Ask the Author: Cherry Potts
Answered Questions (10)
Cherry Potts
That's a tough one. I read so many Dystopian books, that I really would not want to visit in real life - but I think on balance, Ursula le Guin's Earthsea is quite attractive, Dragons, islands, magic... The world of the Left Hand of Darkness is also tempting, culturally, but I couldn't cope with the climate!
Cherry Potts
I don't need two sentences. Donald Trump.
Cherry Potts
I don't really have a summer reading list, because I never have 'time off' in the summer it's just as busy as the rest of the year, if not more so as i am involved in a community opera. - and if I do, I spend it writing not reading. That said, I am looking forward to reading Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent at some point, and Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology and a few others by him, I'm a bit behind.
Cherry Potts
Patience and Sarah (Isabel Miller). I read this book when I was about nineteen and failed to notice that it was funny. Twenty years later I re-read and cottoned on, and enjoyed the book from a whole new perspective. The relationship is quite understated, but perhaps because of that feels solid and believable and you know wihtout being told, at the end of the book, that this is a relationship that will last a lifetime.
Cherry Potts
A long walk, writing something else, setting myself a challenge, being prepared to write complete drivel for a while, music... a cuddle with the cat... I've never had it really badly, and hope I never do!
Cherry Potts
That's a hard one to answer! Freedom to imagine the world how I want it? Except I don't. When it is going well there is nothing to beat a great day of writing, I often can't keep up with the ideas, I get a warm happy glow from a good day writing, along with aching shoulders... I love getting feedback from people who have enjoyed my books. (my favourite was a friend who had taken a copy of Mosaic of Air on holiday and rang me to say she had burst into tears lying beside the pool - I rather callously replied that she was meant to - but I treasured it none the less!)
Cherry Potts
Get on with it. Don't make excuses for not writing, join a writing group if you can find one that suits you, where you can get honest feedback and talk about writing generlly to keep you enthused when the going gets sticky.
Cherry Potts
I never have just one thing on the boil, I am typesetting The Dowry Blade, but I also have several short stories on the go, and an historical novel set in 1253 in the Pyrennes, and a YA timeslip novel set on an archaeological dig in SW England, and a science fiction novel...
Cherry Potts
Anything and everything - overheard conversations (especially Mis-heard: those moments when you think, that can't be what they really said - can it?) pictures in the newspaper, music... It's about staying alive to the possibility that something will be worth pursuing and tucking an idea away until i know what to do with it.
Cherry Potts
My most 'recent' book has been twenty years in the writing - I'm just typesetting it now! The Dowry Blade - an epic fantasy novel about the limitations of love and power and trust. I'm not sure what started me off, but I was reading a lot of fantasy at the time and loved its ability to create new roles for women to do absolutely anything, so my main characters do just that, and sometimes have to live with the consequences.The book started life as a short story which was chosen as the lead story in Onlywomen press' anthology Perfect Pitch. it was quite a long short story, and I couldn't let go of one of the characters, Brede, so eventually and very slowly I wrote the rest of her story.
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