Hello from the Gillespies (44 page)

A. I have to confess Lindy’s cushion idea came from my own attempt to find a creative outlet other than writing. I was becoming concerned how much time I spent at the computer, and decided I needed a hobby as far removed from writing as possible. One day I saw an embroidered cushion in a vintage store and thought it was so pretty. I decided that was the perfect hobby solution for me. Sewing would not only be relaxing, but I’d still be creating something. I visited a haberdashery and enthusiastically got all the material, the patterns and the thread, and sat down one night, ready to be spirited away into a dreamy, gentle world of handcrafts. It was a disaster. My eyesight is so bad that I couldn’t see the stitches. I kept losing my way with the pattern – halfway through it looked more like a child’s drawing of a pizza than the vase of delicate flowers it was supposed to be. I kept at it, day after day, but never seemed to get any closer to finishing it. Eventually, I realised it was making me more stressed than relaxed, and I tidied it all away into the back of a cupboard. It’s still there today. Fortunately, as a writer, nothing is ever wasted, and poor Lindy got to take it up instead.

In recent years I’ve become a keen photographer, just as Angela is in the novel. I do it purely for the pleasure of observing tiny details or beautiful colors and shapes, not with any thoughts of it as a potential career. I also take a lot of photos during my research trips, often posting them on my Facebook page. I like to print out my favorites and turn them into greeting cards, which I send to my friends and family. I call them Monicards.

A. I have a beautiful writing space – the attic in my house in inner-city Dublin. It’s warm, quiet and peaceful, with two skylights high enough that I see only sky. My desk is set under the slanting roof, and I can often hear birds walking across the tiles. This year I’ve also had the joy of watching a pair of seagulls set up a nest on the nearest chimney pot – the two chicks hatched a week ago, and as I write this, I can hear them chirping to be fed. The other great thing about working in the attic is I have to climb up and down three flights of stairs many times during the day. I get so involved in the writing that often I don’t leave the house at all for days on end – if it wasn’t for the stairs I wouldn’t get any exercise at all.

A. Absolutely. In the same way that my reading transports me into many different lives, so does my writing. I’ve lived many different lives through the eyes of my characters. I’ve operated a bed and breakfast on the Hill of Tara in Ireland, worked as a flight attendant based in Hong Kong, as a scientist in Antarctica. I’ve been widowed twice, lost a child in tragic circumstances, fallen in love many times, been estranged from my sisters, been reunited with a long-lost aunt, had twins, fostered a daughter . . . It’s been an action-packed fifteen years since I started writing.

More seriously, I do believe writing my novels has had a profound effect on my life and how I live it. Most of the time it is a great experience, entertaining and enjoyable, inventing a cast of characters and putting myself into their shoes, imagining their lives, reactions, personalities, putting them through all sorts of emotional turmoil. But the writing process has also at times made me face up to some uncomfortable truths about myself. I’ve slowly realised I often have characters who are too quick to lose their temper, who feel jealous easily, who let their anxiety take over too often . . . I’ve learned that those can be my own negative personality traits, and I need to address them in my own life as my fictional characters have to in theirs.

A. They feel like real people to me and real people don’t have just one personality trait. We are all different shades. I see it in myself, in my friends, in my family. Most of us strive to be the best version of ourselves – kind, patient, generous – but there are always flashes of other traits – impatience, anger, selfishness – that fight their way to the surface. It can so often depend on who we are with. In Genevieve’s case, for example, she is endlessly patient with Victoria, but Lindy gets under her skin. That’s the fun of writing fiction about family – all those different personalities under one roof means a constant supply of light and shade, drama and comedy.

A. As I mentioned earlier, I have known and loved the Flinders Ranges all my life, so I was able to draw on so many memories and images to create the landscape, buildings, birdlife and feel of Errigal. It’s a wonderful part of Australia; the landscape is so extraordinary, not to mention the wildlife – kangaroos, emus, eagles. I took lots of photographs when I was there on my research trip last year, but it wasn’t until I had finished the first draft that I looked at the photographs again. All the descriptions of that huge sky, the vivid colors, the curve of the Chace Range, the sounds of the birds, came from my memory.

A. I’ve been very lucky to go on book tours to different parts of the world – Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Italy, Ireland, the UK, even Hong Kong – meeting readers of all ages, male and female. What amazes me is how similar family experiences are around the world. I might be writing about a family in small-town Australia, or rural Ireland, but readers in different countries tell me it’s as if I am writing about their lives too. There’s a great Chinese proverb that I used in the front of my novel
The Faraday Girls
, which I could, in fact, put in the front of all my books:
No family can hang out the sign, ‘Nothing the matter here’.
We all know how it feels to experience sibling rivalry, family ties and tensions, grief and joy, no matter what part of the world we live in.

What does surprise me sometimes is the different translations. My books have been translated into nearly a dozen languages, but I rarely have anything to do with the translations. I get the good news from my literary agent that a novel is being translated and then about a year later, I receive my own book, in a language I can’t read, in the post. All I can do is hope they haven’t changed the story too drastically. One year, I received the Dutch edition of
The Alphabet Sisters
, and, as I always do, leafed through it page by page, trying to recognise familiar scenes or lines of dialogue. I noticed there was an asterisk next to one word and a footnote on one of the pages. That surprised me – I’d never had a footnote in my novels. I managed to work out which scene it was and checked it against the original English edition. It was a scene involving a picnic, with one character bringing lamingtons, a very common and ordinary Australian cake made from slices of (usually stale) sponge that have been soaked in runny chocolate icing and then rolled in coconut. Every Australian kid knows them; they are the staple of school fetes and lunchboxes, cheap, quick and easy to make. I’m not sure where the Dutch translator found the information, but the footnote described lamingtons as ‘an Australian culinary delicacy’.

A. I read very widely: fiction, nonfiction, thrillers, literary novels, poetry, biographies . . . When I’m writing my own novels, I don’t read as much family-oriented fiction as usual, in case I get jealous of another author’s great plotline, or in case an idea leaps across from their book into mine. While I was writing
Hello from the Gillespies,
I mostly read nonfiction – many research books about confabulation and amnesia, raising twins, outback life, celebrity hairdressers, Australian birds . . . When I did get the longing for fiction, I read some very gripping thrillers, including Jo Nesbo’s Nordic dramas, as far removed from my outback setting as I could get. I also read and loved a biography of Kate Bush, one of my favourite musicians, which gave me a fascinating insight into her creative process and family life.

I’ve saved up a large pile of books that I’m planning to read as a treat when I finish the last copyedit and
Hello from the Gillespies
is on the way to the printers. I can hardly see my bedside table at this stage, there are so many of them. They include Kristan Higgins’
The Perfect Match
, Tom Keneally’s
The Daughters of Mars
, Carys Bray’s
A Song for Issy Bradley
, Michael Chabon’s
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
, Colleen McCullough’s
Bittersweet
, JoJo Moyes’
The One Plus One
, and Evie Wyld’s
All The Birds, Singing
 . . .

A. The ideas are starting to come together, but it’s still too early to talk about, except for the fact that so far it seems to have something of a thriller aspect, about a family who is not at all who they seem to be. But before I start on that, I want to finish writing a fun children’s series I’ve been plotting for some years now. My husband and I are also working on a ten-part TV series together. I’ve also had ideas for several short stories . . .