It feels like the longest time since I've done a giveaway so I am super happy to include a giveaway in this author interview. A while ago you may remember that I reviewed Pieces of Sky in a round up of children and YA fiction I've been reading.
I also had the opportunity to interview Trinity Doyle and I leapt at the opportunity, having really enjoyed the book. It is really nice to be able to connect with an author whose work you have enjoyed and ask them questions. I hope you enjoy the questions I posed.
I sent through the following questions to Trinity and these were her responses:
How has Pieces
of Sky changed from the very first sentence you wrote to the finished book
you now have?
I think the
easiest way to answer this is to say how it hasn’t changed. Well, Lucy, Evan, Steffi and Cam are still there. Pieces
of Sky underwent extensive rewrites as I, essentially, learnt to write. It
always began from the same place: fear of the water, but spun out in so many
different directions. With each draft I felt it getting closer to the actual
story but I had to sacrifice a lot to end up with the final book.
Who is your
favourite character in the book and why?
No! I love them
all. Last time I answered this question I said Steffi but this time I’ll go with Cam. Cam was the big brother I
always wanted and I cruelly took away from Lucy. I love stories where an absent
character still has so much weight, and I hoped I achieved this here. Cam, to
me, is a bottomless well—a place where I
can just keep falling. He’s a fantastic
muddle of contradictions from the leader to the layabout to the obsessive. He’s the kind of person you don’t think values anything but in truth values
things fiercely. I wish everyone could’ve known him.
What is your
favourite line/s from the book?
*fetches book*
This is one of my favourite moments…
The Sunbird hits the freeway and it’s just us
and the road for the next four hours. The day is hot and we drive with the
windows down, the wind whipping in at us, and the stereo up. Despite the heat,
Evan’s wearing jeans—black jeans and a dark green T-shirt—but he’s kicked
off his shoes, bare feet on the pedals.
I stick my feet on the dash and lean
back in my seat. I get a surge of something: freedom, independence, growing up—it sings
in my bones.
Which
character gave you the most difficulty to capture in words?
Alix. Alix was a
side character I had no idea what to do with. She started off as Steffi’s friend but was too similar to her, so I made
her a swimmer but then I couldn’t work out why
she was friends with Steffi. Then I made her Lucy’s friend and a swimmer and she began to make sense to me. Once she felt
real the story just seemed to jump into this other more realistic space.
You have had
a lot of different jobs, how have they influenced you as a writer?
This is a tough
one! I think in my different creative endeavours I’ve always been hunting for my voice, something that felt true to me.
Many things I’ve done felt like an imitation of
something else. I always had the hope that through exploring different styles I’d find mine but when that didn’t happen I struggled to continue. Writing is the
closest I’ve come so far.
What book do
you wish you had written? or What book do you read again and again?
I reread a bunch
of books this year and one of the standouts was Hunting and Gathering by
Anna Galvada. The story is essentially about a bunch of lonely people finding
each other and becoming a family—and I just love
that. I finished it and thought I want to do that! And that’s pretty much what I’m trying to accomplish in my current project.
Can you share
a standout moment for you in the process of writing Pieces of Sky?
When I was
trying to figure Evan out. I was listening to the radio at work and Polaris
by Jimmy Eat World came on. I stopped whatever I was doing and just sat there
because that song was him. Even though it was nothing to do with him—and he has mixed feelings about Jimmy Eat World—he was just completely in it. I listened to
that track on repeat for a long time after that.
At what point
of the process did you start to think that the published book would become a
reality? Do you call yourself a writer when people ask you what you do, when
did you start doing that?
I always hoped
for this story to be published but it didn’t start looking like it could actually happen until I’d gotten to the querying agent stage—that’s when I
believed I had something publishable.
I read an
interview with a writer, can’t recall who,
where they said to stop calling yourself an aspiring writer, if you write then
you’re a writer. I tried to own it after
that. It’s something that’s very personal for me though so I struggle to
talk about it, I tend to crack a few jokes then turn the conversation back on
them.
As a writer
and an aspiring writer what were the things that kept/keep you going on the days
when it feels like an impossible dream?
Other writers. I’ve been lucky to have found some wonderful
writing partners and we all just care about each other’s work so much. Having someone else take what you’re doing seriously is a massive motivator.
What practise
has most influenced the development of your own unique voice as a writer?
Good writing is
all about honesty and honesty of self is the hardest thing to put on the page.
Something that’s laughable but I think had a great
baring on my writing was the years I spent on livejournal. In what I call my
vague emo poetry I was learning to name what I was feeling and to put those
feelings into a public space. That practice meant that I was a lot closer to my
emotional self when I came to my manuscript and I’d already dealt, to a degree, with that fear of being seen.
I loved reading these answers, I would love to sit down and have a face to face talk to Trinity! Thanks so much Trinity for answering these questions, your humility as an author and person really shine through and I look forward to reading your next book.
If you enjoy YA fiction I'm sure this will be a book you will like. If you want a chance to win your own copy (NZ and Aus readers only, sorry) then please leave a comment below - how about you tell me: a favourite line from a book, the title you'd chose for a book if you wrote one or what you are reading at the moment.
Entries close Monday 6th of July and I'll email the winner after that.
love you more than a parcel in the post xxx
