Chelsey Flood
About Author
Chelsey Flood is 28 and graduated from the UEA Creative Writing MA last year. She is a member of the Lucky 13 writers group, and has already won several prizes and awards for her writing. This is her debut novel, and she is currently working on a second book. Chelsey blogs at thelucky13s.blogspot.com and tweets as @cjflood_author. She lives in Derbyshire.
Author link
Interview
NIGHTWANDERERS
SIMON & SCHUSTER
JUNE 2016
CJ Flood won the Branford Boase award for her debut Infinite Sky and her second YA novel, Nightwanderers, with its sensitive exploration of friendship, siblings and finding oneself, is every bit as appealing although also completely different from her debut.
In Nightwanderers, best friends Rosie and Ti are inseparable until the fateful night that Ti is caught in a teacher's back garden and expelled before disappearing - presumed drowned - with her sister Ophelia. The novel is Rosie's story, following what happened in the weeks leading up to Ti's disappearance and exploring how Rosie finds a way back to herself. It is an assured and beautifully-written novel.
We asked author CJ Flood to answer the following questions:
Q: Did winning the Branford Boase Award for your first novel, Infinite Sky, make it harder to write your second novel because of high expectations?
A: I found this novel fairly easy to write once I had settled on the character of Rosie and the idea of a conflict with a teacher. There were quite a few false starts along the way though, and I started at least three other novels in the interim between finishing Infinite Sky and beginning Nightwanderers. I have learnt SO MUCH since I got my book deal.
Q: You begin the novel with a reference to a character's disappearance, something that happens much later in the novel. Does this give you a point to progress to as you write the story, or did you pull that chapter forward after you'd written the story chronologically?
A: It's a sneaky trick, isn't it? I added the prologue in at a later date. I never know what's going to happen at the end of a novel when I begin, you see. It is so difficult to grab and hold the reader's attention from the very first page - there is so much they need to know about character and setting and situation - sometimes leaping ahead to a more dramatic time can help to convince them to read on.
Q: What happens before you even begin the novel in terms of notes / planning / day dreaming it into shape?
A: It's very strange really, as you have been so involved in another story, and now you aren't working on anything. I sort of fake it till I make it, I suppose. Turn up at my desk and play around with a character or an idea I'm interested in, until one day I find myself genuinely working on something.
Also I will read a lot and catch up with all the things I neglected when I was on deadline to finish final edits. I mainly just try to follow my interests, and see where it leads, all the while trying not to listen to the voice that tells me that I'll never finish another novel again.
Q: You focus on female friendships in this story, why did you want to cover that? Do you feel those kinds of close friendships are what can shape us into who we become as teenagers/adults?
A: They certainly shape us, yes. Finding our first true friends who love us exactly as we are is so important and wonderful. My female friendships are some of the most important and pleasurable relationships in my life. All those years when I was looking for love, I now can see that I had really already found it in the form of my best women. What's more, these relationships get better and better over time.
Growing up I saw a lot of stories about mean girls, and while this did mirror some of my experience (the more dramatic parts, hence its prevalence in stories) there were also lots of sweet, deep relationships with girls that were completely outside of that hierarchical nonsense, and that was what I wanted to bring to the fore in Nightwanderers.
Q: You also explore a sibling/twin relationship, with Ophelia and her twin sister Ti, but why did you set this up as a challenge to Ti and Rosie's friendship?
A: I just love females so much! For a long time I wished I was a boy, or denied my femininity because I'd learned through observation that to be female was to be weaker/sillier/more mad, etc. I used to wear aftershave and buy lad's mags as a teen, and even in my early twenties I scorned the idea of 'a girls' night in/out'. Now I live for lady times! The last few years have been about accepting and enjoying what a massive girl I am.
But female friendships can have their problems too. There can be intensity and jealousy, as well as laughter and support. I was interested in exploring the co-dependency that can thrive in close sibling and friend relationships.
Q: Nightwandering - do you? Why did you want to take your characters out into the dark? When did that become the title?
A: I don't nightwander so much as I used to, probably because I have more freedom now than when I was a kid. Walking at night was exciting, because everything looked and felt different. You were on high alert amidst a gigantic peace, and that just felt good.
It became the title fairly late in the writing process, because I am a timid and reluctant titler, but I'm very happy with it, as it expresses something I care deeply about, namely encouraging the freedom of young females. I wrote a piece in The Guardian on this subject recently, and the response has been amazing. It is something lots of people care about, it seems.
Q: Through Ophelia you also touch on teenagers' mental health, something that is getting more focus in the media. Do you think you're reflecting the greater pressures on teenagers today?
A: Honestly, I don't feel like an expert on the teenagers of today and the pressures they experience. I speak to them during school visits, but we tend to focus on stories and films and books. My fear is that I will become one of the older people who think that everything's just getting worse and harder. Whenever I read novels from hundreds of years ago, the older characters are always saying how much worse things are getting.
I feel a greater pressure due to the lifestyle changes brought on by increased dependence on modern technologies (social networking, never ending advertising) but maybe that's just because I knew a time before the Internet. Today's teenagers don't remember a time before it, which is unimaginable to me.
A good thing though - when I was a kid I knew nothing about mental health, we just used it as a way to insult each other. At least teenagers today have it on their radar. I am very happy to include characters that have issues of this variety, as it's important to destigmatise this stuff.
Q: Ophelia and Ti also have an additional pressure of having parents from a different culture, they are wonderfully colourful characters but why did you want them to be foreign?
A: I dated a British-Italian man one summer, and the identity crisis contained within him intrigued me. More recently, I lived with a few Italian people in a house share, and the conflict I saw them meet as a result of different social styles due to cultural differences was compelling.
Q: The setting is interesting, a school in a small town - why did you want the backdrop of a small, close community? Is the town, Flushing, somewhere you know?
A: I guess it is another of my preoccupations. Small towns or suburbs become so obsessed with safety and courtesy that they can become quite stultifying. Lots of extremely well-meaning and thoughtful people can become quite intolerant of something that challenges their ideas or disturbs their peace. There's a deep creepiness to the conformity of a small town.
Flushing is based on Falmouth, which is the seaside town I did my degree in, in Falmouth. I go back there a lot as it's where my boyfriend grew up, and his parents still live there.
Q: Your characters do some pretty bad things - what was the worst thing you got up to as a teenager?
A: I was fairly naughty as a teenager, I always wanted to rebel against authority and push boundaries. The worst thing I did was probably stealing my friend's dad's car (with said friend) or maybe shoplifting. I was also invited to leave Sixth Form, but luckily I made it to university anyhow. There I became (gradually) a diligent student, and found the path that led me to become the lovely big square I am today.
Q: Where do you do your writing and are you still playing table tennis or do you have new hobbies to escape from writing?
A: I write at my desk in my flat, except for if I need cake and coffee, in which case I write in a cafe in town. I don't play table tennis as much as I used to, though I intend to fix that this summer. It 'may' have been one of many fads (others include football, snorkelling, guitar). I think my real hobby is finding new hobbies. Currently my hobbies are foraging, learning survival skills and eating things with cream. It's been a long time since a hobby stuck though. Please let me know if you have any ideas!
Q: Any top tips for teenaged writers?
A: Read lots and write in your own voice. You have the thing that all of us adult YA writers are trying to cultivate: an authentic teen perspective. Also, imagine you're an alien, and look at all your friends and schoolmates to get a fresh take on what's 'normal'.
Q: What are you writing now?
A: I'm writing a novel for adults which is about a youngish mother escaping to the woods (I can't stop with the absent mums) and I've returned to one of the novels I wrote between Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, which is called The Wild Ones, and is about the same preoccupations: sisters, survival and how to live.
INFINITE SKY
SIMON & SCHUSTER
JANUARY 2013
Infinite Sky, which has just won the Branford Boase Award for a debut novel, explores a family's dynamics during one hot and challenging summer.
When their mother leaves to go travelling, teen siblings Iris and Sam are left to their own devices and Sam, angry at his mother's departure, gradually falls in with the wrong crowd.
Iris, meanwhile, has grown curious about the family of travellers that has set up camp in their field and she forms a bond with one of the travellers, Trick. But as the summer passes, anger, discrimination and boredom build, leading to a terrible tragedy.
Author CJ Flood talked to ReadingZone about her debut novel:
Q: At what point did you write the prologue for Infinite Sky, where we discover that a character in the novel has died - although we aren't told who?
A: The prologue came very late to the party, a week before my final deadline. I had had a conversation with a writer friend about the book, and he suggested bringing the funeral to the forefront. After that I restructured things to set the two boys of the novel against each other, to emphasis the main story question of the book: who is in the casket?
Q: Did you always know the ending, who would die?
A: No! That was a really surprising thing for me. I assumed by the time you got near the end of writing a novel, you would know how it was going to go, but I didn't. I wrote three different endings: one happy one, in which everyone lived; one heartbreaking one in which somebody lovely died, and the one that is in the book today, which is more of the same heartbreaky kind of stuff. I hadn't intended to make people cry when I started out.
Q: Why did you want to tackle the 'clash of cultures' between the established family and travellers?
A: I didn't really. I just knew that the novel needed conflict, and since Silverweed Farm was at the heart of the story from the beginning, it made sense that the conflict should revolve around that. The arrival of a family of Travellers seemed like a rich possibility to explore, and so I began research, and the Delaneys started to emerge.
Q: What was the hardest part of the novel to write?
A: The funeral. I tried to avoid it by just jumping to the scene after, but my agent pulled me up on this. I also struggled with the character of Iris's mum. I wanted her to be sympathetic, and I wanted the reader to understand why she had left her family, but I also didn't want to get into mad/unable to cope woman territory. I wanted her to be strong, and not in that noble, self-sacrificing way that we see so much of in portrayals of women.
Q: Why did you decide to write in the first person?
A: I write in first person most of the time as I find it the best way to get into character, so it wasn't really a conscious choice. Writing Infinite Sky, I also wrote in the point of view of Trick and Sam, as well as Iris's mum and dad. It was always Iris's story though.
The main advantage is that I can write in Iris's voice incredibly easily. In fact I find it really hard to not write in her voice. I think Iris's voice is pretty much my voice.
The main difficulties writing in first person caused were with the plot. For a long time I couldn't work out how Iris could find out about various things. It seemed forced to have her always overhearing things or finding scraps of information lying around. And then I realised that she didn't have to know everything: she could be as shocked by things as the reader. You see, I really didn't know what I was doing when I started out! I very much learned on the job.
Q: Who is your favourite character in the book and why?
A: Wow, it's really hard to say. I love all of the characters so much! I suppose I have an even softer than average soft spot for Trick. Perhaps it is because of the way he tries to look after Iris when everyone else has forgotten to.
Q: Who chose the title?
A: The team at Simon and Schuster helped me choose. I agreed with them that its title at the time - SILVERWEED - wasn't right, and went back to brainstorming. I suggested THE SKY WAS INFINITE, from a line in the book, and the sales director Phil Earle suggested cutting it down to INFINITE SKY, and that was that.
I wasn't entirely convinced at the time, but now I think it's perfect. All the way through, S&S have had this really strong vision of how to package the book. It's been amazing watching it come together.
Q: Debuts are often drawn from an author's own life, perhaps more so than later novels. Is this the case for you and if so what reflects on your own life?
A: Yes, the book draws a lot from my life. Silverweed Farm is based on my dad's house, and Thomas Dancy has a lot of my dad's mannerisms. My dad's house is so important to me. I had the most glorious childhood there. It is the stuff of adventure novels, which is why I was so keen to write about it.
Iris is a lot like me, and Matty is an amalgamation of some of my friends as teenagers. Although I have an older brother, our relationship was quite different from Sam and Iris's. My brother was into skating rather than fighting, and I was the one that got in with a bad crowd. My mum is very open-minded and free-spirited like Tess, but that's where the similarities end.
Q: How old are you and what have you been doing until now in terms of your day job?
A: I am 29 and I write full time. Before my MA, I worked as a waitress/bar maid/kitchen porter/care worker/copywriter/youth worker. I never got very far with any of these jobs, although I really liked being a kitchen porter (you don't have to talk to anyone and you spend hours daydreaming.)
I don't know if its true that I always put my writing first, but I definitely shirked responsibility, which seemed to add up to the same thing. Also, I was pretty much unemployable which helped.
Q: You were doing an MA in creative writing while you wrote this - how much has that helped shape your novel?
I learnt so much during my MA, about how novels work, and about how to find the story in your writing naturally without forcing it.
The course helped shape my novel enormously because I got so much better at writing. The friends I met there, who were also my crit partners, were always supportive of my writing, but they challenged me too. They teased me about my relentless mentions of the Aga, and warned me against sentimentality, and questioned whether I had the nerve to make bad things happen to the characters that I so clearly loved.
Q: What is your favourite YA story and what else do you enjoy reading?
A: I read lots of YA and my favourite story is either How I Live Now or The Outsiders. I also love Before I Die and A Kestrel for a Knave. Aside from YA I read a lot of classic novels, books that have become world famous for their general magnificence. What could be better? Gone with the Wind, Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina are some of my favourites.
Q: How does your writing day go and what do you do to relax when you're not writing?
A: It depends at what stage in the writing I am. An average writing day before I've settled on an idea, for instance, includes a lot more table tennis than an average writing day when I have a week until my deadline. On a good writing day, I am at my desk by 9, and don't leave until after 7. Sometimes I write at night though, and when I'm editing I can work all day and night quite easily. As you can see from my muddled answer, it's quite variable.
To relax I play table tennis, see my friends, drink beer and watch films. I also like getting into the wild/adventuring when I can: swimming in the river or climbing trees or exploring.
Q: How did you get writing to work for you?
A: I've always read a lot. More than I've done anything else, to the point where it was seen as antisocial and I would get told off.
I've also written a lot, even if just in my diary. These two things are key. Something that helped me improve as a writer was keeping a diary, as if I were writing a story. So I wrote my life, but I made an effort with descriptions and tried to capture people's character etc. A lot of my early short stories are reworked excerpts from my diary. In fact, I am going to take my advice myself, and begin doing that again.
Also, the course was instrumental, as I've said already. It worked out really well for me, as I met my agent there, but I had been writing for about five years before I applied. I think you need to have gotten to a certain stage for a course to be of any use to you.
Nightwanderers
