The madness continues... We hope you all are recovered from your New Year's merriment and are well on your way to achieving your resolutions for 2013!
Today, our lovely guest is J.A. Clement... Get ready to laugh! :-)
JournalJabber: Hi,
there! Can you tell everyone out there a
little bit about yourself?
J.A. Clement: Hola! Well, let’s see. I come from a large-ish
family in the North of England. My family is all mad so there have always been
a lot of stories to tell, and we love telling them! I’ve always been obsessed
with words, as far as I can remember, both
reading and writing them, and in all honesty it seems odd to me that everyone
doesn’t want to.
JJ: You have a great
series, On Dark Shores, out
there. What is a good summary of this
series?
JAC: Oh Lord, I’m rubbish at summaries! (But thank you for
the compliment!)
On Dark Shores is
the story of Nereia and her journey. It starts on a small scale in the first
couple of novellas, as she tries to free herself and her beautiful younger
sister Mary from the hard, threatening situation in which they are trapped, but
the choices she makes back in the little town of Scarlock set her feet on a
path that will take her across a world threatened by war, and possibly farther.
It’s not going to be a short series, I should add...
JJ: You live in
England. Do you ever find it difficult
to connect to us Americans at times? :-)
JAC: Do you know, for the most part I absolutely love
working with Americans! We Brits are a bit cynical and snide for the most part—not
deliberately or individually, it’s just our base setting. We can sometimes be a bit sniffy about
America, and when I went to the US a couple of years ago, I was absolutely
blown away because I suddenly realised that we are sniffy about it because we
imagine the US as being like the UK but bigger, more rumbustious, and without
that vague sense of apologetic embarrassment which we would refer to as
patriotism if we didn’t cringe at the vague concept.
In fact, I loved the US because you guys seem to be really
genuinely lovely. The customer service is gobsmackingly good, the people were
really friendly and nice, and I came away thinking “I want to go back there
again!” The only thing is the language, which trips me up on a regular basis. Lesson number One from America: grits are not
the same thing as hash browns—and I still haven’t found out what you guys
understand the word “jumpers” to mean...
 |
| An American Jumper... :-) |
JJ: How long have you
wanted to be a writer?
JAC: For-ever. I don’t know how not to be one; I just never
expected to get picked up by a publisher. Do you ever get that, when you just know something? It doesn’t happen to me
often, but it’s usually right. I knew I would publish a book, but I also knew
I’d never be traditionally published and as that was the only way it happened
back then, I was a bit confused by that. Decided not to worry about it and just
concentrate on getting a chunk of stuff written, which it turns out was not a
silly thing to do!
JJ: This is the
second year you have participated in Christmas
Lites. What made you come back?
JAC: Are you kidding? The people, first, and because it’s a
cause I believe in. Christmas should be a time of sharing and love and joy;
these days it’s fallen into must-have commercialism and stress for many people.
If you’re in a loving family you can minimalise the friction, but if your
relationship is not healthy in the first place, it’s a recipe for disaster.
No one should be made to feel less than they are or have to
live in fear. If I can help by writing a story (which is something I love doing
anyway) for a book whose royalties will continue to go to NCADV and help these
families year after year, that’s a real privilege. Just try to keep me out!
JJ: You went back in
time for your story in Christmas Lites. What was your inspiration for the story?
JAC: On Dark Shores is
a bit dark and gritty. I’ve been thinking for a while that it would be good to
write something related to it that was a little lighter, partly to show that
I’m not just a misery-merchant, and partly because my characters have had a bit
of a rough ride for a while and a snippet of something kinder will remind me
and my readers that brighter, better times are possible. I can’t write future stuff, as that will
constrain the story going forward, though.
When I thought about what to write for CL2, it seemed an
ideal opportunity. A little further
along the path in On Dark Shores
there will be a detail which relates to this tale, and this little slice of
backstory was warm and joyful. “The Locket” is set in Nereia’s childhood, on
the occasion of her very first participation in her family’s Yuletide
ceremonies. She is just six years old, the only child of doting parents, and
living in a very comfortable house. I
really enjoyed writing it, actually!
JJ: Any Christmas
traditions that you love?
JAC: My family makes our own advent calendars. For every December
day in the run up to Christmas, we fold a piece of A4 paper so that it is A5
with 2 doors to open, then we decorate the outside. Inside we draw a picture of
something funny that happened to someone in the family during the year. All 24
are stuck up on the kitchen wall and a big one for Christmas Day showing a
Nativity scene with all the family pets in the stable. Every day the person who
is the butt of that day’s joke opens the calendar, which is usually an occasion
of mild embarrassment and much sniggering. After Christmas we take them all
down and bag them up to go into the loft. We have sets of calendars going back
to before I was born, and it’s a wonderful record of our family life. I
absolutely love that we have that.
JJ: What was the best
present you ever gave or received?
JAC: We have a bit of a history of prank presents and for
reasons best known to ourselves, they are usually put under the tree with a tag
reading “From Sir Stanley Livingstone.” The first year my sister’s new
boyfriend came over to ours for Christmas. We had been making some rather
tremendous furry cushions for my young nieces and had leftover scraps of fur in
leopard skin print and also in white fur with big purple spots on, so in the
grip of that Christmas silliness that hits in about 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve
when you’ve finished all the sensible pressies and really should be going to
bed, my mum and I carefully constructed two pairs of horrendous thong-type
knickers from the fur. Then we packaged them up as “His ‘n’ Hers Luxury Jungle
Pants,” set on cardboard and wrapped in cellophane, with an endorsement from
some famous politician of the time saying “I’ve never even been in a jungle,
but I’m never without my Luxury Jungle Pants.” Then we put it under the tree,
carefully wrapped and signed from Stanley Livingstone.
My sister opened the package and of course, great hilarity
ensued. The cool bit was her new bloke’s reaction; at first he was totally at a
loss for words as his family never did anything that daft, and we all thought
“Oh dear, we might have freaked him out...” Then all of a sudden he roared with
laughter and joined in, even going so far as to impress the lot of us by
donning his Luxury Jungle Pants over his jeans and wearing them for the rest of
the afternoon. Kudos for stylish reaction, that man!
JJ: What do you want
under your tree this year?
JAC: A new house! We’re moving out of our house on 21st Dec
and there will be a bit of a gap where we’re renting for a month or so before
we can move into the next one. At the moment we appear to be a bit mired in the
negotiations and our move-out date is getting awfully near... In all honesty,
there isn’t anything I need and not a lot that I want (yes, I am an awkward
one!) so I have my lot primed to get me vouchers for paint, DIY, etc. And a bag
of chocolate stem gingers, of course!
JJ: What can we
expect to see from you in the future?
JAC: Well, until I move, not much writing is going to happen,
but there will be odds and sods which are currently in editing. I’ve just
released “A Sprig of Holly,” my story from CL1, as a freebie in an effort to
raise awareness of the anthologies themselves (there are links to both
CL1&2 in the Afterword), so I’m hoping that will help.
I also had a slightly harsh moment where I realised that an
80-thousand word chunk of Book 3 of ODS needs cutting, as it is all backstory
and will only slow the pace and confuse people. Harsh! But fortunately I have
plan B in the shape of my Parallels
series, which is where I’m putting short stories and side stories and backstories
set in the world of On Dark Shores.
So, that 80k chunk is currently with my editor, as it should stand together by
itself, and will be released in the New Year. It details the first part of the
flight of the Mother from the Shantar Mountains, so while you lot are waiting
for Book 3, there is something to keep you
amused... That was a bit of a low blow, though—I thought I was nearly
there with Book 3 and now it’s back to 15 thousand words! It’s the right
decision though, I think.
Other than that, I’m giving a hand to author Dulcie Feenan
with her humorous short Christmas story set in an English parish, and watching
with awe and a little jealousy at the reviews garnered by my colleague Jo
Edwards, whose book “Work Wife Balance” I’m about halfway through and cringing
and giggling at in equal measure (reminds me of “The Office” in fact).
But mostly for the moment I’m trying to organise moving out,
renting over Christmas, visits to my family and my partner’s family, working
some of the days in between, and hopefully buying a house at the end of it! Oh,
and Christmas too.
But AFTER that, I’ll be
back to the writing again—as Roger McGough would say, no peas for the wicked…
JJ: We hope your move has gone smoothly and you're well on your way to the new place! Thanks for the laughs!
About the author: J.A. Clement lives near London with her partner and as yet, no
dogs. She has been writing her fantasy series, On Dark Shores, for
some years but only uploaded the first book The Lady in 2011.
Book 2 in the series, The Other Nereia, is
currently available as a single (and will also be packaged with The
Lady in omnibus form) and book 3, The Mother, is half
written.
The first paperback, On Dark Shores: Omnibus Edition is due out in the next couple of months and there's a deal of
story yet to be told...
JAC works fulltime, commutes farther than might be
considered strictly necessary, and would tell you what she does in her free time
if she could remember the last time free time occurred.
She loves meeting readers and hearing feedback, so do find
her on http://jaclement.wordpress.com, or email her at jaclement.ondarkshores at gmail dot com
and introduce yourself!
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