Please welcome Zoe Brooks author of Love of Shadows. Authors love lots of comments so don't forget to leave a one.
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Love of Shadows
by Zoe Brooks
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INTERVIEW:
1. What or who inspired you to start writing?
I have been blessed by having two inspirational women in my life. The first was my creative English and music teacher at junior school. She realized that I was a poet when I was about eight years old. She made me believe in myself, which is the greatest gift a teacher can give a child. By the time I was thirteen I was published and winning prizes. I remember her walking into a room of children with a dandelion clock in her hand. We told her that you were meant to be able to tell the time by blowing the seeds. "All right," she said blowing, "Then what am I? And what is my breath?"
My second inspiration came from a dear friend, Hannah Kodicek. Hannah loved my poetry and directed me in a performance of my poem for voices Fool’s Paradise . Hannah was a story editor in the film industry – her most successful work was on the Oscar-winning film The Counterfeiters. She also lectured on story editing and structure, so it was not surprising that it was to Hannah that I turned when I decided I wanted to write novels. I think she was nervous about critiquing a friend’s work, but she needn’t have worried. I found what she had to say fascinating and inspiring. Hannah died suddenly of cancer nearly two years ago. She had told me even before she became ill that there was nothing more she could teach me. I doubt that, but I have her notes and her photo is pinned to the cork board above my writing desk.
2. What elements are necessary components for this genre.
I have been told I write magic realism. I had never heard about magic realism before – but basically it has a realistic setting with something magical or strange in it. Arguably it’s not a genre at all, but an approach to writing. My books are set in an unspecified place and time, which some people find disturbing. But magic realism is about that – it’s fantasy which could be real or vice versa. The book is also women’s fiction in the widest sense – I write about women, all my books have strong heroines. There’s some romance in the book, but it’s not the only thing in Judith’s life by any means.
3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?
Prior to becoming a writer I worked for many years with disadvantaged communities and people. I worked with the homeless, with refugees, with abused women. I heard some appalling and inspiring stories and I was and am in awe of the women I met in that work. I grew up in a loving family, have a great husband, and was allowed to follow my dreams, but these women had been abused and told they had no value. How could I hope to understand? I used my imagination to process what I was hearing and somehow step into their shoes. Judith is inspired by the many women I met. Judith is scarred emotionally by her past, but she is a survivor, more than that she’s a fighter.
I also wanted to write a book about a beautiful woman. When I was little, I thought my mother to be the most beautiful woman I knew. She is in her eighties and is still beautiful. All my childhood imaginary heroines were dark like her. I have never been beautiful and so in a way my daydreams were another example of my using my imagination to explore being someone I was not. Judith is a descendent of those early childhood heroines. Of course as an adult I also want to explore the downsides of being beautiful.
4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?
I studied history at Oxford and I bring that to the books. Not that I write historical fiction, I don’t. But I do write books which have themes inspired by history, such as the persecution of the women healers in the 15th - 17th centuries which inspired the story in Love of Shadows. History also helps in creating the world in which I set the story, I spent a lot of time researching the traditional medicines and wisewomen and it was fascinating.
5. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?
I am currently working on the final book in The Healer’s Shadow Trilogy – the follow-up to Love of Shadows. It’s at first draft stage, so much could change, but basically in it Judith faces her past plus she realizes her full potential. There’s another love story in there as well. I will now leave it in first draft and allow my beta readers to feed back. It will probably be published in the Autumn. In the meantime I am publishing the first book in the trilogy Girl in the Glass as a print book. As for books outside the trilogy I have an idea for a novella, which is simmering away at the moment. It is very different from Love of Shadows and the other two books, it’s a paranormal mystery. But we’ll see about whether or when that gets written.
6. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?
I won’t say Judith, because in many ways she is so unlike me. I know writers are meant to write about themselves, but I don’t. I’m far too boring. Plus I am not sure I would want to be Judith, I put her through so much. In fact the character I am probably most like is her Shadow, Sarah. I won’t spoil the book or indeed the last book in the trilogy by fully explaining what Shadows are and can be. They appear human, but they are different. They aren’t emotional like their masters, they are pragmatic and annoyingly logical. They are also very loyal and good at problem-solving. Sadly Shadows are subject to appalling prejudice in the city where Judith and Sarah live. During the first part of the book Judith comes to appreciate Sarah, but then something terrible happens. I had great fun exploring their relationship.
7. Can you give us a sneak peak into this book?
The book opens with the suicide of Judith’s employer and mentor Elma. Not only is Judith coping with the emotional turmoil that follows the loss of someone who has helped her turn her life around, but she finds herself accused first of illegally making the medicine that killed Elma and then of deliberately murdering her mistress. While it is true that Judith made the opium tincture that Elma drank, she did so when the money ran out to pay the doctor for medicines to relieve the terrible pain Elma was enduring as a result of terminal cancer. Elma had warned her to destroy the evidence, but Judith, distracted by her grief, forgets to destroy a ball of raw opium.
Elma had predicted that once Judith started becoming a healer, she would find it hard to turn back. Judith’s mother had been a healer, but had died when Judith was only ten, so if Judith is to be a healer she must teach herself. Elma had trained Judith as a perfume-maker, which both gives Judith the technical skills to make medicines but also the perfect cover. Judith and Sarah make several trips looking for plants for the perfume business and for illegal medicines. It is on a plant-gathering trip that Judith meets Bruno. After an abusive relationship, which happened in book one (Girl in the Glass), Judith has been only allowing herself casual relationships, but when she finds that Bruno and she share a love of Shadows she finds herself falling for the man despite herself.
8. Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing?
I have a group of people who read my first draft for me and a few others who read draft two. They have very different insights to offer – one of the best is my son, who studied scriptwriting at university, another is a friend who reads a lot of women’s fiction books and is very good at picking up bits that don’t work. Towards the end of the process I give the book to my sister, she is a nitpicker and notices those silly little things which I’ve missed.
9. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?
I wrote two novels which weren’t good enough and now sit in a drawer in my office never to see the light of day. But with Mother of Wolves I was confident that I had a book worthy of publication. I knew that because Hannah didn’t have any major issues with the book. She said I was ready. But I didn’t bite the bullet and start publishing until after her death. I wrote book one of the trilogy, Girl in the Glass, as she was dying and poured a load of emotional stuff into it. I know she loved and identified with Judith. And I also know that she worried that I wouldn’t ever publish, but I promised her I would and I have kept that promise.
10. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)
The worst is advice often given to new writers "Write what you know". What rubbish! If I did that, no one would want to read what I’d written. It would be far too boring.
The best advice came from Hannah - "Don’t be afraid of emotion." I am British and have the usual British hang-ups about reserve and emotion. Hannah taught me to look for the bits I left out or handled off-page, these are often very important emotionally, but I subconsciously bury or omit them. In the second draft I make a point of looking for these and adding them. The best example of this is the fact that Judith began as a minor character in another book, but Hannah spotted her and quizzed me about her: "Why was I so ambiguous about this woman?" Once I started facing the character and exploring what made her tick, I was hooked. Three books have followed.
11. Do you outline your books or just start writing?
I work on the plot in my head for months in advance of writing. Some scenes I will know almost word for word before I sit down. Nothing is put down on paper though at that stage. When I write the book I start at page one and doggedly continue to the last page.
12. How do you maintain your creativity?
When I do start writing I retreat to a semi-restored farmhouse in the Czech Republic and close the door to the world for a month. My writing sessions are very intensive, verging on obsessive. Then I re-emerge blinking into the sunlight and go back to being normal. I don’t write all the time and that I think helps. I do blog regularly on http://zoebrooks.blogspot.com and I have started a second blog in which I read and review one magic realism book a week, which is fascinating and inspiring. It’s on http://www.magic-realism.net.
13. Who is your favorite character in the book. Can you tell us why?
That’s easy, it’s Judith. In addition to the disadvantaged women I referred to earlier, she is based on two women who have been very close to me. They say you should love your main character and I do. It is very easy to fall for her, but at the same time she is a difficult person to love. My son told me that he wanted to shake her at times during this book and tell her to stop being so horrid to Bruno. My husband said something similar. All the women who have read it, have said that of course that is because of her past: she can’t trust men. I’d add that she doesn’t trust anyone, because deep down she believes that no one can really like her, let alone love her. Ironically it is precisely because she expects to be rejected that she achieves what she does. In the face of the suppression of women healers and the persecution of Shadows, Judith follows her calling rather than conforming. Although she would not believe it, she is incredibly brave. I also admire the way she educates herself. She is denied education from the age of ten on the grounds of her sex (something that is still happening all over our world as we can see In the case of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan) but she takes every opportunity to learn and better herself.
BLURB:
"I had always felt most alive, when I was
healing. Without healing I was a tin top spinning out of kilter soon to catch
the ground. It took all my energy to hold myself from skidding into
chaos."
But in the city of Pharsis traditional women
healers are banned from practising and the penalty for breaking the law is
death by hanging. After being arrested and interrogated twice Judith is careful
to avoid suspicion, but then scarlet fever breaks over the city like a
poisonous wave, leaving in its wake the small corpses of children. What will
the young healer do?
Love of Shadows is the second novel in The Healer's
Shadow trilogy, which began with Girl in the Glass, and follows the lives of
Judith and her Shadow, Sarah. It is a study in grief, love and defiance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT:
“Your second accuser, as I’m sure you will have
worked out, was your mistress’ nephew. He claimed that you murdered her
deliberately to get her money. A simple case of murder in the eyes of law, no
fudge there.
“Both your accusers are men who if they found
someone dying in the street would not stop to help, or rather they would – they
would help themselves to whatever was in the dying man’s pocket. No, I don’t
like either of them, but that doesn’t make their accusations wrong.”
He sifted through the folder and produced Elma’s
legal will and her real one – the letter to me. There were nicotine stains on
his fingers as they unfolded the fine notepaper my mistress always used for
special letters. Holding it in one hand and the cigarette in the other, he read
in silence. I had planned to keep the letter forever to remind me of her, lest
I forget some day that that fine singular old woman had loved me. I knew that
was in part why she had written it, knowing how much I doubted myself and
others. I treasured it more than any money Elma could have given me and here it
was an object of little interest in a
police file, to be stowed in some drawer perhaps or worse waved in court as
evidence to condemn. That young interrogator was nothing compared to this man,
the Rottweiler knew how to worm under the skin without stunts or threats.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and
Links:
Zoe
Brooks is a British writer and poet, who spends half her life in a partly
restored old farmhouse in the Czech Republic, where she writes all her novels
and poetry. She aims to write popular books, which have complex characters and
themes that get under the reader's skin.
Zoe
was a successful published poet in her teens and twenties, (featuring in the
Grandchildren of Albion anthology). Girl In The Glass - the first novel in a
trilogy about the woman and healer Anya was published on Amazon in March 2012,
followed by Mother of Wolves and Love of Shadows. In May 2012 she published her
long poem for voices Fool's Paradise as an ebook on Amazon.
Social
Media Links
Blog:
http://zoebrooks.blogspot.com
Twitter
http://twitter.com/ZoeBrooks2
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ZoeBrooksAuthor
Amazon
author page http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0034P3TDS
Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5772880
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