The first novel in Ray Star’s Earthlings trilogy is published today by Chronos Publishing. Set in a Britain at once familiar and yet very different, it chronicles the journey of Peridot searching for her friend Euan in a world run by a tyrannical chicken named Alan. Paul Simpson caught up with her shortly before publication.

 

You’ve talked about having written a number of other novels but this is the one you wanted to bring to publication. Why this?

When I was younger my Dad used to tell stories to me about Cuthbert the Crocodile so the other books I’ve written are for children. They’re Cuthbert the Crocodile books which I hope to release at some point in the future but I needed the first book that I wrote to be a full length proper novel. It needs to mean something to me and also something that could in some way, possibly make some kind of a positive difference. I hope this will, we shall see, but whilst the book revolves around magic and it’s an exciting read, I hope people do get the core message to the novel. It might make people think, and then hopefully inspire some positive change.

Without sounding too morbid, the way the world is at the moment, the things we do in our day to day lives that we take for granted, we don’t think of the knock on effect they have on everything else on the planet and unfortunately everything that we do does. We’re at a pivotal point in the world right now where if we don’t start making changes, we’re going to be in a bit of a pickle. So hopefully people will read and think, ‘Ahh, we do that’ and it might click. They might just enjoy the book, which is great as well, but hopefully a few people get the message.

I think the difference is it used to be ‘It’s not our problem, it’s a different generation’s problem’…

Yes and that’s not the case anymore, it’s really not. There’s a quote that I hear quite a lot that’s fantastic: ‘The biggest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it’. Robert Swan said that and it’s just so true because so many generations think ‘Oh, the government will sort that’ or ‘Politicians will sort that’ or ‘Rich people will sort that’ and even if that was the case, we still live here. It’s still down to us to try, and it doesn’t matter how small or big it is, just try and do something. We are all able to have positive change.

It’s something as simplistic as changing your energy provider to one that is green energy. I was going to say it’s a five minute phone call but that’s not true, calling an energy provider is a half hour phone call, but a half hour of your time can make a huge difference. I think it needs to be more public knowledge, that we’re at a time where we need to do these things.

What inspired the book?

It’s a mixture of things. I lost my Dad a few years ago to cancer and when he was diagnosed he was given a set amount of time to live. He asked the doctors, ‘What can I do other than chemo so that I can live longer?’ and the first thing they all said to him, straight away without even a second’s hesitation, was to stop eating meat and dairy. And that was such a big alarm bell for us because we thought, ‘Why are we being told that now when he’s dying?’ Surely if we weren’t eating these things for breakfast, dinner and lunch in the first place there’d be less chance of getting it anyway?

It’s not the only solution – there’s a million and one reasons why you can get cancer. Everything we put in our body has an effect on it – drinking, stress, anything – but that was a large contributing factor so we went down the vegetarian route. But then I found, when I went vegetarian it had the opposite effect on me. When you go veggie, everything’s got loads of eggs and cheese in it and I actually put weight on, I got pretty chunky! Then I stumbled across plant based living, and then everything just carried on from there.

I decided to give up meat but still eat fish then I was in a restaurant with my mum and they sat us next to this fish tank with all these tropical fish swimming around. I just felt so sad because I thought, ‘These poor fish, they’re swimming around in circles their whole lives and they don’t know anything different’ – but then my dinner arrived and I’d ordered cod! I thought. ‘What a hypocrite, how can I say that and then eat this?’ So that was it for me.

My Dad had a Peridot ring that he asked me if I would wear when he passed, so that’s where the name Peridot came from. Euan – after the fish lunch I had with Mum, I said to her, ‘I’m going to write a book about animals that can talk and I need a name for the boy. It’s going to be based around friendship’. Lots of fantasy epics revolve around love and I didn’t want there to be any love triangles or anything like that. I wanted it to be based solely around friendships, there’s a bit of a gap in the market for that. She said ‘I like the name Euan’ because she likes Ewan McGregor.

I didn’t know what the story was going to be about until I sat down and started writing it, I didn’t know the first chapter was going to be based around Alan. I didn’t know the tyrant of the story was going to be a chicken called Alan, which sounds ridiculous but it kind of worked! I didn’t plan any of it. I never know what I’m going to write. I sit down and I start typing and it just flows.

Which begs an interesting question because you’re writing a trilogy.

I am, yes.

But you’re tying off avenues the minute this first book is published. When book two is published you’re tying off even more avenues and you can’t go back and foreshadow. So, do you know where things end up?

I have a rough idea. With the background of the book, there are specific events that need to take place so that I cover everything. I have a list of things and I tick them off as I go but other than that, the actual story itself it’s completely spontaneous. I have no idea what I’m going to write until I’m sitting down and writing it. So it could go any way.

I’m not entirely sure who’s going to make it and who’s not going to make it, and that’s the hardest part of writing for me. You write a character and you fall in love with them and you want them there till the end but would Harry Potter have been Harry Potter if people hadn’t died?

What sort of things did you enjoy reading growing up?

YA Fantasy. I’m just a fantasy lover. Magic, dragons, witches, if it’s got magic in it, I’ll love it.

Anything particular in terms of authors or books?

One of the first YA fantasy books that I read and really loved was The Fallen series [by Lauren Kate]. I read Vampire Diaries and any kind of YA fantasy novel, I get hooked and have to stay up till three in the morning reading it. Michael Grant’s Gone series are my favourite. They are absolutely brilliant. He’s a fantastic writer..

One of the things that struck me immediately and particularly in that first chapter, it feels like Animal Farm turned up to 100.

That was a thing I struggled with because I wanted to include all the practices we do as humans reversed but in a non preachy way. I don’t want people to read it and feel like they’re being condemned for the things that we do. So it was really important to me and, again this is going to sound ridiculous, I had to put myself in the frame of mind of a chicken!

If this really happened, how would Alan feel right now? What would he really say? I just wanted people to be able to perhaps empathise with what we do but from the animals’ perspective. Not forcing anything down the readers’ throats that ‘this is what we do and it’s wrong.’ Some people might not think it’s wrong and that’s fine, everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs and decisions.

To quote Harlan Ellison, everybody’s entitled to their own informed beliefs and decisions.

I wanted to try and inform people in a non preachy way how it would feel if our lives were the other way around because it would be like a scene from a horror movie. It would be horrific, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy – and it happens every day. I’d love to be able to implement some kind of change, but I’m just a 34 year old woman from Essex with two kids and two dogs. This was my way of peaceful activism that I hope people will enjoy as well. I tried to include as much magic and adventure and everything in there as well, so it isn’t just all about the narrative.

Did you work out how the world worked, and know where the island is that Peri is  on at the beginning?

Yes. So for book two, I’m getting a map designed. It’s basically Britain as Britain is but showing where the different compounds are. Everything that is in the book is what is in England and Wales and Scotland. It is Britain. The one thing I’m struggling with is, for the final book is, obviously the world doesn’t revolve around Britain, does it? So I need to take it global but the final book will need to cover other countries as well.

They’ll have to rename Turkey.

Yes, that can be Alan’s cousin! Distant relatives.

When you sit down to write, do you go back and re-read what you’ve done so far?

I do, yes.

And that triggers you into the next bit?

Exactly that, so that’s my little kind of writing method. I’ll write a couple of chapters, I’ll stop and re-read them, do a light edit, nothing too heavy, and then I’ll carry on. That stops me from rambling. I don’t write structurally, I don’t storyboard or anything like that. But you don’t want to ramble, you don’t want to go off course, you don’t want to come away from the narrative, you want to stick to the purpose of the book.

I haven’t written more than three chapters at a time since my second son was born. When I was just pregnant, if I wrote more than three chapters I would make a point of stopping and editing and then coming back to it just so I kept going where I needed to go, where I wanted to go.

There’s lots of parts in book two that I’m really excited to write about, especially with Peri’s magic. She can’t control the magic.

I think everyone’s going to love Joe: everyone wants a Joe in their life. He’s the funny Grandad or Uncle that everyone needs. And I think everyone’s probably going to love Phoenix and Freya – they are based on my own dogs. They are my family so I couldn’t not put them in the book. Their story gets heard.

One of the things that’s covered as well is breed specific legislation which is something that I’ve experienced myself with my boy Phoenix. Freya was taken from a homeless person, so I made sure to include homelessness in the book as well. There’s lots of other things in there as well that aren’t just animal. A lot to cover without being too big a book.

At the end of the day, the story has to, to an extent, take precedence otherwise you will lose your reader.

Exactly that, that’s why it’s a sub narrative and not the core story of the book. The core story of the book is Peri and Euan’s friendship, the resounding thing is them coming together to try and do the right thing, but then the question ‘what is the right thing?’ is for the reader to work out and then to decide for themselves because they may feel differently about it to how I do as I’m writing it. That’s going to be really interesting: I can’t wait to see people’s feedback from that.

What’s the biggest challenge you faced writing it?

Writing a book about an evil chicken named Alan and making it believable and interesting and not stupid or spoof-y!

Making time to write the book: I’ve got kids now, so writing book two is taking double the amount of time of writing book one, which is a shame because now in my head I’ve got all these things that I want to write, I can’t wait to write and then they’ll wake up and start crying and I can’t write.

So yes, making time to write; I want people to like Alan so making the tyrant not too tyrant-y; and deciding who I’m going to kill off!

Earthlings: The Beginning is  out now from Chronos Publishing; click here to order from Amazon.co.uk