Interview with Ruth Barrett,(Lady Calverley), author of Base Spirits

A ghost tale set in a haunted Tudor mansion; an unhinged Jacobean nobleman, a present-day unhappy couple, possession, jealousy . . . Something for just about everyone who likes to curl up with things that go bump in the night !

Base Spirits is available now from Amazon and the author, Ruth Barrett (aka Lady Calverley) has very kindly taken the time to tell us something about the book and its origins :

What can you tell us about your book (without spoilers!)?

Base Spirits is a supernatural thriller with a historical core. At its heart is the true story of a minor Yorkshire nobleman who gambled and drank away his fortune. In 1605, he went on a rampage so bloody that Shakespeare’s acting company performed a one-act play about the scandal! I have constructed a ghost story around a modern day couple with a bad marriage staying at the ancestral noble hall who awaken its past with their own miseries.

Where did the idea for Base Spirits originate?

I accidentally discovered the story back in the 1990s when I was cast as the Wife in ‘A Yorkshire Tragedy’. During rehearsals, I had a chance to visit Yorkshire and found the old hall at Calverley where the tragedy happened. I made friends with a local historian who gave me a tour and got a look inside the buildings. Part is derelict, but one wing is a guesthouse. This stuck with me. Between my role in the play and the visit to the location, I seemed to know enough about this obscure piece of Jacobean history to make a novel of it.

What draws you most to the idea of writing a ghost novel?

In this case, the story lends itself perfectly to that genre. Calverley Old Hall has a few spooky legends attached to it due to its sad past. I’ve always loved ghost stories from the time of my childhood. In every culture, people have been endlessly fascinated by haunted buildings and restless spirits.

What most influenced you when developing the novel?

The fact that I had walked in the shoes of the lady of the manor by portraying her on stage: I had to get into her head and make sense of her situation and her reactions to the suffering inflicted by her husband upon his family. Once I saw the actual Hall, I was hooked.

Do you have any favourite ghostly anecdotes you would like to share?

I’ve ‘felt’ more than I’ve actually ‘seen’ over the years. Certain places carry memories, and sometimes they can feel oppressive enough to me that I have to leave. Other things are just ‘there’ in the periphery and don’t even frighten me. I had a serious illness a few years ago and nearly died. Shortly afterwards, I seemed much more aware of the ‘other side’ and have since seen actual apparitions. Notably, a spectral black cat shows up periodically and hangs around. I call her ‘Boo’.

Who do you think comes top at creating atmospheric ghost tales?

So many literary ghosts leap to mind! Shakespeare was a master at it (as he was at everything!) Emily Bronte. Charles Dickens. Peter Straub’s Ghost Story was a big hit with me in my teen years, and I used to read a lot of Stephen King and John Saul back then too. I discovered Scott Nicholson fairly recently. It’s hard to compare such a diverse list. I think they all have their merits and each have spooked me out in turn!

Classics like The Turn of the Screw and The Woman in Black have been filmed and re-filmed; new arrivals like The Others & Paranormal Activity have achieved something of a cult ‘classics’ status – how far do you think popular & media culture is influencing/fuelling the market for ghost/paranormal literature – and where do you see Base Spirits in relation to that?

As I said before, people have always been fascinated by ghosts, and I think they’ve always been and always will be very much a part of popular culture. Lately, there seems to be an awful lot of ghost hunter TV shows both in North America and the U.K., and ghost walk tours thrive in any city with a bloody history. I loved The Others (based on the Turn of the Screw, in fact). That to me is a perfect ghost story, and I can’t wait to see The Woman in Black. I hope to see mine adapted to film one day. I had a definite ‘cast’ in mind when I was describing my characters.

What are your own favourite scenes in the book?

I don’t want to give away too much… I rather like the unpleasant opening scene. The English sure did take the cake when it came to devising cruel ways of putting folks to death, didn’t they? The historical bits were the most fun to write.

Do you have a favourite method for writing, getting ideas, working out plots?

I’m not sure that I have much method to my writing madness. I tend to get inspirations at the weirdest and most inconvenient times– and without fail, those are the best ideas. I actually jot down the bare bones in notebooks and then let the plots and characters stew in a mental crock-pot until I feel compelled to start typing and structuring. I can’t do that until things are ‘cooked’.

May we know a little about your next novel?

I plan to release some collected short stories. I’ve had a number published in anthologies and periodicals over the years. The next actual novel is The Rake’s Chronicles. I have a working draft and need to spend time reworking before I’ll feel happy to discuss it, but it’s the tale of a revenant spirit set in Victorian England. There’s a fair amount of sex in it. Sort of like The Telltale Heart meets My Secret Life. Further down the road, I have a character-based mystery series I’m developing– the Dead Drunks. It’s taking over my brain, so it may well push the Victorian ghost aside and get done first.

Do you have an ideal ‘dream’ writing space?

I have a pretty good space now: a room lined with books in a two-level Victorian flat on the main drag of Stratford. I think it would be nice to have a quieter spot– as I type, there’s a patio full of laughing folks downstairs enjoying a late summer drink or six. It’s not unpleasant to have people enjoying themselves within earshot, but the top floor of a quiet old house with a view of treetops and the Avon River would do nicely as an ‘ideal’.

With the arrival of e-publishing, do you think writers are more empowered now than before?

I think e-publishing gives writers the kind of power they never had in the past. Even successful authors in the traditional sense had little control over their work. The endless hours alone perfecting the words, followed by query letters to agents and publishers, the agonizing waits for rejection… and if/when the hoped-for ‘yes’ did come, the book wouldn’t be out for another year and a half. This still goes on, and this still works for a few. It did NOT work for me. As I mentioned, I’ve learned the hard way that life is too short. The new way of self-publishing is not for everybody, but those who produce high-quality writing and figure out the tricks to market their wares and reach their audience have all the power. I am also producing a paperback version and will have an actual launch in my local bookshop in October.

Any thoughts or advice on writing you’d like to pass on?

One of the best bits of advice I ever got relates to finishing that vital first draft: just sit down and write start to finish without going back over it. Do NOT go back and tweak or edit or purge until you have a full draft done and dusted. That is your discovery draft. Yes, it will be full of mistakes and diversions and dropped threads, but it will always take you in new directions. The danger of going back over what you wrote the day before is that you end up rewriting the first 50 pages over and over and never move on. You start to second-guess yourself or overwork things to the point of giving up.

Which website would you recommend for writers/readers?

As I am trying to sort out e-marketing, I just discovered the Kindle forum pages at Amazon. There are heaps of threads for writers and readers to connect and find new things to read, or ways to promote your work. http://www.kindleboards.com/. Twitter is a good place to explore and find all sorts of great people and links too.

Where on the web can people connect with you and your work?

I have a Facebook page for my Spirited Words Book Co. at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Spirited-Words-Book-Co/101014656667433

My blog is at: http://ruth-barrett-spiritedwords.blogspot.com

And I’m also on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/#!/LadyCalverley

Where can we buy your book?

Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Base-Spirits-ebook/dp/B005L38G8E/ref%3dsr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1315163319&sr=1-1

 Createspace : https://www.createspace.com/3462705

Interview with Andrew Meek, author of Quintessence

“‘The questioner becomes the answer to the question asked.’
2012. It has already begun; the end of the world.
One man, Alexander Staalman, is the catalyst. He will be the destroyer of worlds.
The signs are all around him: The dead return to warn him. His dreams foretell it. And he alone knows of the monster that has been let loose from his own mind to devour everything.
He must pull the fragments together before time runs out. He must come to accept that he holds the key to it all inside his thoughts, his nightmares. For he is more than just flesh and blood and bone; He is a god. ”

 How did Quintessence start ?

The whole thing started as a reaction to how I felt when my wife became pregnant. For many deeply personal reasons I did not want children, and it came as a shock when my wife said she wanted to keep the baby (I had told her before we were married, not to marry me if she wanted children). Up until the moment of my daughter’s birth my wife did not know if I would even be at her side when it happened. That day changed everything. I saw her born, and I held her little life in my arms. I told my wife that if I was going to be a father, then I was going to be the best a child could wish for. It took years for me to repair the damage I had done to my wife. But, and to this day, I carry those original feelings inside me, I have never forgotten all that had made me the kind of man who would demand that of his wife: ‘The baby’s life, or mine?’ So I started to think; what if she had done as I asked? What if Elizabeth had never come to be? And that is where it began. The impact a single thought can have upon the lives, the world, perhaps even the fabric of reality itself – all altered by a single thought, a single act. Into this is woven and even grander story, about the meaning of life itself and perhaps the greatest secret all: The secret of the Universe. … But, at its heart this is a story about redemption and forgiveness and love and sacrifice.

  What do you hope will be the main impact made on readers of Quintessence ?

 I hope that it will make them think, think deeply about who, and what, and where, and when they are, and what it truly means to be a living, vital being. And about the ever growing effects of all we say and do on those around us – worlds rising and falling on  a single thought, a single word, a single action. I hope it will make them think about the world around them, the true nature of it beyond our immediate senses, our subjective view, and the intimate relationship we have with everything beyond our bodies – the interconnectedness of all things. Its not so much a novel, as an event. Someone said something like that to me after reading it. The story reaches out beyond being just a tale with a beginning, middle, and end. I hope I don’t sound full of myself. But I truly wanted to write something that hadn’t been done before – perhaps with good reason. It’s up to others to decide if I succeeded or not. But I wrote the book I intended too. Sometimes people think I’m a little odd, because I don’t tend to see the world as most do; reading this book will make them see just why that is so. Creating it changed me dramatically, it truly did alter my personality.

 Who, as the author, do you most empathise with in Quintessence ?

Ooh, tough one, and not as obvious as I guess it should seem – as the book is written in first person, I guess my empathy should be with my main character Alexander. But… oh boy, it being the book it is, by saying that I’m also saying my empathy is with the other main character, his psychiatrist Dr Blake, and that is just going to confuse anyone that hasn’t read it – because only by reading it would they know why I’m saying that. You don’t spend ten years plotting and crafting a single story without things getting harder and harder to explain in an easy way. Especially in a book like this. Light holiday read it ain’t. But as we all know, we are complex beings with complex drives, untangling a persons needs and wants and persona, is not a simple task. You see, we spend the whole novel inside the mind of one character – but as to whose mind that is, is one of the mysteries to be discovered by its end. (That’s a clue by the way) *winks*

 Is there one author in particular you feel has influenced and/or inspired you most in your writing ?

 Now this may come as a shock but no, not anyone really. I spent so long writing and researching that I didn’t have time for fiction. I read factual books exclusively. So the authors who have inspired me all wrote non-fiction… that said, they wrote wonderful prose on what could be very dry subjects. If I had to pick three it would be, the philosophers David Deutsch and Daniel Dennett and the writer, playwright, translator,  Michael Frayn for one amazing book called ‘The Human Touch’, which is my greatest treasure in print. So style wise, plot wise, structure wise, and theme wise, no, its what it is in itself, I had no blueprint to follow. This may explain why it took so long…

 How do you start writing : at a desk, on a computer, on paper or on screen ?

 Paper first, always. In many ways this is the bit I love the most, this is when I feel like a writer.

  What drives you to write ?

 The need to communicate ideas and concepts and to get others to maybe look at things from a different angle than they did before.

 Is there a special place where you go to work on your novels?

 My study ( sometimes spare bedroom) is where I work. Though in the summer I like to write in the garden.

 Can you tell us anything about your next novel ?

 I have a choice of three started novels… I may work on more than one next, I was working on them while working on Quintessence as well (I needed to step away sometimes)… in fact, I often do, I find writing a deeply intense experience that drains me emotionally and swapping from one to another helps. But, okay, if I pick one, then there is the one, (called ‘Memories of Dust’), about a man whose wife dies of cancer and before she dies, he makes her a promise to go and see an eclipse (they saw one together before she died) and to scatter her ashes as it happens. He meets a younger woman, (while witnessing the eclipse) whose boyfriend died the night before they were going to run away together. These two strangers spend one night together then the girl disappears. Her clothes are found on a beach and all her other belonging are in her hotel. A body is never found. He goes in search of her and ends up in her home town seeking out her family. The rest… is a secret. Needless to say this one won’t take me 10 years to write!

 Where can readers connect with you on the web ?

 I have a blog that I have just revamped, early days but it’s there. http://staalman.blogspot.com

 Where is Quintessence available ?

 At present it is only available on Kindle through Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005IWZLL8  for the UK Link.

I have plans for a print version but that is a way off at present.

 

Andrew Meek, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts.