With elements of The
Wizard of Oz, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Lovely Bones,
The Things We Learn When We’re Dead shows how small decisions can have
profound and unintended consequences, and how sometimes we can get a
second chance.
On the way home from a dinner party, Lorna Love
steps into the path of an oncoming car. When she wakes up she is in what
appears to be a hospital – but a hospital in which her nurse looks like
a young Sean Connery, she is served wine for supper, and everyone
avoids her questions. It soon transpires that she is in Heaven, or on
HVN. Because HVN is a lost, dysfunctional spaceship, and God the aging
hippy captain. She seems to be there by accident… Or does God have a
higher purpose after all?
At first Lorna can remember nothing. As
her memories return – some good, some bad – she realises that she has
decision to make and that maybe she needs to find a way home.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
If
you could work with any other author, who would it be and why?
I’m
not sure that I’d want to do that, or vice versa. I’m a big fan
of Kate Atkinson, and she lives quite close by…but I’m sure she’s
happy writing away on her own. Likewise, Joanne Harris, who has
never written anything less than brilliant in her life. Maybe,
however, I’d like to work with an author(s) who has talent, but who
hasn’t had a publishing break. I honestly believe that the best
books ever written are mouldering at the bottom of landfill sites or
circulating the world as incinerated particles of carbon because
their writers gave up hope.
What
would be a typical working day for you? When and where do you write?
A
typical working day would be doing very little or writing a huge
amount. I’ve learned never to write unless I know what I’m
writing, and how and why it’ll fit into the overall narrative
structure. I’ve wasted too many days and too many sheets of paper
writing stuff that has ended up in the bin. I’m now much more
focused.
As
to where, I write in an office-study although, as much of writing is
about thinking, the book I’m working on is never really out of my
head. My characters tell me what to write, and are never slow in
telling me when I’ve got things wrong.
What
is the hardest part of the writing for you?
I
think it’s to fully understand the characters you’re writing
about, otherwise you’re describing people who are, at best,
two-dimensional. The best books are populated by people who are
real, and who the reader can relate to. That’s why good literature
is timeless, because human beings haven’t changed much. It’s why
the likes of Shakespeare remain relevant; human nature is still what
it’s always been, with all its glories and imperfections. The
trick is to make those people and their complex motivations real, and
to make the reader believe in them.
When
and why did you first start writing?
I
wrote my first “novel” aged about fifteen, and burned it shortly
afterwards. The idea of a Fourth Reich having a secret base in the
Norfolk Broads seemed absurd, even to me. My second was written when
I was about seventeen, and I still have that. Nobody will ever get
to read it. My third was completed a year later, by which time I had
learned to type. It will also never, ever see the light of day.
As
to why, I have no idea. Maybe it’s because I can write, and am
pretty useless at everything else. I certainly have a compulsion to
write, although I have no agenda. I have no ideas or political that
I want to talk about. Maybe also, I believe that if you’re good at
something, you have (almost) a duty to pursue it. After all, where
would the world be if Michelangelo had thought, “sod the Sistine
Chapel, I’m off to the pub.”
How
did you come up with the idea for your book?
For
no absolutely no idea at all, the first inkling came on a train from
Edinburgh to London. It was an apt place to have that beginning
because, being a civilised place, Edinburgh is the only city in the
world to have named its main railway station after a book.
Part
of the inspiration was a quote that I’d always liked from the Roman
emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius Antoninus who wrote that “our
life is what our thoughts make it.” But I’d always thought that
life is what happens to you – all things good or bad: the people
you meet, the things you do.
But,
from a different perspective, everything about life is also about
memory. We can’t do our jobs if we can’t remember how to do
them; we can’t love people if we’ve forgotten who they are. It
is our thoughts that shape us.
It’s
the only train journey I’ve ever been on where I’d hoped for
signal failure, or for spontaneous industrial action. I could have
sat on that train for another five hours. When I got home, I wrote
the first chapter and the last chapter. The first chapter has
changed out of all recognition, but the last chapter is still pretty
much the same.
Are
you a big reader? If so, what are you reading now?
You
can’t write if you don’t read. Equally, you don’t deserve to
be a writer if you don’t love reading. At the moment I’m
rereading A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. There
are some books that inspire me to write, and that’s one of them.
Do
you have any advice for other aspiring writers?
If
you think you’re good enough, persevere. If you’re not sure
whether you’re good enough, join a book group, or take professional
advice, or have friends you trust to read and critique your book.
The fact is that publishers aren’t interested in finding the new
literary genius; they simply want to publish books that sell and,
therefore, make money.
And
always remember the wise words of Somerset Maugham who said that
there are three rules to writing a book, except that nobody knows
what they are. In other words, keep reading, keep writing…and
eventually stumble on those three rules.
F:
@charlielaidlaswauthor
