Today we're featuring Glyn Soitino, author of Euphorbia, coming November 13
What inspired you to write Euphorbia?In early June 2009, my sister had an accident involving a Euphorbia plant. I thought that maybe I could use that in a story, so I asked her for the details of what happened to her and she was only too pleased to give them. So, I had an incident, but an incident does not a story make. My next step was to invent a character to whom the incident happens (Mark), and give him a painful past, a reason for being the way he is, that part being loosely based on personal experience. The progression of the story was inspired by the changes in village life over the last few decades, the rural exodus and so on, which are also very real. The other main character, Colin, is entirely imaginary.
How long did it take?Seemingly forever. When I started writing it, I thought it would end up Single Shot length. But I had to put it aside to deal with edits and such for various other stories that were coming out, and whenever I got back on track the story just kept on growing. So, what with all the interruptions, I suppose it took around four months to finish the first draft.
Name one thing about yourself that your readers would be surprised to knowThough I'm one hundred per cent English, I was brought up on John Wayne films and country music, and in particular Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs (Big Iron, anyone? God, I so wanted to be that Arizona ranger!). I still love that album. In the song El Paso, Marty sings about a cowboy who shoots another cowboy who is making a move on the Mexican girl whom the first cowboy is in love with, although first cowboy has never actually told her that he loves her. He (first cowboy) then goes on the run, and is finally shot down when he returns to the cantina where she dances because he'd rather die than never see her again. Which I, unromantic child that I was, always thought was pretty stupid, because nowhere in the song did it say that she actually loved him back. Though she did come out to kiss him while he was dying, so I suppose she may have done. Anyway, one birthday, I think I was six, I was given a globe. It was the custom at my school for the birthday kids to take one present and show it to the rest of the school at assembly. I took the globe. The headmistress asked me if I knew where Great Britain was. And I said, 'no, but I know where Mexico is,' and proceeded to show her.
You write in various lengths, from short to long. Are there differences in writing one length over another?Yes. I think I have a different approach to a story, depending on the target length. When I know from the outset that a story is going to be short, told over maybe just a few separate scenes or even one long scene, I can simply make a few notes and then sit down and write it straight through, from start to finish, in a matter of days. That's what I did with Some You Win (drafted over a 3-day weekend) and Hungry, the story I wrote for the Demons anthology last year. Even Patrimony, which I tried so hard to keep to Sip length but ended up being a Single Shot (but only just), took a mere four days to draft, simply because I had that 'short story' target in my brain. And that's fine for the shorts. But for the longer stories, in which there are usually more characters and more things going on in the wings, I tend to spend a lot of time plotting and structuring before starting to actually write. Not that I always stick to the plot or structure, but it does give me a basic framework.
What's the best thing about writing?Being a matchmaker for a couple of guys who really deserve to find love, even if they're only fictional.
How about the worst thing?At the moment, I'd say the worst thing is having to put the writing on the back burner whenever Real Life rears its ugly head and sticks its oversized foot in the door -- damn, that is so frustrating!
Character or plot, which comes first?Lately, what's been springing to mind for the myriad of ideas buzzing around in my brain is a situation, rather than characters or a plot. But once the situation is determined, I need the characters to step in. So, first I have a situation, then characters, and then I build a plot around it all.
What is your favorite way to spend a rainy day?Here in town, that would be reading or writing, but back home in England I sometimes like to go for a walk up the fields behind my parents' house, if it's not blowing a gale, and enjoy the freedom of all that open, empty space.
What is the best writing advice you ever received /found?Now, this is a tricky one. If I may, I'd rather expand on some advice I came across in a writers' magazine recently, which was that something that actually happened to you should never be used as a story. Because an incident is not a story, as we all know. However, what this article did not do was tell you that while it's unwise to transcribe a real life incident and present it as a story, said incident can be adapted and used as part of a story. As I did in Euphorbia; not to mention that around fifty per cent of what happened to Jeff in my story Serendipity actually happened to me, and that particular one just happens to be my best-selling Sip so far.
What are you working on now?What am I not working on now? At the moment, I have around five or six stories in various stages of completion and nothing in the TQ production pipeline, so I should be able to finish writing the WIPs without the distraction of edits, and then, with any luck, have some new releases in the second half of 2011.
Bio: Glyn Soitiño has been writing fiction for her own personal gratification ever since she learned to hold a pencil, a long, long time ago. Writing for an audience, though, is still fairly new. A translator by profession, Glyn has lived and worked in several European countries over the years, and currently resides in Switzerland. Her favorite food is 'proper' fish and chips (in batter, not breadcrumbs), and she makes sure she gets some whenever she goes home to England. Glyn loves dogs and cats in equal measure and enjoys taking pictures of the countryside.
Granite: A Rocky Start by G.H. Worth
No Man's Land by Zoe Nichols
Hell is in the Details by Angela Benedetti
