Joanne Nicholson and I met online in May 2018 and found we had much in common as writers, although I live in the UK and Joanne lives in Australia. We wrote a joint post to share our writing experiences which you can read here. Now we are both busy promoting our new novels, we thought it was time to touch base again. In Joanne’s novel Only the Lonely the catalyst for the story is a fatal car accident, in my novel The String Games the catalyst comes when a young boy goes missing. This got us thinking about how one event can change a life forever which we decided to discuss here. Over to Joanne:
In life, one day often blends into the next until somewhere out of the blue, something extraordinary can happen that alters our lives irrevocably. In my novel, Only the Lonely one such event turns Tiffany’s life upside down. On the night of Tiffany’s eighteenth birthday, her parents are tragically killed in a car accident, caused by someone driving under the influence of alcohol. This leaves Tiffany going through the normal machinations of coming of age while struggling to deal with grief and overwhelming loneliness.
When Tiffany discovers, as the sole heir to her parents’ estate, that her parents have a frozen embryo in storage from when they received IVF to have her, she decides to give birth to her biological sibling in order to create a sense of family and belonging again. Due to ethical concerns, her request is met with objections from the clinic. It raises the question whether a frozen embryo should be treated as property or a person and whether it is morally right for Tiffany to have IVF to implant this embryo, as she has no known fertility issues. Tiffany is forced to sue the clinic to have the procedure, as she can’t bring herself to destroy or donate the embryo, as it is the last link to her parents.
That one isolated car accident at the start of the story is responsible for the chain reaction causing Tiffany’s carefree lifestyle into one where she takes on the full responsibility of her life and the life of her unborn twin. As an author, I enjoy the process of taking inspiration from real life events and then developing characters to weave a story of challenges and ethical dilemmas to take readers on a journey. The inspiration for this novel came from a real life story, where a twenty-five-year-old woman in the USA gave birth to a baby from a donor frozen embryo that was twenty-four years old. This sparked the kernel of an idea – where a woman could be implanted with, and give birth to, her own twin. I then established why someone would want to do that, and the car accident that killed Tiffany’s parents was pivotal to the storyline.
Thank you to Joanne for sharing details of the inspiration behind your novel Only the Lonely. I have to admit, this is a fascinating subject and one that will engage many readers.
Now to Gail:
One of the worst experiences of my life was losing my three-year-old son for forty minutes on the beach at St Jean de Luz in France. I was rubbing sunscreen onto my daughter and when I looked up, he was gone. Although this episode ended happily it made me think about different possible outcomes, the vulnerability of little children in countries where they can’t speak the language, and the parental fear of losing a child. I decided this would be a good hook for novel readers but instead of telling the story from a parental perspective, I decided to explore the legacy of loss from the viewpoint of an older sibling.
It is this catalyst of a lost child that drives the narrative in The String Games. This coming-of-age novel explores the dynamics of a fractured family coping with the aftermath of four-year-old Josh’s abduction and murder during a holiday in France. It explores how guilt is unfairly shouldered by his older sister, Nim, who is the protagonist of the novel. In second part, readers get to understand the repercussions for Nim as she moves into the teenage years and the murky world of peer manipulation. In the final part of The String Games, Nim (who is now an adult) reverts to her given name of Imogen and tries to move forward with her life but echoes from this early tragedy force her to return to France and find answers. The novel raises issues relating to what makes a good mother and whether it is possible to forgive. The metaphor of string runs throughout the story where the characters’ lives are tangled and knotted but ultimately this is a story of fresh starts and new beginnings.
I recently learnt that The String Games has been longlisted in The People’s Book Prize for fiction 2019. This is a national award that finds and promotes new and undiscovered work. The organisation supports the complete eradication of illiteracy and this is something very important to me as, following years of working with parents and children to build their literacy skills, there is still a need in communities for further work. In this longlisting, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect match: an opportunity to gain a wider readership for The String Games and support a cause close to my heart. Winners of the competition are decided by a public vote and I hope you feel able to give The String Games your vote to enable the novel to reach the next stage. Voting is easy. All you have to do is click on the link below:
https://peoplesbookprize.com/summer-2019/the-string-games/
– Scroll to the bottom of the page and enter your name and email address
– tick yes or no to receive the newsletter
– Click submit
Could your vote for my novel help to change my life forever?
Joanne and I hope this post has pricked your curiosity about our novels. If you’d like to purchase a copy of Joanne Nicholson’s Only the Lonely, you can do so through AmazonUK and AmazonAustralia. Copies of The String Games by Gail Aldwin can be purchased and sent worldwide through her publisher’s website at Victorina Press.
You can find Joanne at:
the writer is a lonely hunter 