Barbara Taylor Bradford Meet the Author


Barbara Taylor Bradford

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So, welcome James Paterson. Thank you. What are Book Shots? Well,

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hopefully, they're a revolution in reading and the way we look at

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books. At the least they're going to continue an evolution. They're under

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150 pages. Relatively inexpensive and hopefully impossible to put

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down. It's like one of my regular books, at like 145 pages, very

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tight. You can get on the train, you go to work, you get on the train

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going home and you have read one. So you have accomplished something

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which is kind of cool. The slogan is all thriller, no filler. Is that

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what makes you think somebody will pick up one of these rather than a

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magazine or go online? It's like reading a movie. There's no fat,

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it's all story. You know, hopefully with good characters. If you like

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Alex Cross, here is one you haven't read before but it just happens so

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quickly. Here in England we are going to start with six. It's kind

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of a category. There will be a Alex Cross, a zoo, one about the Royals

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which is fun. There is one about a big heist, a diamond heist. Recently

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I was interviewed in my office and I pulled out these eight very deep

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drawers and I have 107 of these book shots that are either finished now

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or in process and of the so 7 I would say 80 are stories that I

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created. It's like, oh, my God, the person

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that interviewed me over there went like this is insane. This is crazy,

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I said, great, this is insane. But I think for readers this is going to

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be a real boon. Because they are addictive.

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You have written some of them but like your full-length novel, you

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employ a team of co-writers, tell us a bit about how that works,

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I wrote last year over 2000 pages of outlines.

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My outlines are always three or four drafts.

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And usually when I co-write a book, I write

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an outline, for these it may be 30 pages and it is chapter by chapter.

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And what I will do with the co-writer

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is give them the outline, I will say please contribute to the

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outline because that is useful and it gets the co-writer

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The template for the BookShots is every single chapter moves

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both the characterisation and the story forward and turns on the

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meaning you can't see it, you can't feel it, and taste it

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and smell it, if it is not moving forward and I'm not interested

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characters I will say, hold it, we have lost something here.

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Then I will make suggestions and occasionally

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I did not figure out the outline correctly or more often

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If you look at them, they are smaller,

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thinner and hopefully on the trains and planes you will see

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I have read that you work seven days a week,

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52 weeks of the year, is that true, do you not

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even take a day off for Christmas day?

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Christmas I would say would be a very light day but generally

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Somebody said you are lucky if you find something you like

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to do and it is a miracle if somebody will pay you to do it.

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Doing these BookShots, it has been the most fun year

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of my life, because I love to tell stories and I was

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blocked with the books I had because I had the Alex Cross

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and it was like we don't need any more hardback,

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so there was no place for me to let my imagination go

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I will have more content than Marvel by the end of this year.

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It is little wonder that you are known as the busiest man

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in publishing, not just because of the number of books you write,

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but because of the time and the money you spend

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on championing literacy, why is that so important?

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For me, the most important thing is getting kids reading.

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Because if our kids do not become competent readers,

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especially kids at risk, how are they going

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If they get through, ten and 11 and they are not competent...

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There'll be a drag on society and the city

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and all of us, and it will make for a harder life for them

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As an individual I can't do much to solve global warming

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or health care crisis, whatever, but as an individual

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we can all get the kids in our homes reading, mostly,

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we can help the local school, we can help the local libraries,

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libraries are a big issue now and how they get funded in England.

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I just hope that people will stand up and go,

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our libraries are really important, we need the money for libraries.

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How much does your interest in this stem from the fact

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that you had a son who was a reluctant reader?

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When he was eight-years-old, that summer, we said you can read every

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And we said yes, unless you want to live in the garage because we read

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But we said this is going to be painless,

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so we've got a dozen books like Percy Jackson,

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and one of mine and by the end of the summer Jack had read

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a dozen books and his reading skills went up dramatically,

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and ultimately they have SAT scores in America

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so a perfect score in reading is 800 and he had 800 in reading,

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and he is going to an Ivy League college.

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In terms of what can happen, if you take charge

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with your children, make it your responsibility.

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There is nothing more important than a mother or

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father or grandparents to do than make sure the kids read.

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It is good you get them out with exercise but they

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You are hugely successful, a writer of

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commercial mainstream fiction, do you hanker

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after writing the great American novel?

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I have already - they are just commercial!

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On my gravestone, "James kept a lot of people up late at night."

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And BookShots are going to be one of the reasons.

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This is going to change the way people read.

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Although she says that she thinks of it as comic, the comedy is darker

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than forever. For one of our most prolific and most read authors Crock

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lat was an international bestseller and memorable film.

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Sler An exploration of some of the most troubling relationships between

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teachers and pupils and the havoc they can sometimes wreak. It strikes

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me that schools attract you, you like them, don't you? I am very

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fobbed of schools, I taught in them for 15 years and they're wonderful

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observations of community. The observation here is as I said at

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the beginning, pretty dark. It's funny, it's touching. But it goes to

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some very dark places. Both in terms of the staff and their charges. It

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does. I found that schools are a kind of perpetual stage for tragedy

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and farce and everything in between. So many things can happen. It's an

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unpredictable environment. And that isn't just because of setting, it's

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because of the age of those involved. You are talking about

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adolescents going through crises, some imagined, some real and

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relationships with teachers which are inevitably delicate things. I

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think so, yes. It's an intense stage of life, adolescence, you feel

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things very strongly. You can experience experience things for the

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first time and they can be powerful that they're completely create an

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upheaval in your life. I found it interesting to be part of but it's

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daunting as well because later I realised as a teacher you can really

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influence somebody's life and people remember you and they remember what

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you said and if it was unfair they will resent it in a way that an

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adult I don't think would resent. Some bad things happen in this book,

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I will not talk about what they are, it's safe to say you are led into

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territory that's become more familiar to us in the last two or

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three years, allegations of sexual impropriety and misconduct and so on

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and emotional trauma with staff and pupils, did you know that's what you

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were getting into when you started? Not entirely, no. I think what

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happened was I started off with a germ of an idea in this book and

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then in real life Operation Yewtree started to unfold and I found there

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was an uncomfortable crossover in what I was writing about and what

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happened in the world. It became much darker and more topical than I

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thought it would be. You touch on the question in this book of

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atmospheres that can develop, rather hysterical ones leading to a kind of

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almost a witch-hunt atmosphere, or a territory where there are false

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accusations and difficulties and great damage done as a consequence.

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It's something that clearly fascinates you, the unfairness that

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is lurking there under the surface. Yes, I think so. Also the past and

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how the past affects the present. And how memory is not inherently a

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reliable tool, particularly when dealing with experiences of trauma,

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how memory can be affected by all kind of things happening in the

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present day and how memory can sometimes be both unreliable and

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frightening. The main character has been a teacher for a long time, this

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has happened to him again and again. There's that interesting sense of

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having seen generations of pupils coming through in his case to learn

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classics or not to learn, first of all, you clearly adore him. I am

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very fond of him. We are not entirely the same person but I might

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have grown into him if I stayed at the school in which I taught for

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long enough. He's flawed in a lot of ways but ultimately he has a good

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heart. He is warm, he is affectionate. He loves his job. He

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is aware of the consequences of the job that he does. He is aware that

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he is affecting young lives and he has a strong sense of duty. I also

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like the fact that he is a bit of a subversive. That he has various

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prejudices which is unaware of, he has favourites and he is unaware of

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this. He is bad with technology. He likes the odd sneaky fag outside

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when he shouldn't have. One of the interesting things about the way you

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construct the narrative here is that you have got an older man talking

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but you have youngsters as well so they're inhabiting different -

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they're in the same place in the school. That's right. I had the

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benefit of being in that environment for long enough to pick up a lot of

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voices, to remember the way teenager boys talked, the way older members

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of staff talked, and so I have borrowed from colleagues, from

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pupils who are now ex-pupils and watch the whole process with joy

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from Twitter and Facebook. You are a great Twitter user? I am, yes. A lot

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of boys say I remember this and read this book and often they turn up to

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readings and of course they all think I am writing about them, which

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isn't quite true, but there are certainly little vinets. It's a dark

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story but you are having fun. You are a successful author, widely

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read, are you irritated when people say you are the Chocolate woman?

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Does it sometimes hang around your neck? Inevitably a little. I am very

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grateful for the response to it and the fact that people loved it and I

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love it too and I am still writing about those characters. What I find

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irssome, if anything, is that assumption I will do the same thing.

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I could go in almost any direction and have done, I am lucky in that

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sense. You are and you take what I might call the authorial

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responsibility seriously. You are speaking up for authors and recently

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you talked about not going to one nameless literary Festival because

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they were expecting all kind of things and exclusive contracts and

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saying, hang on, authors deserve to be treated in a better way. It's not

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just about me, about me wanting money or special treatment,

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completely the opposite. I would like is for people to see writing as

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a job, it's a profession. And to treat authors professionally and

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this is particularly important for young authors who have a real

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difficulty sometimes in getting to Festivals because of what it's going

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to cost them. They don't make much money writing, contrary to public

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opinion. Absolutely. The average salary for professional author is

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?11 thousand a year, according to the Society of Authors, this isn't

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much, not many of us get to write for a living and make a reasonable

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living out of it. You are an author who conforms I think to one of the

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wonderful stereotypes, you work in a shed at the bottom of the garden. I

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do, yes. You enter a different world when you are there? Shed world is a

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specific space. It's psychologically important for an author to have a

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work space, particularly somebody like me who was on a timetable for a

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long time, it's difficult to manage time and difficult to get into the

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psychological head space of writing. So I think it's important to create

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a place where you work and nothing else happens, whether it's a shed,

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whether it's a desk, when I was just starting off I didn't have a desk,

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so I had two objects that I would put in front of my laptop when I

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wanted to write and that created the work space, wherever it was.

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Sometimes I am working on two at once, in fact nearly always because

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I have books I write on sunny days and book I write on dark days. This

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was a dark day book? Definitely a dark day book. Although it has some

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glimpses of sunshine in there. I should say it's fun, as well. Joanne

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Harris, thank you very much. Well, this is about as much snow as

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I can offer in this weather forecast. It's going to be an

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incredibly mild Christmas, pretty windy too, especially across

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Scotland, particularly Boxing Day. It will be stormy there. This is the

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next storm,

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