December 12, 2008
Today, we have a guest blogger. It’s Rosy Thornton, author of three novels published by Headline Review – including her latest, Crossed Wires, which is out in hardback this week. I first met Rosy in November 2004 via the BBC Drama messageboard where we’d gathered to talk about North & South and John Thornton (Rosy’s dad is actually a real life John Thornton.) We both started writing fanfic and we both sold our novels to the same group with two weeks of each other in 2006.
So here is Rosy, as self deprecating as ever, to talk about Crossed Wires.
It is very kind of Phillipa to ask me to blog about my new novel, ‘Crossed Wires.’
The past week or so, since my advance copies arrived, has been very scary, as I’ve imagined the publisher’s review copies winging their way to strangers’ desks. But the scariest thing of all, in the event, was much close to home. My daughter decided to read the book.
I should explain, at this point, that the two protagonists in ‘Crossed Wires’ are both single parents. At the time I began to write the novel, in 2007, my own daughters were aged 11 and 8. It occurred to me that I had not yet tried writing a book where children were among the central characters, and with two examples at home to observe, it seemed like a challenge I might enjoy. Hence I endowed the male MC, Peter, with twin 9-year-old girls and the female MC, Mina, with a daughter of 10. As well as the interest of trying to depict the children themselves, I gave my characters children the age of my own two so that I could explore some of the anxieties and exasperations of parenthood, as well as the small daily joys.
All well and good, you might think – but children grow. My eldest is no longer that 11 year old: she is all of twelve-and-a-half and an avid reader of teen and YA chick lit. When the advance copies arrived this time she breezed into the kitchen and picked one up, eyes lighting on the pink, cartoon-style cover.
Daughter: Is this your new book?
Me (the proud but shy author): Yes.
Daughter: What’s it about?’
Me: It’s a love story.
Daughter’s eyes light up and she disappears up to her bedroom with the book.
Now, I fear she was always liable to be disappointed: the book contains no sex or even snogging. Her reaction, in fact, was fairly neutral. She enjoyed spotting one or two family in-jokes that I’d put in the book, and overall said it was ‘OK’.
My own reaction was much more complicated – and, frankly, alarmed. How did this happen? How did she move from being on a level with the children in the book – the objects of my authorial observation, to be clucked over by readers my own age, with children of their own – to being old enough to read the book herself, and possibly identify with the parents’ point of view? How did she become one of my readership?
It isn’t, I hasten to add, that I have written dark parental secrets into the book which I wouldn’t want her knowing. It might even be good for our relationship that she should see something of my side of the fence, of parenthood as I perceive it. I suppose if you’d asked me, I’d have said I would want my girls to read the book some day. Maybe when they were 18. Or 35, perhaps, with kids of their own. But now, already, when she still wants the Blue Peter annual for Christmas, and goes to sleep cuddling Winnie the Pooh?* It just all seems a bit… too soon.
Maybe my next novel will be about a nonplussed mother who is surprised to find her kids have turned into teenagers while she’s out getting a pint of milk.
*If she ever stumbles upon this blog, I am a dead woman!
Crossed Wires is available now from Amazon or from all good bookshops. Paperback out in April 2009 from Headline Review.
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Posted by Phillipa @ 6:02 am | Leave a Comment
Maggie Spiers Says:
LOL Rosy!! I love the idea for the next book. And great to see that Peter and Mina got into print!
Maggie x
Rosy Thornton Says:
Thanks, Maggie. And thank you so much, Phillipa, for giving me this blogging space.
Very sorry about my typing… I meant, of course, that my eldest is an ‘avid’ reader of teen/YA chick lit. (My youngest, on the other hand, I might genuinely have described as an ‘avoid’ reader!!)
Rosy x
Phillipa Says:
Maggie – Hi and thanks for all your support.
Rosy – I’ve changed it. LOL.
Debs Carr Says:
I love the cover, and your book sounds wonderful. I have a fourteen year old daughter, and would probably find it rather strange having her read my work too, though unlike you I’m not as yet published.
I look forward to reading this.
Liz Hanbury Says:
Rosy, I’m really looking forward to reading Crossed Wires
LOL, alarming how kids grow up when you’re not looking! Seemingly overnight, my eldest went from going to sleep cuddling his teddy, to spraying on industrial quantities of Lynx, gelling his hair and refusing to tie up the laces on his trainers as it was more fashionable to just tuck them in ;0)
Phillipa – hope the writing is steaming ahead
Can’t wait for ISHBM!
Rosy Thornton Says:
Oh, yes, Liz – the tucked in laces! Girls do that, too.
Nell Dixon Says:
My 14 year old has not only read some of my books but so have her guide company and worst of all her english and RE teachers at school – sigh. Good job they’ve all been sweet romances although Animal Instincts is steamier so I think I might have to hide that one from her.