Author Bethany Clift will visit Waterstones on August 4, as she celebrates the release of her second page-turner, Love & Other Human Errors.
Set in London of the near future, the it charts one woman's bid for funding and how it forces her to form human connections for the first time in her life.
Bethany's first novel, Last One at the Party received high praise when it hit stores last year - the television right have been optioned by Scott Free Films.
Exciting times are ahead for this creative, as Bethany will explain when she visits the store for an 'In Conversation ession' between 6pm and 7.30pm.
The event will take the form of a relaxed and friendly but in-depth conversation in front of a seated audience; discussing Bethany's books, what started her writing career, how and why she chose the themes of her second book, how she weaves the relationships through the background of the sci-fi future setting and the issues with the digital technology.
An audience Q&A will follow together with the chance to get her squiggle across your books.
To get you in the mood for her visit, Bethany answered our questions...
The first book that really took your attention
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I first read it when I was 17, it is still my favourite book and it changed my life. It was the first sci-fi book I ever read – before reading it I thought I didn’t like sci-fi!
I read The Forever War, fell in love with the novel, fell in love with the genre and my sci-fi journey began at that point.
Reading The Forever War changed the books I read, the films I watched and the music I listened to. It introduced me to new hobbies, new friends and set me on a completely different path in life. I still read it at least once a year and it is one of my most trusted sources of comfort and joy.
The moment you knew you wanted to be an author
I’m not sure there was a specific moment that I knew I wanted to be an author – I think, at some point, I just realised I was one. I have always written.
I started writing poetry when I was about nine – long rambling odes with far too many rhyming couplets! I then moved onto writing TV and film and finally novels.
I wrote for twenty years before writing became my main source of income.
I remember reading a brilliant article about someone whose father had died and she had found 20 unpublished manuscripts in his desk drawer and was devastated that she had never known about his writing and that he had never seen his work published.
I understood her emotional reaction but also understood his secret obsession. I think if you are a author, at some point, you realise it is just something you do, it is a fundamental part of who you are.
If I never had another book published, I would still write. You are still a writer, even if no one reads what you write.
A book by someone else you wish you had written
I would have to say The Handmaid’s Tale. It is such a brilliant and prescient book, so starkly told and yet so moving.
Margaret Atwood weaves so many strands together to create a world and society that seems both horrific and entirely plausible. I am in awe of how simply and subtly she builds her world; but when you think about the knowledge you have of the society by then end of the novel – the past, the coup d’etat, the rules and laws and roles of women and social structures – it seems incredible that she has managed to pack so much into 311 pages!
The novel is still as relevant today as it was when it was written and I cannot see a time when it won’t be.
I first read The Handmaid’s Tale as part of an anthology that I brought in America. The day that I started reading the novel we drove to The Grand Canyon and I can remember staying in the car to finish my chapter whilst everyone got out to look at the view.
Margaret Atwood wrote a story so good I missed the Grand Canyon – how could I possibly not want to have written that!
How do you take your books - in paper form or digitally
Paper. Every single time. I love books – the feel of them, the smell of them, the weight of them.
I love holding a book in my hands, turning the pages, writing notes in the margins. I always inscribe books that I give as gifts and, if I buy a second-hand book and find an inscription at the front or notes in the margins, it brings me huge joy.
I like to think that the books themselves are small slices of history – being passed from person to person and taking something of that person with them as they move along to the next pair of hands that will hold them and eyes that will read their words. So, yes, paper please!!
How quickly did you find success - I understand your debut novel has been optioned, which is exciting!
Yes – my debut, Last One At The Party, is being adapted into a TV show by Scott Free Films which is HUGELY exciting! LOATP has been very successful and has been translated and released in a number of countries including Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Australia, India and the USA.
It is easy to let myself believe that I am a runaway success(!) but the reality is that I have been writing for nearly twenty years and it has only been in the last two that I have been able to write as my full-time job. So, I would say that yes, I am an overnight success – but it has just been a really, really long night!
Explain the power of a good book
Okay, so, if I could do anything with my life, I would like to be a space pirate. I would have a spaceship and crew and travel the universe robbing the rich, giving to the poor and righting injustices on planets the other side of our solar system – that would be my dream job.
In reality I am not, and will never be, a space pirate – not just because space pirates don’t exist – also because I am scared of flying, I don’t like guns and I couldn’t guarantee to be back from my pirating exploits in time to pick the kids up from school.
But, I can immerse myself in a book about space pirates, I can follow the exploits of a woman captain who leads her ragtag bunch of mercenaries to planets unknown and, for the half hour that I read, I am her and she is me. This is my world, these are my people and this is who I am. I can escape and live my space pirate dreams and still be back to collect the kids. THAT is the power of a good book.
And tell us your favourite word... and why!
Just the one?! Okay… I’m going to go with ‘love’. It’s such a short and simple word – just four letters, one syllable – but, for me, it is the most important word in the English language. We spend a huge amount of our lives looking for love, if we are lucky enough to find love it sets our world on fire and when we lose love it can literally break our hearts.
Everything that I have ever written is about love and everything that I will ever write will have love in it. I wouldn’t want to live without it. Love really does make my world go round.
What is the writing process like for you?
Utter chaos I am afraid! Writers are often split into two groups – plotters and pantsers.
I try so, so hard to be a plotter – I use graphs and notes and post-its and coloured cards and huge sheets of paper with timelines on – and yet every single time I spend weeks planning… and never look at my notes again as soon as I start writing. Unfortunately, I am a pantser.
I start out with the best of intentions and then find that, rather than do what I had planned for them to do, my character will wildly decide to book a last minute holiday to Brazil and there is nothing I can do but board the flight with her!
Writing a book for me is just as much of an adventure as it (hopefully) is for the reader to read it. The characters will do what they want to do and it is my job to record their lives in the most interesting way possible.
Chaos it may be, but it is also exhilarating and astonishingly fun and I am hugely grateful and lucky that it is my job.
> To book tickets to Beth's Waterstones MK event click here
