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Author Spotlight: Fiona Veitch Smith

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I’m delighted Fiona Veitch Smith has agreed to be interviewed for my first ever ‘Author Spotlight’.

 

(Cartoon of Fiona busy at work by Chris Bambrough)

 

I became aware of Fiona in January when a friend lent me The Jazz Files, the first in the Poppy Denby Investigates series. It took me back to my teenage years when I voraciously read Agatha Christie. There’s that same sense of an era which, despite its crimes, has a certainty and confidence about morals and manners. But in contrast to Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, Poppy Denby inhabits a world of real historical characters and events. This adds extra depth to the novel, the protagonists and the plot. Here’s my review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1888534926

 

 

Of course, I couldn’t wait to read the second book in the Poppy Denby series, The Kill Fee. Once again, the fledgling journalist finds herself smack bang in the middle of a murder myster, this time connected to the political fallout from the Bolshevik revolution. You can read my review here.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1902343348

 

 

I was intrigued to find out more about an author who could blend history and fiction together with such panache, and sent her the following questions.

 

Why do you write?

Writing is part of who I am. I would not feel complete without it. Like an athlete who does not run, or an artist who does not draw, I would not feel that I was expressing who I really am if I didn’t write. When I have not written for a while, due to other work or family commitments, I start to feel on edge and irritable. I need to write to get back into balance. For me, it’s a way of connecting with my soul. It’s a spiritual thing and a physical thing.

 

How long have you been writing?

All my life. I have made up stories and plays since childhood. I did a degree in journalism and worked as a journalist in my 20s and early 30s. I also spent some of that time working for a theatre company writing plays.  I left full-time journalism when I was 32 (although I still did some freelance work) and have been pursuing a career as a professional creative writer ever since – I’m now 47.

 

What is one thing you wish you knew when you started out?

How hard it would be to earn a living as a professional writer. I thought it would just be a matter of time until my earnings picked up to the same level they were when I worked as a full-time journalist. Fifteen years later I now earn the UK minimum wage. But I can’t give it up. Creative writing is so much part of who I am now. I get frustrated at times by how little I earn compared to my professional peers – and how much better off I would have been, financially, if I had stuck to full-time  journalism – but then I remind myself how much more I have gained by being true to myself and following a career I love.

 

How would you describe the genre you are writing in?

I have written in many genre and media. I write for theatre, film, animation, children’s picture books and adult novels. I have also written Christian devotional material and of course journalism. I have even written marketing copy for an estate agent! When you are earning a living from writing it is helpful to be able to turn your hand to whatever work comes along – and pays. However, in recent years, I have started to find the most success in writing adult mystery novels and children’s picture books. So they are now my main focus. I am currently working on a series of picture books for SPCK about the biblical Joseph (of the rainbow robe fame) and for Lion Fiction, a series of murder mysteries set in the 1920s about a female investigative reporter. I think that is where you first came across me, Kathryn, when you reviewed the first two books in the Poppy Denby Investigates series.

 

How did you come up with the character of Poppy Denby?

The idea came when I visited suffragette Emily Wilding Davison’s grave and thought it might be interesting to have a murder mystery set against the backdrop of the suffragette movement. I had previously started, but then abandoned, a contemporary mystery novel about a young female reporter sleuth, but I decided to try it again, this time set in 1913. However, after trying to get the story started for a month or two I felt that the period just wasn’t working for me. I decided instead to move the story forward to 1920 and instead of having the reporter as a suffragette, made her the niece of a suffragette inheriting the freedoms won by the sacrifice of others. Poppy is from Morpeth, like Emily Wilding Davison, and like the historical character, moves to London. She is also based somewhat on me as a young journalist, struggling to forge a career in what was then a male dominated world.

 

How often do you write and what is your process?

That varies according to how much teaching work I have on at the time (I sometimes lecture at my local universities). Also, if I have a new book out, I need to spend a lot of time promoting it. My most productive writing time is May – September when I have no teaching and usually no books coming out (my books usually come out in the autumn). During the summer I write every day, Monday to Friday. Other times of the year I snatch writing time where I can between other work; but never at night and rarely at weekends as I try to keep that as ‘family time’. I find my best writing is done in my bedroom on my bed. It’s a lovely sunny room and calming. I have a separate computer and room for my non-creative work – admin, lecture prep, editing, marking, and social media – so when I sit propped up on my bed with a cup of coffee to hand and my creative computer open, I’m ready to write.

 

Do you write with an outline?

Yes. It’s very important when writing mysteries that all the threads tie up. But the outline changes as I work. I still maintain flexibility within it to follow different paths and ideas.

 

How do you market yourself and your book?

I am active on social media via Facebook and Twitter. However, I rarely do any blogging (I used to before the days of FB, but my FB account attracts lots of followers, far more than when I blogged, so now I just maintain a website as a ‘shop window’). I also speak at writing groups, book groups and occasionally festivals. I also do interviews like this one for book blogs, websites and print magazines.

 

What writing advice can you give?

Be prepared to grow into your writing and work on it. And be prepared to take criticism and guidance from people who are more experienced than you. But don’t expect to get it all for free! Creativity is God-given, but learning how to craft and apply it is something you need to work at and, at times, pay for, like anyone learning a new profession. However, if you want to write as a hobby – and not earn a living from it – that’s perfectly valid too. Just write and enjoy it!

 

Can you create a short writing prompt?

Think of a person. What do they look like? What are they currently thinking about? Now, see them standing at the foot of a flight of stairs. What happens next …?

 

Fiona Veitch Smith is a writer and writing tutor, based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She writes across all media, for children and adults. Her mystery novel The Jazz Files, the first in the Poppy Denby Investigates Series (Lion Fiction) was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger award in 2016. The second book, The Kill Fee is currently a finalist for the Foreword Review mystery novel of the year, and the third, The Death Beat, will be published in October. Her novel Pilate’s Daughter  a historical love story set in Roman Palestine, is published by Endeavour Press and her literary thriller about apartheid South Africa, The Peace Garden, is self-published under the Crafty Publishing imprint. Her children’s books The Young David Series and the Young Joseph Series  are published by SPCK.

 http://fiona.veitchsmith.com

www.poppydenby.com

www.youngbibleheroes.com

What happens when you discover a novel with the same opening premise as the one you’ve written?

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When a colleague of my husband passed him a copy of a London Evening Standard’s book review for Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney this week, I experienced a physical wrench to my gut. Here was a book which sounded frighteningly like The Key of All Unknown. I’m reproducing the review and my book blurb for comparison

Evening Standard Book Review, 3 April 2017

Thirty-five-year-old Amber wakes up in hospital after an accident. But is she actually awake? She can’t move, speak, open her eyes or remember what happened. Obviously.  Hubbie, sis, Mum and Dad all crowd round for chatty bedside visits, believing her to be in a coma, while she can only listen, with that slightly sinking feeling. Gradually the memories begin to drip-feed back. Who’s to say which ones are right? Uh-oh.

 

 

Blurb for The Key of All Unknown

Brilliant scientific researcher Tilda Moss wakes up in hospital unable to speak or move and with no recollection of what happened to her. Determined to find answers and prove she is not in a persistent vegetative state, she travels back through her fractured memories looking for clues. Could someone really have tried to kill her? An indulged younger brother, an obsessive flatmate, jealous colleagues and a missing lover. Everyone has a motive. On the edge of death, and questioning the value of her life, Tilda’s only hope is to unlock the key of all unknown.

 

You might have thought my first reaction would be anger, or a suspicion that my brilliant idea had been plagiarised. But that was not my initial thought. Even though The Key of All Unknown was published in October 2016, and Sometimes I Lie was released in March 2017, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread. What if people thought I had plagiarised Alice Feeney? After all, her books seems to be getting all the attention.

I’ve always been one of those people who feel guilty, even when they’ve done nothing wrong. Psychologists might call it an overactive superego, that slice of the mind that acts as a self-critical conscience and deals with ethical conduct and morality. It develops through childhood as we receive rewards and punishments for our behaviour.

I have very clear memories of sitting cross legged in the school assembly hall while the head teacher berated the pupils on a serious misdemeanour, asking for the culprits to come forward and confess to their crime. An enormous wave of guilt washed over me. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so why was I blushing at the dressing down the Head was giving the school community? And what if a teacher observed my discomfort and wrongly assumed I was to blame?

 

 

Primitive emotions well up unbidden. They are as impossible to hold back as the tide. You feel what you feel. The only thing you can do is ensure they don’t control your behaviour. So I rationalised the ghastly sinking feeling at reading the reviews for Sometimes I Lie as just my childhood fear that people will find out I’m not as clever or as good as I should be.

My husband assured me that any examination of the facts would demonstrate I hadn’t plagiarised Alice Feeney’s idea, and she hadn’t copied mine. I began the book in the autumn of 2015 and signed a contract with Instant Apostle in January 2016 after they read the first few chapters and the synopsis. According to her Facebook feed Alice Feeney finished her novel in April 2016 just as I was finishing my first draft. It’s simply a case of two people having a similar idea at the same time. It proves the words of Solomon

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (New International Version of the Bible)

Even if either of us had caught wind of the other’s plot, you can’t copyright an idea. Give two writers the same concept – or a dozen writers for that matter – and they will all write completely different novels.  That’s because the secret ingredient of any book is the author’s voice, which is as unique as a fingerprint.

I immediately bought the kindle version of ‘Sometimes I Lie’. There are some superficial similarities. After all, when imagining a woman in a coma it’s inevitable that descriptions of the sounds, smells and routines of a hospital will be included.  But plot and tone are radically different.  It’s a good read. And so, I hope, is mine.

I don’t want to be in competition with other writers. There are enough readers for everyone. Only I could have written The Key of All Unknown and only Alice Feeney could have written Sometimes I Lie.  It’s only human for me to want my book to do as well as hers. It’s difficult not to see life in terms of an upward climb, keeping one’s eyes on the peak ahead, digging one’s feet into the mountainside in the hope you will reach the summit. But maybe there isn’t a top.

The writing process is all about making oneself vulnerable.  You have to move downwards and inwards first, facing up to the darkness in your own soul, the feeling of being an outsider, a loser, an empty vessel, before you can create sometime of value. Writers proffer what they have – tentatively, fearfully, expectantly. They long for feedback and affirmation. They receive criticism and rejection. They always want to write something better, something that will reach into the soul of another human being with a message that can transcend time, geography and even the language they write it in, communicating with strangers through nothing but the medium of a piece of paper or a kindle screen.

A writer’s value isn’t dependent upon their success. The Key of All Unknown has value, irrespective of sales or Amazon rankings, because I created it. It’s an expression of my humanity and my own mortality.

I’ve never viewed my writing career (such that it is) in terms of a race, with many competitors but only one winner. I write reviews of other people’s books and recommend them to friends. I like to celebrate and promote the success of my fellow Instant Apostle authors and see them receive great reviews and increased sales.

Perhaps, after all, I’m OK with the idea that there’s another book about a woman in a coma . . . But sometimes I lie!

The Power of Stories

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27 March – 2 April 2017 is World Autism Awareness Week.

According to the National Autistic Society, there are more than 700,000 people in the UK on the autistic spectrum. People don’t grow out of autism. Autistic children become autistic adults. At one end of the spectrum, there are those with severe learning and communication difficulties. At the other end, people with Asperger’s Syndrome suffer from high anxiety and sensory overload triggered by social situations.

It’s encouraging that autism is more widely understood than it used to be. One sign of this is that writers and programme makers are recognising the unique outlook and experiences of autistic people and think these are worth portraying and celebrating.

A few examples:

  • The A Word, a family drama with autism at its heart, was aired on the BBC last year.
  • The Undateables on Channel 4 often features singletons with Asperger’s or autism.
  • Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Sherlock highlights the autistic traits of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s detective, and then there’s Saga Noren, the detective with Asperger’s Syndrome from The Bridge.
  • Something of a literary sub-genre is developing, instigated in the public’s mind by the excellent Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon.
  • The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida, depicts the experiences of a 13 year old autistic boy from Japan. The book includes an introduction by the novelist David Mitchell who has an autistic son himself.
  • Romantic comedies such as The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion introduce a man with undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome into the world of commercial fiction.
  • My personal favourite at the moment is Schtum by Jem Lester. It’s the heart-breaking account of the struggles of a father and grandfather to obtain the right school placement for ten-year-old, non-verbal, Jonah. You can see my book review here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1911204667?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

 

 

These stories depict in varying ways the lives of autistic people, giving a voice to those who find communication with others fraught with pitfalls and failures.

I’m passionate about the power of stories to transform attitudes. That’s why they’re used by politicians, religious leaders and advertising moguls when trying to influence our choices. But a good book goes much deeper than this. It allows us to immerse ourselves in another person’s reality, inhabiting their mind and their world for a few treasured hours with no intermediary but a piece of paper. They show us the lives of others and enable us to enter into the sufferings and joys of a stranger.

Autism is a hidden disability. You can’t tell by looking at someone whether or not they’re autistic. This in itself can fuel misunderstanding and a lack of compassion. Far more boys than girls are diagnosed, possibly because girls are better at masking their difficulties. They also present differently from boys, and professionals don’t always adjust their diagnostic criteria accordingly. As a result autistic women and girls have a higher mountain to climb to receive a correct diagnosis and support, and often end up with mental health issues as well.

I’ve worked with autistic teenagers and know from personal experience that it’s easier to remain fixed within one’s own limitations and expect the autist to change their behaviour rather than to enter into their world and change yourself as a result. But autistic people can’t enter the neurotypical world without help, and to help them we have to connect on their terms. It’s another step of imagination. It’s no accident that parents and professional use social stories to help teach autistic children the social skills they need to survive in the neurotypical world.

Autism is a horrible disability, but autistic people themselves shouldn’t be demonised or viewed in a negative light. Each one should be recognised as an individual, not lumped together as a collection of deficits. Without their unique take on life, their creativity, personal integrity, focus and intellectual abilities, our world would be a poorer place. Although evidence is inconclusive, certain character traits suggest that Amadeus Mozart, Sir Isaac Newton, Michelangelo, Charles Darwin, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, Albert Einstein and Andy Warhol might have been on the spectrum.

‘Autism’ literally means ‘selfism’. We live in a culture that values success, appearance, achievements and possessions above all things, a world where the drive for personal fulfilment and individual self-expression can sometimes end up imprisoning us in a self-centred community of one. Let’s not judge those who are socially isolated through no fault of their own. It’s only by opening our minds and our hearts, making ourselves vulnerable to each another and using our imaginations, that we can grow in our relationships and develop truly inclusive communities.

 

 

So if you catch yourself tutting at that flustered mother in the supermarket whose child is having a tantrum, please be kind. She might be an ineffective parent. Her child might be spoilt and disobedient. Or it might be that the child is completely overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, smells and busyness of the shop and screaming is the only way they have to express their pain.

Awareness isn’t enough. We also need a change of heart.

Blogs are like Buses

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Blogs are like buses. Nothing for ages then two come along in quick succession. But it seems important to acknowledge that it’s a year today since the publication of my debut novel. That’s my excuse.

I was expecting to spend 24 March 2016 on social media posting and tweeting about The Girl at the End of the Road, which was being officially released by bookshops and online retailers that day. I should have been enjoying the experience of achieving a lifelong dream, relishing the congratulations from friends and family. I certainly didn’t expect to be rushed into hospital.

 

The previous night I’d gone to bed with some unpleasant blood blisters in my mouth. I must be really run down, I thought, with the pressure of editing my first book, organising a mini book tour for the following months, and beginning my next novel. When I awoke on launch day, I noticed a rash of red spots on my throat and arms which didn’t blanch when pressed. I was queuing at the receptionist’s desk at my local surgery at nine o’clock sharp and was shown straight in.

As soon as the doctor saw me, he telephoned the hospital and told them to be ready to receive me. Once in Accident and Emergency, I was fast-tracked through the system. When asked to change into a hospital gown, I was shocked to see that my legs were covered in a livid non-blanching rash and purple bruises. I must be very ill indeed!

I’ve often speculated what it would be like if I was suddenly faced with a potentially life threatening condition. I’d seen my own father die from cancer a few years previously, and had sat by his side as he slowly slipped away. I’d wondered if he’d been able to hear me, and whether he was afraid or peaceful as he faced the end.

With doctors coming and going from my little cubicle, I felt surprisingly calm. When a registrar from the Haematology Department sat next to my bed about three hours later, I knew from his face that he had discovered what was wrong. He explained that normal platelet readings were between 150 – 400 per microliter of blood. A life threatening reading was anything below 20. My platelet levels were 3. My immune system was destroying my platelets and my blood could no longer clot.

 

 

I was given clotting medication and taken to the Critical Dependency Unit to be observed overnight in case I was bleeding internally or into my brain.  I was told I probably wouldn’t sleep because of the drugs I’d been given. I lay in the dark listening to the sounds of the hospital, and the cries of the elderly lady opposite who kept asking where she was and if anyone was there.

The irony of my situation didn’t escape me. I was half way through the first draft of my second  novel, a book about a woman in a critical condition in hospital. As she lies in bed, she desperately tries to remember what happened to her and questions the beliefs she’s built her life upon. Now I was lying in a hospital bed thinking about the meaning and purpose of my own life.

By the next morning the ulcers in my mouth had stopped bleeding. My blood pressure was stable and I was sent home with high dosage steroids to switch off my faulty immune system. During the days that followed I spent most of my time in bed. But sleep eluded me. Although physically exhausted, my mind was wide-awake. I decided to continue writing my manuscript, tapping away on my laptop during the night while everyone else was asleep. Having just experienced my own life-threatening moment and spell in hospital, ideas poured out of me. Within a week I’d completed 30,000 words and finished the first draft of The Key of All Unknown.

We have to use our imaginations to understand the lives of others. While writing this book, I was imaginatively lying in my heroine’s sick bed, whilst lying in my own. Without that personal experience of hospitalisation and vulnerability, I believe the book would be a poorer version of itself. Things happen for a reason.

I’m delighted to say that I’ve made an amazing recovering. There’s a one in three chance that the idiopathic thrombocytopenia could return, and like all of us I walk the fragile path between life and death. Nothing externally has changed, but I’ve become more aware of my own mortality. I’ve also learned that it’s not the strength of one’s faith that counts, but the strength of the One in whom you put your faith that’s important.

 

 

 

I Dreamed a Dream

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It’s just over a year since I set up this website. I was clear at the start that I didn’t want a blog page. I would have a news page instead. The main reason was that I enjoy writing at length and in great detail – exactly the opposite skills required for a blogger!  Also, I wasn’t sure what to blog about. But I think perhaps the thing that’s been holding me back is that it’s much easier to inhabit a character and hide behind them than to speak directly as myself. As you might have gathered, I’m an introvert.

So what’s changed? Suddenly I find I have lots of ideas to blog about. I want to review other people’s books. I want to share what I’ve learnt about publishing. And if I can overcome my fear of public speaking – as I’ve had to do since having two books published – then surely I can overcome my fear of blogging.

So I’m going to start right at the beginning. How I became an author.

I dreamed of being a writer throughout my childhood and teens.  When I realised stories were created by people and weren’t magically ‘just there’ to be plucked from the library shelves, I knew I wanted to create these worlds for myself and for other people.

 

 

I’ve always made up stories in my head. I do it unconsciously, imagining other people’s lives and setting myself in different situations and dreaming impossible dreams about the future. As I grew up and began to tell people I wanted to be a writer, there were the usual negative comments.

“It’s so hard to get published.”

“It pays so badly.”

“You have to study the great works of English Literature.”

“You must stick to the grammatical rules.”

“You must write about what you know” – not what you love or what excites you or what obsesses you.

“Why not go to secretarial college and learn to type? You’ll always be able to get a job.”

 

 

I left school at sixteen, went to secretarial college and began working  in London from the age of 17. I kept writing in the evenings and enrolled for writing classes and residential weeks.  Finally I listened to the advice I was receiving and signed myself up to do an English A’Level in evening classes, eventually managing to secure a place at Lancaster University when I was 21.

I read solidly for three years, writing essays about other people’s stories, feeling intimidated that I would never be able to write as well as them. After graduating it was easy to slip back to being a secretary in London, though I continued to write in the evenings.

But at the age of 28 I gave up. Blame a heart break which made me feel I had failed as a human being. The rejection silenced my voice. I no longer believed I had anything to say that was worth listening to. I lost faith in the magic of fiction and the happy ever after. It was time to knuckle down, put my dreams aside and concentrate on the real world, which meant having a better career and earning enough to pay the bills.

 

 

When I married my husband in my thirties, he knew I’d once dreamed of being a writer and encouraged me to take it up again. I refused to countenance the idea. I was a different person now. Older, wiser. I couldn’t bear the hurt of facing my broken dreams. Besides I was busy bringing up our two children and working part time as a Learning Support Assistant.

Then I had another heartbreak: the loss of my beloved father from cancer. With two young children, a job, a widowed mother and all the tasks in the house and garden that needed to be attended to, I didn’t have time to process the grief properly and pushed on through the pain.

As months turned to years, I became conscious of the most tremendous mental and emotional pressure. At the beginning of 2012 I started jotting down my feelings at odd moments in the day to try and put things into perspective. At first this made me more unhappy. I read back my personal rants at how miserable I was and they sounded petty and ungrateful. There were so many others in the world suffering more than I was. To them, my life must appear unimaginably comfortable and blessed.

 

In order to gain some emotional distance, I projected my grief onto a fictional character of the opposite sex. He was in a different situation from me, grieving the loss of his job in the financial crash, but experiencing similar emotions. Thus the shallow, materialistic character of Vincent Stevens was born.

I didn’t tell anyone I was writing. I didn’t know if I would be able to finish a complete novel, and didn’t want to have to answer the question, “How’s the book going?” only to have to tell people that I’d given up. If I was going to fail, I was going to keep it to myself.

I planned what I was going to write when walking the dog. I scribbled the ideas down whenever I could, particularly when sitting in the car waiting to pick up the children from school. Within two months the first draft of ‘The Girl at the End of the Road’ was finished and I plucked up the courage to tell my family. My husband, sister and a couple of friends heroically read it and made encouraging sounds.

The difficulty of writing a book is nothing compared to the difficulty of trying to get one published. I sent off my manuscript to agents and publishers and the rejections started to trickle back. I edited and revised and sent out another batch of submissions. Strangely I found that the pile of rejections toughened me up. My crippling fear of failure and rejection stemming from the broken romance in my twenties was disappearing.

I’d given up writing after my first real experience of loss. I’d taken it up again two decades later during another period of devastation. Older and wiser, I now knew that pain, failure and rejection were inevitable aspects  of life. Although they make you vulnerable, giving up on something I’d loved because I didn’t want to be a failure at it was not the answer. I learned that doing nothing is much more undermining of a person’s confidence than doing something and falling flat on one’s face. It’s better to be a failure at the thing you love than to be a success at something you hate.

 

In May 2015 I heard back from a small Independent Publisher called Instant Apostle. They liked the sample I’d sent in and wanted to see the full manuscript. I emailed it to them on a Friday morning, and by the following Monday I receives a phone call offering me a contract.

Reading and writing are transformational processes. We have to use our imaginations to understand the lives of others and to enter into their experiences. Stories offer the possibility of going inside the Other – the princess, the superhero, the detective, the murderer – to experience vicariously a little of the strange and wonderful and terrible thing it is to be human. And that’s a miracle.

I hope that if you are grappling with a sense of failure or loss and are tempted to give up on something, you’ll be encouraged to continue with that thing you love but which seems so fraught with risk.

As the saying goes, ‘If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat’.

 

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