Lit Up Interviews: Meet Our Team

A Few Words With Julia, Our Fiction Editor

Writer of poetry, prose, and the occasional rant. I like to feed the monsters under my bed with story cake and poem pastries. Is peculiar (Julia)

Either Or (Please highlight or underline your choice)

1. Tea or coffee
2. Hot or cold
3. Movie or book
4. Coke or Pepsi martini / Champagne or Cava
5. Toilet paper — over or under
6. Morning person or Night owl
7. Shower or bath
8. City or country
9. Social Media or book
10. Paperback or ebook

Would you rather (Please highlight or underline your choice)

1. Would you rather be in a room full of snakes or a room full of spiders (preferably sleeping ones)?
2. Would you rather have an endless summer or an endless winter?
3. Would you rather have constant nagging pain or a constant itch?
4. Would you rather only be able to have sex in a room for full of bugs or no sex at all ever?
5. Would you rather always be an hour early or be constantly twenty minutes late?
6. Would you rather live in a haunted mansion or live in a un-haunted cottage?
7. Would you rather lose the ability to read or lose the ability to speak?
8. Would you rather have one real get out of jail free card or a key that opens any door?
9. Would you rather go back to age 5 with everything you know now or know now everything your future self will learn? <<screams>>

Under the Spotlight:

1. Where were you born? Mars (according to trusted family members).
2. Who was the most influential person in your life and how? I think my kids have taught me more about myself and the world than even my wisest teachers.
3. What was the happiest time of your life? I’m a live-in-the-present kind of girl.
4. Tell us your first memory or something you vividly remember from Lit Up. I was lucky enough to be one of the first people DiAmaya Dawn let in on the secret when she first started Lit Up. Both her and Lit Up are responsible for giving me the push to post my first story on Medium. The rest is (a somewhat erratic) history.
5. What do you value most and why? Not to sound too schmalzy or hippy-dippy — but kindness is free and easy.
6. Did you like school? <>
7. Now let’s remember the good old pro-Covid days: What were some memorable trips or outings? I climbed my first mountain when I was two (all the way up on my own little feet but all the way down on my dad’s shoulders). From that time on weekends and holidays were fell walking, castles, and museums — I now live in a city with a Roman palace as its town centre, more museums than you can shake a stick at, and glorious mountains as its backdrop. Working on an archaeological excavation in the Black Desert in Jordan introduced me to how the night sky should look. I still dream about it. We lived in tents and dug our own toilet trenches, got up at dawn to trowel and mattock until 1pm (by which time we had mostly melted). One night we had a party and invited someone we all thought was a spy, he took me for a starlit walk on the parapets of a ruined castle and recited poetry in Arabic — this is the nearest my life has ever got to a film. But right now I’d love to be able to go fell walking with my brothers in the Lake District (we’d pack pork pies, bacon sandwiches, and Cadbury’s chocolate for a snack at the peak) and trade old jokes and stories.
8. How would you want your loved ones to remember you? With a smile.
9. When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? There is no want, just words — I’ve been reading and making stories since I was 3 years old. Even my ‘What did you do in your summer holidays?’ homework read more like fantasy or magical realism than non-fiction.
10. How long does it take you to write a book/story/poem? Forever … or sometimes the click of my fingers. I have pieces that just slipped out and got polished up very quickly. I have others that have sat in the ‘nearly there’ pile for years, sometimes I visit them to have tea and cake and reminisce on old times.
11. What is your work schedule like when you’re writing? I get up early and hope no one else does (including my dog). There is a lot of coffee, and a lot of coffee left to go cold. The rest I fit in on the rare occasions I have the apartment to myself and no other work to do.
12. What would you say is your interesting writing quirk? My unusual punctuation and tendency to use the word ‘and’ — I remember a teacher at school counting all the ‘and’s in my story and saying there were too many ‘and’s and I decided I could live with that. And you can imagine how my mind was blown when I learned that contrary to what that teacher told me you are allowed to put ‘and’ at the beginning of a sentence.
13. Where do you get your information or ideas for your books? Conversations, news stories, writing prompts, google, the world around me. Sometimes a phrase just slips into my head, unfolds, expands, and decides to take me somewhere.
14. When did you write for the first time and how old were you? I had a pushy mother — I was properly reading (and scrawling) at 3 years old. Unfortunately, although my reading has improved, my handwriting isn’t much better. All through childhood paper was at a premium, loving aunts would provide notebooks, my mum would bring scrap paper from work, and I would fill them with characters, drawings, and stories.
15. What do you like to do when you’re not writing? Hang out with the people I love, read, bake and eat cakes, walk, search aimlessly for something ‘joyful and uplifting’ to watch on Netflix, play with the dog, laugh/get angry at things on social media.
16. What does your family think of your writing? My girls are my biggest fans, my husband is jealous and says things like ‘you love that book more than me’ but at the same time he is incredibly supportive, my dog just wants a tummy rub. Whenever I say ‘I’ve finished my book’ they all get really excited. Then I point out I meant the one I was reading not the one I’m still writing and they put the champagne back in the fridge.
17. Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say? Only nice things — mostly.
18. What literary pilgrimages have you gone on? I don’t think I’ve ever gone somewhere because of an author or something I’ve read. But wherever I am in the world I’ll seek out either my memory from a book or the hangout of a favourite author. When I lived in London I liked checking out the blue plaques (I did go find the T S Eliot one in Kensington), and when I visit somewhere I’ll usually read something by a local author or set in that place. If I were to make a proper pilgrimage I think it would be to Capri (because of Axel Munthe’s The Story of San Michele, Tiberius, birds, and Italian food).
19. What is the first book that made you cry? Hmm — probably Charlotte’s Web or Little Women, both of which my mother read to me when I was quite young.
20. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Both — I feel crazy energised and alive when I’m writing, but like a smelly, damp, wrung-out sock when I close my laptop/notebook.
21. What is your writing Kryptonite? Interruptions from my family or friends. I can write in a noisy cafe and not be bothered by strangers, but if anyone sneezes in a far room of the apartment my concentration is shot. And submissions — when I decide something is ready to submit I spend way too long looking for its perfect home.
22. Do you believe in writer’s block? I try not to believe in it, unfortunately, sometimes it believes in me.
23. Have you ever gotten a reader’s block? I hardly read (or wrote) at all when my children were young. Too much distraction — it didn’t feel safe to go hide in another world, and kids want you to share everything with them — even the thoughts in your head.
24. Does a big ego help or hurt writers? I think a writer who can’t take notes or criticism misses out. Even criticism that doesn’t make sense to you (or everyone else says is wrong) can inform your writing. On the other hand, you need to know when to let criticism go and move on in the direction your gut takes you.
25. What do you think makes a good story? I’m supposed to say characters — but actually, I think it’s more to do with honesty and connection. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, a tall tale or an ‘honest to God this happened’ if the writer exposes their true self readers can connect. So, yes characters, as long as those characters in some way expose how the writer really sees the world. I’m not saying the characters should be a version of the author, but rather expose how the author sees and understands other people completely different from themselves.
26. What are common traps for aspiring writers? Under confidence, overconfidence, too much listening to others, not enough listening to others, not writing, choosing stationery.
27. Have you ever gotten a reader’s block? This is the same question as no. 23 — is this a trick question?
28. What other authors/writers are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I am so happy to have lots of writer friends in both real life and online. I run a writers’ group in Split where Michael Freer pushes, nags, and supports me and others, and Tash Pericic is a cheerleader extraordinaire as well as inspiring me with the raw honesty of her own writing. A Maguire of Lit Up is just a mine of information, encouragement, and positive criticism. DiAmaya Dawn is inspirational in both having seen her writing journey, and the help she gives other writers. Abhishek Sengupta, Christopher Iacono, Roo Black, Daphelba, edh lamport, and Jk Mansi are my gotos for chats, renewed sanity, sage advice, empathy, prompts, and kicks up the arse. Edd Jennings for his wisdom, his words, his years of writing experience, and dark sense of humour.
29. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? The little extra I pay for journals with dots.
30. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? This is still an open question — I suspect I’d like Dickens now but haven’t tried him again, I keep trying to like Hemingway. When I was younger I found Joseph Conrad incredibly dry and too descriptive, now his stories come alive on the page for me.
31. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I actually wrote about this as it is such a clear memory. Reading Ray Bradbury as a kid I just got stuck on a beautiful passage, the words sang, they tangled my thoughts, they trapped me in a place I never wanted to escape. https://readmedium.com/how-a-discarded-book-helped-a-martian-live-on-earth-adcf68d5a2e7?source=friends_link&sk=13a9b222511e60a8ff124c0c2859cf30
32. What are the most important magazines for writers to subscribe to / What are your favourite literary journals? Lit Up and The Mad River ;) But seriously, subscribe to journals where you admire and enjoy the writing, the ones that fit you, the ones you’d like to be published in.
33. What’s your favourite under-appreciated novel? I’m never quite sure whether a novel is under-appreciated or not — I mean if I appreciate it then I over-compensate for the critics… I often hear people complain about classics such as Ulysses by James Joyce. It’s usually billed as being ‘difficult’ or ‘inaccessible’ — I think if you just give yourself over to it, and stop worrying about meaning (or whether you’re understanding it), you can live the journey, enjoy individual moments, and be absorbed into the world of the book. I also think it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking a book is overrated just because you didn’t enjoy it yourself. For me Hemingway would be an example — I don’t enjoy his writing, but I can appreciate that millions of others do. It’s a matter of taste.
34. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Only two, and one of those isn’t even at the half-finished mark.
35. What does literary success look like to you? I am shallow/under-confident enough to want publication via an agent and a traditional publisher of paper books.
36. How do you select the names of your characters? Often they just introduce themselves to me, if not then I spend way too long to find a name that fits the story somehow.
37. How do you come up with the titles to your books? Titles are easy — it’s the rest that is hard. (Weirdly this works in reverse for poetry.)
38. Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find? My favourite thing — and another time sink I have to watch myself for.
39. Who is your favourite author and why? I’m not big on having favourites, it feels limiting to me and like I’m trying to put myself in a box. But if you twist my arm I can give you a few names. Kazuo Ishiguro, Iain M Banks, Haruki Murakami, F Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Margaret Atwood, and Maya Angelou. They are all masters of words, characters, and atmosphere. They transport you to their world and show you it from their eyes. A special mention to Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams for making me laugh.
40. Share something your readers wouldn’t know about you. I’m descended from the Viking gods, and I’m the black sheep of my family.

Share something fun or interesting

A photo — favourite place, favourite food, favourite animal etc.

A recipe: