Author interview
Tell us, very briefly, what Hannah and Soraya’s Fully Magic Generation-Y *Snowflake* Road Trip across America is about.
It’s about four women who embark on a road trip across America: Hannah Lexingwood and her two sisters, Charlotte and Julia, plus Hannah’s best friend, Soraya. In different ways, all of them are at daunting crossroads in their lives. Hannah and Soraya, whose idea the journey was – and on whom the novel focuses - are members of a rock band about to break up; Charlotte’s business is going bankrupt; Julia is a novelist who has recently relocated to Norway with her new husband, and she’s acutely homesick.
Hannah has a potentially devastating secret. The truth will out, of course, but it won’t be easy. In the meantime, she must come up with a ‘big idea’ to save her band, and her two sisters have to work through their own problems.
But life’s most significant dilemmas are often best resolved by cooperating. As the trip progresses, there are spectacular fallings-out and makings up, but surprisingly, it begins to look as if each member of the group possesses part of a key to help the others unlock the seemingly unlockable. America challenges, entertains and infuriates them in equal measure, but they also fall in love with it.
Why is the title so long?
​
Just to be clear: I didn’t start the horrifyingly long title competition, and sadly, I can’t even win it. First prize goes to Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. On the plus side, I have beaten The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, so I may get the runner-up medal. The chief hope of all such novels is that, by the time potential readers have reached the end of the title, they’ll decide they’re so far in, they might as well read the whole thing.
​
Where did you get the idea for Hannah and Soraya?
​
I’ve been self-publishing novels for a decade now, and writing and sending them off to agents since I was eighteen. For the last ten years, I’ve been writing a series of novels that fit loosely into the espionage category. I say ‘loosely’, because I’m not particularly interested in spycraft: the series’ main concern is with life in Britain in general in the 21st century. The characters in Hannah and Soraya’s Fully Magic Generation-Y *Snowflake* Road Trip across America all appear, on and off, in that series. In other words, Hannah and Soraya began as a spin-off, but it quickly took on a life of its own and became a total stand-alone. It’s now not necessary to know anything at all about the preceding series to understand or enjoy it.
​
What inspired you to write it?
​
Partly all the adverse fuss in recent years about ‘snowflakes’. I have worked with young people for 35 years now - all of my adult life, in fact - and I don’t see any evidence that they’re especially prone to crumble at the least sign of adversity. Quite the contrary: nearly all the ones I’ve known have been level-headed, intelligent and considerate. They’d almost certainly - as in every era - be the first to volunteer for the front lines if, God forbid, there was ever to be another war. They have ideals, that’s all. They may not be yours (or even mine occasionally!), but that’s how history works. Things evolve. And you certainly can’t have a proper debate by hurling insults and bandying about stereotypes.
​
There's a very odd couple who keep resurfacing in the novel. Tell me a bit more about them.
​
Harlinne Vobrosky and her husband, Rudolph, were originally meant to represent the US Republican and Democratic parties. One clue appears in the fact that she was supposedly born in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the GOP was founded, in 1854; but there are more in "Rudolph's Backwards and Forwards Story" in Part Five, where Rudolph's star always rises as Harlinne's descends and vice-versa (the astute reader will notice that this mirrors the precise years each of the two political parties occupied The White House). At one point, Rudolph observes that he and Harlinne were never as engaged as they wanted to be in the real life of America, which sums up my view of the country: it overflows every attempt by politics and politicians to contain it. The appearance of Cecelia Vobrosky in Part Eight symbolises the beginning of what is arguably a new era in American politics, and which began in 2016.
​
Why Matador?
​
It took me a long time to realise that there is a market in bricks-and-mortar bookshops for self-published novels. Prior to this year (2020), I assumed that most bookstores were very sniffy about anything non-traditional. Then I read Debbie Young’s How to Get Your Self-Published Book Into Bookstores, published by The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and, frankly, it was a revelation. Suddenly, I realised I could put my books on physical shelves where real people could browse them. Then I read another ALLi book - Choosing the Best Self-Publishing Services – and that led me to Matador. It seemed sensible to go with the best.
What are you writing right now?
My espionage series, Tales of MI7, is due to come to an end this year, and I am currently working on its penultimate instalment, provisionally entitled Humankind 2.0. It is quite difficult, because all my novels are set in London in the present-day, and with coronavirus currently on the march, what plausibly counts as the ‘present day’ is continually changing.
What next?
I am close to retirement, and that should give me a lot more free time, touch wood. After I have completed Tales of MI7, I have a number of options. I might gradually publish my entire backlist in paperback and try to become King of Waterstones. Or I might write more literary fiction, in the vein of Hannah and Soraya. Or I might just decide I’ve had enough of writing, and take up another hobby. It all depends on what happens in the next twelve months. Which could be anything at all.
​
