Prose has some fabulous speakers coming up over the next few weeks: NY Times Modern Love editor Dan Jones, NY Times Op-Ed editor Peter Catapano and a  free talk with bestselling author Laurie Gwen Shapiro whose novel The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam has been lauded by both the NYT and CBS.   Most everything on Prose is on-line. So this is a heads up…  You snooze, you lose. Trust me, Prose is a gem of a resource for all writers and aspiring writers. Listen to the episode here where I interview Joselin, Prose’s fabulous founder.

3. Here is the link to the FREE in-conversation with Author Laurie Gwen Shapiro who wrote the new Amelia Earhart book that’s getting so much press – it’s on Tuesday, August 19th.

August, 2025

The post Prose Playground- Upcoming Talks and Seminars appeared first on Elena Bowes.

Clare also shows how friendships with people younger and older can be life enhancing and the importance of finding your own community. She does this in a light, never preachy, often funny way that leaves readers, or at least this reader, feeling a bit better about the world. My Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity. You can listen to the full interview here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author.

Can you briefly tell us about the path that led you to become a novelist at age 50?

When I was younger, I dreamed of being a novelist. From the moment I discovered stories, I wanted to be able to write them. That was my great dream. But life gets in the way. I worked in advertising for 20 years.

I wrote nothing apart from PowerPoint presentations and emails and shopping lists. And then in 2015 I got to the point where I realized that my life was going seriously off track because I had picked up a rather major dependency on alcohol and my wine o’clock habit was completely out of control.

I was drinking about 10 bottles of wine a week, which is way too much. I mean, that’s way over the government guidelines and it was having all sorts of impacts on my life. So, I knew I had to quit drinking, but I was too embarrassed and ashamed about the situation I found myself in to talk to anybody about it.

I didn’t talk to my doctor. I didn’t talk to my husband. I didn’t talk to my friends. What I did do because I needed some form of therapy was I started an anonymous blog, and I called it Mummy was a Secret Drinker. I wrote in that blog every day. I wrote about what I was going through and all the research I’d been doing and how I was feeling. That blog went viral and then became a memoir called The Sober Diaries, which was published at the beginning of 2018.

And by this stage, my new addiction was writing, and I really didn’t want to stop writing. I absolutely loved it. But I didn’t want to carry on writing about my own life, so I thought I’d try writing about imaginary people instead. And that became my whole new career.

You wrote a wonderful blog about how author Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, motivated you to keep writing your first book. In a nutshell, for those who haven’t read Anne’s book, can you explain how it applies to so many of life’s challenges?

I love that book. And funny enough, Anne Lamott doesn’t drink either. She quit drinking many years ago. She writes that the expression ‘bird by bird’ comes from a story from her childhood where her little brother had a complete meltdown one evening because he suddenly realized that he had a school project due the next day and he hadn’t done any of it.

He was supposed to have spent the previous semester working on this project about birds. He was supposed to cover I don’t know, 20, 30 different birds. And he was completely beside himself in floods of tears.

He said to his father, ‘I can’t do it. This is the end of my school career. I’m going to be in such trouble.’ And his father sat him down. He said, ‘Now don’t panic. We’ll just take it bird by bird, buddy.’ And they did. They took it bird by bird. And by the end of the night, they had a whole project on birds to hand in.

Anne talks about how writing a novel is very much like that. If you worry about having to produce 100,000 words, the whole thing can seem overwhelming. But if you just think about each page, each chapter, or even each paragraph, you just take it bird by bird, within a relatively short period of time, you find that you’ve got a whole novel.

And giving up alcohol is absolutely about bird by bird. The Alcoholics Anonymous expression of one day at a time, is absolutely what gets you through addiction. If you worry about, can I stop drinking forever? You’ll never even take the first step. If you think, can I stop drinking just for today? The answer to that is always yes. Can I just write about one bird? Yes, of course you can. If you write about one bird enough times, you’ve got a whole project. If you write one chapter enough times, you’ve got a whole novel. If you have one day without drinking enough times, you’ve been sober for a decade.

It’s a really good lesson. Breaking things down to just one little task at a time rather than thinking of something as a humongous project. I have a Post-it taped to my desktop that says, Bird by bird buddy.

Oh, brilliant. It’s good for teenagers as well. If you have young people in your life who are struggling, just saying to them, ‘Look, can you make it through until the end of tomorrow? And if you can do that, you can make it through to the end of the following day and the end of the day after that.’ It helps the whole world stop feeling overwhelming.

Do you know anyone like Daphne, your principal character who at age 70, is sharp, chic, feisty, opinionated, and as witty as they come, an original with a fabulous, checkered past? I want to be Daphne when I grow up. But are there people you modelled her after?

 She’s modelled after the sort of woman I want to be when I’m 70. She isn’t modelled after any one particular person, but she’s modelled after an amalgamation of characteristics that I found aspirational.

At the beginning of the book, Daphne’s not really a very nice person. She’s very spiky. She doesn’t like other people. She’s very critical of everybody around her. And she doesn’t have any friends. She thinks she’s slightly better than everyone else. In many ways, you wouldn’t want to know somebody like Daphne.

I wanted to explore how even the most unlikable people in the right circumstances can be magnificent. And by the end, I think everybody is rooting for Daphne and she’s great, but it’s not where she starts off. She’s certainly not perfect, But I think the most interesting people aren’t perfect.

 I liked that even at the beginning when Daphne was unpleasant and snooty, she was always funny. And had a plan. I never felt sorry for her.

I’m really pleased about that because that was exactly what I wanted to avoid. With older characters in novels, you are encouraged to feel pity for them, and I didn’t want anyone to pity my characters. They’re often in quite precarious situations, and they’re not always the nicest people, but they’ve all got agency.

Daphne does yoga and Pilates every day. And she’s very strong for her age and she carries a walking stick, not because she needs a walking stick to walk with, but because she uses it as a weapon, and she uses it to clear people out of her way if necessary.

The rest of the Q&A can be found here on 26, a UK site to promote the joy of words.

Happy Summer

July 2024

The post Q&A with Clare Pooley – How to Age Disgracefully appeared first on Elena Bowes.

In the spare six-line opening of King’s captivating novel we learn that Casey’s mother has recently died, Casey is broke, there is someone named Luke in her life that she’d rather not think about, and that she is a writer. And as sad as this book may be, it’s also very funny, touching, sexy and wise. And hopeful. Here’s my Q&A:

Can you tell us about Casey and the two men who enter her life – Oscar and Silas? 

 I was really interested in taking a woman who has these huge burning ambitions, a desire to write and become a writer. A lot of things are working against that. She’s $70,000 in debt from credit card and student loan debt. Her mom has died. Her heart has been broken. And she has a pretty challenging job as a waitress, living in this crappy place.

I just thought – what could make things even worse? A choice between two decent men. It boils down to figuring out who has the biggest heart, who is the guy who has the possibility of caring about her as much as himself. And I think that question when you have two charming guys is a tricky one. She has to go on a lot of dates with these guys to figure out who they really, really are.

I understand that you waited tables from college until you were about 33- you really nailed those restaurant scenes. I loved the contrast between Casey’s two lives – the solitary writing life and the social hustle and bustle waitressing one. Can you expand on how those two careers complement one another?

Writing is a desk job. Sedentary, bad for your back. Isolating and Anti-social, though at times you feel you are communing with all of humanity. It’s wild and trippy and cerebrally imaginative. It’s full of surprises. The salary is crap for a long time, sometimes forever. It’s an unpredictable, unstable career in every way.

Waiting tables at a busy restaurant is athletic. You never sit. You have no chair. The time flies by. It’s wholly interpersonal and you meet great people, and you laugh and cry on a regular basis. You use your mind but in an entirely different way than you use it while writing. Restaurant hours work well for morning writers like me and, unlike with teaching, you do not bring your work home with you. You leave it all there, every last dupe and credit card slip.

Your five books are so varied. Where do your ideas come from?

My big original ideas come from one of three different places. They either come while I’m reading. Actively reading with a cup of tea, not in bed about to fall asleep. Also, in the shower, right when I’m waking up in the morning can be a very fertile time for me.  And also, in the car.

Are you writing for the reader?

I have to banish the idea of an audience when I write. Initially, I am just writing for myself, to see what I as a reader would like to read. When I get into my revisions, I can sometimes let myself think of my cross-the-street neighbour reading my work- her name is Lisa and she’s trained as a lawyer and is just a phenomenal reader. And then I start to have real readers- I get my husband to read it, my writers’ group to read it, my agent and then more revisions.

I listened to your heartfelt talk with author Judy Blume who inspired you years ago, your favourite of her books being– It’s Not the End of the World – Can you tell us about that?

My mother was about to leave my dad so she gave me the book about someone who was about to leave her husband. It was very strategic on her part. I loved that book so much. I was so grateful to have that book. I read it in 1974. I didn’t know anybody whose parents were divorced. I probably read it 6 or 7 times. I loved the realism. I had read a lot of talking animals, a lot of spaceships, a lot of fantasy, orphans discovering a secret garden. But her books were realism- adult literary fiction with slightly easier words. In discovering her books, instead of thinking I want to read, which I had always done, I thought, I want to do what she’s doing.

Do you think Writers & Lovers could similarly comfort aspiring writers?

I hope (my novel) will help aspiring writers. I think that a lot of people can relate to this notion of wanting something and not knowing how to get it. And wanting to live a more creative life, and a more stable life without giving up some long-held dreams.

When Lily interviews for the high school teaching job, she loses herself talking about literature, talking about how plot and symbol aren’t as important as reverberation. Can you elaborate?

I was a high school English teacher for a number of years. It pains me when my books get interpreted with a high school English rubric, ‘let’s talk about the symbols’, ‘let’s talk about the themes’, ‘let’s talk about character change’, ‘lets’ talk about loss of innocence’, all that stuff. I feel like what would be so great is to give high school kids books and have them respond emotionally to them. How did this make you feel, make it a more personal experience for them. It would cultivate more a love of books, than a dread of books, which I think people come out of high school with.

Which writers do you read when you want to get inspired?

I always keep on my desk- Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse  and  The Evening of the Holiday.

Those are my bibles. I pick them up whenever I need to remember why I write, and what I want to give people (when I write).

I love Elizabeth Strout and my favourite is My Name is Lucy Barton. I love Toni Morrison, I love Beloved, I love this book that not many people have read called Old Filth by Jane Gardam (Failed in London, try Hong Kong). I also love Tessa Hadley, another English writer, her most recent Late in the Day is just a great novel. She has a collection of short stories called Sun Stroke which are excellent- those are some of my go-to’s.

You can read the rest of my interview with King in 26 here. And don’t despair if you’ve read all of her books, she has a collection of short stories Five Tuesdays in Winter coming out in November.

February, 2021

The post Writers & Lovers – my Q&A with the Fabulous Lily King appeared first on Elena Bowes.

Love of work and family, nature and music sustain you and have helped you overcome the tragedies in your life that would have felled many a weaker character. What advice would you give people, especially those struck down by sadness, in the pursuit of happiness?

It is hard to offer advice about how to deal with sorrows and tragedies.   I suppose I would say you have to incorporate them into your life, and keep working.  Work is one of the two most important things in life – love is the other.    When you lose someone you love you still have work to do.    You live with grief.   I don’t think you can pursue happiness – it comes when it will, often unexpectedly.

You found lasting and stable love relatively late in life with an old friend playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.

You wrote,

Middle-aged love proved stronger than anything I had known before, and enduring.

Do you think age and maturity play a significant role in the calm pleasures of middle-aged love? Can you tell us a bit more about that relationship and how it differs from your first marriage?

Yes, I would say that my late marriage has been the most wonderful relationship in my life.   Having had a husband who could not be relied on it was extraordinary to find myself with someone totally reliable.    It is not always easy being a step-mother or father, but tremendously rewarding when you all become friends.     Then, since both of us are writers, we understand the ups and downs of each others’ lives – what Michael calls

start of book depression, end of book depression, middle of book depression’.

He is probably a bit calmer than me, and laughs a lot at the ridiculousness of things.   I have learnt from him.   We both like walking and travelling together.   We get on well.

For the rest of my interview with Claire, click HERE. The Q&A was published in 26’s monthly newsletter. For those who love words, 26, is a writers’ group populated with poets to copywriters and everything in between. Happy Reading.

January, 2019

Images courtesy of Chris Boland

The post Claire Tomalin: Writing a Life appeared first on Elena Bowes.

Sarah Hughes, fiction publisher at Harper Collins UK, reportedly called Boy Underwater one of those “once in a decade books,” adding that “Adam is exactly the kind of exceptional voice-led talent that we all dream of and I couldn’t be more delighted and proud to welcome him to the HarperCollins list.”

I talked to Adam about this heartbreaking, honest story about a broken family with secrets, told from the perspective of nine-year-old Cymbeline. We discussed voice, humour, planning (or lack thereof) and writing for young readers. Take it from me, you don’t have to be young to enjoy Boy Underwater, just young at heart.

Who wouldn’t love the opening few lines of Boy Underwater:

Here’s something you won’t believe.

I, Cymbeline Igloo, have never been swimming.

It’s the swimming bit you won’t believe, by the way, though if you don’t believe my name either, it really is Cymbeline Igloo, and you have to believe that because it’s written on my schoolbag and in my jumpers and on lots of other things, like my passport. You won’t believe I’ve never been swimming because I mean totally never. Not ever. Not once in my whole life. I am nine years old!

And so it goes.

Question: Adam, I read in a blog you wrote that you wanted to write a book for children whose lives are not perfect, where faily life  might be unstable or where there’s mental illness. What advice would you give aspiring writers who want to tackle difficult possibly scary issues for young readers?

Adam: You have to take care of your reader, know that you have a great responsibility. They must always know that, while the journey may be challenging, you will bring them home safely.

Question: I also read in that same blog that there are some serious autobiographical details in Boy Underwater? How about on the lighter side? Are there any embarrassing titbits from the past that provided fertile material for Boy Underwater? Do tell.

Adam: Not really but my first memory is of falling into a swimming pool and sitting at the bottom of it, quite happily watching the flicking light. I was two years old. My heavily pregnant mother jumped in to save me.

Read the rest of my Q&A with Adam here in 26’s July e-letter. 26 is an association for writers to inspire the love of words.

July, 2018

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