An Interview with Fiona Robyn

Fiona Robyn has kindly stopped off here today as part of her virtual book tour. Her début novel The Letters is out now. It's a cracking book with vibrant characters, sparkling prose and a damn good page-turning story. Violet Ackerman is divorced with four grown up children. She 'ups sticks' to live by the sea where she starts to receive a series of mysterious letters written almost fifty years ago.

Hi Fiona and thanks for stopping by. I was immediately interested in the character Violet. She's 51, forthright and doesn't suffer fools. However, one of the ways we get to see her softer side is through her devotion to her cat Blue. His mannerisms are finely observed. You are obviously a cat lover?

Guilty as charged!

Blue has a very calming effect on Violet. Do your cats have that effect on you?

They do. Their lives are a little simpler than ours, I suppose – no emails to reply to, no hoovering. They also do stretching and sleeping very well – as I type Silver is curled up on a cushion nearby, and Fatty is stretched diagonally across the bed. They’re both smiling.

My cat doesn't do a lot. Do you think I should ask him nicely to be a little more inspirational?

Don’t be silly – when does a cat ever do what you ask? That’s another thing I like about cats – their contrariness. Not like those eager-to-please dogs!

How long did The Letters take you to write? And how many drafts?

I interrupted myself in the middle of The Letters to write A Year of Questions, so I suppose about a year if you don’t count the hiatus. There are usually about three major drafts, and then I’ll go over it again and read it aloud, making minor tweaks as I go.

Do you write longhand or straight to screen?
(Please tell me you like notebooks)?

Straight to screen – there are too many words in a novel not to. I use notebooks for my journals and to write poetry – I do have a stationary fetish. You can never have too many notebooks.

This is your début novel and you have two others coming out. The Blue Handbag in August and Thaw, next February. You're impressively prolific. As a wannabe, who's still struggling to complete her first book, how do you organize your time?

Don’t be fooled – it just took me a long time to find a publisher so the novels had piled up! Over the years I’ve worked towards setting my working life up so I have the mornings free to write. Having said that, I continue to struggle to get my first draft finished – you’d think it would get easier. I wrote the first draft of my first novel (Thaw) in half hour chunks before my full time job, so there are no excuses really…

Do cats make an appearance in these other two books?

Leonard from The Blue Handbag is more of a dog person, so he has a little terrier called Pickles. Ruth from Thaw would probably have a cat if she didn’t live in a little flat, but I don’t seem capable of leaving them out of the story altogether.

What are you working on now?

My current novel is about a nerdy boy called Joe who visits his aunt in Amsterdam when he’s a teenager and again when he’s 27. I’ve already got a trip planned this summer to go and gather some authentic Amsterdam detail. What a great life, eh? I’m very lucky.

Thank you Fiona. Shall we have some tea now? I have Jaffa Cakes?

Jaffa cakes sounds good to me ; ) Thank you for having me, Lane.

The Letters is published by Snowbooks. It can be purchased here or here.

Fiona's blog can be found here. And her website here