Writing Fear – Carol Maginn
My Fears by Carol Maginn
I grew up in a warm, secure house in the suburbs of Liverpool, terrified of a big old wardrobe. The attic was also scary, as was the whole house in darkness. It didn’t help childhood fears to grow up Catholic, at least in those days. We knew about eternal damnation, the torments of hell, and the evil cunning of Satan, all by the age of about seven.
Fortunately there were things that could be done. Prayer, mostly. Our Lady was on our side, and sympathetic if prayed to. As was Jesus. And it was worth bearing in mind that, as a Catholic child, we were lucky enough to each have a personal guardian angel. They were invisible, but helpful. I recall a poster on our classroom wall which showed two children approaching a fork in the road and two diverging paths. On one path there is a car accident. A guardian angel is steering the children towards the other, safe path. Which is good, obviously.
There are many things to fear in the real world, of course, and not much we can do about most of them. The attraction of fiction is that we’re able to create our own reality and project our own world and inhabitants. The problems we need to solve are ones we’ve set ourselves. There’s something wonderful, as both a writer and a reader, about being able to enter an alternative, interior reality.
But I’ve never been very keen on creepy. When I wrote my third novel, The Case of the Adelphi (not yet published) it was originally planned as a straightforward historical ghost story, in the tradition of Wilkie Collins’ Haunted Hotel. The nineteenth century was fascinated by the supernatural. The Ouiji board, intended to allow spirits to communicate with the living, was invented then, and mediums of every sort flourished. The Ghost Club was a respectable, research-based society of which Charles Dickens was a member. But Adelphi ended up as something rather different – more character-driven and speculative.
My second novel, Daniel Taylor, is based on the premise that two men arrive in Rome on the same day with the same name. One is an expert in finding lost objects, hired by a Russian oligarch to find the ring of Diocetian. The other is a burnt-out advice worker in Rome for a two week holiday. Their identities become entangled in dangerous ways. The advice worker, who is confused and scared quite a lot of the time, is the character I most identify with. I was living in Rome while I wrote this book, and I transferred a lot of my own fears and uncertainties onto him.
And in the world of the novel, if not in the real world, we can open the wardrobe, peer into the attic, and wander round the house at dead of night…can’t we…?
About the author
Born in the Gothic city of Liverpool, brought up in the seaside resort of New Brighton, Carol has lived in Manchester, Sheffield, Rome, and Edinburgh.
She’s worked as a waitress, auctioneer’s clerk, bookseller, lawyer and teacher, and has always read and written.
Her favourite writers are too numerous to list, but include Hilary Mantel, JM Coetzee, Raymond Carver and John Banville.
She walks, swims, dances occasional salsa, and enjoys both cooking and eating.
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