An Interview with Alex Beecroft!
This brilliant author and wonderful person was kind enough to open her blog to me not long ago. Now I have the honor of opening my own to her.
Please welcome Alex Beecroft!
Alex, what
was your motivation to become a writer? What took it that step further to
publication?
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Or at
least, I wanted to be a writer from the point at age 11 where I realized you
had to want to be something other than merely alive. It feels as though it was
built in. I’ve also always wanted to be published. I began trying to be
published as soon as I got to the stage where I believed my writing was of
publishable standard – that was about age 23, though I have to admit I didn’t
try very hard until I reached my 40s and it began to feel as if time was
running out.
Who
is your muse and inspiration?
I’m a serial monogamist as far as muses go.
They’re mostly actors. I’ll get inspired by some guy and he’ll prompt two or
three novel ideas, which will occupy two or three years of my life. Then I’ll
suddenly go off him and find someone else. When the whole ‘everything this guy
does makes me want to tell a story’ thing is in full flood it’s a wonderful experience.
And it does lead me to watch some amazing TV/movies which I wouldn’t normally
touch with a barge pole, so it’s an educational thing as well as an
inspirational one. This is my muse for most of my Age of Sail stories:
Who is your favorite character of all
time? Why?
Therem Harth rem ir Estraven from The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula
LeGuin. This is a profoundly personal one, I guess. I’ve always had trouble
with gender – didn’t understand it, didn’t want it, wanted to be treated like a
person, like a human being, not like a man or a woman. I’d say I was genderqueer
or - more closely - of no gender at all. And Estraven is still the only
character I have ever come across in literature who is exactly that. Ey is also
subtle, intelligent, heroic, vicious, motherly, reflective and altogether
admirable. I would love to grow up to be as awesome as Therem Harth rem ir
Estraven, on a world where nobody worried about what gender or sex you were
because everyone was neither or both.
Which
of the characters you've created is your favorite? Why?
I couldn’t choose between my characters. I
love them all, even the villains. I don’t think you can write them properly
unless you do.
How
would you describe yourself?
Weird. Ideally suited to be an absent
minded professor, providing I didn’t have to bother with having students.
How
would others describe you?
Standoffish? Inclined to take the middle
ground? It’s hard to say. (Heh – maybe ‘indecisive’ is the way to go.)
Would
you survive a zombie apocalypse? Why/Why not?
You know, I just might. My husband is a
marksman with a rifle and I’m not too bad an archer. Also, having done a lot of
reenacting, I know how to build a shelter, light a fire with flint and tinder,
spin and weave wool, make leather and work it, knap flint to make knives, turn
wood on the pole lathe etc etc. So as long as we could get to our own island,
or other defensible hold-out, we’d be all set to survive without any modern mod
cons.
What
is your creative process?
That’s hard. I’m not entirely sure. Ideas
arrive. I don’t quite know how, but I’ll find myself thinking “ooh, what if
there was a murder on HMS Endeavour and Joseph Banks had to find out who did
it?” or “Maecenas and the Emperor Augustus are old drinking buddies – together
they discuss poetry and fight crime.”
Usually these ideas, which seem so exiting
at the time, will not survive more than a few days, but every now and then one
of them will persist, and I’ll end up elaborating on it in my head – “ooh,
Maecenas could be hiding something. He’s secretly building a replica Great
Pyramid in his bath house using dog skulls and mortar made of incense.” Really? But why?
If the idea keeps growing and gaining
complexity it will eventually reach the point where I know it’s
self-sustaining. Then I’ll sit down and spend a week or so hashing out the
details. (Who is Augustus’ sinister servant? Why is Livia trying to poison him,
and what has this to do with the one eyed Gaulish child-catcher?)
Then I’ll wrangle these details into a
rough plot plan, so I know approximately what’s happening every 1500 words or
so. And when I’ve got that, I’ll start writing and find out the fine detail as
I go.
What
are some of your favorite things? (Color, Animal, Season, Music, etc)
Favourite colour – green. Initially through
patriotism towards the land of my birth, Ireland. Now that I’ve accepted
that I’m actually as English as they come, the favourite colour has persisted
just because I like it.
Favourite season – Spring. I get SAD, and
can’t describe the relief and reprieve of realizing that winter is finally
over. Huzzah, I have made it! I haven’t died, and there are a blessed nine
months ahead of me before I have to go through all that again.
If
you were a blueberry, how would you like to end your existence?
In slow dissolution on the grassy ground,
on a sticky hot summer day, with leaves dancing above me against the blue sky.
Alex has some remarkable books out, her latest promises to be something extra special too!
The faeries at the bottom of the garden are
coming back—with an army.
Under the Hill, Part 1
When Ben Chaudhry is attacked in his own
home by elves, they disappear as quickly as they came. He reaches for the phone
book, but what kind of exterminator gets rid of the Fae? Maybe the Paranormal
Defense Agency will ride to his rescue.
Sadly, they turn out to be another rare breed: a bunch of UFO hunters led by
Chris Gatrell, who—while distractingly hot—was forcibly retired from the RAF on
grounds of insanity.
Shot down in WWII—and shot forward seventy years in time, stranded far from his
wartime sweetheart—Chris has been a victim of the elves himself. He fears they
could destroy Ben’s life as thoroughly as they destroyed his. Chris is more
than willing to protect Ben with his body. He never bargained for his heart
getting involved.
Just when they think there’s a chance to build a life together, a ghostly voice
from Chris’s past warns that the danger is greater than they can imagine. And
it may take more than a team of rank amateurs to keep Ben—and the world—out of
the elf queen’s snatching hands…
What
made you write this particular book?
I’d done an awful lot of historical, Age of
Sail based stories, and I was aware that people had started to think of me as
an author of historicals. I’d inadvertently given myself a brand identity that
I didn’t really want. Don’t get me wrong – I love having a historical element
in a book. I love the fact that visiting the past is like visiting an alien
world. But my first love and my real interest continued to be fantasy, and I
thought I would give myself a treat and write something self indulgent and fun.
I can’t say that I intended to write this
book the way it came out. I’m not really that kind of an author. I intended to
write a lighthearted novella, loosely thinking of it as “gay Tam Lin,” while I
researched World War Two for another historical. But then the novella grew (as
my novellas tend to do) and it absorbed the WWII research and integrated it
into the plot. Suddenly I had a two-volume epic with time travellers. There
still is a Tam Lin element to it, but now there are also themes of alienation,
the loss of one’s world, how to carry on when everything that defined you is
gone.
Part of my process that wasn’t covered
above is that when a story wants to grow and expand, I shrug and roll with it.
I’ve never yet had cause to regret that. Good things come to those who cling on
to the back of a story as if it was a bolting horse and see where it takes them
in the end.
If
this book was a song, what genre would it be?
Oh, that’s easy. It would be the kind of
rock/folk combination of Steeleye Span. Particularly something like this: Seven HundredElves
Would
you give us a peek? Share an excerpt?
I certainly would :)
Chapter One
Ben bolted out of sleep, halfway to his
feet before he realised he was awake. What was that noise! Something was
wrong—he could feel it pressing under his breastbone. He thought he’d dreamed
of a subterranean groan, felt again the rush of sticky re-breathed air and then
the smoke. God! The smoke, pouring through the shattered windows of the train…
But this was his bedroom. Look, there—the
alarm clock cast a faint green light on the claret duvet and gold silk coverlet,
familiar as closed velvet curtains and his suit trousers hanging on the back of
the bathroom door. 3:14 a.m.
His breathing calmed slowly. Was that what
had woken him? Just another flashback? Or could there be an intruder
downstairs?
Tiptoeing to the wardrobe, he eased open
the mirrored door, slipped on his dressing gown and belted it, picking up the
cricket bat that nestled among his shoes. The closing door showed him his
determined scowl—not very convincing on a face that looked as nervous and skinny
as a whippet’s. Licking his lips, weapon raised, he seized the handle of his
bedroom door, eased it down.
And the sound came again. All the doors in
the house fluttered against their frames, the ground beneath him groaned, tiles
on the roof above shifting with a ceramic clatter. A crash in the bathroom as
the toothbrush holder fell into the sink. He jumped, crying out in revulsion
when the floor shuddered and the carpet rippled beneath his bare feet as if
stuffed with snakes.
Earthquake! An earthquake in Bakewell? Home
of well dressing and famous for pudding? The sheer ludicrousness of the idea
flashed through his mind even as he raced down the stairs. You… What did you do
in an earthquake? Stand under a door lintel, wasn’t it?
As he reached the living room, it happened
again. He clutched at the back of the sofa while the entire house raised itself
into the air and fell jarringly down with an impact that threw him against the
wall. Bricks moving beneath his fingers, he pulled himself along the still-drying
wallpaper into the hall, flung open the front door.
There was blackness outside—the streetlamps
all guttered out—and silence, a silence so profound that the pressure began
again inside his throat. It was so much like being buried underground. As he
strained his ears for something friendly—a barking dog, a car alarm—a wind
drove up from the Wye, filling his ears with whispering.
No stars shone above. But in the
neighbour’s windows, he could see something silver reflected, something that
moved with liquid grace.
No way!
The curve of a horse’s neck traced in
quicksilver reflected in a driving mirror. A stamping hoof—drawn out of lines
of living frost and spider web—splashed in a puddle. Drops spattered cold over
his bare ankles.
Coming up from the river, across the
bridge, up the sleeping suburban street they rode, knights and ladies.
Glimmering, insubstantial shreds of banners floated above them like icy mist.
Harps in their hands, hawks on their fists, and now he could hear the music; it
was faint, far away, wrong as the feeling that had driven him out of
bed. Alien and beautiful as the moons of Saturn.
“No way!”
He clapped both hands over his mouth, but
it was too late. The words were out, full of blood and earth and inappropriate,
human coarseness. Their heads turned. He caught a glimpse of armour, shadows
and silver, as one of the knights reined in his horse, glided close, bending
down.
The creature smelled of cool night air. Its
inky gaze raked over Ben from head to toe, like being gently stroked with the
leaves of nettles, a million tiny electric shocks. His skin crawled with the
prickle of it, ecstatic and unbearable, and he gasped, held on the point of a
pin between violent denial and begging it to do more.
Long platinum hair slid forward over a face
drawn in strokes of starlight. “Which eye do you see me with?”
“I…” croaked Ben, his mouth desiccated, his
lungs labouring. “What? I…”
Something in the garden—something huge,
covered in spikes, lifted up the house, foundations and all, and shook it like
a child’s toy.
“Fuck!”
Terror goaded him into action. Lurching
back into the hall, Ben slammed the door, locked it, shot the bolts top and
bottom, fumbled the chain into its slide and reached for the phone.
Nine-nine-nine got him a brisk, polite young woman saying “What service
please?”
Outside, crystalline laughter tinkled in
the starless night. The walls flexed like a sheet of rubber. “Police please!
I…” …think I’m being attacked by fairies.
And everything went quiet. Down the street
a burglar alarm brayed into the night. He opened the door a crack to see the
streetlamps shining vulgar yellow-orange over a score of double-parked cars.
There was, of course, no evidence the creatures he’d seen had ever been there
at all. He took a deep breath, decided against setting himself up for a charge
of wasting police time, and let it out in surrender. “Never mind.”
Thank you so much for sharing with us Alex.
I have been thoroughly intrigued ^_^
