It’s time for another interview with a debut author and next up is the wonderful Jude Brown, who hails from my own hometown of Middlesbrough.
Her debut novel is out now and is a thriller dealing with climate change.
Go check it out!
Tell us a little about your book and how you came to write it.
His Dark Sun is both a psychological thriller and a coming age of story and themes such as bullying, betrayal, revenge, obsession, love and hate are covered. Set in London in 2022 the capital is overheating, as is the world. Accelerated global warming is being blamed but nineteen-year old Luke Spargo thinks otherwise. Told entirely from his point of view, Luke is convinced the rise in temperatures are because the sun is dying and if he’s right, he is the only one who can stop it. But time is against him as the summer solstice, D-Day, is less than two months away. Luke is a troubled young man with a troubled past and his mission to save the world and stop the sun from going out and plunge the world into endless night, leads him to commit very dark deeds.
The book started life as a short story, which I wrote whilst living in north west London, which is where the book is set. It was about a firefighter who was an arsonist and set fires by using the sun’s rays. I resurrected the story when I was studying the novel option on my MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. I had trucked up to class with no idea about what to write (as I’d tagged the novel course on as an extra option), so it was a panic situation. I changed the thirty something firefighter to a nineteen-year-old boy with a fascination with the sun and Luke was born. I didn’t have a plan, so Luke’s character drove the story along. He was a great complex character and he made lots of things happened but that’s all the book was, a series of events. It lacked direction. Setting it in the future provided that.
You’re also from the North East. What impact has that had on you and your writing life?
I grew up in Middlesbrough, leaving at twenty-one to move to London. Until I was twelve, we lived in a modest two-up two-down in a small terraced street. Ely Street marked the boundary of residential and industrial. There was a dairy, a warehouse, a factory, a timber yard, a coffin makers, a cadet training centre, a beck, an abattoir and an underground warren of air raid shelters in the factory field. An adventure playground right on my doorstep! And I made total use of it. That environment was a winning lottery ticket to me, it fed my imagination and I loved living there. I knew everyone in the street, and I could go into any house and feel safe and secure. We weren’t a typical nuclear family. I was an only child and lived with my single mother, my widowed grandfather and my spinster great aunt, which in the sixties wasn’t that common a set up but I didn’t feel out of place as the street was full of characters and non-traditional set ups. I think we’d have been called a minority back then and I do remember feeling a bit different, but it wasn’t a negative. I like different and I like outsiders and that’s definitely informed my writing, so to the wit and warmth of the people I knew and grew up with. My love of books and writing was seeded then. I visited the local library every Saturday and I was lucky to live in a time when the school curriculum wasn’t too rigid, the grammar books had been thrown out and we did creative writing every day. I wrote poems, plays, stories and received recognition that I had some talent early on. My play was chosen to be put on for the end of year school performance and one of my poems was voted best in class that year. My teacher, Mrs Porter, was encouraging but she didn’t overdo it, it was a low key, but it cemented something inside me. I knew I had some talent at this writing thing and I continued to write throughout my life, but it was just for me, I wasn’t aiming for publication it was something I did to exorcise demons – loss, hurt, sadness. I took refuge in creativity and that’s why I ended up studying art therapy. I became a visual artist for a time but it did feel a bit of a betrayal, as writing kept nagging at me. I decided to do something with it, take it more seriously but I soon found out you can’t pull something out of your back pocket and expect to run with it. You have to work at it, polish it, practise it. I treat it like homework now, imagine I’m back in Mrs Porter’s class.
What makes your book unique?
I think the book’s USP is that it is at the cutting edge of a very contemporary, very new genre of fiction. Climate change science fiction, or cli-fi for short, is still in its infancy but it’s going to become more and more popular, as global warming becomes more and more pressing. I think the genre is about to explode and be the next big thing – but I would say that!
Climate change is an issue in your novel. What made you decide to write about that and is it something that concerns you in real life too?
The climate change theme came about by accident. The book was originally set in the present day during a particular hot summer but there was no reference to global warming and I struggled with the plot. When I decided to set it in the future and give it a cli-fi flavour it opened up more possibilities and I really enjoyed writing speculative fiction. I felt as if I’d found a genre that suited me.
Accident or not, I’m really pleased that I have written a book that looks at the threat that global warming brings to our planet. I think it’s irresponsible to carry on the way we are. The evidence is clear. Yes, there have been periods of warming and freezing and it may be a natural cycle but our carbon footprints can’t be helping. It isn’t about blaming, it’s about accepting things need to change, we need to change.
Your book will soon be in readers’ hands. Which part of being published are you most excited about?
I’m really looking forward to taking part in writers’ events. I’ve been picked to be part of Read Regional, an event New Writing North organises, which sends northern writers out across the region to libraries and other public arenas and, I’m looking forward to the interaction with readers face to face. I’m not expecting His Dark Sun to appeal to everyone but books connect with individuals on all kinds of levels and there’ll be things in the book that resonate with readers that I won’t have even thought about! Everyone brings their own experiences and has their own relationship with any kind of creative piece and that’s what’s so mind blowing, so it will be interesting to hear those thoughts and also to get some feedback. It’s my debut novel and it’s quite a scary thing to send it out into the world but it’s also exciting and it will be such a contrast to what has gone before ie the solitary slog, all those times spent in social isolation, just me and the keyboard!
What has been the most challenging part of your journey to publication?
Sticking at it! It’s been a long and winding road, with a few false starts and dead ends and I very nearly abandoned the novel completely. My main challenge was getting the narrative right, it wasn’t working and I didn’t know how to fix it because I lacked the insight to do it. It had begun life as a short story and I basically stretched it out – padded it with well written scenes, but that’s all they were. It was my first attempt at a full-length novel and I didn’t have a plan ie a synopsis. the story developed as I wrote. Some writers are able to do that, they can steer the story as it develops, but I couldn’t and I wouldn’t really accept that. The novel lacked direction and I struggled to nail the plot and that was the main barrier. It doesn’t matter how good a writer you are, you need a story. It doesn’t have to be dramatic or a fast-paced page turner, but it does have to have a narrative, a thread running through it that pulls the reader on. Putting the book aside and starting another was the best thing I could’ve done. When I returned to it and set in the near future everything clicked!
Do you have a writing mentor, or someone who has influenced your work?
Claire Malcolm, Chief Executive of New Writing North, has championed my work since I won a Northern Writers Award back in 2013 – an award run by New Writing North. She believed in my writing a lot more than I did and kept in touch from time to time. She contacted me just over two years ago, when I was halfway through updating His Dark Sun to set it in the near future (it was initially set in the present). She asked me to send it to her when I’d finished as, apart from her role in NWN she sits on the Board of Moth publishing/Mayfly Press, and the publishers were looking to acquire some new writers. Unfortunately, I got ill and wasn’t able to continue editing the book and wasn’t sure when I would be able to. I couldn’t believe it – not another opportunity lost – but Claire told me to get well and that they would wait until I could finish the manuscript. I got well and sent it to her a year later. She liked it, and the rest, as they say, is history. Or in my case, the near future!
M J Hyland, Tim Winton and Steven Sherill are contemporary writers that I really admire. I love their writing styles, the issues they deal with, the way they get inside their characters. Hyland writes about misfits, sociopaths, and her books are great psychological studies. I love reading that kind of book and in my writing I like to explore the psychology of characters and I’ve always been drawn to righting about outsiders. This is How has a central character that is one of the most well drawn sociopaths you could hope to read about. Her prose is pitch perfect and she is very good at laying clues and suggestions without the reader noticing. I did a workshop on beginnings and ends once and the tutor told us to pick a favourite book, so I picked This is How. It was such a revelation to see how the beginning and ending echoed, and also how the first chapter had hints regarding the inciting incident, the early hook. I learnt a very useful tool that day and I put that technique to use in my novel.
If there was one book that you could have written, other than your own, what would it be and why?
To Kill a Mockingbird – Cliché maybe but I’m not ashamed to say that this classic has everything. Atticus Finch is the ideal human being. His sense of justice and the way he stands firm and does not sell out on what he believes to be right and just is a lesson for life and humanity. He will not cow tow to majority pressure or allow prejudice to stop the truth from winning. I just love him and I love his daughter, Scout, the main protagonist. She’s portrayed as a tomboy and motherless and I think that’s a very good way to inject some innocence and playfulness into a book that explores very serious issues such as rape and racism.
What advice would you give to other writers hoping to publish a novel?
Don’t give, up. Keep writing. Be brave. Be bold. Be open. Obstacles and failure are part of the process but you can learn from them. Don’t close yourself off and sulk because it’s not going your way and don’t keep on doing the same thing if it’s not working. To borrow from Einstein – if you keep on doing the same thing and expect a different result, that’s a sign of insanity. If the narrative’s not working, change it. If the characters aren’t working, change them. Sounds simple but it’s tough ditching well written prose, prose you’ve spent months, years on. Sometimes it’s even necessary to walk away from the whole thing and start something new. Be prepared to put the work in. If you want your craft to improve you have to practise. Jessica Ennis put in thousands and thousands of hours over many, many, years before she achieved her ultimate goals. Writers are just like athletes, only they’re exercising their imagination, creativity and literary skills.
Is there a debut novel you’re particularly looking forward to reading in 2019?
Apart from The Disappeared, your own debut novel; it would have to be Saltwater by Jessica Andrews, another north eastern writer – I’m nothing but loyal!
Find out more
His Dark Sun on Goodreads
His Dark Sun on Amazon
About the author
Jude Brown grew up Middlesbrough and has lived in London, Liverpool, Reading and Sydney, working as a secretary, nurse, designer, art therapist and creative writing tutor. Several short stories and poems have been published in anthologies and some shortlisted for the Bridport and Raymond Carver Short Story Prizes. She currently lives in Sheffield having moved there to study an MA in Creative Writing, where she began writing His Dark Sun. The novel was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Award and also won a Northern Writers’ Award. The writing of His Dark Sun was supported by an Arts Council Award.
You can find out more about Jude by visiting her website or following her on Twitter.