Ask the Author: Jo Chumas
Answered Questions (6)
Jo Chumas
I go back to non-fiction. I have a huge collection of non-fiction books; science, psychology, travel etc etc. There's something calming and therapeutic about non-fiction. The factual nature of non-fiction calms my mind and takes the pressure off. I think writer's block comes from feeling the pressure to be this or that type of writer and that's just awful. I used to get writer's block much more when I was trying to impress this publisher/agent or that publisher/agent. Now, having been writing fiction for 19 years, I feel the only person I need to impress is me. Because of this I don't get writer's block that often any more.
Jo Chumas
The privilege of it. The knowledge that you're writing a story that will hopefully inspire people. Being the mistress or master of your own destiny is also hugely satisfying.
Jo Chumas
Never write to order. Don't fall into genre popularity writing. Write the story that's in your heart. If you're a genuine writer - and by that I mean - you write because you absolutely have to/you're driven to - never give up and never let anyone or anything get you down. Hard I know.
Jo Chumas
I'm working on a murder-mystery version of After Rafaela called The Lake. I have wanted to do another version of one of my novels for ages. After Rafaela is a good fit for this. The Lake takes the characters in After Rafaela and turns them into pure evil. I've added a male narrator into the story called Ellis Yannick. I wanted to use the characters from After Rafaela to really drill down and examine what makes people evil. There's evil in all of us as well as good. It's fascinating to research.
Jo Chumas
I think my inspiration - my burning desire to write - stems from being a deeply introverted person. Without writing, I would be voiceless and that's very scary. I grew up in a household where having a voice wasn't really part of things. Being a girl I was not supposed to have a voice. It was the era of female invisibility. I was a third daughter. I always think of my father as Don Draper - the character from the US hit TV series Mad Men. I adored him but he was rarely around. There was never much opportunity to express myself verbally in my house, so I wrote down my thoughts and this became my default way of being. The same applies today. I am burning to express myself but writing things down is my default position. Novel writing is about expressing the fears, desires and thoughts I have. For example in my novel After Rafaela, I wanted to write about the grief I still feel at the passing of my beloved sister. I also had a very close friend - my best friend - who left me years ago. We were exceptionally close. In writing After Rafaela I wanted to deal with these feelings of loss, of insecurity, of feeling voiceless, of feeling overwhelmed by anger and grief at how life turns out sometimes. One reviewer picked up beautifully my message in this novel. He said the novel was about the precariousness and uncertainty of life in our times. So true! After Rafaela is a novel which hopefully describes the insecurity of our lives, the way things can turn out for us and how basically we have little control over things. But there's positive things in all this. The novel has a happy ending. I always hope for that, for everyone.
Jo Chumas
The idea for The Unforgiven came from a feeling; that my story in The Hidden wasn't finished and more needed to be said. I am deeply fascinated by family lines and generational traits. I wanted Aimee Ibrahim - my protagonist in The Hidden to have a daughter who carried on the legacy of Aimee's mother Hezba, the Egyptian Sultan's daughter. Thinking deeply about Aimee's daughter made me realise that she needed her own very powerful story, and so The Unforgiven was born.
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