NK Chats To: Elle Nash
Hi Elle, thank you for joining me today. Can you tell me a little about your book, Animals Eat Each Other and what inspired the story?
Hi Laura, thanks so much for having me. Animals Eat Each Other is a book about a girl who falls into a relationship with a couple, right after graduating high school. The couple, Matt and Frances, find themselves enamored with her, so much so that Frances even renames her: Lilith. Things become complicated when the three of them become dishonest with each other about their true feelings, and Lilith must explore these new boundaries in the wake of her own nihilism about herself and how she gives and receive love, raising questions about her own self-worth.
The biggest inspiration for the story was just how I felt at the age of nineteen. I felt lost, had been burned in love by a couple different people through high school up until that point, and became very jaded. I wanted to write the sort of book about not just love but also about bisexuality that I would have wanted to read as a young woman, without tokenizing the ‘sexual awakening’ aspect of the coming of age story we’re all so used to.
What’s your typical writing day like? Is there somewhere specific you like to write?
My typical writing day is haphazard and on the fly. I am the mother of a young and vivacious toddler so I tend to write whenever I can get it in. In the morning before she wakes up, it’s 15 minutes here or there, during naps if I can, at night when everyone is asleep. I’ll even bring my laptop with me in my car if we’re running errands. If she naps before we get to our destination, I’ll sit in parking lots and type up notes and write then, too. I also write into my notes app on my phone a lot, and even dictate thoughts to myself to transcribe later. I feel a bit like I’m collaging most of the time.
What’s your favourite word and why?
Very tough question. Probably the word “spell.” There’s a lot to it. I view the practice of writing as a form of magic— like manifesting, conjuring something from the ether. The very idea of “spelling” a word, like carving something down onto a piece of paper or an object (or the internet) is a form of making a spell, of manifesting. You can out people under a spell with your words, by transmitting the feeling of a thing through atmosphere and character and mood. It’s a pretty powerful thing to think about.
Which authors have inspired you?
So many! Elizabeth Ellen, author of Person/a; Juliet Escoria, whose book Juliet the Maniac was just released; Mary Gaitskill, who has a great number of short story collections. Tom Spanbauer and Chuck Palahniuk’s early work were very inspiring to me as a young aspiring writer, along with Octavia Butler, whose book “The Parable of the Sower” really changed my life.
What are you currently working on?
I just shoved aside a second novel manuscript for a bit so I could focus on some short stories. It’s been fun.
What songs would be in the playlist for this novel?
Oh, so many, but here is a shortened list:
“10 or a 2 Way” by Korn
“F*** the Pain Away” by Peaches
“Tourniquet” by Marilyn Manson
“I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” My Chemical Romance
“Screaming Infidelities” by Dashboard Confessional
“With Teeth” by NIN
“King of the Closet” by Blindside
“Blood Pig” by OTEP
“WOW” by Marilyn Manson
What is your writing process like from idea to final draft? How long does it take you to write a book?
My first book took three years to finish a first draft, and then another year to get it to a publishable, final draft. I had never written a novel before and I had zero planning put in it whatsoever. It just kind of started as a short story and I kept expanding and expanding until it was more of a novel. The current book I’ve been writing, I actually planned out a lot beforehand, and challenged myself to finish a first draft in twelve weeks, which I finished in eleven, then spent a couple of weeks revising. I’m currently letting it sit for a bit before I go back to do more revisions and see if there are other structural issues I need to take care of.
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Book Review: Sleep by C.L.Taylor
All Anna wants is to be able to sleep. But crushing insomnia, terrifying night terrors and memories of that terrible night are making it impossible. If only she didn’t feel so guilty…
To escape her past, Anna takes a job at a hotel on the remote Scottish island of Rum, but when seven guests join her, what started as a retreat from the world turns into a deadly nightmare.
Each of the guests have a secret, but one of them is lying – about who they are and why they’re on the island. There’s a murderer staying in the Bay View hotel. And they’ve set their sights on Anna.
Seven strangers. Seven secrets. One deadly lie.
Someone’s going to sleep and never wake up…
Anna is in a car accident which kills two of her colleagues and severely injures another.
In order to try and move on with her life, Anna splits with her boyfriend, Alex and ends up working at a hotel on the remote island of Rum in Scotland.
When tragedy strikes further, she and the guests discover they are cut off from the rest of the Island.
Messages for Anna begin to appear. Each one is more sinister than the last. She soon realises she has nowhere to hide.
I am a fan of C.L. Taylor’s novels. I tend to start reading and before I know it, I’ve reached the end and it’s 2am in the morning. I have not wanted to put it down. It was certainly the case with Sleep.
C.L. Taylor has such a unique way of drawing you into her novels. The beginning of this book is a prime example.
The tension is built at a great pace. I thought I had it sussed and then something else would soon happen to debunk my theories. I couldn’t see the end coming.
Anna is a damaged character. She has been through a lot. I felt sorry and protective of her as she tries to move on from her life.
by Book Review: The Teashop Girls by Elaine Everest
It is early 1940 and World War Two has already taken a hold on the country. Rose Neville works as a Lyon’s Teashop Nippy on the Kent coast alongside her childhood friends, the ambitious Lily and Katie, whose fiancé is about to be posted overseas in the navy. As war creates havoc in Europe, Rose relies on the close friendship of her friends and her family.
When Capt. Benjamin Hargreaves enters the teashop one day, Rose is immediately drawn to him. But as Lyon’s forbids courting between staff and customers, she tries to put the handsome officer out of her mind.
In increasingly dark and dangerous times, Rose fears there may not be time to waste. But is the dashing captain what he seems?
After becoming a fan of Ms. Everest’s writing with her ‘The Woolworth Girls’ series of novels, I was delighted to hear that this author had a new series coming out, centred around the famous Lyons teashops. Please say hello to the central cast of Rose and her mother Flora, their friends Lily and Katie, Mildred a mother cum father figure whom I can’t wait to find out more about. The icing on the cake is a delightful Polish immigrant named Anya.
Set around two teashops in Margate and Ramsgate, the novel begins prior to the Dunkirk evacuation of June 1940 with our protagonist’s literarily on England’s frontline and indeed, this is emphasised to full emotional effect by the writer a number of times. The descriptions of both during and post an air-raid are amongst the most vivid and real that this reader has seen and I must congratulate the author on this.
Seaview is the guesthouse that Flora runs and as well as the teashops, is the main location for the action. There is an eclectic mix of characters that are present here and together with the inclusion of an Army love interest for Rose, makes this an engaging, thrilling novel that should bring not only keep Ms. Everest’s long-standing readers happy, but should bring her a whole new tranche of devotees.
by Book Review: One Last Summer by Victoria Connelly
Today it’s lovely to welcome Victoria Connelly and the blog tour for her latest novel, One Last Summer.
They have the whole summer ahead of them. Is it enough to rekindle the friendship they once shared?
Harriet Greenleaf dreams of spending the summer in a beautiful ancient priory on the Somerset coast with her two best friends—but her dream is bittersweet. On the one hand, it’s a chance to reconnect three lives that have drifted apart; on the other, she has a devastating secret to share that will change everything between them forever.
First to arrive is Audrey—the workaholic who’s heading for a heart attack unless she slows down and makes time for herself. Then Lisa, the happy-go-lucky flirt who’s always struggled to commit to anyone—or anything. Ever the optimist, can Harriet remind them of the joy in their lives and the importance of celebrating good friendship before it’s gone?
Through the highs and lows of a long, glorious summer, these three women will rediscover what it means to be there for each other—before they face the hardest of goodbyes.
Harriet, Harrie to her friends, books the Priory, a getaway in Somerset for six weeks.
She hopes that she can reconnect with her two oldest friends, Audrey and Lisa. Harrie holds a secret though, one she is not sure she’s ready to share.
Audrey is busy running her own school and is not taking the time for herself. Even when she arrives for the six-week holiday she has promised Harrie, she still can’t stop working.
Lisa has Yoga but isn’t really fulfilled by her day job.
One Last Summer is one of those novels that I knew from the first page was going to make me cry. And it did.
I immediately got very emotionally involved with all the characters. All three of these women have things they are needing to work through – work/life balance, getting older, mortality and relationships.
by Book Extract: I Love You Billy Langley by Monika Jephcott Thomas
Hello to Monika Jephcott Thomas and the blog tour for her latest novel, I Love You Billy Langley.
Twenty-year-old Netta can’t wait to leave Germany and teach in Brighton, England. It’s the height of the swinging 60s, but Netta hasn’t bargained for the prejudice she’ll receive in a country full of anti-German sentiment just twenty years after the war.
She finds solace in Billy, the school caretaker, with whom she falls in love.
But when she takes him back to Germany at Christmas it’s Billy’s turn to be on the receiving end of a frosty welcome.
I have reviewed the novel but first, Monika has shared an extract. Enjoy.
***** beginning of extract*****
Netta Portner looked around her bedroom as if it were the last time she would ever see it. It wasn’t.
Not just yet. But she felt the need to capture everything in her memory now, before the chaos of leaving ensued and clouded everything. As she scanned the room she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the dressing table. She turned to face her reflection, smoothed down her dress, adjusted her glasses, and raised her chin in the confident manner she prayed she could adopt when she stood in front of a class of comprehensive school students next week in the south of England.
‘Here!’ Her mother came hurrying into the room, dumping three suitcases of various sizes onto the bed.
To Netta the hurrying and dumping seemed completely unnecessary and typically dramatic. For a split second Netta wondered if it was designed to mask a sadness at her imminent departure from the nest, but that notion was soon buried under her general irritation with her mother, which Netta had cultivated throughout her teenage years.
‘These served me well when I moved here from Kunzendorf,’ said her mother.
‘During the war? When you were pregnant with me?’ Netta asked, delighting in her albeit embryonic presence in the story her mother had regaled her with on many occasions – the story of an arduous journey all the way across a devastated Germany on its knees in the final months of the Second World War. Since then Netta had never been much farther from home than the north coast for family holidays.
‘Hm-mm!’ her mother sang her response as nonchalantly as she could. ‘So a little jaunt to England should present no issue for them.’
‘It’s hardly a little jaunt, Mama.’
‘Well it’s hardly a race across a vast nation being bombed mercilessly by the Allies either, is it?’ her mother said.
Netta seethed as she flipped open the lid of each case.
Her mother, hands on hips, looked around the room as if she had never seen it before. ‘At last I can give this room a damn good clean.’
Netta looked daggers at her mother’s back as she ran her finger along the chest of drawers and grimaced at the dust she found there.
‘Oh please, mother! When was the last time you cleaned anything?’
‘Well, I’ll get Emilia to do it. Chuck out all this rubbish too.’
by Book Club
