Because I write out of order, I am always re-reading what I’ve written, trying to work out what’s missing, what I need to write next, what I’ve accidentally duplicated, and what doesn’t need to be there. It’s a never-ending process and it starts almost on day one. I find the challenge of writing from that limited point of view really interesting.īeyond that, I tend to write characters who are basically good-hearted but who are capable of inflicting harm despite - or because of - that. I really enjoy writing characters who are stuck inside their own heads, and moving them from their initial conceptions of themselves.

What are some of your favorite types of characters to write? It makes selling and marketing them a complete nightmare, but never mind! I could make a similar list for A Spoke In The Wheel, which is due out in May. (Honestly, that’s partly why I wrote that one!)Īnd so on.

There are very few books that present characters of faith who are comfortable in a LGBTQ sexual identity. Despite the university setting, it’s like no New Adult book that I’ve ever seen. Speak Its Name, for example, inherits a lot from the Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope - but it’s set in a university and deals with questions of sexual identity head-on. My books never sit comfortably within any one particular genre. What’s something unusual about your book(s)? Her next book, A Spoke in the Wheel, will be published in May 2018 and looks at physical capacity, the social model of disability, acceptance, redemption, and integrity. Speak Its Name (2016) explores Christianity and sexual identity in the context of student life and politics, and was the first self-published novel ever shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize. Her stories are about people who sort their own heads out and learn that they are, on the whole, not nearly such terrible human beings as they thought they were.

She now lives in Cambridge, works in London, and writes on the train. After completing her undergraduate degree in English Literature at the University of Exeter she moved to Guildford and found herself working for a major trade union.

Kathleen Jowitt was born in Winchester, UK, and grew up deep in the Welsh Marches and, subsequently, on the Isle of Wight.

A Spoke In The Wheel by Kathleen Jowitt