10 Things I'd LIke My Readers To Know About Me By Joe Treasure

I was the sixth child in a family of nine. My older sister Mary often had to supervise us younger ones. She took an inventive if sometimes wayward approach to childcare, making up games like blindfold tasting, when she’d line us up in the kitchen and spoon random things onto to our tongues for us to name – honey, salt, mustard. She liked sewing and one year made us personalised beach robes incorporating our own quirky design features.

Our house was ramshackle but spacious. My Irish mother would happily provide food and a bed for half a dozen extra people if they turned up unexpectedly, which they sometimes did. We took holidays in an old bus that my carpenter father had kitted out with bunk beds and a kitchen. We slept in some surprising places, but our favourite destination was the Pembrokeshire coast. We often stopped for hitchhikers and learned to be open to people.

I was an English and drama teacher for years before I thought of writing fiction. I liked working with teenagers because they aren’t yet sure what they think and haven’t learnt to hide their feelings. A good school can be a learning environment for everyone. I liked being able to play percussion in the orchestra, take drawing classes with the A-level students, and practise my bad French on the language assistant. 

I met my wife, Leni Wildflower, in Los Angeles on a teaching exchange. Getting to know Leni was the biggest adventure of my life. I drew heavily on my LA experience for my first book The Male Gaze. I gave my visiting Englishman a British wife quite unlike Leni, but even her family assumed it was really all about her

My second book, Besotted, was about two brothers who are exploring their Irish roots and fall in love with the same girl. The girl was imaginary but the brothers were modelled on me and my young brother Wilfrid. We were so close as children that when I started school our parents discovered that, though he’d been gabbling away for years, they couldn’t understand a word he said – I’d always been there to translate. His sudden death three years ago, while he was working as a GP in Shetland, was a hard loss for me.

When I don’t feel inspired to write, I set myself a minimum time. It might be as little as two hours a day. I sit with one eye on the clock, forcing myself to type. The words come out flat and dull. Then maybe in the last twenty minutes I stumble into something that might have a future. Sometimes it’s two or three days of frustration for one day of joy. Not a bad average.

I have huge admiration for writers of historical fiction like Sarah Waters and Hilary Mantel. I’ve tried it but never feel I know enough. Before I can even can get a character out of bed in the morning I’m wondering how the bedsprings creak and what the alarm clock looks like, and what’s for breakfast and does the milk come in a bottle, a jug or a pail? It was fun to set The Book of Air in the future because I could make those things up.

I used to be a news hound but I’ve started watching the news through half-closed eyes, like a kid watching a scary movie. Reading nineteenth century fiction is a form of escape. Writing The Book of Air allowed me to get reacquainted with Jane Eyre. Right now I’m reading War and Peace for the first time and wondering why no one ever told me Tolstoy is funny.

One thing I love about London is how easily you can get about on foot, traveling by tube, jumping on and off buses. Even when you’re jammed up against commuters during rush hour, it’s never as dull as sitting in traffic.

Leni and I have lived at 13 different addresses during our 18 years of marriage, crossing the Atlantic four times. We moved into our second-floor Victorian flat in Balham nearly two years ago. The neighbourhood is youthful and diverse and close to green spaces. We’re thinking we might stay awhile.