Zoe Brooks
We have a wonderful treat today... Zoe Brooks, author of Love of Shadows has
stopped by!
Tell me, were you a reader before you were a writer?
What do you enjoy reading?
I am told by my parents that I was making up poems
before I learned how to read and write. So I was a writer (well a poet at
least) before I was a reader. I love magic realism – books where the real world
meets fantasy. I didn’t know that was what I liked until I went to fantasy
conference in Leicester and was talking to another writer about my work.
"Oh," he said. "You write magic realism." When I got home I
googled magic realism and realized that not only did I write it but that most
of my favourite books were in that genre too. In order to get a better
understanding of the genre I have set myself the challenge of reading and
reviewing a magic realism book a week for a year. You can follow my progress on
http://www.magic-realism.net.
Is Love of Shadows the first book you’ve
written?
No, there have been quite a few books in which I
learned how to craft books and which now sit in a drawer never to see the light
of day. The first book to be published was Girl in the Glass – the
prequel to Love of Shadows.
I had previously published books of poetry, but I
won’t count those
Where their some particular inspirations for the
character’s development or character traits for Love of Shadows?
The central character in the book is a young woman
called Judith. She starts life in Girl in the Glass as Anya, but changes
her name in order to escape someone who is pursuing her. For over twenty years
I worked with disadvantaged women – refugees, victims of domestic abuse, the
homeless – and I was inspired and humbled by their remarkable stories. In order
to get my head around what I was hearing I used my imagination and made up
stories. But after twenty years it all became too much, all those layers of
thick skin had been worn away and I had to stop. I turned to writing and in so
doing I hope helping my readers gain an insight into those women’s worlds.
Judith is influenced by those women. She’s a survivor,
but she is damaged by her past. There is in her head a voice which tells her
she is nothing and this means that she expects to be let down. She doubts that
anyone can love her and tests those that
do, but is also drawn to the wrong guys. She is driven by a need to heal and
help others, but is bad at accepting help. She is loveable and at the same time
frustrating. In addition to the women I met through work, there have been a
couple of women who have been very dear to me and who were very influential on
why and how I wrote about the character. People tend to think you write about
yourself, but that isn’t true.
There are many roads that lead to becoming a published
author, each one littered with its own potholes. What was the most challenging
aspect of writing Love of Shadows? (dialogue, character development,
creating names, etc)
For Love of Shadows the difficulty was that I
was writing for some people who have not read Girl in the Glass as well
as for people who have. This threw up a number of problems, most obviously how
to provide enough backstory without being boring, but also how to start the
novel. The opening of a novel is so crucial, it has to grab the reader, either
when they flip open the book in a store or when they download the beginning
from Amazon.
How did you tackle this challenge?
With hard work. I kept going back to the story and
rereading it with the new reader in mind. Then I added elements, but avoided
overloading the opening. When the book was finished I gave it to someone who
hadn’t read Girl in the Glass and got their feedback. Beta readers are
really important.
Being an author is so much more than just writing a
good story. Besides the “pen and ink,” what is one of the most difficult things
you’ve encountered on your journey as a published author? What helped you get a
handle on it?
I am an introvert, brought up in a very British family
where "showing off" was frowned on, so the hardest thing to do is
promote my book. I just have to remind myself that if I don’t no one will read
it and I will have let down those women who inspired it and the readers who
would have loved it. Social media helps as it’s a lot easier than talking face
to face. And people like you Lynn make it so much easier.
It sounds like you’ve come quite a distance. Thank
you, Zoe Brooks, for coming today and sharing a little of your experience with
us, for helping us avoid a few potholes on the journey to becoming a published
author.
Find out more about this author:
Website: http://zoebrooks.blogspot.com
Thanks Lynn for inviting me on your blog. Good luck with your latest release.
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