Inspire Me with Aoife Walsh

I am pleased to welcome Aoife Walsh onto the blog today to discuss what inspired her to write about Too Close To Home, her second novel.

I don’t have to look too far to figure out my inspiration for Too Close To Home. It’s about a girl called Minny and her complicated, demanding family. Minny is truculent about her extra responsibilities: elder children in big families have always felt that way. My dad was the fifth of seven kids and his older sisters had to help bring him up (although I should disclose that those four women went on to have twenty-five children between them, so they can’t have been that disillusioned).

The thing is, sometimes in families where everybody is stretched just to manage the day to day, a child - of any age - can get sidelined. Perhaps the child that’s most likely to happen to is the one that everyone thinks is okay.

Minny isn’t, actually, the oldest in the family. Her sister Aisling is almost two years her senior - and only one school year up. By an astonishing coincidence, my two eldest have a similar gap (though they’re much younger), and, like Aisling, my eldest son is autistic. So is my youngest, as a matter of fact, though I didn’t know it when I started writing this book. My daughter is not.

Too Close To Home isn’t, obviously, about the mother of the family. Nor is it directly about Aisling. I should say outright that I absolutely agree with people who feel that there need to be more books with autistic MAIN characters, preferably written by autistic authors. 

This book, however, was always going to be about Minny, the middle child with all the pressures of the eldest. Autism is only one of the issues in Minny’s life - she’s trying to carve out an identity against a background of estranged fathers, half-sibling babies, religious scruples, elderly sex, self-obsessed friends, insensitive teachers, a boy she might fancy and a minor class struggle. 

But, to me, the relationship between Aisling and Minny is the heart of the book. And I think I wrote it mostly because I know I expect a lot of my daughter. Some evenings all she hears from me is: ‘Don’t snap at your brother like that, he gets that at school all day. Don’t ignore him even if he is telling you a fact you’ve heard seventy times before and weren’t remotely interested in the first time. Can’t you just sit in a room with him for a while, you know you’re his best friend, don’t you? Fair doesn’t mean everybody getting the same, it means everybody getting what they need…’

So this book started life as a way of paying some attention to my daughter. To my son too, and to the way they are with each other. His relationship with her, rocky though it sometimes is, is one of the most positive things in his life - and in hers, too. I guess the book is a love letter to that relationship. It’s also a way for me to tell her, I do know you have it rough sometimes. I know it’s hard to love somebody whose life is difficult, even when you’re an adult, let alone when you’re fourteen like Minny or ten like you. A lot of our family life is not set up for you. I may not always give you the positive attention you deserve, and there are times you get negative attention you don’t deserve. But I do think about you, and worry about you, and admire you and love you and even, sometimes, appreciate you.

Too Close to Home is published by Andersen Press and is available to buy now.

Summary

Meet Minny: her life is a complicated whirlwind of unbearable PE lessons, annoying friends and impossible-to-live-with siblings. Minny is desperate for some space in a house spilling over with family and hangers-on. She has to contend with her autistic sister Aisling's school bullies, whilst trying to keep her self-absorbed BFF Penny happy, and look normal in front of new boy Franklin. And on top of this, now Dad has announced that he’s returning to London - with his new girlfriend. 

Secrets, lies and home truths will out, frying pans will be burnt, and arguments will flare up in a story full of humour, honesty and minor household emergencies.

To find out more about Aoife Walsh:

Twitter

ON INSPIRATION by Emily Murdoch

Now you all know how much I loved Emily Murdoch’s debut novel, If You Find Me. If you don’t then read my review here. Well I was so pleased to be asked to host a post from Emily herself, about her inspiration.

I’m truly honored by the invitation to share this lovely blog space with all of you. Thank you so much!

And I bring with me my Pink Sparkly Dust Of Creative Inspiration.

Alchemic: any magical power or process of transmuting a common substance, usually of little value, into a substance of great value.

Like your very own words into poems, short stories and novels. 

Are you a writer? Writers write. Did you write, today?

You know how to do it. Sit down. Think. Allow what’s clearest and strongest in your heart and mind to form from the alchemy of humanity swirled with divinity, whatever that means to you. God, muse, universal consciousness, whatever you call it: tap in.  

If you feel something, someone else is feeling it. Let the feeling become clothed in words that warm both yourself and others.

Creative courage is necessary. And caution. Are you ready for the truth? The fear of looking, really looking, is a formidable foe. But the best writing is writing that goes for broke, every sentence stamped out of your heart-shaped soul. 

Fear of exposure, fear of failure, fear of your work not being up to par, or as well-executed as your hopeful, perfectionistic, writer’s (painter’s, dancer’s photographer’s, etc.) heart is a pain the artist bears. Only creating more work soothes the ache. And the creative circle rolls on.

Some of us writers fret over every word, every piece of punctuation. When you hear how writers can spend an hour taking out and putting in a comma, some of us know that perfectionistic anguish personally and want to do anything we can to avoid it, not invite it in.

The answer?

Invite it in. 

Embrace the alchemy. Start the raw materials on their golden journey.

As a writer, I’m very prolific, although I don’t share everything I write. One of my driving creative forces is the fact that life is not forever. How arrogant I’d be as an artist, to think otherwise, and in the process, squander the sacred gift of words I was entrusted with in this lifetime. 

All we have is now. 

So, write anything. Write a grocery list, and imagine the different food items, then imagine the man, woman, or child’s hand holding that list, and go from there.

Who is she? How old? What is she wearing? What was she doing before the list? Is she old enough to go to the store alone?

Now, hold out your hand. Take hers in yours. 

Let her tug you along.

SHOPPING LIST:

Bread

Butter

Eggs

Cream

Heart

Soul

Mind

Words

Dreams

Thank you Emily for such an inspirational post.

If You Find Me is available to buy now and published by Indigo.

To find out more about Emily Murdoch:

Website / Twitter 

Inspire Me with Jane Casey

To celebrate the forthcoming publication of How To Fall, the new crime novel for young adults, I am pleased to welcome Jane Casey onto the blog to tell us what inspired her to write this novel.

 

I usually write crime novels for adults - I’m just finishing my fifth - but I have an enduring love for YA fiction. I started out as a children’s books editor (not a bad Plan B for a writer, it has to be said) and I was lucky enough to work with great authors such as Meg Cabot and Alyson Noel on some amazing books. The idea to write a YA novel came around the time I should have been writing my second crime novel. I’ve never been able to resist a good story, either as a reader or a writer, and I got hopelessly sidetracked. That book didn’t quite make it to being finished - maybe I’ll get around to it one day. It led, however, to a very lovely editor at Random House Children’s Books suggesting I might write a crime novel for teens, which in turn became How To Fall.

How To Fall is mainly a mystery but also a love story. My heroine, Jess Tennant, is a new arrival in the sunny seaside town of Port Sentinel - but the town has a dark heart and many secrets to uncover. I wrote Jess as an alternative to the fainting heroines that were Bella Swan’s legacy in YA fiction and she’s pretty feisty. She has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, being blonde, opinionated and easily underestimated. Like Buffy, she’s addicted to wisecracks even when she should keep her mouth shut. Like Buffy, she has a strong moral sense. Like Buffy, she can’t help falling for what might be the worst possible guy for her. If you’ve never watched Buffy, seasons 1, 2 and 3 are pretty much essential viewing, despite the rubbish CGI when they were making each episode for about $12.50. There has never been a better TV show. About vampires and teenagers, anyway.

A few years ago I got completely addicted to One Tree Hill, despite the fact that it was preposterous. I don’t even like basketball. I do like evil fathers who pull strings to get their own way, and One Tree Hill had a great one of those. Also, cute boys. 

And speaking of which, Grant Gustin. I’ve often been asked who would play a particular character if they made films of my books. If How to Fall was ever filmed, I wouldn’t get a say in who played Jess or any of the other characters, and it takes approximately one million years to get a film made so he would be too old (and American), but when I imagine Will, he’s built along the lines of Grant Gustin. To find this image I had to look at literally hundreds of pictures of him. Had to. For ages. I won’t judge you if you find you have to do the same.

Don’t ask me why, but I am currently obsessed with owls. They, and their reproductive habits, play a major part* in How to Fall. This one was an eBay purchase and sits on my desk. The picture does not feature my desk, which was too untidy to be a backdrop but has altogether fewer fruit bowls on it.

*all right, a minor part

In many ways I haven’t grown out of my teenage taste in music. Give me an angsty pop song about heartbreak and I am happy. It’s not cool and I don’t care. I edge towards credibility with my love for Feist, Gemma Hayes and Martha Wainwright, but to be honest it’s Taylor Swift, One Direction and Take That all the way when I’m writing. I highly recommend the overwrought yodelling of Avril Lavigne, especially ‘Keep Holding On’. It’s a karaoke classic. 

Art is a big element in How to Fall and I couldn’t resist including a particularly lovely painting that hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. It was voted Ireland’s most popular painting recently, and you can see why. Called ‘The Meeting on the Turret Stairs’, painted by Frederick William Burton in 1864, it shows the final parting of Hellelil from her bodyguard, Hildebrand, and it’s a beauty. Hellelil, as a name, has been slow to catch on. I may try to revive it by giving it to a character. Then again, I may not.

Finally, Dirty Dancing, a film that really deserved a better title. I remember when it came out first (though I was FAR too young to go and see it in the cinema) and being fascinated by the poster - Jennifer Grey being lifted out of the water by Patrick Swayze. Like How to Fall it tells the story of a girl who learns to love and take risks and believes in doing the right thing, no matter what it costs her. I’ve seen the film so many times I think it’s woven into my DNA and every love story I write probably owes something to it. Sometimes falling in love is just the start of your problems, not the happy-ever-after ending you might expect - and that’s the kind of story I like to tell.

 Thanks for a fabulous post Jane!

How To Fall by Jane Casey will be published on the January 31st by Corgi.

To find out more about Jane:

 Author Place: http://authorsplace.co.uk/jane-casey/

Twitter: @janecaseyauthor