I'm delighted to welcome Jane Lythell to my blog today, to talk about why she has changed direction with her novels. Woman of the Hour was published by Head of Zeus in paperback on 3 November 2016.
Why the change of direction with my novels?
By Jane Lythell
My first two novels
The Lie of You and After the Storm are psychological thrillers. I have always
been interested in what drives a person to do extreme things and in these two
books I explored obsessive behaviour.
The Lie of You is
about Heja who wants to destroy Kathy who is her work colleague. Kathy is a new
mum and is struggling to cope on her return to work. She feels all her work errors are of her own making.
Gradually her home life as well as her work life starts to fall apart. In fact
she is being systematically undermined by Heja. Heja is a chilling and obsessive woman and yet by the end of the book
the reader understands what drove her to act as she did and maybe even to feel
some sympathy for her. We all have a dark
side which we hide from the world. Sometimes something happens which tips a
person into full blown obsession.
My second novel
After the Storm is set in Belize City and an island in the Caribbean Sea. There
are four main characters: British couple Anna and Rob and an American couple
Owen and Kim who have an old sailing boat they
have been living on for three years. On their first night in Belize Anna and
Rob meet Owen and Kim. Owen suggests they charter his boat and he will take
them to the island of Roatan, where the diving is sensational. Anna is fearful
but Rob persuades her it will be a great adventure. Unknown to them Kim is
desperate to go home to Florida but Owen is determined to continue their life
on the boat. Straightaway we have conflict of wishes between the four
characters and a small boat is a very claustrophobic place when
tensions start to build.
The
two couples set off. It takes ten days to reach Roatan and that is a long time
when one of the four, Owen, is hiding a terrible secret that is eating away at
him. The strapline of the book
is Some Secrets Destroy You. The
storm of the title is both a weather storm and a psychological storm. By the
end of the novel all four characters have been changed by spending this intense
time together. The underlying theme is that you need to bring dark secrets out
into the light of day in order for them to lose their destructive power.
I greatly enjoyed
exploring the dark side of my characters in both these novels. With a thriller
you set up a problem that has to be solved and you are guaranteed a strong
forward momentum. Given this why did I decide to change direction with my third
novel and move away from psychological thrillers to writing contemporary
women’s fiction?
The reason was that
I had a strong desire to write about the issues raised by a woman’s working
life. So many novels depict women’s family and emotional lives. I’ve
seen much less fiction about a woman struggling with the pressures of work. Yet
that had been my life. A single working mother, trying to keep all the balls up
in the air, feeling conflicted about competing pressures. I wanted to explore
that.
I wanted to write a strong female character who also has her
weaknesses and vulnerabilities. My heroine Liz Lyon is 41 years old and
divorced. She is a respected TV producer and a guilty single mother. I wanted
to show the whole woman: work-Liz, calm, controlled, soothing egos and managing
a difficult boss and home-Liz who is far more emotional and reveals her real thoughts
and feelings. At work Liz has to bite her tongue and censor what she says. At
home she can let rip. And she fears that she is a better mother to her team than
she is to her beloved daughter Flo.
The drama of the workplace offers such a rich vein to
explore in fiction. So many issues and moral dilemmas are thrown up by this
aspect of our lives. There are power struggles, intrigue and betrayals as well
as moments of satisfaction and fulfilment.
I think it is
important not to keep doing the same thing in your writing just because it
worked the first time. I worked as a producer in television for 15 years and saw
this happen too often where repetition of a successful format stifled creativity.
You have to trust in your readers as why would they want the same thing over
and over?
Finally, for me the most important thing is to create
characters my readers believe in. It doesn't matter if they dislike a character
or adore them. But it does matter if my readers don't believe in them.
I am currently
writing a second book about Liz Lyon and StoryWorld TV station which will be
published by Head of Zeus in August.
About Jane Lythell
Jane
Lythell lives in Brighton and is a sea-lover, star gazer, film and football
fan. She worked as a television producer for fifteen years. She then moved to
the British Film Institute as Deputy Director, a year as Chief Executive of
BAFTA followed by seven years at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Her debut
novel, The Lie of You was published in January 2014; her second After the Storm
in January 2015 and her third novel Woman of the Hour in July 2016, all by Head
of Zeus.
About Woman of the Hour
Woman of the Hour
By Jane Lythell
Published by Head of Zeus (Paperback - 3 November 2016)
ISBN: 978-1784971212
Publisher's description
Meet Liz
Lyon: respected TV producer, stressed-out executive, guilty single mother.
StoryWorld
is the nation's favourite morning show, and producer Liz Lyon wants to keep it
that way. Her job is to turn real-life stories into thrilling TV – and keep a
lid on the scandals and backbiting that happen off-stage.
But then
simmering tensions erupt at the station, trapping Liz in a game of
one-upmanship where she doesn't know the rules. As the power struggle
intensifies, can Liz keep her cool and keep her job? Does she even want to?
Buy Woman of the Hour from Amazon UK here.
