Interview with Valerie Poore

Continuing my series of interviews with authors, today I have an interview with Valerie Poore. Val is a writer of both fact and fiction, and adult and children's books. She's a friendly and supportive author. I've been following her for a few years now.

INTERVIEW WITH VALERIE POORE



Hello, Val! Welcome to my blog.

Maria, thank you so much for inviting me here. It's lovely to be a guest on your blog as I've often enjoyed reading your guest posts before, so it's great to be here in the hot seat myself!

Thanks! Please introduce yourself

I like this question as it reminds me of giving presentations when I worked in marketing in South Africa. Always introduce yourself, they said. And half the time I'd forget and only remember half way through. Luckily, my audience used to laugh - well, mostly they did, so in some ways it was a good ice-breaker. But then introductions often are, aren't they?

Well, then who and what am I? I'm an indie writer living and working in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I was born in London, grew up in the West Country, spent 20 years in South Africa and moved here permanently in 2001. My day job is teaching academic and business writing skills to students, graduates and staff at a Dutch university. That probably doesn't sounds much fun, does it? Actually, I really enjoy it and have lovely students. But, my own writing is something of a welcome break from teaching as I can be more adventurous and play with the language more than I can when I am trying to give students good tips, rules and tools for writing decent sentences.

Fiction writing is a great escape from reality :)

Where does your inspiration come from?

Mostly, it just comes from the world around me. I've been one of life's bit of flotsam in a way. I've washed up on more than a few shores in my time and for that I'm very grateful as it's given me the opportunity to satisfy my ongoing curiosity about people and places. When I was a child, I was fascinated by history, but I think now that it's really always been people who have interested me and that when I was young and living in the UK, learning how people lived in the past was what intrigued me. Then when I went to live in South Africa in my twenties, I had a whole bunch of new people to observe and learn about, so the history part moved onto the back burner. Since I've been pretty much settled in the Netherlands, and also spent three years commuting from Belgium, the life and people in these two countries have provided still more food for my curiosity. I love watching, listening and learning, and then trying to make sense of different customs and cultures in my own way. I think that's also why most of my books are memoirs.

I'm sure all that travelling has given great insight in different types of cultures and human nature

Tell us about your latest book.

My latest published book is Walloon Ways: Three years as a weekend Belgian, the fourth in my memoir series, and this one is about those three years as a weekender on a barge in Belgium. Actually, I was planning to live there full time, but I couldn't get decent paying work in Brussels, so I travelled up to Rotterdam on Mondays and back again every weekend. But even though I still worked in the Netherlands, I loved my time in Belgium and have very fond recollections and memories of the country, so I decided to write a book about them.





My current work in progress, however, is a novel set in South Africa and then I'm in the planning stages of a period novel set on the Dutch waterways during the second world war. It will be a sort of prequel to my first novel, The Skipper's Child, which is set in 1962.

Are there any characters in your books that are based on real people?

Oh yes, I based The Skipper's Child on my Dutch Partner's family background. He grew up on a barge and the family members in my book are very much inspired by his parents and sisters although the story is complete fiction.





In my second novel, How to Breed Sheep, Geese and English Eccentrics, several of the characters are based on my own family (especially the more eccentric ones) but not all of them, and the main character, Maisie, is not me. I must admit that this book is a sort of cross between a memoir and a novel as so much of it is fact.



I love that title! :)

How long did it take you to write your last book?

Walloon Ways took me about six months to write, and then another four of five months to edit. What tends to happen is that when I make changes, I make new mistakes, so I have to proofread several times to try and get it right. My novels have all taken much longer than that though, even up to two years to complete.

Yes, I've found editing can seem like a never-ending process!

Do you do your own proofreading or use a professional? Anyone you’d recommend?

I like doing my own editing, although I'm open to suggestions - I just prefer to have the final say in what I do. However, I'd love to use a professional proofreader. Unfortunately, my income can't justify it yet, so I use Beta readers and I have English teacher friends who proofread it for me, but even after that, I edit and proofread over and over again. If I could afford to use a proofreader, I'd go for @ProofreadJulia, who I know from Twitter. She is so professional and has a great reputation.

How much research do you do when writing a book?

For my four memoirs I've only had to check accuracy of times, dates and events, etc. (memory can be fickle!), but for my novels, I've had to do quite a bit of research, especially for The Skipper's Child, when I needed to know a lot about the waterways and how they operated in the 1960s.

What’s your favourite genre to read?

I'll read almost anything, but oddly enough, my absolute favourite is Detective fiction. If I have a Donna Leon or a Deborah Crombie, you might as well not bother talking to me until I've finished. I just love a good crime novel, but I prefer mental puzzles to gore. I used to like Ian Rankin, but gave up on him when his books became very graphic in the descriptions of the murders and the sick minds behind them. I just couldn't cope with them. That said, I also love memoirs, particularly sailing and cruising memoirs or those that deal with moving to and living in other countries (those people again!). It's sort of why I started writing my own.

Do you listen to music when you write? If so, what type?

I can actually write anywhere at any time, so if I'm on a train, for instance, I don't listen to music, and if I'm at home, my partner is often watching YouTube films while I write, so I only get to listen to music when I'm alone. When that does happen, I listen to rock music. I love the music of the seventies and also the nineties but when writing I tend to listen most to JJ Cale. His music is wonderful to write by, and to drive by too.

Apart from writing, what are your favourite pastimes?

Working on my barge. I am never happier than when I'm doing jobs and maintenance that will keep it the thing of historic beauty that it is. I have an almost unhealthy love for my boat, the Vereeniging. Oh and I like playing the guitar and violin too, but I'm not very good as I don't practise enough. I just enjoy it tremendously.

Thanks so much for being a guest here, Val. I'm looking forward to finding time to read some of your books!

Thanks again, Maria! This was fun to do and it was a great selection of questions. I hope my answers give you an idea of who I am and what I write.

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Author links:

Blog: http://vallypee.blogspot.nl
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vallypee
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/river...
Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Valerie-Poore...