📖 Author in the Spotlight ~ Claire Dyer

 

Hi Claire and welcome back to Jaffareadstoo. Congratulations on your new novel and Happy Publication Day!

Thank you! It’s great to be back!

Without giving too much away what can you tell us about What We Thought We Knew?

The novel is about the three families at numbers two, four and six Penwood Heights. These families are connected by work, friendship and a terrible tragedy. Also, whilst each character thinks they know all there is to know about the others, they don’t. Whilst told via ten points of view, it is the central character, Faith, whose story is narrated in the first person and allows the reader to know that not only is she keeping her own secret, but unknown to everyone else, she’s also keeping another’s. It is when this other person’s secret is discovered that what the families thought they knew about one another is blown to pieces.

When planning a novel what usually comes first the plot or the people?

It varies. Sometimes inspiration can strike via an object or place, and sometimes a central idea or a situation. With this novel, it was after I’d hosted a dinner party with friends that I got to wondering what secrets we might be keeping from one another, and the story grew from there. I visited the town where I wanted to set the novel and drove around Penwood Heights (which is a real place) so I could visualise for myself where the families might live. I must add that a lot of artistic licence was used in my portrayal of the road, houses and town! And, once I’d got the setting nailed, I set about peopling it. Telling the story from ten points of view was a mad decision but one I don’t regret now it's done! I felt it important that each person should have their own voice and story arc.

Whilst researching the novel did you discover anything which surprised you?

I actually first researched and wrote the novel about twelve years ago, rewriting it during lockdown and my parents’ last illnesses, so I guess the thing that surprised me most was how ‘real’ everything still seemed to me: both the people and the places of the novel came back in full technicolour. However, I think the thing I enjoyed researching most was Faith and Lizzie’s coffee shop. The very lovely people in my local Costa spent time talking to me about their process and especially how their Lisa 3 Coffee Machine worked! It was huge fun and really interesting!

Your style of writing is very much ‘from the heart’. Does this take its toll on you emotionally and if so how do you overcome it?

You’re right, I do feel very connected to my characters and the ups and downs of their lives can take their toll on me, but I guess the thing that helps is remembering that I’m working towards an ending where (hopefully) there will be a resolution of sorts for each of them – even if it’s not a fairytale ending, it’s an ending and that’s what keeps me going!

When do you find the time to write, and do you have a favourite place to do your writing?

When I’m writing I try to schedule specific times in my diary around my teaching and editing commitments, and have found that I write best in the morning at my desk at home, in silence, with a cat or two by my side. However, my absolute favourite place and time to write is when I’m on holiday in my beloved Kalkan in Turkey. Getting up early, making coffee and sitting looking out at the bay as the sun rises over the mountain behind the villa as I write, is a real treat!

What do you hope readers will take away from reading What We Thought We Knew?

I hope they will take two things away from reading the novel. Firstly, I hope they will be able to forgive my characters for what they do wrong and, secondly, understand that sometimes we can all do the wrong things for the right reasons.

Thank you, Claire for being our Author in the Spotlight today.

Thank you for having me!

Pegasus
25 January 2024

The families at numbers two, four and six Penwood Heights are connected by work, friendship, the loss of a child and a secret truth which has sat in the bedrock of their lives for years. In the centre of this tight-knit group is Faith, who believes her job is to act as a paperweight, keeping them all safe. And she does this until someone from her past reappears and threatens to sabotage everything. And, as the pieces fall, these families, these friends, realise that what they thought they knew about one another was nothing more than make-believe. They also discover that trust is illusory and for Faith, at least, that keeping other people’s secrets can be more dangerous than keeping her own.

More about Claire

Claire Dyer’s poetry collections are published by Two Rivers Press, her novels by Quercus, The Dome Press, Matador and Pegasus. Her latest novel is ‘What We Thought We Knew’, and a further collection, ‘The Adjustments’, is forthcoming with Two Rivers Press in April 2024. She teaches creative writing and runs Fresh Eyes, an editorial and critiquing service. She is Poetry Consultant to the Council of the SWWJ, has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London and is represented by Broo Doherty at DHH Literary Agency.

X/Twitter @clairedyer1

Website Facebook Instagram

Amazon UK

📖 Book Review ~ The Significant Others of Odie May by Claire Dyer

Matador
28 July 2021

My thanks to the author for my copy of this book

 

Any one of them could have murdered her... but who did?

On the night Odie May and her married lover are due to celebrate him leaving his wife, Odie goes out to buy a bottle of his favourite wine and, on her way home, is murdered by a woman in a lime green coat.

The next thing Odie knows is that she’s in a waiting room and there’s a man called Carl Draper saying he’s her Initial Contact. He is carrying a clipboard and invites her into an interview room.

Over the course of her interview, Carl and Odie track back to the significant others in her life to date to try and work out where she’s gone wrong, who might have killed her, and why.

In the meantime, Carl also shows Odie what’s happening in the life she’s left behind as her mother and her lover, Michael, learn of her death and manage the tricky days that follow it.

But nothing is as simple as it seems. Although Carl has it in his power to return Odie to the moment before she was killed, this comes at a price she may not be able to pay.

📖 My thoughts..

We first meet Odie May when she has been murdered by a woman in a lime green coat, this is no spoiler as it clearly says so in the blurb, but what then follows is the story of how Odie May found herself in that particular situation, clutching a bottle of red wine and wondering where her life went horribly wrong.

I think we all wonder what it would be like to shuffle off this mortal coil and what awaits us when we are gone and as a nurse I was often privy to people's thoughts when they had been 'brought back' following cardiac arrest but none of them could categorically say if there was anything to see on the other side. That's why it's been so interesting to meet up with Odie May as she is given the unique opportunity to look at her life, to re-evaluate her place in it, and to see the impact of her loss on those she has left behind.

As always, this talented author has given us something that is a little bit different and which makes us question what we know about Odie, who it must be said, isn't the most lovable of characters, however, the more I read her story and the more I warmed to her unique personality. I enjoyed how the story takes us through the relationships Odie has with her significant others, from her childhood, and beyond,  in those moments which have shaped Odie into the person we meet at the start of the story.

The Significant Others of Odie May is a well thought out thriller, with lovely attention to even the smallest detail, and by the end of the story I had really warmed to Odie, and I hoped that when faced with a choice of what to do next, she made the right decision.

About the Author

Claire Dyer’s poetry collections are published by Two Rivers Press, her novels by Quercus and The Dome Press. Her novel, 'The Significant Others of Odie May' is forthcoming from Matador in 2021. She curates Reading's Poets’ Café, teaches creative writing and runs Fresh Eyes, an editorial and critiquing service. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London and is a regular contributor on BBC Radio Berkshire. 

Twitter @CalireDyer1

Website

@MatadorBooks

Blog Tour ~ The Last Day by Clare Dyer

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be part of the Blog Tour for The Last Day

And to welcome the author

Claire Dyer

Hi Claire, welcome to Jaffareadstoo and thank you for spending time with us today. Tell us a little about yourself and how you got started as an author?

Firstly, thank you so much for inviting me to take part in this Q&A. It’s a real treat! 

I guess I’ve always written (or had aspirations to). I remember sitting at my grandmother’s bureau when I was a girl and writing shockingly bad poems and short stories. I studied English at Birmingham University in the early 80s but then got sucked into the world of work and bringing up my family, so it was only when my kids were in their teens that I finally lifted my head above the parapet and thought, ‘Hey, why not give writing a try again?’ 

I went on a Cornerstones course and met Julie Cohen who introduced me to Reading Writers, the longest-running writing group in Reading and, on joining I began to work with some wonderfully supportive people who weren’t afraid to tell me when I was getting it wrong but who also celebrated with me when I got things right!

From there it was mainly because of the people I met on the way who gave me the encouragement and context to push myself to completing whole novels and then, when I thought I was ready – which I obviously wasn’t – I started the whole submission thing. There have been many rejections along the way, but what’s been fantastic is the whole learning process I’ve been on and the characters who have peopled that journey. I wouldn’t have been without any of them for all the world!

Where did you get the first flash of inspiration for The Last Day?

The idea came to me when I was sitting at my desk and I hastily started writing down some notes for it. I wanted the book to be about an older woman and her ex’s new young partner. Originally, it was to be based around four portraits which would represent the changing relationship between the two women. It’s altered a bit along the way, obviously, but I what I wanted to explore was a different paradigm to the norm: one where the women actually liked one another!

Will you explain to us a little more about the plot without giving too much away?

The novel is told from three viewpoints: Boyd’s, his ex-wife Vita’s and his girlfriend Honey’s. 

When Boyd finds himself in financial straits he asks Vita if he can move back into the home they used to share and bring Honey with him. Vita says yes because she’s over him and it doesn’t bother her either way whether he’s there or not. 

However, living together is unsettling for all of them. Each has their own secrets and desires and the past has the tendency of bumping up against them and knocking them off course. I can’t say too much without giving the game away, but needless to say they each end up in completely different place than the one in which they started!

How do you plan your writing, are you a plotter, or a see where it goes kind of writer?

I’m more of a see-where-it-goes sort of writer. I have a basic plot outline but find that the characters tend to dictate where and how it develops. For example, in The Last Day, Vita’s POV was originally in the third person, but on the second rewrite, she pushed herself centre and forward and started waving her paintbrush at me and telling me what she should say next and so I had to put her in the first person after that!

Also, whilst I knew how the book was to end, I tried not to tell myself so that I would keep the same element of surprise in the writing that I hope the reader will experience when they read it!

Do you have a special place to write and where do you do your best thinking?

I’m very lucky in that I have a writing room at home. It faces my garden and since my kids have left home at least one, if not all, of my three cats tend to spend their days with me. Ideally, I like it to be quiet but living in Reading that’s not always possible, especially because each of my neighbours have had or are having major extensions done to their houses!

However, I also like to write in other places. I relish going on writing retreats to, for example, Retreats for You in Devon or Tŷ Newydd in North Wales but my absolute favourite writing place is Kalkan in Turkey. I think we’re on our 16th and 17th holidays there this year and there’s nothing better than sitting on the terrace of the villa where we stay with my laptop in front of me and gazing out over the bay as the sun sparkles the water.

Having said all this, my best thinking I suppose happens either at night in bed when I can’t sleep or in the swimming pool where I go for my thrice-weekly swim. The dark and silence of the night and/or the focus of thinking of nothing but counting lengths does, I find, free up my mind to sort plot problems or character dilemmas.

Are you your worst critic and why?

Oh yes, certainly! I think it’s a writer’s natural state to be in a constant state of doubt and despair. Whenever I write I have the good fairy on one shoulder telling me I can do it, and the bad fairy on the other, telling me what I’m doing is rubbish and doesn’t make sense. Even reading the proof copy of The Last Day was a rollercoaster: one minute I’d be telling myself, ‘This is OK, you know,’ and the next, I’d be wracked with uncertainty. The only way to counter this, I believe, is to put your trust in your characters. It’s their story, after all!

And finally ...If your life was book what would be the title?

My family have said that, due to my fashion choices, they are considering putting the words, ‘Here lies Claire Dyer, she wore beige’ on my headstone, so maybe the book of my life could be called ‘The Woman Who Wore Beige’!!!

Thank you again for featuring me on your site. It’s been a huge pleasure!

The Dome Press
15 February 2018

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book and for the invitation to be part of the blog tour

What's it all about..

Every ending starts with a beginning; every beginning, an end. 

Boyd and Vita have been separated for six years when Boyd asks if he can move back in to the house they both still own, bringing with him his twenty-seven-year-old girlfriend, Honey. 

Of course, Vita agrees: enough water has travelled under enough bridges since her marriage to Boyd ended and she is totally over him; nothing can touch her now. Boyd and Honey move in and everyone is happy - or so it seems.

However, all three are keeping secrets.

My thoughts about the book..

Vita enjoys her own company, immersed in her artwork, she appears self-contained and in control. When Boyd, her amicably estranged husband, falls on hard times, Vita is persuaded, almost against her better judgment, to allow him move back into what was once their shared home along with Honey, Boyd's much younger girlfriend. This unlikely ménage seems a strange combination but as their shared experiences start to merge and coalesce, so the secrets of their lives start to be exposed.

The whole idea of the last day is very skilfully developed and without saying anything at all about the plot, I was completely taken in by the whole concept of time passing. Through a fascinating three stranded narrative the circumstances of the story are revealed by Vita, Boyd and Honey. All three characters have distinct voices and the author, very cleverly, allows them time to tell their stories in their own unique voices, without any one of them outshining the other. I was engrossed by all three characters, but I was especially captivated by Vita, whose strength and determination wraps around her like a shield.

The Last Day is a beautifully written novel which shows remarkable insight into the subtle nuances of a fractured marriage, where past hurts have long gone unreconciled and where disappointment and sadness have lingered for far too long. The author carries the reader along, not with a plot that shouts and screams to be heard, but rather with a delicate blend of thoughtful reflection, so that before long, The Last Day fills spaces in your mind that you never knew existed.

About the Author

Claire Dyer’s novels, The Moment and The Perfect Affair and her short story, Falling For Gatsby are published by Quercus. Her poetry collections, Interference Effects and Eleven Rooms, are published by Two Rivers Press. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London and teaches creative writing for Bracknell & Wokingham College. She also runs Fresh Eyes, an editorial and critiquing service.

In 2016, Claire penned and performed a poem for National Poetry Day, called The Oracle, for BBC Radio Berkshire.

Visit the author's Website

Follow on Twitter @ClaireDyer1 #TheLastDay @DomePress

And do visit the other blog tour stops for more exciting content.

Sunday War Poet ~ Author's Choice ~ Claire Dyer

It's Remembrance Sunday and I  am delighted to  introduce

Author

Claire Dyer 

and her choice of  Sunday War Poem

I wanted to choose a poem written by a woman and, when looking at the Poetry By Heart website  discovered the work of Helen Mackay (1891 – 1965).

What appealed to me about this poem was its insistence on a domestic narrative. Not for it are the battlefields or the horrors and privations suffered by so many soldiers, but rather it focuses on the tragedy of a motherless family saying goodbye to their father who is leaving on a troop train. 

Train – Helen McKay

Will the train never start?

God, make the train start.

She cannot bear it, keeping up so long;

and he, he no more tries to laugh at her.

He is going.

She holds his two hands now.

Now, she has touch of him and sight of him.

And then he will be gone.

He will gone.

They are so young.

She stands under the window of his carriage,

and he stands in the window.

They hold each other’s hands

across the window ledge.

And look and look,

and know that they may never look again.

The great clock of the station-

how strange it is.

Terrible that the minutes go,

terrible that the minutes never go.

They had walked the platform for so long,

up and down, and up and down-

the platform, in the rainy morning,

up and down, and up and down.

The guard came by, calling,

“Take your places, take your places.”

She stands under the window of his carriage,

and he stands in the window.

God, make the train start!

Before they cannot bear it,

make the train start!

God, make the train start!

The three children, there,

in black, with the old nurse,

standing together, and looking, and looking,

up at their father in the carriage window,

they are so forlorn and silent.

The little girl will not cry,

but her chin trembles.

She throws back her head,

with its stiff little braid,

and will not cry.

Her father leans down,

out over the ledge of the window,

and kisses her, and kisses her.

She must be like her mother,

and it must be the mother who is dead.

The nurse lifts up the smallest boy,

and his father kisses him,

leaning through the carriage window.

The big boy stands very straight,

and looks at his father, 

and looks, and never takes his eyes from him,

And knows that he may never look again.

Will the train never start?

God, make the train start!

The father reaches his hand down from the window,

and grips the boy’s hand,

and does not speak at all.

Will the train never start?

He lets the boy’s hand go.

Will the train never start?

He takes the boy’s chin in his hand,

leaning out through the window,

and lifts the face that is so young, to his.

They look and look,

and know that they may never look again.

Will the train never start?

God, make the train start!

‘Train’ was published in ‘London, One November. Poems’ in 1915.

With piercing emotional insight, Mackay describes the scene with a painterly eye. We see the tableau of the father, his children and their nurse as a static and a moving thing; there is, in the scene and in the poem an unbearable tension between the desire for the train to leave so that the moment of farewell will have been faced and survived, and the desire to delay it’s leaving for as long as possible.   Furthermore, Mackay’s attention to detail encompasses both the vast: the station, the train, the father’s unknown destination and the tiny: a man touching his son’s chin to lift his face so that they can look at one another for what could be one last time.

Also, for a poem published in 1915 it eschews the formal conventions of the time in terms of structure, phrasing and rhyme schemes. Rather, it is a loose narrative with stanzas of differing lengths and the use of the repeated refrains, for example: ‘Will the train never start?/God, make the train start!’ The language is commonplace and she uses adjectives sparingly with those she does use being neat, ordinary and fitting.

This is a poem which will stay with me. I hope it will stay with you.

***

Claire Dyer is the author of

Eleven Rooms

The Moment

The Perfect Affair

Falling for Gatsby

Huge thanks to Claire for sharing her personal choice of war poem for my Sunday feature on the 

War Poets of World War One.

*~*~*

The author in my spotlight is ....Claire Dyer

I am delighted to introduce to the blog

Claire Dyer

Claire ~ welcome to Jaffareadstoo and thank you for chatting to us about your book 

The Perfect Affair.

Quercus

Where did you get that first blinding flash of inspiration for The Perfect Affair?

It actually came via two sources. Firstly, I was shown a photograph of a reception held sometime in the 1960s to mark the launch of a ship. There was something in the way two of the people in the photograph were standing which told me that there was more to their relationship than met the eye. They were studiously not looking at one another and yet I could feel a tug of connection between them and so started thoughts about writing a novel about characters torn between love and duty.

Secondly, I drove by a house one day which had the most amazing stained glass in its front door and this got me thinking about doorways and about the sun throwing colours onto a hallway floor. To me doorways are liminal places and so I wanted Eve and Myles to meet on a doorstep and for this boundary to represent the struggle between right and wrong that they experience in their relationship.

What can you tell us about the story that won't give too much away?

There are two stories in the novel: one chronicling Rose’s affair with Henry in the 1950s and the other following Eve and Myles’s relationship in the present day. What I wanted to show most of all are the choices the two women face in their respective generations and how some of these choices are very different from one another and also how some are very much the same. There are therefore quite a number of motifs linking the two narratives. Moreover, I didn’t necessarily want pass judgement on the rights and wrongs of their respective situations but instead to give voice to the heartbreak people can suffer and cause when they find themselves falling in love with someone they shouldn’t.

Whilst you are writing you must live with your characters. How do you feel about them when the book is finished? Are they what you expected them to be?

I always go into a period of mourning when a book comes to an end. You’re right, I do live with them and it’s a 24/7 thing so when it’s done I experience a kind of grief. My characters move into my head and heart and even if I don’t do it consciously, I find I'm working on plot points or the scenes they will people when I’m going about my daily business. Therefore when I do sit down to write, it’s like they’re real and have been there all along and are speaking through me and so I don’t actually have much of a say. It’s all a bit weird really!

And, I guess that because of this my characters can and do change as the novel progresses. In The Perfect Affair Rose was supposed to be a bit part but she became more and more vocal and visible and, rather than it being a conscious choice, her story spilled out concurrently with Eve’s. I guess the only person who really stayed as I had intended him was Henry, but then that’s Henry for you; constant and steady!

Which character in the story did you identify with the most?

I suppose it has to be Eve because we are roughly the same age and my sons have recently been the same age as Eve’s daughter is in the novel, so there is a lot I can identify with in her life. However, to make us different from one another I made her tall with long straight hair whereas I am short with short curly hair and this helped me distance myself from her and see her story more objectively!

Are you a plotter...or ...a start writing and see where it takes you, sort of writer?

A bit of both. I do plot the overall arc of the novel; I decide on my settings and time frames and sketch out my characters and do whatever research is necessary but then I kind of let the story take over. I find my books have their own narrative urge and that if I over think things this doesn’t leave room for invention. What I love the most is sitting at my keyboard and seeing what happens. Obviously in doing it this way there are good days and bad days! I usually do have a rough idea how the book will end but don’t like to admit this to myself so as to keep it a surprise for me as well as the reader! This all changes, of course, in the editing process when I have to hone and buff my prose and ensure everything ties up but the first draft has, in the past, tended to be a bit of a voyage of discovery!

Do you write the type of books you like to read and which authors have influenced your writing?

Yes I suppose I do. I like books that make me think, that I have to work at to tease out their meaning. Like with poetry, I like novels I come out of knowing more than when I went in! I recently did an MA in Victorian Literature and so hugely admire the technical and narrative skills of writers such as Eliot and Dickens. My favourite novel ever is Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and I’m a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway but also love Margaret Atwood, Anna Quindlen, oh the list is quite endless! I am a voracious reader and am currently reading The Magus by John Fowles, have just re-read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell and The Guernsey Litearary & Potato Peel Pie Society and a recent favourite has been Where Love Lies by Julie Cohen. I’ve also just completed another MA, this time in Poetry, and have fallen completely for the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. She is, as a friend recently said, like a cat. She always falls on her feet in her poems! I do so envy her this!

What’s next?

I am currently working on another novel which is a multi-point-of-view, multi-generational story set between 1987 and now and which has trust as its core theme. So, I have my work cut out!

More about Claire can be found on her website.

http://www.clairedyer.com/

Claire~ Thank you it's been a real pleasure to learn more about the writing process and the fascinating background to The Perfect Affair.

Jaffa and I wish you continuing success with your writing career.

My review of The Perfect affair can be found here.

*~*~*

Book Review ~ The Perfect Affair by Claire Dyer

Quercus

How wrong is it to love someone you shouldn’t?

How right is it to stay after love has gone?

In the time it took to reach the end of the first page of The Perfect Affair, I knew that I was reading a story I always wanted to read. By the time I got to the end of the first chapter, I was completely enamoured by the story of Eve and Myles. And as the story progressed, I shared their dilemma; I rejoiced in their obvious delight in each other and empathised with their overwhelming fear that what they felt was somehow lessened because of circumstances. The parallel affair between Rose and Henry is interwoven into the story with consummate ease and is no less powerful for being told in a series of flashbacks. The transition between the time frames is flawless, the prose is lyrical, almost poetic in places, and the development of the characters with all their faults and foibles is achieved in a sympathetic and non-judgmental way.

It would be easy to say that writers of words make stories but they don’t, not really, as anyone can string words together, but words only become stories in the hands of a true storyteller. Only a magician of words can take and mold a story into something special and believable and only a talented writer can take a story, a set of characters and make the reader truly believe in what they are reading.

That lovely phrase about fairies springs to mind...if you believe in fairies, clap your hands...well, here’s a new one, if you believe in storytellers, read this book....

About the Author

*~*~*