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Author
Interviews Interview: Lisa
Jewell Lisa
Jewell's debut novel, Ralph's Party,
became the top selling debut novel of
1999. Following the recent release of her
second novel, Thirty-Nothing, Lisa talks
to Fiction-Net about maturing as a
writer... Fiction-Net:
So Thirty-Nothing has been released. Do
you feel any different than you did when
Ralph's Party hit the
bookstores? Lisa
Jewell: Incredibly different. When
Ralph's Party came out I was still in this
painful, deluded state of conviction that
the whole thing was a terrible mistake,
that nobody would buy the book and it was
all going to be a catastrophic disaster,
so even though it was incredibly exciting
it was also very surreal and
nerve-wracking. This time round there has
been so much confidence surrounding
publication that it's even rubbed off on
me! I've
been looking forward to the launch for
weeks and now it's finally here it's even
better than I thought it would be. There's
been loads of really great publicity and
very positive reviews and to cap it all
off, Thirtynothing has just gone straight
in to the best-seller charts at number 4!
I've enjoyed it much more this time
around. "I
think there's more confidence in my
writing" Fiction-Net:
The general consensus is that the
writing-quality of Thirty-Nothing is the
biggest difference - would you
agree? Lisa
Jewell: Definitely. When I read back
through Ralph's Party, some of the prose
and dialogue really makes me cringe. I was
very careful to avoid writing anything
that I thought might come back to haunt me
later. Also, because I had much more of an
idea of where this book was going right
from the start, unlike Ralph's Party which
was a very organic, hit and miss book to
write, I think there's more confidence in
my writing - it probably seems to flow
more smoothly. Fiction-Net:
When we last interviewed you, you said "I
still find it hard to believe that I've
been published". Still feel the
same? Lisa
Jewell: Absolutely. But these days it
doesn't hit me every few minutes like it
did at first. Now I just have a reality
check moment every couple of
days! Fiction-Net:
So anything planned for your third
release, or are you planning to relax for
a while? Lisa
Jewell: Ha! Relax! You have got to be
joking. I started writing book number
three in January, at the same time as I
started planning my wedding. Big mistake.
The two activities just did not complement
one another at all and consequently, when
I got back from honeymoon in July, I read
through what I'd written and it was
appalling. So I took a very deep breath
and started again. I'm now 100 pages in
(not bad for a month's work) and have
until the end of January to finish -
basically, that's 25 pages a week, which
may not sound a lot, but really it is.
Interestingly though, having this pressure
on me for the first time has proved to be
very inspiring and I'm really enjoying
writing at the moment. When you're writing
at that pace it's more akin to reading a
book and hence much, much more
fun. The
novel is about a twenty five year old girl
who comes to London from the West Country
when her thirty-six year old sister dies.
She only intends to stay long enough to
sort out her estate, but ends up getting
embroiled in her sister's life and falling
in love with her dead sisters best (male)
friend. It's like a cross between
Desperately Seeking Susan and After Hours,
with plenty of interesting and quirky
characters and scenes of London
life. Fiction-Net:
In Ralph's Party, Smith and Ralph were
inspired by your then-boyfriend and his
brother. Were there any similar
inspirations for the characters of
Thirty-Nothing? Lisa
Jewell: Hmm ... kind of. I started off
with this old-fashioned idea of friends
realising they're in love and, because
I've never had a strong platonic
friendship with a man, whenever I got
stuck or wasn't sure how a character might
act or respond to a certain situation
arising out of that platonic friendship,
I'd think of my brother-in-law (again!
He's going to start asking for a share of
the royalties soon!) and his friendship
with a girl called Karen. However, I
hasten to add that their stores are
completely different - they both have
lovely partners of their own and harbour
absolutely no secret desires for each
other! "The
thing I like best about having my own
website is the Fiction-Net:
Your web-site seems to be a something
you're keen to keep up-to-date. Do you see
the internet as a valuable method of
promoting your work? Lisa
Jewell: It's hard to qualify how
effective my website is in terms of
promoting my work. I get about 30 hits a
day, but who knows who from or what they
think of my site. The thing I like best
about having my own website is the contact
it gives me with readers, with the people
who actually went out and spent their
hard-earned cash on my books and liked it
enough to write and tell me. Feedback is
incredibly important to me - it really
brings what I do all day, every day, to
life. I'm as excited as a little kid when
I open my e-mail and find a note left
there by a teenage boy describing reading
the book in one afternoon while sitting in
Sydney Harbour. Or an eighty two year old
man who read it in bed until two o'clock
in the morning to finish it. Or the woman
who hadn't read a book in ten years and
enjoyed it so much that she went straight
out and bought a book by Marian Keyes. Or
the man from Essex who proposed to his
long term girlfriend after reading it. Or
the accountant from Surrey who wrote a
song inspired by it. Or the American
traveller who found it in a beach bar on a
tiny island south of Cuba. Or the girl who
simply wrote to tell me that for some
reason that she couldn't quite put her
finger on, it had made her feel more
hopeful about her future, her work and her
relationship. We
all know the indescribable joy of getting
lost in a good book and nothing beats the
feeling of knowing that someone out there
has had that experience with the book that
you wrote. Without my website and without
e-mail, I would be unaware of all
this.
Fiction-Net:
And what are you using the 'net for
these days? Lisa
Jewell: Procrastinating, mainly ... I
spend and hour on the net every morning
when I wake up. most of which is spent
checking the progress of my books on
various bookshop sites and reading
customer comments (sad, I know). I also
occasionally use it for research when I'm
writing. For example, there is this great
service called the Knowhere Guide
(www.knowhere.co.uk) which is a bulletin
board style guide for different areas of
the country. I had a character who came
from Felixstowe and I needed to name the
main shopping street so I went to this
site and found a listing for shops in the
area. And when I wanted to describe a
terrible meal of offal that my characters
in Thirtynothing were served, I found a
website full of awful-sounding innards
recipes which I adapted. |
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