Interview with Jenny Harper

Jenny Harper is the author of The Heartlands Series, published by Accent Press – three titles to date set in and around the fictional small market town of Hailesbank near Edinburgh. The just-published Maximum Exposure follows Face the Wind and Fly and Loving Susie.

Maximum Exposure is described on the cover as ‘Page-turning and thoroughly entertaining. I loved it!’ by Katie Fforde.

from the blurb:

Livelihoods are at risk when a local newspaper begins to fail, but the future of one member of staff depends more on the choices she makes than the decisions of others…

Adorable but scatterbrained newspaper photographer Daisy Irvine becomes the key to the survival of The Hailesbank Herald when her boss drops dead right in front of her.

I asked Jenny some questions about Maximum Exposure, the series, and her writing process.

Jenny, Daisy is a delightful character – dizzy and scatterbrained in some ways but with real emotional depth. She follows your two perhaps more ‘grown-up’ heroines, Kate Courtenay, wind-farm engineer, in Face the Wind and Fly, and Susie Wallace, a member of the Scottish Parliament, in Loving Susie. Was Daisy inspired by anybody you know?

I have no idea where Daisy came from! No, she’s not based on anyone I know, she just grew in my mind. At one point, I did feel she lacked depth though. I needed to know more about why she was the way she was – and so her controlling father walked into the pages of the novel. It would be interesting to revisit Daisy in a year or two and see how life with Ben might change her. Now there’s a thought …

We see the story from Daisy’s viewpoint and from that of her childhood friend Ben. Did you know from the beginning that you wanted both of them to have a voice?

Yes. I find single viewpoint novels really difficult to write and admire anyone who can do it. I like to get inside at least two characters, and I also like to be able to move the action around more than is possible with a single point of view.

I know that you have been a journalist and also published non-fiction books. Have you ever worked on a newspaper?

Only as a freelance. I used to be a regular feature writer for many Scottish newspapers, particularly The Scotsman and The Sunday Times Ecosse (as it was when I wrote for it). But I ran a corporate communications agency for more than 20 years and we published magazines and newspapers for private and public sector organisations, from banks and oil companies to organisations such as Seafood and Historic Scotland.

The setting of the series is a small community. As far as I’m aware none of the characters so far cross over from one book to the next. Is that a possibility?

Yes. The next in the series again features new characters, but the one I’m working on at the moment (Number 5) takes one of the minor characters and develops her story. And now that I know Hailesbank, Forgie and Summerfield quite well, I’ll be picking up other characters in major or minor ways again too.

When will the next Heartlands title be available?

The People We Love is due out in ebook format on 26 February and paperback in August, and I believe it’s my best yet.

And how many do you envisage being in the series?

Who knows? It depends on many factors – if I continue to enjoy writing them, if my publisher wants more of them, if readers like them – and if it doesn’t all become too complicated! I have at least two more novels roughly planned, but I don’t know whether I’ll develop them or not. But I also have a hankering to revisit the first novel I ever tried to write, based loosely on my parents’ experiences during the war, in Scotland and in India. I didn’t have the technical experience to write back then, but maybe I do now.

Do you like the writing or the editing best?

It depends which stage of writing I’m at. I love it when everything starts to come together, and I love enriching what I have written, making it stronger and deeper. I am appalling in the early stages of a novel, I go down false avenues, prevaricate, change plot lines and fiddle with characters. It all takes a while to settle down in my head – but once I get to a certain point, it’s much easier and I really begin to enjoy it. I love editing – it was my professional discipline and I think I’m quite good at it.

You had a short story in the Romantic Novelists’ Association anthology Truly, Madly, Deeply. How do you like writing short stories compared with novels?

I’m a complete beginner at short stories. I went on a writing course to the gorgeous Chez Castillon tutored by Veronica Henry and she decided to spend a morning on short stories. I hadn’t expected it – but I’ve been so grateful ever since. By the way, I have another short story coming out on 1 November in an anthology called Let’s Hear It For the Boys It’s all for the charity Movember, in aid of men’s health, so please do click and buy! A great read for just 99p and a great cause.

Do you have a website or a blog?

www.jennyharperauthor.co.uk

http://jennyharperauthor.co.uk/category/myblog/

I also blog at http://novelpointsofview.blogspot.co.uk/

 Thank you for answering my questions – I look forward to seeing more of the Heartlands community in The People We Love.

Thank you for hosting me!

Five in September

I read five books in September. Only five! Must do better.

Ice Dancing by Catherine Czerkawska. Read on Kindle. Set in rural Scotland with a great sense of life in a small community. Narrator Helen’s world is turned upside down when Joe, a Canadian ice hockey player, moves into a cottage nearby. Helen – about to turn 40 and with her only child about to leave home – is feeling that her life with farmer husband Sandy is rather stale and she falls in love with Joe – nine years younger than her and very attractive. Joe returns Helen’s feelings but he has his demons which are slowly and shockingly revealed. A very grown-up love story … and if you are a fan of ice-hockey that would add an extra dimension to your enjoyment.

Walking the Woods and the Water by Nick Hunt

In 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor, aged 18, walked from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. The books he wrote about his travels have become classics of the genre – A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water and the posthumously published The Broken Road.


In 2011, Nick Hunt began his own ‘great trudge’ to follow in Fermor’s footsteps and using only his books as guides. He trekked for around 2500 miles through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Fermor had carried little or no money and had relied on a (aristocratic) network of contacts for bed and board, and on the kindness of strangers. In the 21st century Hunt used social networking to plan some free accommodation in advance but like his predecessor found himself on several occasions sleeping rough. He too was sometimes overwhelmed at the bounty shown to him by people who didn’t know him and had nothing to gain.

You would expect much to have changed in the last eighty-four years encompassing wars and occupations and changing political landscapes and technology, and of course it has. But it was even more fascinating to see what hasn’t changed – great swathes of beautiful landscapes, and the interest in and generosity shown to a passing traveller.

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

This is a much-hyped first novel – it’s from the point-of-view of a woman with dementia whose memories mix up her sister Sukey who went missing just after the war, and the current disappearance of her friend Elizabeth. And the hype is justified – I’m lost in admiration of how a writer who looks about twelve in her cover pic could get the voice so convincing, tell a great story through her unreliable narrator, and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

And now for something completely different … This is, according to the back of the cover, aimed at ages 9+. It’s set in the 30s in a girls’ boarding school and is a kind of cross between Angela Brazil school stories and Hercule Poirot. Daisy Wells (the Hercule character) and Hazel Wong (Hastings) investigate a murder that no one else, apart from the perpetrator, knows has happened. Throw in the suicide the year before of one of the girls – this is strong stuff for nine-year-olds and a long way from Angela’s jolly romps in the dorm and worrying that you’d lost your hockey stick. I think it works though and the heroines are engaging; I would read another one although the period is not as well evoked as in Beswitched by Kate Saunders.

Ace, King, Knave by Maria McCann

Read for book group. Described by Hilary Mantel as ‘Hogarth sprung to life’ and I can only agree with her (I’m sure she would be thrilled to hear). It takes a few pages to know where you are then you settle down and enjoy the roller-coast ride through Georgian London, a page-turner despite having to refer periodically to the glossary – as the author uses (but doesn’t over-use) Georgian words to help bring the period brilliantly to life. For example: Romeville – London; cackler – a preacher; autem mort – a wife, or female beggar impersonating a desperate mother; daisy – a naïve person; fawney – a ring (as in piece of jewellery); three-legged mare – the gallows; plus, as one of the characters is a prostitute, words which would block your spam filter were I to set them down here.

Prize-giving

Tonight, 14 October, this year's winner of the Man Booker Prize will be announced.

The short-listed titles are:

How to be Both by Ali Smith

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

How to Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

J by Howard Jacobson

The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee

We are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

I have not read any of them (yet … ).

I thought I would look back at twenty years of the prize and see how many of the winners I’ve read (and if I liked them or not). There were more than I’d expected:

2010 The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson x

2009 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel √

2007 The Gathering by Anne Enright -

2002 The Life of Pi by Yann Martel √

2000 The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood √

1997 The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy x

1995 The Ghost Road by Pat Barker √

(2012 Bring Up the Bodies, I have a lovely hardback copy and look forward to reading, suspecting though that I might have to skim through Wolf Hall again first)

2013 The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, bought, signed by the author, as yet unread)

  

The American equivalent is the Pulitzer Prize and my reading of those is:

2011 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan √

2010 Tinkers by Paul Harding √

2006 March by Geraldine Brooks √

2005 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson √ (coming to Edinburgh on November 16th)

1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields √

1994 The Shipping News by Annie Proulx √

Not so many – but they include titles by three of my top ten authors, Geraldine Brooks, Marilynne Robinson and the late lamented Carol Shields. Another winner, Anne Tyler (in 1989 for Breathing Lessons) is also a favourite. Donna Tartt won this year with Goldfinch, yet another title on my wish list.

So little time … so much to read.

A room of my own

Virginia Woolf advocated A Room of One’s Own to write in. Jane Austen wrote in the family parlour. Paper and pencil/laptop being portable, writing is physically possible anywhere but not always mentally possible. 

Some write in coffee shops – I’ve tried that but find it hard to tune out other people’s conversations, not to mention the noise of the coffee machine. But complete quiet around you, in the Reading Room of the National Library for example, can have a paralysing effect. Am I making too much noise tapping keys, making notes, breathing?

At home my writing space used to be the kitchen table but now that my son lives far away from home I’ve commandeered the desk in his bedroom … bought a new chair … put up a notice board … and added bits and pieces to make it look like a writer’s room.

There’s a lovely view from the window (shame about the cars though) and gazing at it is not procrastination of course – staring out of windows is part of the writer’s job description. The green on the other side of the road is a golf course in the summer – and beneath the velvet grass, it’s said, is a burial ground for long-ago plague victims. In the winter when the trees are leafless, and if I crane my neck, up on the right I can see Edinburgh Castle.

On the wall in front of me and my laptop is the aforementioned notice board. Scribbled notes on various works-in-progress (hope I can still read them.) On the bottom left, the illustration of my story, Class of '64 published last month in The People’s Friend, the red-haired young girl looking spookily like my teenage self (see photo on the right). 

In front of the notice board is my favourite red-head, Anne of Green Gables, a doll brought back by my sister from Prince Edward Island.

There was a TV show a few years ago called End of Story (sadly, never repeated), a competition where well-known writers, such as Ian Rankin and Marian Keyes, wrote part of a story and viewers finished them – the winners had their stories read out and got to meet the authors. I didn’t enter but sent off for the End of Story mug to keep pencils in and to inspire me to keep going. It's sitting on top of a box of index cards, one for each story I've written.

On the chest of drawers is a lovely sunflower tin with horrible receipts in it – book writing is one thing but book-keeping is something else and the downside of being self-employed. Next to it is the quaich awarded when I won the Romance Novel competition at this year’s Scottish Association of Writers’ Conference. And next to that a collection of bookmarks in a (washed …) syrup tin.

I can’t always be sitting in that office chair though. A useful piece of advice is to print out the last page of your wip, or write the last sentence down on an index card, and carry it around with you – then you can keep writing wherever you are.

And eventually you, or even I, will get to the end of the story.

Poetry? Yes, Please

I have written lots of poetry in the past – even given a few public readings – but the Muse went off in the huff a year or so ago.

‘Write your short stories then,’ she snapped over her shoulder as she disappeared into the blue remembered hills, ‘but don’t expect me to jump up when you’re in the mood for a poem. I’m off!’

I’ve tried calling to her to no avail. I can only hope she’ll slink back sometime when I’m not looking.

But she can’t stop me reading poems by other people or listening to Poetry Please.

Not highly original choices I know, but my five favourite poems are (probably):

Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Sea Fever by John Masefield

The Lamplighter by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats

‘Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs’ is the first line of (possibly) my very favourite poem, Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas’ look at his lost youth. Every one of the subsequent lines is just as rich and gorgeous and unexpected as the first one, check them out here. He was the subject of one of the Edinburgh Book Festival’s reading events this year, chaired by Lilias Fraser from the Scottish Poetry Library. A group of about twenty DT fans, ably guided by Lilias, made very insightful comments which added to my appreciation of Fern Hill and introduced me to three of DT’s other poems. There's a reading of the poem on YouTube by Richard Burton and, perhaps surprisingly, one by Prince Charles.

Another Book Festival event featured Billy Collins, one-time American poet laureate. I saw him at the BF eight years ago and have never forgotten his reading. He has been called ‘the most popular poet in America’, and is famous for his conversational, witty poems. They work well on the page but hearing him read adds another brilliant dimension. Check out his quietly hilarious poem on mother love called The Lanyard on YouTube here. 

I’ve also been reading poems with a different slant on mother love by my American friend Kathy Roberson, who has just published Moments of Departure. To paraphrase from the blurb:

‘Twenty-one years ago, Kathy and her husband, adopted a child with special needs who was, in adoption lingo, “hard to place”. One-year-old Katie came with labels: African American, general development delays, mild cerebral palsy. And thus begins the Robersons’ journey into new territory, both for them as parents and their other two young children as siblings.

    Kathy’s collection of poems relates her family’s challenging adventure, beginning with the day they buckled Katie into her car seat for the first time, moving through the following two decades of bringing her into adulthood. Each poem mines the seemingly little things in life to unearth fundamental truths that will resonate for anyone who has encountered the frustrations and joys of caring for a loved one.’

Kathy is a wonderful poet and her poems can be enjoyed by anyone but if you know of a family who you think would particularly appreciate the book do let them know about it (or buy them a copy – it's available in paperback and on Kindle, on .co.uk and .com). Here's a flavour:

Navy Converse

Even quite young she’d spot

them a mile away, along

long aisles of shoes of all

sizes an styles, men’s, women’s,

teens’ children’s, formal,
casual, blue canvas that were not

the same. She could tell at a glance

as she sped by, crying out

 “NO!” when I tried to suggest

they’d do just fine. ….

Six in August

I read six novels in August and some poetry which I will blog about separately.

The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes. Read on Kindle. Two timelines – one contemporary, the other in World War 2 and Occupied France. In the present day Liv, owner of a painting of a beautiful woman, a gift from her recently late young husband, has to go to court to defend her ownership, as descendants of the artist are claiming it was looted. In the harrowing other timeline, Sophie runs a hotel visited by the occupying Germans. Her beloved husband, artist Edouard, is fighting at the front. The portrait he painted of her hangs in the hotel and is much admired by the German Commandant …

The One Plus One by Jojo Moyes. Read on Kindle. This one is contemporary (I love that all her books are so different) and, oh joy, it’s a road-trip book. Not an American road-trip … but a car journey from the south of England to Aberdeen where single mother Jess’s daughter Tanzie is to take part in a Maths Olympiad, the first prize for which is a desperately needed £5,000. In the car is also Nick, Jess’s troubled teenage stepson, and a very large flatulent dog called Norman. The car is driven by Ed, erstwhile employer of cleaner Jess, who has his own reasons for wanting to leave home for a while. Jojo Moyes is so perceptive about family dynamics and Jess is a wonderful character – I am interested to find out who will play her in the forthcoming film.

Cross Country with Grandma by Karen Testa

Christian Aid Booksale purchase. This is an American road-trip book –I will probably never take one but can live vicariously. The first chapter pulled me in straightaway:  it’s headed Herring Bay, Maryland and begins ‘The envelope I hold in my hand will break my heart.’ Then events take the narrator and her eighty-five-year-old grandmother, feisty Maude, on a literal journey across America and a metaphorical journey into Maude’s past. My copy was signed by the author in 1995 – I wonder how far it travelled before ending up in a second-hand booksale in Edinburgh?. Copies are available on Amazon: 16 used from 0.1p – and one new from £2499.50 ...

A Night on the Orient Express by Veronica Henry

Christian Aid Booksale purchase. A zip-through read about various couples/groups who are travelling on the Orient Express for different reasons. I particularly liked the young couple, who’d never met before but who had ‘won’ each other in a lonely hearts competition, and the step-family on a bonding holiday.

The Long Weekend by Veronica Henry

Christian Aid Booksale purchase. Format as above, this tells the stories of the guests in a beautiful Cornish seaside hotel and one of the co-owners. Secrets, lies and scandals are exposed over one hot weekend. The author is also a script-writer so she handles the various storylines effortlessly.

The Hour Before Dawn by Sara MacDonald

Christian Aid Booksale purchase. Described as ‘A rich, multi-generational saga, set in Singapore and New Zealand. The mysterious disappearance of a young child sets in motion a series of events that will haunt future generations of the family.’ Good plot and some lovely descriptions especially of rural New Zealand.

Serial writer

In 2008, as a member of Edinburgh Writers’ Club, I was entitled to go to the conference of the Scottish Association of Writers’ Conference. One of their competitions that year was to write the first instalment (7000 words) of a serial for The People’s Friend.

At that time, once a month, I met up with four writing friends and we took turns to provide a prompt or an exercise from which we would write for twenty minutes or so and then read our work aloud. One month our hostess, Vicki (now acclaimed novelist Victoria Hendry), handed out some paperbacks of various genres and asked us to select a page at random, look at the first line and use that to start our own piece. I can’t remember the title of my book but it was a horror story; the line I picked out was about a woman driving in the rain. I decided she was travelling up to the very north-west of Scotland and (although I don’t even read horror never mind write it) I vaguely had in mind that she was on her way to some pagan ceremony which would end badly. I called the scribbled piece The Stone Mother without having any idea what that meant.

When I read about The People’s Friend competition I thought of that piece of writing and how I might take it further. My heart had never been in pursuing the pagan ceremony idea and of course The People’s Friend doesn’t do horror … So the woman in the car with her windscreen wipers working overtime became an archaeologist en route to join a Viking dig and I came up with a cast of characters for the community she was going to be living in.

(If anyone wants to take up The Stone Mother and go off to a horrorific pagan ceremony be my guest.)

No one was more surprised than me when I won the competition. I had not thought beyond that first instalment and it was both thrilling and frightening to realise I had a commission to finish the serial. But before it could be taken any further The People’s Friend wanted some changes – some scenes swapped around, there were too many single people, one character was over-the-top … and I had to produce a complete synopsis of the rest (five or six instalments of 5000 words each). I’d had some short stories published before but had never written anything of length so this seemed an impossible task – like going into a dark room full of people I’d never met and being expected to know them. It took me weeks. 

At one point I really thought I couldn’t do it and had to give myself a severe talking to; it would have been so stupid not to grasp the opportunity offered to me. Eventually I produced an A4 page for each of the next six instalments, broken down into five chapters/scenes and once that was all approved I was off – and it was great, rather like joining the dots. I had a blueprint in front of me to follow.

I submitted the second instalment, waiting for their approval/comments before beginning the next one. It was quite a long process but at last The Family at Farrshore was published in The People’s Friend in 2011 and then I sold the large-print library rights to Linford Romance Library (an imprint of Ulverscroft).

Cathryn is delighted to join an archaeological dig at Farrshore, in the Scottish Highlands. Apart from her professional interest, it means she’ll be at a distance from her recently ex-boyfriend, Daniel. Canadian Magnus Macaskill, is in Farrshore for his own reasons, one of which is to trace his ancestry. As they spend the summer lodging with the MacLeod family, Cathryn and Magnus are drawn into the small community and to each other. But how will Cathryn react when Daniel reappears?

 In 2013 The PF’s Fiction Editor Shirley Blair asked me if I had any other ideas for a serial (I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to myself to start another one). I gave her two suggestions and she went for one with a hotel setting. This time she didn’t ask for the full synopsis but she queried the timeline I was proposing so I did do a plan to show her how it would work. It can be tricky – you send off an instalment and in the weeks before you get a reply your head is in another story and then you have to reacquaint yourself with your serial characters – but I did find it easier the second time round. The Ferryboat began last week (23 August 2014), the first of six instalments. 

It’s about an English couple who move up to the west highlands of Scotland (to Lorn, a fictional place but in my head it’s near Oban) after buying a run-down hotel with their daughter and her chef husband. It’s a time of change there because a new bridge is about to replace the age-old ferry service; not everyone likes the changes the new hotel owners make.

I’ve sent another serial idea for Shirley to consider … watch this space.