| Author Profiles - Jan Mark |
|
You could track my autobiography through the books. I never write about myself, but places and events are based on reality; the town I grew up in, Ashford, Kent and the school I went to in Nothing To Be Afraid Of; Canterbury College of Art in Still Life; Remote Control; the school where I taught in Hairs in the Palm of the Hand. I got a novel out of the pub where I worked as a student – At the Sign of the Dog and Rocket. My brother’s job, long distance lorry driving, became Trouble Half-Way, and his passion for renovating old commercial vehicles, A Fine Summer Knight. My first novel, Thunder and Lightnings, was set in the part of Norfolk where I moved with my husband and children after we left Kent and discovered that we had bought a house on the flight path of a military base. The Lightnings were still taking off when they went over the roof. The peculiar things buried by the previous owners, that I unearthed in the flowers beds reappeared in Under the Autumn Garden. Now I live in Oxford where I set Man In Motion and Crocodile Time. The Sighting is set near by, in the Thames Valley, a strange and mysterious part of the country that hardly anyone writes about. A lot of people write about Oxford but they usually choose the places that seem historic or romantic – and appear on television – the colleges, the ’dreaming spires’ the parks, the rivers. I prefer to write about the part I live in and you could find somewhere like that in any town in England, streets of small Victorian houses, shops on the corners. There is a boxing club on our corner. One of the reasons I bought this house is for the view across the allotments at the back, which featured in Worm’s Eye View. I once wrote a story that took place on a Boeing 747 crossing the Atlantic, and I’m just beginning a novel set in Heathrow Airport. You can get a story out of absolutely anything. AuthorZone 1
– Sept 1999. |
|
 |
Need
Directions to Peters?