Hello everyone!
I hope you all have had an incredible November, and I hope you are all ready for more author interviews!
This week, I am thrilled to share this interview with the talented and humorous Carol Carman. I met Carol through SPFBO9 – Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off, where I discovered her book, Twicetime. I don’t know that I have laughed as heartily or as often reading a book as I have reading this fantasy novel.
Thank you , Carol, for joining me. I am so excited to get to talk to you about your books, particularly Twicetime, so let’s get to it.
•Is Twicetime your first book?
This is my second book. Although it’s set in the same location as my first, Gingerbread Children, a standalone novel.
•Would you please give me a brief synopsis of Twicetime?
The Frankenstein story gets a new twist as an aristocratic, lady scientist fights to save her ancestral home, her loved ones and her own life from the clutches of her soon-to-be-ex-husband. She is aided by – amongst others – a female blacksmith, her elderly witch aunt and a re-animated bodyguard built from the best bits of what the butler brought back from the cemetery. Two noblemen make sure that all’s fair in love and war as the aristocracy and the workers rub shoulders with the resurrected in a battle for supremacy, property and true love, by way of drinking, gambling, murder, magic and morals.
• You mention a battle for supremacy, property, and true love. Could you elaborate on the central conflicts in Twicetime and how they drive the plot forward?
Let’s just say that – as in real life – it’s all a question of wants. Some of the characters are in relationships, some want to be in a relationship and some want to be out of a relationship. Some characters have property and money, some want to have those things and some want to stop them getting them. Some characters just want a quiet life; some characters want others to have no life at all. Will everybody – will anybody – get what they want?
•Tell me, what inspired you to write Twicetime?
Many years ago, I attended a writing course in Cambridge run by the screenwriter and playwright Nick Warburton, and one of the exercises he gave us to do was to look at a well-known story from the point of view of one of its lesser characters. For me, it was as if someone had unlocked the door to a whole new world, and since then I’ve been fascinated by looking at fairy tales, folk tales and well-known stories from a different angle. Some of these tales (or at least a version of them) are so familiar to us that they barely register any more. Frankenstein is one of those, and I suspect the majority of people only know the story from the film adaptations rather than the book – as I did. The idea suddenly came to me: What if Frankenstein had been a woman? Why would she need to build a monster? And the answer came: to protect herself from another monster. So, I took the idea to my then writing partner and we generated a 30-minute pilot episode radio script which covered the start of the story. Unfortunately, it was rejected, but I liked the concept so much that I wanted to write the rest of the story.
•Twicetime combines elements of fantasy, science fiction, and romance. What do you hope readers will take away from this genre-blending story, and why did you choose to merge these genres?
To be honest, once I’d asked the question ‘What if Frankenstein had been a woman?’ the science fiction was already from Mary Shelley’s story, as were the resurrection and the blind man in his cottage in the woods. So, I had to have a scientist, Rosa – named for Rosalind Franklin, whose work on discovering the structure of DNA for so many years was overlooked in favour of Crick and Watson.
Fantasy is my default setting anyway, and I wanted to write another book, which would have a link to my first one (Gingerbread Children), but with a completely different set of characters, and the link is that the witch in Twicetime was trained at The University of Nature (the setting for Gingerbread Children).
As for the romance element, Rosa couldn’t just be a scientist; if characters were only one thing, they wouldn’t be very true to life, believable or engaging for the reader, which is what I try to make all my characters. There must be motivation in everything a character does, whether it be romance, revenge, exasperation, altruism, pity or any of the thousand things that prompt people to do what they do every day.
I hope that people get so absorbed in the story that they don’t think about whether it’s genre-blending. I didn’t think about it, when I was writing it. I only want readers to have a good time with the book, get what they want out of it and tell their friends to buy it!
•Is the main character, or one of the main characters, inspired by someone you know in real life?
Not directly, but I do know that Frances, the witch, has a dry humour and down-to-earth attitude not dissimilar to my mum’s.
•Tell me about the conflict between Lady Rosalind and Lord Rudolf.
They were forced to marry each other; they both deeply resent it and loathe each other. However, the castle and the fortune are Rosa’s and Rudolf is dependent on her. It’s summed up in this snippet from the book: ‘…Castle Stein, Rosa’s ancestral home and the place where she and Rudolf lived in a wedded bliss that depended on them seeing each other as little as possible.’ Rudolf funds his drunken, womanising lifestyle from Rosa’s fortune, but when he blows up her laboratory – her life’s work – it’s the last straw for her, and she kicks him out. With no home and no money, Rudolf is bent on revenge.
•Was it difficult to portray the conflict between these two as it carried over to other characters throughout the book?
Not really, but I had to make sure that not only the main but the supporting characters had a part to play in the conflict, whether that be on Rosa’s side or Rudolf’s.
• The supporting characters, like the female blacksmith and elderly witch aunt, are fascinating. How did you go about developing these characters and their roles?
All characters are born of necessity; if you don’t have characters, you don’t have a story. A witch is needed to enable the resurrection and to provide a slim link back to the first book; the female blacksmith came about because every scientist needs a good assistant, and initially, that’s what she was.
• Above you mention the two noblemen who ensure that all is fair in love and war. Could you share more about these noblemen and their roles?
Ah, yes, Yedder and Guildman. I like those two. The short prologue to the book shows four children playing together – Rosa, Rudolf, Yedder and Guildman – and it also illustrates something about the character of each, which readers will see as they progress through the book. So those four characters have known each other all their lives, and Rudolf, Yedder and Guildman were in the army together as well. Yedder is good comic relief for the story, and both he and Guildman have a moral code, which the debauched Rudolf lacks. When Rudolf vows revenge against Rosa, then Yedder and Guildman have a big part to play in protecting Rosa from Rudolf’s plans.
•I admit, the scenes with Yedder and Guildman are some of my favorites within the book. Who do you hope will read Twicetime?
Anybody. Everybody. A film or TV producer would be handy – someone who could bring to the screen the images I saw in my head as I was writing it!
• You mentioned a desire for a film or TV producer to bring your story to the screen. If Twicetime were to be adapted into a film or TV series, what aspects of the story would you most look forward to seeing come to life on the screen?
I’d love to see the resurrected bodyguard brought to life (no pun intended), and when people read the description of him, they may see why I said that. Also, I’d love to see what the set designers came up with for how the town of Maund looks.
•Let’s say Twicetime is picked up for the big screen, and you had a say in the casting of the various roles, who would you choose for Lady Rosalind, Lord Rudolf, Frances, or any of the other more central characters?
For Frances, I think Julie Walters would be perfect. For the bodyguard, probably a combination of someone like Layton Williams and Tom Hardy. And for Guildman, someone who looks like – and is as cool as – Alan Rickman in his Hans Gruber period.
•Ooh… Fantastic choices, though I am not sure anyone could ever come close to being like Alan Rickman. True classic there, and gone too soon. Now, about you as an author. How did you get into writing?
I seem to have always had a facility with rhyme and metre, and I started writing poetry when I was about eleven. In my late teens, I branched out into short stories and then plays, but it wasn’t until I was made redundant in my forties that I set myself the challenge of sustaining a story over the length of a novel. That produced my first book, Gingerbread Children (a take on the story of Hansel and Gretel) which always came back from agents with a letter which was some variety of ‘Yes, you can write, but Terry Pratchett’s got the fantasy market sewn up’ or ‘Yes, you can write, but there’s no call for stories involving magic’ (this was pre-Harry Potter). So, the manuscript was shoved in a drawer while I earned a living and it wasn’t until I retired that I self-published it.
•How long have you been writing?
Over fifty years, on and off.
•Writing for over fifty years is a long time, in a world that has experienced some incredible changes. Can you share how your writing style and approach have evolved over this time, especially in the context of Twicetime?
I think that the biggest change is that the stories I’ve written have become deeper and more multi-layered than when I started out. Twicetime has a quite a cast of characters, all of whom have to be (and I hope are) fully-rounded. I try to make sure that every character earns their place in the story and they’re not ciphers or stereotypes. Also, I think my vocabulary and editing skills have improved over the years!
•Share a moment of inspiration that affected something you have written, even if it is not in Twicetime.
The aftermath of George Floyd’s death revealed so much to all of us, and in trying to understand it, one of the many things that research brought to the fore was the ‘white by default’ effect in literature, which – in brief – is the automatic assumption by readers that a character has white skin unless told to the contrary.
I must admit it was a ‘scales falling from the eyes’ moment when I found out about it, and there are many things to talk about surrounding the subject of readers identifying with / building a mental image of characters in a book. And, I’ll confess, I err on the side of ‘don’t describe anybody in too much detail because then the reader can make up their own mind about what the characters look like’.
But it became important to me to do something, however small, to point out the absurdities of people’s prejudices regarding skin colour. This was also partly prompted by a right-wing old man at a writing group frothing at the mouth about the actor Dev Patel being cast as David Copperfield. He couldn’t grasp my point that by his logic, there should be no actors at all, because they would never be able to play someone different from who they are, and that by extension, I as a writer would be condemned to write only Northern English women, because I that’s who I am.
It became blindingly obvious that I had a golden opportunity in Twicetime for a short discussion on the subject within the confines of the characters and plot (because one of the main characters was already made up of parts from different bodies) and without it being too heavy-handed, I hope. This is part of what I wrote:
“The only colours that really interest the people of Maund are the colours of money. Copper, silver and gold are powerful colours indeed.
The colour of people’s skin is of interest only to a physician or healer, and then only if it’s not the colour it’s supposed to be. To judge someone’s character by the colour of their skin is as ludicrous as judging the value of a treasure hoard by the colour of the field it’s buried in.
The skin people inhabit is not a matter of choice; they’re born with it, they live with it and they’ll die with it. And that’ll be the end of it.
Unless something very unexpected happens.”
•Whew, a lot of profound insights there, and all great points to work into your writing. As indie writers, we rely on many tools (books, apps, programs, etc) to write and prepare to publish. What is the most useful tool you use when writing or preparing to launch your book? Why is it so valuable to you?
Microsoft Word. For someone who previously used to bash away on a typewriter, word processing software is a gift from the heavens. It’s just so easy to edit using a word processor, and I can try out text and page formatting quickly and easily without having to compare costly printed versions.
•Have you ever stumbled on advice or a tip that you found to be useful in your writing journey?
One of the best pieces of advice I was given was to keep the reader immersed in the world you’ve created and don’t give them anything which may jolt them out of it.
So, for example, many moons ago when I had the manuscript assessed for my first book, Gingerbread Children, the biggest thing the reader noticed was that I’d carefully crafted this fantasy world, which was a pre-industrial revolution society, but occasionally I’d put in a reference to something that was descriptive, and possibly even funny, but it was too modern to fit with the tenor of the novel. (I think one instance was that I described something as the sort of thing that would happen to a soundtrack of Carmina Burana.) Once it had been pointed out, it seemed obvious, and it’s been one of the fundamental principles of my writing ever since.
Another example is that I recently read an otherwise very good Regency fantasy novel, but every so often the author would break out of the story and address the reader directly, which I found irritating, because for no good reason, it took me away from the story they were telling.
• Twicetime is an entrant in SPFBO9. Congratulations on becoming a semi-finalist! Having enjoyed Twicetime so much, I completely agree with your bloggers’ choice! How do you feel now that your book is a semi-finalist?
Thank you so much! I’m over the moon to be a semi-finalist. I poured my heart and soul in writing Twicetime, and reaching the semi-finals is an independent vindication of my faith in it as a damned good book. Even though I now know that I’m not a finalist, I’m still happy because the reviews that I’ve had have been so rewarding. They’ve given me such a boost.
•Has your experience as an entrant in this blog-off helped you reach new readers? Maybe beyond your expected audience?
I do hope so. It’s definitely helped me to reach more overseas readers, I know that.
•Have you read any of the other entrant titles? If so, what were your overall impressions of the one(s) you’ve read?
I have dipped into quite a few, and my impression is that the standard of writing is very high, which is another reason I’m so pleased that Twicetime reached the semi-final.
•Please share any general thoughts you might have on the blog-off.
It’s a marvellous idea, and many thanks to Mark Lawrence for organising it. Indie authors need all the help they can get in bringing their books to people’s attention, whether that be readers or reviewers, plus SPFBO is a snapshot of what a wide range of indie fantasy books there are for the rest of us to dive into. And I must say, I’ve found the camaraderie between the entrants is wonderful and it’s a very supportive community.
•Agreed! The blog off really shines a light on the incredibly community we have developed for ourselves. What is one thing you wish to express to readers who might enjoy your book?
I’d say firstly if you do enjoy it, please tell all your friends and leave me a review on Amazon, because the more reviews a book has, the more likely it is that Amazon’s algorithms will recommend it to other people. Plus, I’m genuinely fascinated to know what people like or dislike about it, who their favourite characters are, etc.
Secondly, if you want to ask me any questions about the book, please email me.
•If you could give a shout-out to any fellow writers, now’s your chance. Give us their name, and a book by them that you read and enjoyed.
I’d rather give a shout-out to all the book bloggers and reviewers like yourself who give us authors the chance to talk about our books and reach a wider audience. Thank you so much!
•Awe. Well, it is my honor. Within the indie community, we still work so hard to get our books out there to readers, and that is why I do these. As a writer myself, I know how hard it is to get readers, who rely on Oprah or Reese Witherspoon to recommend their next read, to take notice. Interviews are a great way for readers to get to know you and your books. And they are just a lot of fun to do. Are there any upcoming projects or developments related to Twicetime that you’d like to share with your readers or potential audience?
Sorry, nothing related to Twicetime except for the fact that the next book will also have a witch and a familiar in it.
•Oooh! Fun! Beyond writing, what other things do you for fun or work?
I live with my musician husband, Martin, in a little village which – according to local estate agents – is just outside Cambridge in the UK. We love going to the theatre and to comedy gigs, eating out occasionally and quizzing. Since lockdown, we and a few friends get together online every few weeks to solve escape rooms, which usually takes second place to having a chat and a laugh so you won’t find us on any ‘fastest escape’ leader boards anywhere.
I also edit and find illustrations for the Grunty Fen series of books by Christopher South, which is a joy for me to do. Although there is a real place called Grunty Fen in Cambridgeshire, the one in Chris’s books is quite fictitious: a bleak, damp, comic wilderness where, despite every effort by the authorities, a timeless way of life survives untarnished by progress; a place of variable history and ever-changing geography where drain-rodding is a competitive sport, villages sink into the mire and reappear elsewhere and the area is plagued by feral nuns on Vespa scooters. The books grew out of a weekly BBC radio series, Dennis of Grunty Fen, the premise of the show being that Christopher – playing an over-educated, bumptious type – would interview Dennis, a sly, wily Fenman (played by world-renowned bluegrass musician Pete Sayers) who always got the better of him. The comical culture clash between them and the ever-growing number of bizarre characters they created sustained the series for seventeen years until Pete’s death; for the last five years of the series I was the producer, editor and sound-effects person. There’s more information on the website www.dennisofgruntyfen.co.uk where people can also buy downloads of some of the original radio series.
•Wow! Sounds like you have a lot to occupy your time and your mind! Fantastic. That is the end of questions I have for you. Once again, I am so happy to have had this opportunity to talk to you and learn more about you and Twicetime.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for joining us! I hope you come back to join me as I share another interview in a couple weeks.
In the meantime, be sure to check out Carol’s books, and if you are on X – give her a follow! And remember, once you are done reading her book, or any book for that matter, please take a few minutes to rate and/or review it! We authors love it, and other readers do too!