Ask the Author: Jake Arden
Answered Questions (9)
Jake Arden
I've always been fascinated by the question what would have happened if Hitler had invaded England. When I moved to a small Kentish village, which would have stood on the invasion route, the stories of older locals and the echoes of the past in the landscape, old pill boxes etc, inspired me first to research and then to map out a novel.
Jake Arden
Reading history. Listening to other people's stories. Feeling the echoes of the past in a place. Creating stories in my head to get off to sleep.
Jake Arden
A novel about a young English woman who is taken to Paris, along with her two older sisters, by a handsome tutor and a chaperone and finds herself swept up in the 'Three Glorious Days' of the 1830 Revolution, where she experiences an awakening in more ways than one.
Jake Arden
Write as often as you can to hone your craft. It doesn't have to be literature: social media provides a good platform to practice your skills at connecting with an audience. Jot down ideas for novels and short stories and snippets of dialogue but don't start writing the first draft until you've worked out the structure of the piece and done some research to ensure you can carry the work through to the end. The French Revolutionary St Just once said: 'He who half creates a revolution, digs his own grave.' The same is true metaphorically for writers. If you finish something which you feel belongs in a grave, remember editing is just as important as writing and you can breathe life into your creation. Finally, subject your work in progress to scrutiny by fellow writers at classes and in online forums. It's painful but worth it.
Jake Arden
No bosses micromanaging me. Freedom to let my imagination play.
Jake Arden
Anything to do with 1830 in England and France as I'm researching the new novel I'm writing about English tourists who find themselves swept up in the 'The Three Glorious Days' of Revolution in Paris during the summer of that year. I'm still finalising my reading list.
Jake Arden
Victorian London. I'd usurp Dr Watson as Sherlock Holmes' sidekick.
Jake Arden
Put my pen down and roll with it. I find there is no point trying to fight it. Better to recharge my creative juices by doing soul-uplifting activities. Nature is a great rejuvenator of the imagination.
Jake Arden
Annabelle was very pleased with the progress of the work to turn her cellar into a stylish, fun, sound-insulated, basement romper room for her three-year-old triplets, Cotton, Thomas and Kitty. That was until the workmen removed an ancient brick wall and showed her what lay behind it: an intricate network of narrow channels, tunnels and holes scraped into the London clay, resembling some ancient desert civilisation’s dried-up irrigation system seen from a satellite, except this one was littered with looked like chicken bones and small black shiny pellets, the unmistakeable spore of rats, a lot of rats; then she heard the squeaking.
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