Author Interview: Frances Gilbert

Welcome to our series of Author Interviews, where Charlie Bray chats to a variety of Indie writers about their lives and their books.

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Today I am delighted to interview author, Frances Gilbert.

Frances, tell us about yourself

I was born in the UK and emigrated to the US with my husband and family.  Although I have a degree in economics I am really a right brained person living a great deal in my imagination. Stories, family stories, old favorites from children’s literature have always sustained me. Sharing books with my children and grandchildren has been a continuing joy.

How many books have you published so far?

I have published eight children’s books, two adult novellas and a CD of children’s stories.

How long have you been writing?

I didn’t start writing until a certain sign post birthday when my daughter said, “If you don’t do it now you never will.” Before that I had always written scraps and told stories, to entertain myself mostly!

Tell us a bit about the novels

In my novels I try to juxtapose ordinary daily life with uncertainties and insecurities in the characters that result in a boiling up of emotions with tragic consequences.  They usually have a great deal of domestic detail and are set in quintessential English villages and towns.

What inspired you to write them?

I really don’t know, sometimes a dream or an idea just appears in my mind and won’t be silenced. Sometimes when I am without a good mystery to read I entertain myself by trying to write one, then I can have it all play out exactly as I want, which is very satisfying.

She Should Have Come for Me. What is the relevance of the title?

The dog is feeling guilt at having engineered such a tragic outcome, so she feels that the woman ‘She’ in the story should have punished her. I am intrigued to know how others interpreted the title. It is always so interesting to know what readers see in a story, often themes or interpretations that I didn’t think of myself.

Do you plan out your book or does it find its own direction?

I never plan the books. I start with an image which runs in my head like a movie and then I just type.

The story takes its own path. In Where is She Now? the character Anna just inserted herself into the story, I had not planned to have an alter ego and I don’t really like that kind of story but she just appeared, I found my fingers typing her name – it was quite creepy. A psychic read that book and said I had tapped into a past, true event , which was even more creepy!

What is the main message of your books?

Most of my stories deal with relationships, and the enduring mystery of married relationships!  Maybe the message is that life is a struggle sometimes and our actions can have dramatic and unexpected outcomes.

What are some of your creative influences?  Were there any specific ones that inspired a particular book?

Story telling has always been a part of my life from stories told in bomb shelters to shared reading in the family. My father was a great story teller and my mother had a fund of poems that she could produce to fit any occasion, that’s how you kept kids quiet in the ‘olden days’.  Houses have always inspired me; they are characters in their own right. I love old houses with histories and secrets, they speak to me.

There are not specific prompts for a particular story, rather a generalized feeling for history, houses and tangled relationships.

What do you enjoy most and least about writing?

I love creating place and time, I love how the slip of time backwards and forwards can be used to understand a character or strengthen a plot.  I like being able to manipulate characters, and I love creating a setting that takes me back to my childhood, the scents and smells, creosote and privet, warm brick walls, the smell of ironing and fires, my grandmother’s house.

For very young readers I write to be read aloud.  The flow and rhythm of language that pulls little listeners in is probably what I enjoy most in all of my writing.

I hate proofing and trying to organize the computer stuff. I have a huge dread of writing the naughty bits, without which they tell me no book will sell!

Any advice for aspiring authors?

Write for you, not what you think the market wants. Write and then put the stories away for a while. If you still like them when you revisit them put them out there. I am so grateful for the opportunity to put my book  out there on IndieTribe

Do you have any future projects in the works?

I am writing another psychological mystery, Murder at Beckets, and am trying a Scottish mystery for young readers, which is fun but I need to brush up on Scottish history since it goes back in time. I am also writing ‘short shorts’ two page stories for a short story collection. That was a writing group challenge and I am really enjoying it.

Thank you so much, Frances, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you and I know our readers will find your comments very helpful.

 

I reviewed Frances’s book She Should Have Come For Me recently and just could not put it down.

I heartily recommend you to give it a read:

It is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

 

 

I am also reviewing Frances’s book Where is She Now? soon.

Why don’t you grab a copy and then you can compare your thoughts with mine.

It is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk