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Your latest novel, Oz, has a very intriguing title – how
did it come about?
The
title came to me early because it reflects the story in three different ways.
There’s a mystery character called Oz. One of the locations is Sydney,
Australia. And thirdly, though it doesn’t matter at all if readers don’t notice
this, the story also has echoes of The
Wizard of Oz, not least in the contrast between Sydney’s glittering heat
and London’s dreary grey winter.
This question may overlap
with the previous one, but I’d love to know what sowed the seed of this story
in your mind.
The slip I drew from the box said, ‘The secret was
all she had that was hers.’
Something clicked with me. I had no characters or
location at first, just a notion of someone opening and reading an email addressed
to their late mother, but I knew this was the germ of a novel I wanted to write.
Initially, taking my cue from the slip of paper, I imagined the protagonist to
be a woman, perhaps in her thirties. Only several months later did he turn out
to be a 29-year-old man, and only then did I begin to discover who Mark Jonnson
was and what his conflicts and dilemmas were.
I know that in your earlier
novel, Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones,
the Inverness setting played an important part. What led you to choose the
locations in Oz and were there any
particular challenges in making those choices?
The
choice of Sydney came easily. I’d been determined to write about this
fascinating and wonderful city ever since I’d spent three weeks there in 2001.
While other tourists were clicking their camera shutters, I was constantly
scribbling in a notebook, recording not just what I saw and heard, but my
emotional responses, jetlag symptoms, etc.
For the contrasting London setting, I felt the urge
to put my own locality on the page – Clapham Junction, Lavender Hill, the 77
bus ride from Tooting Broadway to the Hole in the Wall pub at Waterloo Station.
I don’t live in the same streets as Mark’s mother, but I know those streets
well.
The main challenge of course came
with the Sydney location, because my story took me to places and times I hadn’t
researched on my visit. I am hugely indebted to Australian friends who helped
me with many evocative details, some crucial facts and with Aussie dialogue.
What did you most enjoy
about writing Oz? And what did you
find most frustrating?
The
chapters from Mark’s mother’s point of view flowed most easily and needed the
least rewriting; however strangely it wasn’t those that I enjoyed writing most.
The best moments were when I finally, after many failed attempts, resolved something
intractably frustrating! The characters of Mark, his wife Gina and their little
daughter Matilda all caused me no end of grief. These elusive people grew
incrementally from very patchy, scratchy beginnings, and it was wonderful when at
last they blossomed into unique and complex human beings.
A final problem that had me stuck and stymied for
months was the opening scene. I rewrote it dozens of times, and it never felt
right. And then one of my alpha-readers said he didn’t really connect with the
book until such-and-such a place, and I realised – in a fabulously enjoyable
moment – that my overworked opening belonged, all but a few words, on the
cutting room floor! Bang, jump forward. Straight in. Much better. Yay.
Many fiction writers develop
a recognisable tone, style and subject matter, but your three novels are
surprisingly different from each other: Truth
Games takes a wry look at fidelity in
the 1970s, Love, Revenge & Buttered
Scones is surreally comic, and Oz is quite serious, even melancholic,
though shot with humour. Do you feel these stories have anything in common with
one another? Do you feel there is a ‘Bobbie Darbyshire’ type of story, approach
or voice?
Readers
tell me my books are recognisably from the same pen, but it’s hard to pin down
why this is. I don’t think it’s ‘voice’ because I write from the close point of
view of my characters and work at giving them distinctive voices, not my own.
Maybe it’s structure and pace? I think hard about how to make the pages turn and
always keep the story moving forward. What else? A filmic quality, the hopefully
vivid part played by location? And all my books contain dark and light, comedy
and tragedy; I particularly like the poignancy of sadness and humour combined. As
to subject matter, my characters often have troubled, unresolved relationships
with their parents; without my willing it, that seems to be a common thread!
Do you have plans for a fourth
novel – and if so, will it be entirely different from your previous ones or
will it have any similar characters, locations or themes?
I’m
currently polishing the fourth, and yes, it is different again, but the common
threads are still there. Humour and tragedy, paciness, vivid locations,
dysfunctional parents. This one will be surreally comic again, but not a repeat
of Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones. The
humour is blacker, and the surrealism involves a rather alarming afterlife –
one of the two protagonists is a ghost in a serious fix. The city this time is Brighton,
another place I have roots in and a great big soft spot for.
I interviewed you on
Literascribe a few years ago, when e-publishing was beginning to take off and
the publishing industry was entering its ongoing phase of adjustment to
self-publishing and to ebooks. At the time, you were able to hand-sell your
books, very successfully, in bookshops such as Waterstones. What changes have
you seen take place since then – and is it harder to bring your books to the
attention of readers these days?
The
short answer, sadly, is yes, it is much harder to bring my books to the
attention of readers these days. Saturday signings in Waterstones were a wonderful
way to introduce them to strangers, but in the last couple of years most
Waterstones have discontinued them. I’m still welcomed back by a couple of
lovely branches, and I hope a few more may reintroduce signings now their HQ is
giving them more local discretion. Apart from being a significant boost to Waterstones’
sales, customers find chatting to an author in a high street book shop a real
point of distinction from Amazon. Footfall has been lower because of Amazon, e-readers
and the recession, but seems to be levelling out and even increasing a bit now.
What is your favourite
piece of writing advice?
Work
hard at keeping readers wanting to turn the next page. Books on screenwriting
(e.g. by Christopher Vogler and Robert McKee) analyse how compelling stories
work their magic, and their principles apply just as much to writing a gripping
novel. Some reject this advice as formulaic, but so is the form of a sonnet; the
challenge is to write originally within the form so the reader feels the poetry
not the form. And even if you’re determined to break the principles of the
storytelling craft, it helps to understand them first!
The four other top tips for
improving as a writer are, one: write fearlessly – banish the worried ghost of
your mother from your shoulder; two: write lots, rewrite lots, and rewrite
again lots; three: get honest, tough feedback and open your ears and your mind
to it; and four: read lots, keep reading lots, never stop reading.
Thank you so much for joining me again on Literascribe, Bobbie - I wish you every success with Oz!
More about Bobbie:
Bobbie
Darbyshire’s third novel, Oz, just
out, is getting an enthusiastic response from readers. Set in London and
Sydney, it starts with a mystery – a young man uncovering secrets in his dead
mother’s house – and it ends with a nail-biting tug-of-love for a little girl
called Matilda, seven years old.
Bobbie’s earlier novels are Truth Games and Love, Revenge
& Buttered Scones, and she is currently polishing a fourth. Winner of
the 2008 fiction prize at the National Academy of Writing and the New Delta
Review Creative Nonfiction Prize 2010, Bobbie has worked as barmaid, mushroom
picker, film extra, maths coach, cabinet minister’s private secretary, care
assistant and volunteer adult-literacy teacher, as well as in social research
and government policy. She hosts a fortnightly writers’ group and lives in
London.
Oz on Amazon: http://is.gd/qE3sEY
Love, Revenge & Buttered
Scones on
Amazon: http://is.gd/DZBpJk
Truth Games on Amazon: http://is.gd/akQgC1
Amazon.co.uk
author page:
Connect with Bobbie:
Facebook
: https://www.facebook.com/bobbie.darbyshire
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/bobbiedar
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