Kerry Fisher
The School Gate Survival Guide is a funny novel about school gate snobbery. I got the idea for the book when I lived in Italy and realised that snobbery there tends to be confined to two things. One was job title - there's a lot of 'You must meet Engineer So-and-so and Lawyer Big Cheese'. I was often introduced as Doctor Fisher as I have a degree in languages, which used to scare me in case someone started choking to death and I could only offer up a suggestion about the subjunctive. Secondly, regional snobbery is huge: northern Italians generally find themselves superior to southern Italians. When I came back to Britain, I realised that job titles and geographical location were just the beginning…all sorts of little social judgements are taking place constantly. I don't know any other nation where what you put in a child's lunchbox somehow pigeonholes you into a social class. There's a lot of humour within that idea so I decided that the school gates would be a perfect backdrop - Downton Abbey in a contemporary school setting.
How much has your background in journalism helped you to write this book?
I find novel-writing and journalism to be quite different, though the discipline of sitting in front of a blank screen and 'just getting on with it' are the same. I'm not in that category of writers who talk about the story just bursting to get out. For me, it's often like hacking something out of concrete with a hammer. When I studied journalism, I was told two vital things: you need to be able to turn up to work with a hangover, broken heart or bad temper and still produce decent writing and 'if you don't know where to begin, pretend you're rushing into a bar to tell your friends what you've just seen - that's your starting point.' I've translated that into 1000 words a day, even when I'm sitting there with my brain shuddering, wondering whether I'll ever have another idea again.
Please tell us about the character of Maia.
Maia is a cleaner who gets an opportunity to send her children to a posh private school. She finds herself catapulted into a middle-class minefield and has to find a way to survive. She's feisty, funny and honest and is prepared to do anything to give her kids the best possible start in life, which is why so many women, whatever their social class, can relate to her. She's the daughter of a Basque immigrant - her unusual name, Maia Etxeleku - is crucial to the story, though it's the thing that irritates readers the most - 'tx' in Basque is pronounced 'ch' - so her name is 'Echeleku'. I lived in San Sebastian in the Basque country for a couple of years, which is why I chose it. The Basque language fascinated me - it bore no relation to anything I'd ever heard before.
Please tell us about The Writers' Program at the University of California that helped you move from fact to fiction.
It took me ages to sign up to a creative writing course in case I discovered that I was utterly rubbish at the thing I most wanted to do - write a novel. After reviewing books for several years, I took the plunge and signed up to the Writers' Program at the UCLA and it was like being reborn…I simply couldn't wait to sit down and write, staying up until two o'clock in the morning because I found the whole process so exciting. Some exceptional writers might be able to just sit down and crank out a brilliant novel but I started at the beginning, making tons of mistakes and learning along the way. My first novel - which will never see the light of day - consisted almost entirely of characters going from restaurant to restaurant in search of a plot. The most important piece of advice I carry with me all the time: 'This is fiction, we can skip the boring bits.'
You wrote travel guidebooks for Thomas Cook for a while so where would you most like to go in the world?
Nothing can beat the absolute joy I feel of landing somewhere I haven't been before and knowing that there's a new country out there, just waiting to be explored. I'd love to go back to Australia and take the children to Sydney, which is my favourite city in the world. After my daughter thought Manchester was the capital of Scotland, I decided that a little bit of eye-opening travel might not be a bad thing, so we're off to China next Easter to see a completely different culture and hopefully pin down the fact that Beijing, not Dublin, is the capital.
What is next for you?
This time last year I didn't even have an agent or a book deal so I don't want to be too greedy as I feel incredibly grateful to be where I am now. I'm very interested in the business/marketing side of bookselling, so I'd like to understand more about that - in the current climate, I don't think you can twirl around all struggling artiste in the attic waiting for inspiration and expect other people to do the marketing for you. I'm also looking forward to my second novel, The Divorce Domino, being released in summer 2015 and finishing the book I'm writing now. Ideally, I'd love to have an excellent idea for the next one so that I don't have to frighten the staff in Starbucks where I write by standing on the tables shrieking, 'I can't do this, I'm a fraud, now they'll find me out'.
The Island Escape by Kerry Fisher