Firstly, congratulations on your debut novel! How did it feel when you found out that Legend wanted to publish Silence?
It was terrific but also scary! I went hot and cold and was excited and full of dread at the same time. It was a bizarre situation as I was sitting in the pub with Tom from Legend. I’d submitted the opening chapters and synopsis of Silence after having my story in Seven Days, the 2007 Legend short story collection. Then I’d submitted another story for the 2008 collection Eight Hours, meanwhile Tom asked for the full manuscript of Silence. I found out that my story for Eight Hours was accepted and then a week later Tom invited me to the office to discuss the novel. I thought that must be significant but didn’t want to get my hopes up. I’ve had several experiences of being disappointed. For instance, a children’s novel I wrote in 2001, where a publisher showed interest and I was under contract but then it fell through. So I know that things can change and nothing is definite in the world of publishing! On my podcast around that time, I sound excited but also very reticent.
We were in the pub and Tom had just bought me a beer and we’d done all the usual chatting. And I said, ‘So are you going to publish my book or what?’ and he’s so laid back, he just said, ‘Yeah, I think we will.’ I was trying really hard to be cool and not hysterical but I think I drank that beer rather fast! I was scared because it was like, oh my God, now my mother is going to read this and my old teachers and all the people who hated me at school and said I’d never get anywhere, potentially could read it. And it’s like the contents of my head splurged out on paper so I knew that I’d feel quite exposed. It was nervewracking. On the other hand, it could be published and then a complete flop, panned by the critics or just ignored, so there’s that to be scared of as well! When you’re just starting to write all you worry about is whether it will get published, but now it’s there, there’s so much else to worry about.
So, tell us a bit about the book.
The blurb on the back is Jackie Harris, prison counsellor and ex-drag king, kills her lesbian lover’s rapist in what she insists is self-defence. Looking back through her life, Silence portrays a troubled but resolute character struggling against the many obstacles and with her own identity. My own one liner description is ‘A caffeinated roadtrip through time and space, featuring murder and mayhem, sex, politics and cats.’
But really it’s much more than that. It’s difficult to give a full synopsis because it covers a lot of ground.
How did the idea for Silence come about?
The book was born out of the MA in Writing that I studied with Manchester Metropolitan University in 2002-2005. I wrote it on the course and didn’t really intend to publish it, which makes it more honest than other novels I’ve written where I’ve had an eye on the market. I think if I hadn’t been on the course it would be quite a different novel for many reasons. I began with a premise of this woman who was a prison counsellor and was attracted to her client which is always a sticky situation, and that something terrible happens so she ends up in prison with the client – so the power differential is reversed. I’d just studied for a counselling qualification myself, and had been working in Women’s Aid and in a homeless shelter. So all of that went into the book – the sorts of situations you end up in when you’re working in social care, and the fact that many of the workers are people who could equally be service users. How many vulnerable people there are out there and how we tie ourselves in knots trying to be fair to everyone without being manipulated!
The main influence the MA had on the book was that it isn’t a straightforward linear progression, one narrator novel. With the premise I had, I could have written a formulaic genre thriller but decided not to. Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith was one of the books we studied on the course, and the idea of having two narrators keeping secrets from each other intrigued me. I’d already read Tipping the Velvet and wanted to write something equally as graphic and honest of the lesbian experience (i.e. my experience) but in a modern setting.
I conceived of this huge arc, with the events leading up to Jackie killing the man who rapes her lover Jim, then the fallout and her time in prison on remand, the trial etc. I wanted to explore the back story of both Jackie and Jimmie, what made them become the people they are, and why they react as they do to their situation. I realised partway through that there was far too much material for one book, so decided to end the first book at a natural point, the culminating event of the killing. Leaving it like that means that the reader has to decide whether Jack is guilty or not. I’ve concentrated on Jackie’s back story for Silence, and the next book will cover the trial, Jack’s prison experience, and Jimmie’s back story and how she pulls her life back together following the attack.
Let's be honest, the subject matter's a bit controversial – what has the reaction been to it so far?
Yes it is! But I firmly believe that if you’re going to write a novel about sexual abuse and recovery from abuse then you need to have some sex in it that is not abuse. I think that’s probably why I don’t like misery memoirs, because the parts where there isn’t ‘misery’ tend to be twee and evasive. To my mind, a culture that allows graphic sexual violence in a novel or biography but baulks at scenes of graphic consensual sex is a pretty sick culture. Also I am interested in the distinction as there is often not a clear line drawn between consensual sex and non-consensual. Most relationships begin in the non-abusive sphere and those that become abusive have a gradual decline so that you don’t realise what’s happening until you are able to look at it in retrospect. This was something I wanted to explore. But yes, having graphic sex, violent consensual sex, and abuse within the same novel framework is probably going to be seen as controversial. Some people might say that in juxtaposing sex with abuse I am confusing the two, but I would argue that you can’t have a definition of what is abusive sex without being able to see what is non-abusive. And until we are open about what goes on behind closed doors, a lot of what is abusive will continue to occur.
On the one hand I was worried at the reaction, thinking it would make people look at me in a negative light as they would assume that Jack is based on me. I do use a lot of my own experience in making her as a character, but I also based Jim on myself and they are very different. I’ve never killed anyone and don’t intend to! On the other hand I’ve got a rebellious streak (like Jack) and tend to shrug off other people’s opinions of me. I’ve been vilified most of my life for whatever reason and have become immune to it. I’m not inviting the press to camp on my doorstep, but I don’t think that being declared ‘sick, evil and depraved’ by society in the way that happens to Jack in the novel would have such a detrimental effect on me as it does on some people. All the feedback I’ve had so far is that the novel is unputdownable, which has got to be good.
With that in mind what has the feedback been like from family and friends?
Actually it’s been surprisingly really good. My mum phoned me the other day to say she stayed up late to finish it and thought it was brilliant and wants me to get on with the sequel. She doesn’t usually read novels as she finds them boring, so that’s high praise! People say that ‘my mum likes it’ is no compliment but not with my mum – when she told me it was well written, she sounded surprised! I keep getting emails and text messages from friends who’ve just finished reading it, and their reactions are just as important to me as the professional reviews, which are just starting to come in.
The Western Mail said that Silence 'is not one for granny'. Did you have a target audience in mind when you wrote the book?
Well not my granny for sure! I did mention Gran in the acknowledgements because she told me she’d like to read the book. That might have been what prompted the reviewer to say this.
This novel is one of the first things I wrote where I wasn’t constantly thinking about who my audience would be and censoring myself for publication. I think that this internal censor is a bad habit because the writing that comes out doesn’t ring true. When I began the MA I knew that the novel I was writing would be read by the other students and my tutors, so I suppose they were my audience. I approached it from the basis of writing a book that I would want to read. A powerful drama about a lesbian writer in a dilemma and living out one of my worst nightmares. I couldn’t find this book so decided to write it myself. That would indicate that my audience is myself and people like me. I never wanted it to be a ‘lesbian genre’ book. I haven’t got anything against lesbian books and I’ve read my fair share of them, but I think that there’s a danger of limiting yourself to a niche. I wanted it to be a mainstream book like Sarah Waters’ writing. I think that it’s important that books with lesbian characters are out there in the general fiction section and have a wider audience of the general public.
Silence is Waterstone's Welsh Book of the Month for August. What avenues has that opened up for you?
It’s incredible what an interest this has drawn! I am very pleased of course, and I try to slip it into every conversation I have about the book. When I heard about that initially I thought it was quite funny. I think there is a stereotype of Welsh writing, especially Welsh women’s writing, and my book does not fit into that stereotype at all. But I think that Waterstone’s is a progressive company and they could obviously see the commercial potential. I imagined that putting my book as a representative of Welsh writing would turn a few heads or raise eyebrows, but didn’t expect the level of attention it has done. It has meant that there is media interest for a start, and of course there are the events that have been arranged in branches of Waterstone’s in Wales. I have yet to see whether there will be a backlash. I can imagine some church leaders in Wales potentially taking issue. I don’t want to provoke something like that but if it happened then this would generate even more publicity so I’m ready for it!
At the moment you're working hard promoting the book – are there any events people can catch you at?
These are the book signing events linked with Welsh Waterstone’s Book of the Month for August.
Swansea Waterstone’s (town branch, not Taliesin) Saturday 9th August 12-1pm Aberystwyth Waterstone’s Saturday 16th August 12-3pm Newport Waterstone’s Saturday 23rd August 12-1pm |