Author Interview: Kate Fulford
Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?
Where am I from? I’ve often wondered that myself. The bare biographical details are that I spent my childhood in Hertfordshire and my teenage years in Norfolk, but I’ve never felt I was from either place. I hot-footed it to London immediately after university and I have never left. I love London and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s my spiritual home. Lots of people hate London (and are happy to tell Londoners so) but for those of us who have chosen to live here long term, it inspires a passion that you don’t often find elsewhere. London also features heavily in my writing, it’s almost another character in fact. As for my writing, I write novels about clever, resourceful, funny women who solve their own problems. I have a very distinctive voice as an author, but there’s nothing manufactured about it, it’s simply the only way I can write. My friends tell me that reading my books is like hearing me talk (something I do a lot), so anyone that doesn’t like my books probably wouldn’t like me…
How long have you been writing?
It never occurred to me to think I could be a writer when I was young. It’s not something anyone in my family had ever done. I never kept a diary nor did I ever write anything I wasn’t required to by school or university. But I did read a great deal (books were an integral part of family life).
What was the inspiration for your most recent book?
This is a tricky one to answer honestly, or at least to commit to in print. Let’s put it like this, the relationship between a woman and her partner’s mother is a notoriously tricky one. Both women love the same man, but they have very different relationships (one would hope) with that man. Unless both parties are very easy going, or very wise, there will most likely be difficulties to overcome. I suspect that at some time or another, all women (and some men) have come across a potential mother-in-law they could happily live without. So it’s a topic that’s ripe for fiction – two people having to negotiate a relationship with each other that neither wants because of a third party they both love, and want to be loved by. And if it has any relevance to my own life, I’d really rather not say…
What was the hardest part about writing this book?
The most challenging, and most satisfying, part of writing this book was creating a story arc. A book that simply listed horrible things about the mother-in-law wouldn’t make much of a novel. It was a lot of work, therefore, to create a story for the characters to inhabit. I enjoy books which compel me to read the next chapter when I should really be getting on with something else (like sleeping) so twists, turns and cliff-hangers are important to me. I also like stories which tie everything together into a satisfying whole. I therefore spent a long time going over and over the story to make sure that events prefigure each other in a way that isn’t obvious on first reading, but which draw all the subplots and events together. I want to surprise and delight the reader, but without being too tricksy. I don’t like it when either great tranches of a book don’t serve the central plot in any way, or that throw something in at the end that the reader knows nothing about simply for the sake of a ‘big twist’. So plotting was the hardest part, by far.
Do you often develop characters from your personal experiences or draw from that of others?
I’m really interested in people, I think it’s one of the reasons I love London so much. You are surrounded by people, and have endless opportunities to talk to them - while out walking, on the tube or bus, in cafes, in museums, everywhere. All these encounters give me amazing insights into all sorts of lives. I remember little incidents or ideas that these encounters spark and use them (in a fictionalised form) in everything I write.
Are your comfortable writing in different genres?
While I have a distinctive style, all my writing is humorous (or at least that’s what I like to think) the only other thread that connects everything is my style of heroine. Women are always at the centre of my stories, often as both protagonist and antagonist. I don’t do this to make any kind of statement. It’s simply that I’m a woman and it would never occur to me (or to any of the women I call friends) to sit back and let a man sort out our problems for us.
Is your writing genre one that you read a lot of? Why or why not did you decide to/not to write in this genre?
I read very widely and don’t have a ‘go to’ genre. I love (and hate) all sorts of different books. The only thing I demand from a book is that it is well written. I spent several years as a copywriter and I can be very pedantic about sloppy sentence structure, incorrect use of words, the pointless overuse of adjectives, and bad punctuation. Which will open me up to shoals of unwarranted, unnecessary, untenable, unimaginative criticism from other pedants, who are disinterested in my work anyway.
Do you have a favorite writing theme?
It all begins and ends with characters for me. While I might start with an overarching idea for a book, it is the people that inhabit the story that bring it alive. So I am only interested in writing interesting, quirky, multi faceted people that (hopefully) avoid being clichéd. I want people to feel they can understand why my characters (even the not so nice ones) do what they do.
When did you decide that it was time to take your writing public?
When I wrote a book that a) I felt was good enough and b) had a hook that would give people a reason to buy it. I wrote at least five books before this one, but despite encouragement from some friends and family to submit them I knew they didn’t meet the criteria I had set myself. And I think writing is as much a craft as an art and in all those books I was working towards being good at what I did. My writing won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I am proud of In-laws and Outlaws, and I felt that it should, and could, get a wider audience than my husband and a couple of really close friends.
Is writing your first job?
I am lucky enough to be able to devote myself to writing full time, although I do volunteer at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home one day a week (https://www.battersea.org.uk/) - though I use my married name there, so you won’t know it’s me!.
What is your next writing project?
I am just completing the sci-fi novel I mentioned earlier, and have already begun another, which I will get back to after I have done another round of edits on the sci-fi one. The idea behind the newest one comes from my own experience of the country versus the city. As a teenager I lived in a house in the middle of the countryside. Literally. We had no neighbours. Now I live in the city but there’s always the slight lure of the country, especially when you could live in an enormous house. But what would it really be like? How would you get on? And what if you upset the locals and they wanted you gone, what might happen then?
Now for one of my favorite requests - tell us a random fun fact about yourself.
The illustration on the cover of my book was done by the illustrator of such famous books as Wolf Hall, The First Ladies Detective Agency series, Life of Pi and many more. It just so happens that the illustrator, Andy Bridge, was one of my best friends at school. We had completely lost touch when I saw his name on the spine of Wolf Hall one day when I was rereading it. So when I got published I approached him and he was delighted to do it for me! I think it’s kind of nice that two kids from the same small school have done the inside and the outside of a book. And I love, love, love the cover!
SHE KNOWS WHAT'S BEST FOR HER SON, AND IT'S NOT YOU…
Eve has an idiosyncratic relationship with the truth, is a borderline psychopath (according to her psychologist friend Claire), and has a rather colourful past. But her heart is in the right place. Having recently met Gideon everything seems, at last, to be working out rather well for her. Then he introduces her to his mother. Marjorie clearly believes that she knows what's best for her son, and it's definitely not Eve.
Over the next few months Eve struggles as Marjorie seems hell-bent on undermining her relationship with Gideon at every opportunity. Then, a chance meeting with someone very close to Marjorie confirms Eve's worst fears - there are literally no lengths to which Marjorie will not go to get Eve out of her son's life. Using her own ingenuity, and with help from some very unexpected quarters, Eve finds herself caught up in a very high stakes game indeed, in which there can be only one winner.
Where am I from? I’ve often wondered that myself. The bare biographical details are that I spent my childhood in Hertfordshire and my teenage years in Norfolk, but I’ve never felt I was from either place. I hot-footed it to London immediately after university and I have never left. I love London and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s my spiritual home. Lots of people hate London (and are happy to tell Londoners so) but for those of us who have chosen to live here long term, it inspires a passion that you don’t often find elsewhere. London also features heavily in my writing, it’s almost another character in fact. As for my writing, I write novels about clever, resourceful, funny women who solve their own problems. I have a very distinctive voice as an author, but there’s nothing manufactured about it, it’s simply the only way I can write. My friends tell me that reading my books is like hearing me talk (something I do a lot), so anyone that doesn’t like my books probably wouldn’t like me…
How long have you been writing?
It never occurred to me to think I could be a writer when I was young. It’s not something anyone in my family had ever done. I never kept a diary nor did I ever write anything I wasn’t required to by school or university. But I did read a great deal (books were an integral part of family life).
It was only much later that I began to write for pleasure. It all started because my husband is Australian. We met on holiday (ours is one of those statistically improbable holiday romances that lasted – 22 years and counting) and it was nine months before he was able to move to London to be with me.
During that time I wrote to him every week (no email back then!). My letters often ran to 15 or 20 pages. I wrote funny and lightly fictionalised stories about my life, and I really loved writing them. Luckily he also liked reading them, and the experience got me thinking. I had a good career in business, but it didn’t feed my soul. I always felt that there was something else I was supposed to be doing, but I didn’t know what. Writing those letters was the start of finding out what I was meant to do.
Over the next few years I explored writing in a number of ways. I took night classes, I went on an Arvon course (https://www.arvon.org/about-us/), and I wrote. But I had lots of other stuff going on (work, more studying, life etc) and although I daydreamed about getting published I didn’t really put much effort into it. Then, about four years ago, I realised that I needed to focus on getting published or forget about it, so I did the former, and here I am!
What was the inspiration for your most recent book?
This is a tricky one to answer honestly, or at least to commit to in print. Let’s put it like this, the relationship between a woman and her partner’s mother is a notoriously tricky one. Both women love the same man, but they have very different relationships (one would hope) with that man. Unless both parties are very easy going, or very wise, there will most likely be difficulties to overcome. I suspect that at some time or another, all women (and some men) have come across a potential mother-in-law they could happily live without. So it’s a topic that’s ripe for fiction – two people having to negotiate a relationship with each other that neither wants because of a third party they both love, and want to be loved by. And if it has any relevance to my own life, I’d really rather not say…
What was the hardest part about writing this book?
The most challenging, and most satisfying, part of writing this book was creating a story arc. A book that simply listed horrible things about the mother-in-law wouldn’t make much of a novel. It was a lot of work, therefore, to create a story for the characters to inhabit. I enjoy books which compel me to read the next chapter when I should really be getting on with something else (like sleeping) so twists, turns and cliff-hangers are important to me. I also like stories which tie everything together into a satisfying whole. I therefore spent a long time going over and over the story to make sure that events prefigure each other in a way that isn’t obvious on first reading, but which draw all the subplots and events together. I want to surprise and delight the reader, but without being too tricksy. I don’t like it when either great tranches of a book don’t serve the central plot in any way, or that throw something in at the end that the reader knows nothing about simply for the sake of a ‘big twist’. So plotting was the hardest part, by far.
Do you often develop characters from your personal experiences or draw from that of others?
I’m really interested in people, I think it’s one of the reasons I love London so much. You are surrounded by people, and have endless opportunities to talk to them - while out walking, on the tube or bus, in cafes, in museums, everywhere. All these encounters give me amazing insights into all sorts of lives. I remember little incidents or ideas that these encounters spark and use them (in a fictionalised form) in everything I write.
I am also fascinated by what motivates people to behave as they do, which resulted in me studying for a Masters degree in psychology a few years ago. Bringing these two streams together I try to think myself into the mindset of each of my characters when I’m writing. I try to think as they might to ensure that their actions and reactions come from their character, rather than being bolted on simply to serve the plot. And, of course, there’s an awful lot of me in there too.
Are your comfortable writing in different genres?
While I have a distinctive style, all my writing is humorous (or at least that’s what I like to think) the only other thread that connects everything is my style of heroine. Women are always at the centre of my stories, often as both protagonist and antagonist. I don’t do this to make any kind of statement. It’s simply that I’m a woman and it would never occur to me (or to any of the women I call friends) to sit back and let a man sort out our problems for us.
So, I wouldn’t want to confine myself to a genre. I have a yearning to write something historical – I love history and my first degree was mainly history focussed – but it would be funny and possibly not that historically accurate. I would also love to write a murder mystery, but I’d have to choose the right victim, as I don’t like the way perfectly nice people are bumped off just to get a plot going. And, funnily enough, the novel I am just finishing is, I am assured by others, science fiction. I didn’t realise I was writing sci-fi until someone pointed it out, because I had started from the point of wondering what would happen if you could see how your life might have gone if you’d made different choices, and then written an adventure story that explored that idea.
Is your writing genre one that you read a lot of? Why or why not did you decide to/not to write in this genre?
I read very widely and don’t have a ‘go to’ genre. I love (and hate) all sorts of different books. The only thing I demand from a book is that it is well written. I spent several years as a copywriter and I can be very pedantic about sloppy sentence structure, incorrect use of words, the pointless overuse of adjectives, and bad punctuation. Which will open me up to shoals of unwarranted, unnecessary, untenable, unimaginative criticism from other pedants, who are disinterested in my work anyway.
Do you have a favorite writing theme?
It all begins and ends with characters for me. While I might start with an overarching idea for a book, it is the people that inhabit the story that bring it alive. So I am only interested in writing interesting, quirky, multi faceted people that (hopefully) avoid being clichéd. I want people to feel they can understand why my characters (even the not so nice ones) do what they do.
When did you decide that it was time to take your writing public?
When I wrote a book that a) I felt was good enough and b) had a hook that would give people a reason to buy it. I wrote at least five books before this one, but despite encouragement from some friends and family to submit them I knew they didn’t meet the criteria I had set myself. And I think writing is as much a craft as an art and in all those books I was working towards being good at what I did. My writing won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I am proud of In-laws and Outlaws, and I felt that it should, and could, get a wider audience than my husband and a couple of really close friends.
Is writing your first job?
I am lucky enough to be able to devote myself to writing full time, although I do volunteer at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home one day a week (https://www.battersea.org.uk/) - though I use my married name there, so you won’t know it’s me!.
What’s something that you do to help find new inspiration?
Writer’s block? I’m not so sure it exists, not for me at least. I think that creativity is like a muscle. You have to exercise it to make it stronger and the more you do use it, the stronger it gets. But you also have off days. I run and cycle and I have days when I drag myself out to do it, and feel that I have no energy, but if I stopped doing either because I sometimes find it hard, I wouldn’t get better at running and cycling. So I think that you just have to keep at it. Pick up the computer (or whatever) and give it a try. If what you write one day is complete tosh then rewrite it or chuck it away, but keep doing it, but not overdoing it. As for finding new inspiration, sometimes the best thing is to get away from the computer, don’t think about it, let your brain have a little downtime, get a good night’s sleep. Then, bang, an idea or a solution to a problem pops unbidden into your brain. It’s an amazing thing, the brain.
Writer’s block? I’m not so sure it exists, not for me at least. I think that creativity is like a muscle. You have to exercise it to make it stronger and the more you do use it, the stronger it gets. But you also have off days. I run and cycle and I have days when I drag myself out to do it, and feel that I have no energy, but if I stopped doing either because I sometimes find it hard, I wouldn’t get better at running and cycling. So I think that you just have to keep at it. Pick up the computer (or whatever) and give it a try. If what you write one day is complete tosh then rewrite it or chuck it away, but keep doing it, but not overdoing it. As for finding new inspiration, sometimes the best thing is to get away from the computer, don’t think about it, let your brain have a little downtime, get a good night’s sleep. Then, bang, an idea or a solution to a problem pops unbidden into your brain. It’s an amazing thing, the brain.
What is your next writing project?
I am just completing the sci-fi novel I mentioned earlier, and have already begun another, which I will get back to after I have done another round of edits on the sci-fi one. The idea behind the newest one comes from my own experience of the country versus the city. As a teenager I lived in a house in the middle of the countryside. Literally. We had no neighbours. Now I live in the city but there’s always the slight lure of the country, especially when you could live in an enormous house. But what would it really be like? How would you get on? And what if you upset the locals and they wanted you gone, what might happen then?
Now for one of my favorite requests - tell us a random fun fact about yourself.
The illustration on the cover of my book was done by the illustrator of such famous books as Wolf Hall, The First Ladies Detective Agency series, Life of Pi and many more. It just so happens that the illustrator, Andy Bridge, was one of my best friends at school. We had completely lost touch when I saw his name on the spine of Wolf Hall one day when I was rereading it. So when I got published I approached him and he was delighted to do it for me! I think it’s kind of nice that two kids from the same small school have done the inside and the outside of a book. And I love, love, love the cover!
Eve has an idiosyncratic relationship with the truth, is a borderline psychopath (according to her psychologist friend Claire), and has a rather colourful past. But her heart is in the right place. Having recently met Gideon everything seems, at last, to be working out rather well for her. Then he introduces her to his mother. Marjorie clearly believes that she knows what's best for her son, and it's definitely not Eve.
Over the next few months Eve struggles as Marjorie seems hell-bent on undermining her relationship with Gideon at every opportunity. Then, a chance meeting with someone very close to Marjorie confirms Eve's worst fears - there are literally no lengths to which Marjorie will not go to get Eve out of her son's life. Using her own ingenuity, and with help from some very unexpected quarters, Eve finds herself caught up in a very high stakes game indeed, in which there can be only one winner.
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