Solace and Grief

Interview with Author Foz Meadows :

1. Tell us about your book Solace and Grief?

Solace & Grief is about the escapades of Solace Morgan, a teenage girl raised in the foster system who has just come to the realisation that she’s a vampire. After encountering a faceless man in the alley behind her house, Solace runs away, finds her first ever group of friends and starts living with them in a warehouse – and then things get weird. Because even though she never knew her parents, the enemies they were running from are starting to catch up with Solace, and learning about their past might be the only way to keep herself alive.

2. What was your first vampire book you read and what author inspired your love of the genre ?

I didn’t start reading vampire books until quite recently. My love of all things fanged came, I suspect, from watching unhealthy amounts of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at university, which places any and all blame squarely at the feet of Joss Whedon – but then, I’ve been a fan of fantasy and mythology for almost my whole life, so it was a fairly natural direction to take.

3. What gives you the innovation to write a particular genre ?

Though I’m happy enough reading straight fiction, there’s something about fantasy that sings to me; I prefer to write it for the same reason. I’ve come up with a lot of theories over the years as to why this is, but apart from the sheer imaginative scope provided by writing in made-up worlds, I think there’s also something wonderful about being able to play with our established notions of reality. Straight fantasy works as a blank slate – building new societies from the ground up – while urban fantasy allows us to peel back the edges of the known and wonder what might be lurking underneath. More than in any other genre, I think, fantasy/SF allows us to consider what might be, as opposed to what is, and that is a valuable thing.     



4. Has your characters or writing been inspired by friends/ family?

Not deliberately, but there are times when I look back on a scene in retrospect and realise that parts of it have been based on my own friends and memories. It’s a very strange thing to have happen, because it starts to make me feel a bit as though my head is a cauldron of Stuff I Have Experienced, with writing being analogous to dipping a ladle into this mess and scooping it onto a page. Only, you know. Classier. With adjectives.

5. Did you experience writers’ block? If so, what did you do to get rid of it?

Whenever I get stuck, I find the best way to get going again is to immerse myself in someone else’s narrative. Apart from having the benefit of being a pleasant experience, it gets me thinking about stories without necessarily thinking about my story, which is sort of like pouring lubricant on a rusty bike chain: I might not be pedalling yet, but it will certainly help me move more smoothly when I do.



6. What are you working on now?

My editing on The Key to Starveldt, the sequel to Solace & Grief, is nearly – very nearly – finished. I feel like I’ve been saying that for the better part of four months, but really, it’s true this time! And once that’s done, I want to get stuck into the third and final volume in the series, Falling Into Midnight. I’ve got a very strong idea of how that book will work, and I’m really excited at the prospect of finally getting to write it.

7. What is your favourite scene in your book?

This changes whenever someone asks me. Not to give any spoilers, but there’s a scene on top of the Opera House roof that I’m rather fond of, and also the opening moments when Solace is still living in her group home. Of course, that will probably change again before this goes to print!

8. Had you previously written anything?

Yes, but apart from a few poems, I’d never had anything published. I’ve been writing stories in my spare time since early primary school, and was writing an epic fantasy novel all through high school and the start of university. Nobody ever told me I couldn’t write – growing up with two journalistic parents, I sort of assumed the opposite – and it’s always been something I’ve loved to do.

9. How long does it take you to write a book?

About six months to a year for a first draft; longer when you factor in editing. The book I wrote through high school took about six years, but then, I only ever finished it once, having scrapped it and started again on a pretty much annual basis throughout that time. Right now, I’ve been working on The Key to Starveldt for a bit over a year and a half, including edits and rewrites, although I had a full first draft finished in about September last year. By the same token, I also work full time, which impacts on how many hours per week I can spend storytelling. On a recent holiday, where I had absolutely nothing else to do, I managed to bash out a complete first draft for an unrelated adult novel in a hair over one month – it was about 90,000 words long, but that’s hardly what you’d call a typical or sustainable output!

10. Which comes first for you – characters or plot?

Characters. I’ll go even further than that: 90% of the time, I start with names. What sort of person seems to fit that name? What type of setting suits them best? How old are they? Who are their friends? And then, once I know who the people are, and where they live, and what they like, I start to have ideas about what they should be doing…

11. How did you get into writing? Did you always want to become a writer?

It was just something I always did. It never occurred to me that it was something I might ever want to stop doing, but there was definitely a moment where I decided I’d like to do it for a living. I was twelve at the time, and despite my dreams and the endless hours after school spent hunched over a keyboard, I always had a back-up career in mind – at least until university, at which point I realised that writing essays was not nearly so much fun as making up stories with magic in them. And honestly? I still can’t think of anything I’d rather do more.



12. If you were stranded on a desert island, what are three material things you couldn't be without?

An indefatigable pen, lots of paper and a really good knife. Not that I require a really good knife in my day to day activities, but I’m guessing one would come in handy if I was ever expected to rig a hammock out of convenient vines or carve a humorous, sanity-saving visage onto a coconut. (For instance.)

13. What are you reading now?

I’m in the middle of several books at the moment: The Journal of Dora Damage, by Belinda Starling; Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood; The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture, edited by Yoshio Sugimoto; and The Time-Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer. Which is a really, really anomalous list, in that it doesn’t actually contain any fantasy, and makes me sound like the sort of erudite person who drinks exotic tea and shops in interesting clothing boutiques with bamboo screens and acres of cashmere. Not that there’s anything wrong with tea or bamboo or cashmere, but if I tell you that the majority of my clothes live in a pile under the bed and that almost 80% of these are T-shirts with words on them, you’ll see what I’m getting at. For the sake of accuracy, I’m also about to embark on Kim Falconer’s The Spell of Rosette and Carrie Ryan’s The Dead-Tossed Waves. Whew!

14. Which author has inspired you most and why?

For me, this question is a bit like asking someone to fill out one of those personality tests, like the Myers-Briggs, viz: there’s a very good chance I’ll tell you which of my favourite authors I’d most like to be compared to, as opposed to the writers who’ve had the greater influence on my actual style, consciously or unconsciously, which in turn tells you more about how I’d prefer to see myself than what I actually write. Which, wow, is a very rambling non-answer. But it’s nearly midnight as I type this, so I’m going to beg a little indulgence and toss out three names that seem like they’d be in contention: Sara Douglass, whose Axis trilogy was the first adult fantasy series I ever read, and therefore cannot help but be a bit seminal; Douglas Adams, whose sense of humour still makes me chuckle at inappropriate moments; and Neil Gaiman, who served as my introduction to urban fantasy.

15. What advice would you give aspiring authors?

The simplest advice there is, being: write! Yes, it can be hard to break into publishing – sometimes unfairly so. Yes, you will receive criticism, and some of it will be valid. Yes, it is difficult to balance writing with everything else you have to do. But if you can understand those three things and not be intimidated by them to the extent that writing suddenly seems too hard, then you’re in with a shot, because the one sure-fire way not to get published is to give up. Write the story that’s in you to tell. And, when you’re done, write the next one.

16. To finish off, Do you have a quote or poem that has stuck with you over the years and what is the story behind it?

I love me some quotes! Sometimes, a little too much. But here is one I’ve always found moving, taken from Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses. The whole piece is a work of astonishing beauty, but these lines stand out in particular:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”

Source: paulazone.blogdrive.com/archive/404.html