This will be the last confession of 2017. I’ll wait while you all breathe a collective sigh of relief disappointment. But don’t worry! The authory confessions will be back in the new year, with plenty more sinners begging forgiveness. Today we have Jo Zebedee, author of Waters and the Wild, here to bare her rotten soul.
- I write science fiction and am really bad at some aspects of science. One of my worst is getting muddled about the effects of gravity. If it’s low gravity does that mean more bone density or less? If it’s a gas planet is that more or less gravity than a smaller planet. I do get there (I have a science for dummies book, and long suffering science friends who take questions) but it can lead to interesting first drafts….
- I once wrote a smutty flash fiction story about a nun and some waves that might have been a little more… corporeal… than water normally is. And slightly equine…. Anyhow, I didn’t mean to write a smutty story. If I had meant to, it would have been just fantastic. But I’d had a few drinks and I came up with what I considered to be masterful, posted, went to bed. I got up in the morning to comments and sniggers and … I was relatively new to the forum, so that made it worse. On the plus side – at least I made a splash!
(Rob – I think everyone should join me in a petition to get Jo to share this smutty nun story)
- My other writing sin is possessive apostrophes. I really struggle with them, although I’m getting better. Also, giving some of my characters slightly Northern Irish dialect when they’re not supposed to be. Mostly my copy editor, Sam, catches them and lets me know!
- I’m incredibly face-blind which means, essentially, I’m lucky to recognise my own mother. I used to work in a medieval castle that is a big tourist draw and we used to get quite a few celebrities through, pretty much none of whom they recognised. Which is how I came to threaten Paul McCann with his kids being asked to leave if they climbed on the cannons again…. 🙂
- Little known fact – I can juggle reasonably well. I can juggle balls, and chuck them under my legs, and manage a few turns with clubs. I studied drama at university and one of our tutors was a street artist who ran a group for learning circus skills. I tried the unicycle, too, but was terrible at it.
- When I was 14 I wrote my first novel – an environmentally aware piece, a la Whale Nation. And I subbed it to Jonathon Cape, one of the biggest niche publishers in the UK. They were really lovely about it, sending me a letter and telling me to keep going and not give up. Oh, and that they wouldn’t be publishing my delightful piece, either.
- One for my mum, this. Apparently in my first sports day I ran the wrong way down the sports track. I was 4. It summed up my athletic prowess for life.
- Which brings me to my last one, and another sports one… I decided to try ski-ing. Now, I have odd feet which don’t have great balance and have ankles that crack and give way when I try to run, let alone ski. I got to the top of the hill, using the chair lift (badly, those things are lethal) and, when I tried to go down, both ankles cracked. I was left to walk down, wearing orange sallopettes that everyone could see while the entire school skied sedately past me. I’ve never tried it since. (Ice skating didn’t go notably better….)
Jo is the author of five books: a Space Opera trilogy, based on the fictional world of Abendau; an alien invasion novel, Inish Carraig, set in Belfast and Waters and the Wild, a psychological thriller with added fae, also based in her native Northern Ireland. She does lots of other things, too, like running a business, being a mum, and is interesting in the concept of human cloning for frazzled people.
More about her can be found on www.jozebedee.com and she can be followed on twitter under @jozebwrites.
Amy was five when she vanished during a family trip, only to be found hours later, clutching a golden acorn and claiming to have visited fairies. Now she’s eighteen, and the fairies are calling her back.
While attending a wedding deep in the Antrim glens, the voices grow darker and their song takes hold. Not sure if she’s mad or if the fairies are real, she flees, drawing well-meaning Simon into her fairy-fuelled road trip.
To escape their hold, she must confront long-hidden secrets, and find a truth which may not be hers to unearth.
But, even then, the fairies may not let her go…
