Interview with Holly Bourne!
A few weeks back I was luckily enough to get the opportunity to interview the fabulous @hollybourneauthor at Spinster Sunday! I feel in love with her debut novel, Soulmates, after reading it as a part of WCBP 2014 Longlist Panel, and was so happy when I got this chance! (Huge thank you to @abookplaceforeveryone for arranging it!)
I toyed with uploading the audio file of the interview, but then decided against it as I couldn’t stop cringing at the sound of my own voice! The full interview is, however, transcribed below!
When did you first realise that you wanted to be an author?
[thinks for a while] Sorry! I just need to think about this one… because I never thought that I could. It’s a bit like wanting to be an astronaut, or a prima ballerina, you know. It’s just like something that happens to other people, and especially as I grew up in a poor background and you never thought that it was something that you could do. But writing was the only thing that I was ever really good at and so I got into journalism, and I started writing a book when I was a news reporter, and I still never thought that it would come to anything. I never thought that I could become an author until I sent off my book to an agent and they came back and said ‘oh, wow’, to which I was like 'what?!’ [laughs] So it was a very late realisation, that I actually had it in me to be able to do something so amazing with my life.
Your debut, Soulmates, blew me away, especially with the ending. Where did the story come from, and did you always plan for that ending, or did it develop along with the book?
I wrote that when Twilight was at the height of it’s popularity, and there were bookshops everywhere dedicated to dark romances, it was just this massive 'thing’. I loved those books, don’t get me wrong, but I worried that they were giving unrealistic expectations of what love is, and what it can acheive, especially at that age. So what I wanted to do with Soulmates was take that idea of the very grand love and then rugby tackle it. So I had to end it like that, otherwise it would be like all of the books that I was trying to tackle. It was always going to have that ending, and people don’t like it! But then when I say to them 'well, how would you have liked me to end it?’ they kinda go 'well, actually… yeah’, so it was the right ending.
Where did the initial story of Soulmates come from?
As I mentioned, I was just looking at all of these books, all this 'romance fixing the world’ and I just remember having this one thought, which was 'What is finding your soulmate wasn’t always a good thing?’ and it was just that idea, that question, that snowballed from there. I did lots of research into soulmates and into the science of love and that story just came from that one question.
Why do you prefer to write young adult fiction as opposed to anything else?
I think teenagehood is just such a transcendental part of life, so much is going on, you’ve got puberty happening, lots of things happening to you for the first time, you’re not quite a child and not quite a grown-up, so there’s this big kind of melting pot of crap, and to me that is where the interesting stories are. Stories of self-discovery, and self-empowerment, where somebody goes on a journey. And you never go on more of a journey than when you are a teenager, and you’re trying to find out who you are. I think all my books, to some degree, are about finding out who you are and owning who you are, so that’s why I keep writing YA, creatively I’m just pulled to that age group, because that’s where the magic happens!
The UKYA community has been going from strength to strength, how does it feel to play such a large role in this?
I just feel so blessed to be a part of it, so lucky. It’s such a thriving, positive, caring, enthusiastic, friendly community, and I have met the most wonderful people, and read the most incredible books. There’s nothing negative in UKYA. It’s just a dream of wonderful authors and books and bloggers and readers and I just feel really, really lucky to be a part of it. That people recognise that there is worth in British stories and teenage girls can read about GCSEs rather than SATs, and just those little things that make you more likely to connect to a story, and to think 'this could have happened to me’ - I think that’s really important to a reader. Being able to feel like you could be that person is so important as a reader.
What do you get up to when you’re not writing?
Ummmm… I do a lot of yoga - I’m one of those vegetarian, yoga, meditation, walks in the countryside bores [laughs]. I also eat a lot of cake! And I love going out for tea - going out for tea and cake is one of my favourite things in the world. I’m really boring! I love watching Buffy on Netflix, or just hanging out with friends and going to the pub. I’m not a very cool person! I don’t like anywhere noisy, or crowded, so I’m just in my little village having a jolly old time!
Quickfire Questions;
Cats or Dogs? Cats
Tea or Coffee? Tea
Winter or Summer? Winter
E-books or physical? Physical
What is your favourite bookshop? Oh no, I can’t! I’ll play it safe and say Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. And Storytellers, Inc, of course!
Get Holly’s books from the Book Depository. Photo by @lisalovestoread
