Interview with Sarah Bourne
When the
day starts with tragedy . . . where will it lead?
Eight strangers start their day
unaware of the events about to unfold, but they find themselves having to
reassess who they are and what they want from life after a woman steps in front
of their train.”
–synopsis for The Train.
This month, we profile British turned Aussie author Sarah Bourne, who’s virtually unique in that she exclusively writes standalone thrillers and character studies.
15) Sarah, it has to be said that your throughline for The Train is somewhat reminiscent of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2017 movie, Aftermath, in which a grieving husband and father struggles to cope with the deaths of his wife, daughter and unborn grandchild. What inspired the idea for The Train?
Interesting… I’ve never seen that movie. I might have to watch it now! The idea for The Train came because having been a counsellor for many years, I’m always struck by how people can experience the same event but have totally different responses to it. I wanted to make the single event a dramatic one that had the power to shake people out of their usual ways of thinking and reacting, hence the suicide. And then I had to make the characters representative of commuters on a train to London, which also gave me the chance to write about other issues, as each character has their own sup-plot and story arc. So, Iris, an older woman, is facing issues of aging and loneliness, Claire, a middle-aged woman is struggling with caring for elderly parents and putting her own life on hold, and so on (don’t want to give too much away!) I love creating all the characters and trying to weave some of them together in a way that didn’t feel contrived. I’ve had people messaging me to tell me which was their favourite character and ask more about them! I love hearing from readers.
14) As I’d said in the introduction, you’re virtually unique in my dozens of previous subjects in that you write standalones and not series. Why is that?
Great question! Even though my books are quite character driven, I trend to write around themes and as much as I like some of the people I create and would like to spend more time with them, I feel like they’ve done their job within the one book. Having said that, the first thing I ever wrote (a still unpublished YA paranormal romance trilogy) made me fall in love with my characters. I couldn’t stop thinking about them, but I knew their story was finished. In the end I had to write them a letter and thank them for coming into my life, but now it was time to leave! I know it sounds mad, but it worked, and I could move on to writing something else.
13) Are there any plans to turn one of your standalones into a series or one with new characters?
Several people have suggested I write more about the characters in The Train – maybe give them each a book of their own, but I haven’t got it in me! Other readers have wanted to hear more of what happened to Laila after the end of InVisible. I love that they are so invested in the character and the story that they want more, but I also like to let the reader imagine for themselves where her lie might have taken her after the book has ended. I love books that leave me wondering about the characters – they’re the ones that stay with me more than books where everything is neatly wrapped up.
12) You once wrote that you got into writing fiction “almost accidentally”. How did that come about, exactly?
It was a total accident! When my kids were in their early teens I had more time to do what I wanted. I work part time, and love to swim and do yoga, but I needed something creative in my life. I wanted to do a photography course, but couldn’t find one locally, so picked up a pen and a notebook. I thought maybe I’d write a short story, but it turned into the aforementioned YA trilogy! 320,000 words in all. And that was how I got the writing bug. Now I can’t stop, even though every time I finish a book, I worry I’ll never have an idea for another one. Once I let go of that anxiety, I get another idea, sometimes several, and then I have to choose which one to go with. Sometimes I get into the research and realise it’s not going to work, or start writing and it doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere so I abandon it and start something else.
11) Describe your typical writing day, if there is such a thing. Do you draft exclusively in notebooks or journals or laptops or is it a combination of both? Do you set a word goal for yourself and, if so, what is it?
I don’t have a typical writing day. I work odd hours – early morning, late afternoon/evening, so have time during the day. I’m very good at letting other things get in the way of writing, and always think I should be more disciplined, but I can’t force it. I am in awe of people who sit down and write a certain number of words a day, but I don’t work that way. When I’m in the flow, I can sit at my computer for hours, other days, my writing feels constipated and I have to leave it! If that happens for two or three days in a row, I leave the computer and go to my notebook. I love the physical act of writing with a nice pen, and often find that it frees my thinking up again and I find the way forward in the story. Once that’s happened, I tend to go back to the keyboard again.
10) Plotter, pantser or plantser?
Panster. I’ve tried to plot out books but the characters always seem to hijack the story and take it off in directions I hadn’t even thought of. Although it can be challenging starting a book with little idea of where it’s going, I also love the process of discovery as I write. Sometimes I have to pull the story back a bit and take charge, but usually the characters seem to know better than my conscious mind where they need to go and how to get there.
9) You’d also written on your blog a couple of years ago at the start of the pandemic that it had made writing more difficult. Has that been mitigated in the years since?
Looking back, I think I was in a state of anxiety at the beginning of the pandemic; it felt like the world have become a threatening place, nowhere was safe. Also, both my daughters were working in the UK and couldn’t get home as Australia closed its borders very early on and even Australian citizens couldn’t get back easily. So I was anxious for me and worried about them, and trying to get used to seeing friends on Zoom rather than in real life. The house suddenly felt small (it’s not!) and I didn’t have any space in my head for anything other than dealing with the day-to-day activities of my life. Fortunately, after the first few months, the anxiety subsided as we all settled into this strange new way of life, and I actually ended up being quite the writing machine!
8) Let’s talk about Ella’s War, an almost typical Sarah Bourne book with a seductive storyline: A WWII nurse wakes up in a hospital bed in 1947 with no memory of how she got there. Now, you’re a counsellor. Was your profession able to inform you as to the experience of an amnesiac or did that require special research?
I haven’t worked with anyone with amnesia, so I had to do a lot of research for the book. I actually had an idea that it was going to be a comedy – woman wakes up with no memory but she’s a well-known wealthy socialite, so all these men come and claim to be her husband to get their hands on her money. It quickly fizzled, but as I was wondering what to do with it, I read a short article about nursing in the war – specifically that WW2 was the first time nurses were at the front rather than way behind the lines. I thought that was interesting, so read all I could about it, and Ella was reborn as a nurse who was grappling with the trauma of all she’d seen and had to do in her time in France and Germany.
7) Who were some of the authors you’d read while growing up in England and had any of them gone on to influence your own work?
I wasn’t a great reader as a youngster, but had to read the classics at school – Hardy, Austen, Shakespeare, Dickens, the Brontes and so on. It wasn’t until after college that I discovered the joy of reading for its own sake, and then I felt I had to make up for lost time! I read widely, although I can’t read horror and I’m not a great fan of sci-fi. I think everything I’ve ever read has influenced my writing in some subliminal way, but I particularly love the writing of John Boyne, Niall Williams, Anne Enright (is there something in the fact that they’re all Irish, I wonder?), Kamila Shamsie, Mohsin Hamid, Rohinton Mistry, Kate Atkinson, Chris Cleeve, William Nicholson. The list goes on, but they all write fantastic characters in interesting plots, which is what I aspire to do.
6) I know you wouldn’t practice yoga if it hindered your writing. But does it really center you and facilitate the writing process?
My yoga practice is very important to me. I feel like it grounds me in a way nothing else can, except maybe a long walk in the countryside or by the ocean. But I can practice yoga anywhere, anytime, and it always leave me with a sense of clarity. When I’m feeling blocked in my writing, or know I have to write a difficult scene, I get onto my yoga mat and focus on the breath, the movement, the alignment of my body, and let everything else fade into the background. By the time I’ve finished my practice, I can usually move forward with the writing. It feels like a gift.
5) Exile, your latest release, is perhaps your most Gothic novel, a character study between a mother and daughter in the Shetland Islands. What inspired this and why was it necessary to set this story in the remote island of Yell?
When I was a teenager my mother had a friend who was in her fifties and obsessed with a man she worked with. He was all she could talk about. They weren’t in a relationship but thoughts of him filled her every waking moment. Years later, working in Mental Health, I came across a woman who had been diagnosed with Erotomania, or De Clerambault’s syndrome, and the symptoms were exactly the same as my mother’s friend had. Move forward again, and I decided it would be a really interesting theme for a book, so I did a lot of research and found that there are degrees of this issue, from the lovely ‘falling in love’ feeling called limerence, to full blown Erotomania. Add to that the fact that I like writing about dysfunctional relationships, and Kirstie and her mother were born! Kirstie has burned a lot of bridges in London, so decides to remove herself and her ‘illness’ to a remote island where she hopes her Obsessive Love Disorder won’t be triggered and she can get her life back on track. But, of course, other issues arise, not least her mother coming to visit and the cracks in their relationship coming to the fore.
4) InVisible has at its backdrop the 2005 terrorist attacks in the London Tube. How were you able to get into the mind of your main character, Laila, and was research into Islamic terrorism difficult to do?
The idea for the book actually came from hearing a radio interview with Lisa Guenther, an American philosopher, talking about the phenomenological effects of solitary confinement. I bought her book and found it fascinating, so read a few more books about solitary confinement, and then started thinking about a character. I wanted to write about a woman, and I didn’t want her to be in prison for a specific crime, so I decided that she was wrongfully held, and the only reason I could think of that someone would be in solitary was under suspicion of terrorism.
I was quite worried when writing this book that I’d end up on some sort of watch list because I did so much research into terror groups, training camps, terrorists, etc! I also had help from a couple of people I met who had been in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan quite recently (not as terrorists, I might add!) and their comments were invaluable in terms of creating the sense of place.
As to getting into Laila’s head, I did what I do with all my protagonists and major characters – I wrote a detailed profile of her physical, mental and emotional traits and felt my way into her as a person. Then I asked myself a lot of questions about her situation, how she might respond to what was happening, and so on.
3) Are there any plans to write a straight up police procedural or a good, rattling murder mystery?
Funny you should ask that! During lock down last year I started writing a murder mystery series, featuring DI Luna Bright. It’s a new venture for me, not only switching genres, but creating a series. It’s very different to writing stand-alone novels, because I have to think about character development over a much longer time-frame as well as come up with inventive ways for people to be killed! It’s great fun, though.
2) You’ve been living in Australia for about a quarter century now, yet none of your novels are set there. Any plans to do so?
I’ve tried to set books in Australia, I really have, but they always end up somewhere else. In one that hasn’t yet been published, the protagonist started in my own part of Sydney, but quickly went to India and stayed there! I’m not sure what it is that gets in the way of setting a book in Australia – I think I worry that I need a different vocabulary to describe the very different place. England is small and cosy, Australia is vast and the outback can be quite a hostile environment. Maybe there’s also a sense of nostalgia in writing about the England I remember, even though I love living in Australia. I suppose England is in my blood!
1) What’s next for Sarah Bourne?
I have an earlier book of mine being re-published later this year. Two Lives tells the parallel stories of two women involved in a car accident and how their lives eventually merge again with interesting consequences!
I’m also looking for a publisher for the Di Luna Bright murder mysteries, as well as another stand-alone novel about a family dealing with grief (seems to be a recurring theme for me!)
As always, I have a number of writing projects on the go, so I’m keeping busy.
Thank you so much, Robert, for these great questions. I loved answering them.
If you’re interested in learning more about Ms. Bourne’s work, please follow the handy links below.
Exile, published 23rd March 2022
InVisible published September 2021
Ella’s War published June 2021
The Train published April 2021
Twitter: @sarahbourne007
Instagram: SarahBourne007
posted by jurassicpork @ Monday, April 25, 2022
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