’s role as a provider of education, healthcare etc grew, the Church’s social function – as a welfare institution – began to diminish. As suffrage expanded to include the lower classes, the power they had to demand the government meet social needs meant that the Church no longer had a clearly defined role to play. People began to ask: ‘What, actually, is the point of church?’

http://www.world-war-pictures.com

Faith became an issue of personal choice. That’s why the evangelical movement did so well; because it was down to the individual and their ‘personal relationship with God’. In my Poppy books, the heroine is set adrift from Church as an institution and needs to re-align her faith. Is it a personal faith? Is it a family faith? Is it a communal faith? What role does a God of love have to play in a world blighted by horror?

The Twenties was a decade where God’s credibility was being challenged. It was no longer a matter of ‘we believe because the church tells us to’, it was: do ‘I’ believe it? People were increasingly emboldened to turn their backs on religious faith by the growing understanding of science, which some believed gave a legitimate alternative to the question of how the world came to be. People were no longer just asking ‘what’s the point of the Church?’ But: ‘what’s the point of God himself?’ In the 1920s universal suffrage put political power into the hands of individuals. The question of whether to believe in God or not was now in their hands too.

And so we have Poppy going into a séance. What will she make of it? Will the devil get his claws into her? Will she think it’s all a bit of harmless fun? Or, is something more serious, and ultimately, more sinister going on…? You’ll have to read it to see.

Fiona Veitch Smith is a writer and university lecturer, based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her 1920s mystery novel The Jazz Files, the first in the Poppy Denby Investigates Series (Lion Fiction), was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger award in 2016. The second book, The Kill Fee, was a finalist for the Foreword Review mystery novel of the year 2016/17. Book four in the series, The Cairo Brief, has been shortlisted for the People’s Book Prize, which you can vote for on the prize’s website. For more on the series visit www.poppydenby.com 

Where is God?

The winning artwork: ‘A thousand bottles of tears’ by Deborah Tompsett

Earlier this year a new art competition was launched: the Chaiya Art Awards. The theme was ‘Where is God in our 21stcentury world?’ The finalists’ artwork made up an exhibition held at the prestigious gallery@oxo at Easter. More recently, a beautiful hardback coffee table book written featuring all the finalists has been created. To celebrate its launch, I have the huge pleasure of being a part of the book’s blog tour. Here, the founder of the art award, Katrina Moss, reveals the idea behind it and what she wanted to achieve – as well as details about another competition. (Special thanks for Jonny Back for his beautiful photography.)

Where did the idea for the competition come from?

I thought it would be fantastic to create an arena where artists could explore their spirituality through their art and creativity. The feedback I had from artists is that galleries aren’t always interested in art that explores faith. We deliberately made the competition theme based, to focus the work to explore the depth and mystery of God. During the competition I received several emails thanking us for opening up this opportunity. “It has given my practise a significant boost to my confidence and creativity,” said one artist.

‘In the detail’ by Kate Green

Do you come from an artistic family and are you an artist yourself?

I don’t come from an artistic family at all. In my thirties I had a significant breakdown and one of the things that happened in the process of getting well was something unlocked inside of me. I found in the darkest of times an incredible release in being able to express myself creatively. Making art continues to allow me to express myself in life – in the joyous, the confusing, the difficult, the times of sadness and gut-wrenching disappointment. Art is like music; it allows us to communicate things that are beyond words and engages us at a deep emotional level. My current form of making is mosaics.

Did you have a large number of entries for the competition?

We were amazed. In the first three months from our launch in September 2017 we had 80 entries; in the final month we were overwhelmed as the total grew to 453 entries. The entries varied from photography, sculpture, textiles, videos, ceramics, drawing to painting. We were thrilled. The standard of work was really high and we had entrants from all ages across the entire UK including Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. The website had nearly 30,000 hits and visitors to the exhibition numbers were 2,700 plus. (I say plus because sometimes there were so many visitors they didn’t all get recorded.)

Ann (left) and Katrina

 How did the book come about?

I knew I wanted a standalone book that would also complement the  exhibition. We were doing something new, something truly innovative  and I wanted a far greater number of people to enjoy, explore, question and meditate on the work. I think Ann did a superb job in pulling the book together because her writing is so creative and meditative and works perfectly alongside the art. She and I have been friends for 35 years and I have always loved her writing. Our passion for seeing work of faith and spirituality created remains undiminished. It was lovely to work on another project together.

What were the outcomes you hoped for?

There were three things I was looking for:

  • To allow artwork that explored the theme to stand alongside other contemporary galleries in our capital city in such an iconic location.
  • To allow the public to discover something of the possibility of transcendence in our hugely secular society.
  • I wanted the artwork to be for sale to help the careers of the artists. Over 25 per cent of the pieces were sold. It is fantastic that through the exhibition artwork found its way into people homes and workplaces.

As it was so successful, are you planning you do another competition?

Yes, we will. We will announce the theme Easter 2019 and the competition exhibition will be Easter 2020. Please sign up to our website if you want to be kept informed and enter the competition. Everyone is welcome to contribute.

Where is God in our 21st Century World? by Ann Clifford was published by Instant Apostle on 21 September 2018. It is available from bookshops, online retailers and the Chaiya Art Awards website.