Linda Gillard

Yes. This is known as PLR - Public Lending Rate - and it is a major contributor to the pathetic income that most authors earn. (Average author's income is estimated by the Society of Authors to be

I would love to create a character who could sustain a series of books! This would be wonderful for a variety of reasons... 1. I miss my characters dreadfully when I've finished a book. It's a form of bereavement. (Some of them I'm still not over and don't suppose I ever will be, eg Rory and Flora Dunbar in A LIFETIME BURNING.) 2. It would halve the work in creating a new book since character creation is something that takes a lot of thinking time and emotional input. 3. Publishers and readers like series and so do tv production companies, so a book that is part of a series is probably going to be more commercial. But I suspect it will never happen for me. (If I could manage a sequel, I'd be chuffed! ) I have a suspicion series characters don't on the whole develop very much, they just get older and life happens to them. (Some pretty much stay the same like Lord Peter Wimsey, Jeeves & Wooster, Inspector Rebus.) Series books are mainly about the plot - often a formulaic plot, like a crime novel - less about the central character. My books are always about character and plot is secondary. (This is a gross generalisation I know and you might not agree, but I think it serves for the purposes of discussion.) I think too in a book I'm trying to resolve a character's issues in a way that feels emotionally satisfying, sometimes conclusive. That doesn't lend itself even to a sequel, let alone a series. There are exceptions to my generalisations above: Dorothy Dunnett's and Patrick O' Brian's historical novels where there are characters of such complexity and depth that they can be explored over a series of books (although it's generally thought that P O'B was spreading his material rather thin by the end. I'm currently reading no. 11 in the series and there's no sign of that yet.) The only character of my own I've ever felt inclined to write a sequel for is Rory Dunbar in A LIFETIME BURNING. I considered it and then realised it just wouldn't work. There's no doubt in my mind that Rory would have been dead within the year after the conclusion of ALB!

Assuming cost is an issue, Kate, you might like to know that all my books are available "used" (which often means new) on Amazon starting at

No, I don't really have holidays. I travel around the UK quite a bit for author events and writing workshops, so I do get away. I don't ever stop writing for long. I finished Book 4 a couple of weeks ago and I've already started making notes for Book 5. I'm waiting for a delivery of books so I can start doing some research for it. Usually I have an idea for the next book as I finish writing the previous one. You know how some book lovers worry about being stranded somewhere without anything to read? I worry about not having a book to write. I like to always have one on the go. I make a point of not working on Christmas Day! The thing is, I don't really see it as work, because there is nothing I would rather be doing.

PS I think A LIFETIME BURNING is a book that repays re-reading. Once you know all the twists you can read it in a "Ohmygod - look out behind you!" sort of way. One of the things people like about the book when they re-read is discovering that the whole story is already there in the Prologue (which was extremely difficult to write without blowing the plot!) If you re-read nothing else, take another look at the Prologue. You might be surprised!

There were two basic ideas that were jumping-off points for A LIFETIME BURNING. One I can mention, the other will have to have a spoiler warning! The first thing that came to me was Flora's voice: a middle-aged woman, sardonic, blackly comic, very damaged in some way... dead, in fact. I liked the (not very original) idea of opening the book at a family funeral, but decided to have the deceased narrating. I didn't have a story at that point, only a narrator. Once I developed a plot, Flora's voice seemed the obvious one to tell the extraordinary story of the Dunbars. The other inspiration was a radio interview I heard on John Peel's HOME TRUTHS. A middle-aged woman was speaking and I knew by the end of an interview that her life was a novel. She hadn't talked much about her earlier life, just about how she lived now, but my imagination was able to conjure up a back-story for her and that became Flora's life. In the interview the woman talked about her life thus: That was a novel waiting to be written! __________________

Glad to hear you enjoyed A LIFETIME BURNING, Jules. Some readers haven't liked the backwards and forwards in time narrative, but perhaps you can see how that gave me scope to manipulate the story so that the reader is kept in suspense about certain key events. I couldn't have done that with a chronological narrative. It was technically a very challenging book to write and trying to keep tabs on everything - 58 years of an extended family's lives - wasn't easy!

I've talked here about pressure from publishers to produce a book a year. There's also a certain amount of reader pressure... I suppose this is an instance of where publishers and readers are of one accord. But it begs the Q... If you could have longer (and probably better) books produced every other year, or a shorter book, maybe somewhat rushed, every year, which would you prefer? Is it about quantity or quality? For a lot of readers I think it's about quantity because we live in a culture where books are "consumed" and disposed of very readily. Not everyone treats books with the respect that I'm sure readers in this forum demonstrate towards them. We have fast food, fast everything practically. Do you want fast books?

Sorry! I'm producing a book a year at the moment. Can't do it any faster!

I forgot to answer another bit of Michelle's post... The next book, provisionally titled FAMILY SHADOWS, is out next May so you have a long wait for that one I'm afraid! This is the blurb I've written for it... Orphaned by drink, drugs and rock n’ roll, Gwen Rowland is invited to spend Christmas at her actor boyfriend Alfie's family home - a ramshackle Tudor manor in Norfolk. She's excited about the prospect of a proper holiday with a proper family, but soon after she arrives, Gwen notices something isn't quite right. Alfie acts strangely towards his family and is reluctant to talk about the past. There's the enigma of an old family photograph and Alfie's mother, a celebrated children's author, keeps to her room, living in a twilight world between past and present, fact and fiction. When Gwen discovers fragments of forgotten family letters sewn into an old quilt she starts to piece together the jigsaw of the past and realises there's a lot more to the family history than she's been told. And a lot more to Alfie. I've put the opening up on my website under News. Go to http://tinyurl.com/r4d8e and scroll to the bottom of the page.

That's fine! Go ahead. There are book rings for all my books on BookCrossing.com. I see there are 93 copies of my books registered and many are doing the rounds in rings and book rays.

Here's a big clue for those of you who love the classics! A book I adored as a teenager in a smiling-through-the-tears way was Charlotte Bronte's VILLETTE. STAR GAZING is a bit of a take on that.

Yet again, another really interesting Q! And I think I can answer without giving too much away... I definitely prefer to write (and find it easier to write) question mark endings, leaving things open so that a reader has to decide how they think things turn out. Even when I give a clear indication of how things stand at the end of a book, as I do in EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY, I'd like the reader to think "Well, OK, that's how things are now, but how will they be in a year's time? In 5 years?..." Those of an optimistic disposition can tell themeselves things will be hunky-dory. Those of a gloomier (more realistic?) persuasion can see a resolved ending as merely temporary and rather tentative. With STAR GAZING I was asked for an epilogue which would clarify various issues. I declined. I said I didn't want everything resolved and although I was writing a commercial book, I hadn't wanted to write a cosy book. Happy endings are much harder to write IMO because it's difficult to make them believable. You can make things tidy, but believable? And you want to avoid the yuck factor! A happy ending that's convincing, unsentimental, emotionally and intellectually satisfying - well, that's a challenge for a writer. Tragedy is much easier to write! If you are writing popular fiction there is indeed a lot of pressure to write clear and happy endings. We are told that's what readers want (although as I've said before, I'm yet to come across any market research anyone has done to establish this.) The novel I've just finished writing could have been very open-ended, a mix of happy & sad, but partly because I anticipated my editor's request, I thought I'd try an epilogue in which I sorted out (almost) everybody's life and showed you how things were a couple of years on. Rather to my surprise, I thought it worked, so I've left it in. But this epilogue is almost tongue-in-cheek. It's clearly a "tidying up loose ends" addition and self-consciously so. I hope readers (and my editor!) will be happy, but it's borderline "cosy". My justification for this is that the preceding 100 pages have been anything but cosy, so the contrast between the two actually provides a balance. But who knows? As a writer you're always trying to second-guess readers, who vary enormously anyway. You have to just write for yourself in the end. I shall be interested to hear what you think of STAR GAZING, Michelle. I can guess where you have got up to! My intention was that the reader would reach a certain point in the book where the massive "shock" occurs and they would experience a great screeching of genre-gears as they move from one kind of book into another. I never knew if readers would buy this. (Apparently some do.) The Q I would be asking if I were reading is, is this a complete change of direction or merely a temporary diversion?...

I hope you enjoy it, Jules. Maybe "enjoy" isn't quite the word... I hope you are gripped! Readers sometimes find the backwards- and forwards-in-time disconcerting to begin with, but you actually don't need to know where you are on a timeline. What I was playing around with was layers of memory. If you are 50 there's still a part of you that is 10 or 25 and you remember your young self in parallel with your older self. I think as memory is stimulated, we're conscious of many different times of our life, simultaneously. That's what I tried to capture in the book - a sort of kaleidoscope of time and memory.

I don't think I've ever based a character on anyone I know. I steal physical likenesses in so far as I usually have a visual idea of a character based on a photograph, or a composite of photographs, but I always make up their personality, although bits of my own might be incorporated. (There's a lot of me in Calum, the hero of EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY and there was something of the teenage me in Flora, the heroine of A LIFETIME BURNING. As a devout Anglican, I debated with myself whether my vocation was to be a nun or an actress - a dilemma that young Flora also has to resolve.) But it's unusual for me to use anything about personality that's taken from real life. Occasionally some situations and events are sometimes taken from life. Generally speaking though, I make the whole thing up - the characters, the story, the setting. The trouble with using real life in novels is, it isn't very believable. You have to tone it down for fiction.

No, you're right, the picture is architecturally wrong. That's not the vernacular architecture of Skye and Keir's house is very old. But the picture's also geographically wrong in that you don't have that sort of terrain on the Skye coast and Keir's house is actually facing a mountain range, but, hey, this is a book cover! Designers don't read the books they design, they are briefed by editors. (At least in the UK. I can't speak for Germany.) My workshop went very well thanks. There were 16 students, all in the process of writing novels. The feedback was very positive. I didn't sell as many books as I'd hoped which meant I had to carry them all the way back to Skye, but apart from that I was very pleased with the day. One woman bought all 3 books for her reading group. I hope they'll decide to read one of them in the group. I emailed her the Reading Group guides I've written.

Sorry for the delay in replying to your Q, Michelle. I've been away in Aberdeenshire teaching a one-day workshop. Yes, I think the German cover is meant to represent Keir's house by the sea on Skye and I do think that will be the predominant image of the book for a reader. I've never heard of publishers consulting readers about anything! I think they just look at sales figures and assume if something sells, it's what people want. I read an article today in which a major publisher was claiming that what bookbuyers want is more celeb biogs and more cook books (and presumably more celeb cook books?) because these sell in very large numbers. Hmmmm... I'm not quite sure of the logic of this... I remember when they used to justify rubbishy reality tv shows by claiming that viewing figures showed that this was what people wanted. Then they serialised BLEAK HOUSE in soap format and - surprise! - people watched in their millions.

None at all at Piatkus. (STAR GAZING.) We are shown them as a courtesy only, but that is normal in publishing. Transita were much more open to the idea of author input, but they were untypical. I chose the photo that became the cover of EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY from a website Transita referred me to. For A LIFETIME BURNING I was shown several covers which I rejected, then it was down to 2, both of which I liked, although they were very different. I expressed a preference and that was the cover I got, but I don't know if they would have gone with my choice if they'd preferred the other one. I doubt it. Covers are all about marketing and the author doesn't have any say, which is probably fair in as much as authors are writers not sales people. But it is dispiriting to say the least to be landed with a cover you don't like, and many authors are. It's one of the things authors tend to moan about! The German edition of STAR GAZING has the sort of cover I'd envisaged - a windswept seascape and a lonely-looking house... See http://tinyurl.com/58fgkk But Piatkus saw the book as more of a love story so they went with this... See http://www.lindagillard.co.uk/star-gazing.php

Writing blurbs is incredibly hard! I think most authors have a hand in their cover blurbs and some actually write them. (I wrote all of mine.) Blurb-writing is a real art. You have to entice the reader and give a clear idea of what the book is about and what the book is like, but obviously you don't want to give the story away. When I lent Stephenie Meyer's TWILIGHT to my daughter I said, "Don't read the back cover!" That book is a case where an author has gone to a lot of trouble to skilfully set up a big surprise that is blown by the blurb. True, the surprise comes not too far into the book, but if you read the book not having read the blurb, it's a different book to begin with. If you read the blurb you know straight away you are reading a book about .

Thanks Jules! I love your Bette Midler quote in your sig. My favourite Midler quotes: "I love Nature. Despite what it did to me." And dealing with a heckler in the audience during a live show she yelled, "Shut your hole, honey. Mine's making money."

Yes, you're all saying what I thought you'd say! (And very sensible too.) So why do editors pressurise authors to write more-of-same?... Where are publishers getting their information from? The 2nd hardest thing to do in publishing (the first being get a 1st novel published) is to change genres. As you know, authors are often expected to change their name if they change genres (eg Nora Roberts/J D Robb). I know authors who are desperate to change genres after years writing the same sort of book, but their publisher won't take the new manuscript. I'm lucky in that I write genre-busting novels, so I haven't pigeon-holed myself yet. I asked the editor who dealt with STAR GAZING what genre she thought it was. She said "Linda-Gillard-genre". I think she meant it as a compliment, but publishing likes pigeonholes and so do booksellers. I have heard - and I do hope it's not true - that if booksellers don't know where to shelve a book it stays in the box, unpacked. I supose you've all heard the story about A SHORT HISTORY OF UKRAINIAN TRACTORS? It was shelved under agriculture until booksellers caught on.

A PS about covers... The publishing trade uses covers to pigeonhole books so you know what you're getting, eg headless female in costume = historical fiction aimed at women. What do you think about this? I find it incredibly boring. Even if the books aren't samey, they look it! The thinking seems to be that readers are so busy (or stupid?) that they have to be told what genre the book is because presumably they can't work it out for themselves. There's now a move afoot to age-band children's books so the reader knows what they are buying. Authors, teachers and parents are signing petitions against this. They think it is anti-reading. So do I and I can't imagine what the thinking is behind it. But you can bet your boots, someone thinks it will lead to more sales.

I'm interested to know what makes you buy a book? What do you buy, what do you borrow and why? Which books do you feel you must own? And why? When you buy books, are you influenced by covers? Cover quotes from authors? Reviews? Publishers always claim to know what readers want but I've never heard of anyone actually asking us. For example, publishers are convinced that readers like authors to produce similar books. They assume if readers liked something, they want more of the same. My experience talking to readers of my books is that they don't mind variety at all, but they like to have a sense that the book is by the same author (which IMO boils down to the authorial voice. It sounds as if it's by the same person, but could be about quite a different subject.) Any thoughts?

Sorry. I'm not very used to forums - as you can probably tell.

!!! SPOILER ALERT !!! for EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY