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Author
Interviews Interview: Josie
Lloyd & Emlyn Rees Despite
the huge number of books we read here at
Fiction-Net, 'Come Together' by Josie
Lloyd and Emlyn Rees remains a firm
favourite. We thought we'd catch up with
the authors to discover their plans for
the future. Fiction-Net:
Your approach to Come Together, where
chapters are alternated between the lead
characters, Jack and Amy, was original and
a key to the book's success. Did you
always intend to use this
method? Josie:
We'd both written novels before and,
since we lived in different parts of
London at the time, and had different
writing styles, it seemed the obvious way
to go. The alternate chapters provided us
with a way of adding suspense and kept
each other guessing what was coming next,
so that we could let the story develop
organically - rather like a real
relationship. Emlyn:
The method kind of presented itself to us
as soon as we decided to write together.
It seemed the only way to give us equality
as writers. We also wanted it to be a war
of words between the sexes, to a degree,
and a two voice dialogue like this seemed
to be a fun way to go about it. Fiction-Net:
There is no avoiding the fact that,
initially, readers of the sequel - Come
Again - are somewhat shocked to discover
that the story is not told from the
perspective of Jack and Amy. What made you
take this approach? Josie:
When we were writing Come Together, we
both enjoyed writing about Jack and Amy's
friends and felt that we wanted to explore
them further. Also, having 'lived' with
Jack and Amy inside our heads, we felt we
needed a break for them - no matter how
much we liked them! Emlyn:
We very much saw Jack and Amy's story as
being self-contained, with a definite
beginning, middle and end. We liked the
fact that we left them happy at the end of
Come Together and didn't want to mess with
that dynamic. At the time of deciding on
whether we should write a sequel and, if
so, what it would be about, we'd just got
together ourselves, and were consequently
interested in exploring what happens to
separate groups of friends when a new
partnership is forged. Jack and Amy's
social circles seemed a great place for us
to explore this. Fiction-Net:
One would assume that you (Emlyn) wrote
for Jack and you (Josie) for Amy. If this
is the case, were there occasions where
you swapped roles for any of the
writing? Emlyn:
We considered playing a prank on our
editor with the last two chapters of Come
Together, but chickened out in the
end…or did we? Seriously, though, our
rule in Come Together and Come Again has
been that Josie creates the female
characters and I create the male
characters. After that, though, the
writing process loosens up with us both
freely putting any character in any
dramatic situation. Josie:
It was tempting at the end of Come
Together for me to write a Jack chapter to
see if I could get away with it, but I was
so deep in Amy's story by then that I
didn't have time (besides, girls are much
better!). By the end of writing both Come
Together and Come Again, though, I
certainly felt comfortable writing the
characters that Emlyn had initially set
up. However, Emlyn always had the final
say on any dialogue I put in any of his
characters' mouths during the course of my
chapters, and the same applied for any
dialogue he wrote for any of the
girls. Fiction-Net:
So, what can we expect to see from you
next? Will we be hearing more from Jack
& Amy & co.? Or are you planning
to write separately? Josie:
We're currently writing a third joint book
together, and still having as much fun as
we did when we wrote Come Together and
Come Again. It's another romantic comedy,
but we have moved away from Jack and Amy
and their gang for the time being, to keep
things fresh, hopefully for both ourselves
and our readers. Emlyn:
I'd love to return to Jack and Amy
sometime in the future, but we're possibly
talking a decade here rather than years.
Will they still be together? And if so,
will they be parents? Will they be being
faithful to each other? It would be
interesting to find out. As far as writing
separately goes, it's something I think
we'll probably do if either of us ever
feels the need to. Currently, though, I'm
enjoying writing with Josie, both novels
and film scripts, and enjoyment is, for
me, what it's all about. Fiction-Net:
It's pretty fair to say that together you
make a great writing team - how did you
meet? Josie:
We met through a friend of ours - another
writer called Matthew Branton - who was
writing an article on first time
novelists. At the time, Emlyn had just
finished his first thriller, The Book Of
Dead Authors, and I was working on It
Could Be You. We met in a pub called The
Front Page and hit it off immediately.
Emlyn worked as an assistant to my
literary agent and pretty soon we became
good friends. Things kind of went from
there… Emlyn:
Socially, as Josie says, in the pub with
Matthew, but I actually first saw Josie
when I took her a cup of tea when she came
in to meet my then boss. Josie swears
blind that she doesn't remember this,
which just goes to show that first
impressions don't necessarily count. Or
maybe it was that old office habit I had
of walking round with a paper bag on my
head that makes her so
forgetful… Fiction-Net:
And what do you get up to when you're not
writing? Josie:
Big question! I'm pregnant at the moment,
so my answer is very different to what it
would have been nine months ago and will
be in nine months time, i.e. I'm currently
NOT drinking, NOT partying, NOT shopping,
NOT hanging out with my mates as much as
I'd like to, but thinking about all of
that a hell of a lot! Other than that, I'm
gearing up for the perils of parenthood,
discovering the dubious joys of John
Lewis's baby department, and looking
forward to meeting the little
critter. Emlyn:
Pretty much the same stuff that I've
been doing since I moved to London in
1994: meeting friends after work,
sporadically heading back to Wales to
check in with our families, and
frequently, I'm ashamed to say, boring
people witless in pubs around closing
time. We also read a lot and the best
thing about this is that, despite what we
do for a living, neither of us consider
this work. And finally, there's a dolphin
called Ecco, which seems to have been
getting a lot of attention from me these
last few weeks. I don't normally junk out
on computer games, but right now any
excuse not to convert our spare room and
my study into a nursery gets my
vote. Fiction-Net:
Do you have or are you planning to have
your own web-site? Josie:
We don't at the moment, although maybe we
should, because we do visit a lot of
book-related sites to see what's going on.
We also use the net a lot for research and
benefit enormously from e-mail, taking
advantage of it to keep in touch with our
editor and friends while we're lurking
down in West Wales, where we often go to
write. Emlyn:
We'd like to and an increasing number of
our friends are setting up their own.
We've even gone as far as joining the dot
com domain name gold rush, so we have the
turf and it's just a matter of building on
it now. Fiction-Net:
And finally, what advice do you have for
writers trying to break into the
business? Josie:
The most important thing about writing a
novel is to finish it. Many people think
that it's easy and that they have a novel
inside them, but to actually get it out
and down on the page or screen is a
different matter altogether. I'd tell any
would-be-writer that they should go for
it, but to remember that it can often be
as much hard work as it is fun. Emlyn:
The first novel I ever wrote is in a box
under my bed at my parents' place. It got
rejected across town (something like
fifteen publishers in all gave it the
thumbs down) and I hit a low and decided
that that was it, I wasn't cut out to be a
writer. It took me three years to bounce
back and start writing again and I wish I
hadn't wasted that time, but had just
dusted myself off and got on with writing
a second book. So the first piece of
advice is: don't give up. The second piece
of advice is: get an agent. Don't be
fooled by publishers' reputations. A lot
of them no longer employ readers in-house
and will only look at writing that's been
submitted through an agent. Finally, and
most importantly, do it because you love
it. It's the only thing that will put the
highs and lows into
perspective. We are
pleased to announce that Josie and Emlyn
are now proud (but tired) parents of baby
daughter, Tallulah. Congratulations to
them both. |
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