What’s your favourite published work of yours and why?
Katie in Love, not merely because it is my recent book, but it was also the most painful and rewarding. For 13 months, like carrying triplets, it kept me in a state of insomnia, exhilaration and semi-cava-dependency (my drink of choice, lighter and less bubbly than champagne).
I worried over every word and sentence, and have tried to write both the best book I could and a book that was relevant to the times in which we are living – a time when falling in love when the world seems to be falling down around us is both surprising and terrifying.
Where do you draw your inspiration from?
Inspiration comes from your writing. Thoughts meander subliminally through our subconscious, at night when we sleep the brain is working. In the act of writing, phrases come out and you think: wow, did I write that? Did I have that insight? Sometimes you know something is good, good within your own limits, and those parts make life worth living.
Do you have any unusual writing rituals?
All writing is ritualistic, it’s an addiction; something you have to do. I have the same brand of pens and markers. I like yellow lined notepads. I have a corkboard pinned with quotes, a window next to the desk that throws back my reflecting at night when I sit at the laptop juggling the little black words so that they are shiny and slide together in ways that seem familiar and I struggle to make original.
Do your nearest and dearest know what you do, and if so, what was their reaction when they found out?
Mother was lived. She thinks she is the Mother in my first novel, The Secret Life of Girls. My Father was secretly pleased, but didn’t say so, not in front or Mother, and his brother, my favourite uncle, bought me an unusual present: the sexiest set of underwear EVER. He is a very naughty man who tells all his friends to buy my books.
What was your ideal career when you were a child?
I wanted to be a waitress. It seemed such a glamorous job walking about in a tight black skirt and heels, leaning over tables and looking disdainful. In fact, I live my dream by being an occasional events waitress and look on disdainfully at the faux-masters of the universe drinking too much and falling over. Being a waitress is educational and if I know anything about psychology, essential for the writer, it comes from serving tables.
How do you get yourself in the mood to write?
How does a bus driver get into the mood to set off on his big red bus? He puts the vehicle in first, touches lightly on the accelerator and pulls into the traffic. You switch to the document you are working on, read back over the last few pages and press on. Hemingway said always leave something undone when you end the day and it’s easier to go back and start again. I take that advice.
What’s the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
That you only fail when you stop writing.
Which author, erotic or otherwise would you love to meet and why?
Anaïs Nin. She took a torch and burned down the barriers that allowed intelligent literary erotica to become part of the mainstream. She lived her life as she wrote her books. She understood that the best erotica is told from the female perspective and created a style that no other writer in the genre has bettered. If I have one tip for writers in the genre, apart from reading Katie in Love, of course, it is read Nin.
What’s the biggest writing challenge you’ve ever taken on? Did you succeed?
My early novels, there have been five, all with ‘girl’ in the title: Girl Trade, A Girl’s Adventure and so on. They are linear, coming-of-age stories of girls discovering their sexuality and experimenting with who they are.
In Katie in Love, I set out to write a more complex narrative – an unlikely love story set against contemporary fears and phobias. With terrorism, the financial crisis, internet porn, speed dating, nude-selfies, love seems risky and absurd. When Katie meets Tom, the sex is great. She feels as if she is falling in love and explores her life, her past, her place in the world. She reaches unexpected conclusions and is forced to make choices that will change her life forever. It is a book, I believe, for today, and any young woman who reads it will identity with Katie.
*****
BLURB
Katie Boyd has nothing in common with Tom Bridge, the volunteer doctor she meets at a party – except in bed she finds a passion to match her own. Tom is intense, puzzling, a man who cares about others and compels Katie to question her own life drifting through the hip clubs and London party scene.
When Tom returns to his post in a Sri Lanka orphanage, Katie isn’t sure if their passion was lit by its brevity, or if love, unexpected and not entirely wanted, has edged its way into her life. Should she go back to being who she always was? Or follow Tom into the unknown?
Katie in Love is a compelling erotic-romance that will grip readers as they follow Katie’s journey to an ending they may have expected – but not in the way they expected it.
Brilliantly written and coolly self-aware, Chloe Thurlow was described by KM Dylan on Amazon as “…the Anaïs Nin of our times.” With Katie in Love – her sixth novel – Thurlow reveals a writer at the height of her powers.
BUY LINKS
Link for Amazon downloads – http://bookgoodies.com/a/B00S1SMMIG
Link for Amazon books – http://bookgoodies.com/a/1503014908
Author Bio
Chloe Thurlow is the author of six novels and the writing guide The Fifty Shades of Grey Phenomena. She lives in East London, likes dancing, cava, writing, practising Spanish and has, she’s been told, the worst Spanish accent in the world. Katie in Love is just out.
Website: http://www.chloethurlow.com/
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Enjoyed the interview. Thanks.