To celebrate the recent release of her new novel The Floating Theatre, we asked author Martha Conway to let us in on 10 things she'd like all of her readers to know about her! So read on, and get to know her a little better...

Martha Conway

Martha Conway

  1. I eat a piece of chocolate every day. This requires no explanation.
  2. Although I’m American, I also have afternoon tea every day, although probably not a proper tea (see chocolate, above).
  3. As a writer of historical fiction, I’m a fiend for research. Historical diaries and travelogues inspire me. The U.S. Library of Congress maintains a web site called “American Memories” with firsthand accounts of life in the 19th century, and I could (and do) spend hours reading it. What I really love is learning how people lived—what they ate, their daily chores, what they planted in their gardens, their social engagements, and how they got along (or didn’t) with other nearly communities—rather than the politics of the day.
  4. I teach creative writing for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program, and I’m constantly amazed and delighted by the imaginations of my students.
  5. Although I counsel my students to write an entire first draft of a novel through before revising it, I don’t always follow this advice myself. About a quarter of the way through a first draft, I often realize that my original concept was deeply flawed in some way and I must start over. However, after that I do write a complete first draft before going on to the second!
  6. When I want inspiration, I read Kate Atkinson, Tessa Hadley, Sarah Waters, Kathleen Grissom, or Charles Dickens.
  7. In my latest novel, The Floating Theatre, the main character is a seamstress and costume designer—but I don’t sew. Although my older sisters (I have five of them) received sewing machines as presents when they graduated from college, I successfully petitioned for a computer. I can sew on buttons, but that’s about it. However, when doing research for The Floating Theatre I quickly realized that sewing is something you really must do rather than read about. One day my daughter’s class took a quilt-making lesson, and I asked the teacher if she would take me on as a private pupil so I could write about sewing without making a complete fool of myself. It was lovely; Susan came to my house once a month, and we sat in my living room and sewed. She showed me how to make shirtsleeve hems, how to alter a blouse, and how to make a ruff (my character makes a ruff for a theatre dog). I enjoyed it thoroughly—but I probably have forgotten everything by now.
  8. I am usually reading two or three books at the same time. One of these is always an audiobook that I listen to while I’m driving doing errands. I seriously (but probably wrongly) think I’m a better driver when I’m listening to a book—I don’t get so mad at other drivers, for instance (why don’t they learn the traffic rules?!), and I don’t feel quite the same urgency to get wherever I’m going. At the moment I’m reading The City and the City by China Mieville, Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard, and I’m listening to Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson.
  9. As I’ve already mentioned I have five older sisters, and I also have one younger sister, but no brothers. Growing up, my two best friends also came from all-girl families. Maybe for this reason I have always been interested in female protagonists; when I think up stories, there is always a girl or a woman at the centre of it. Lately I’ve been experimenting with writing from a male point of view, though.
  10. My husband grows roses and dahlias, and I usually give him the credit when passers-by compliment me on our front garden. Usually.

The Floating Theatre by Martha Conway is available now, published by Zaffre in paperback for £8.99.