This week, we're talking with Paul Toolan about his new short story collection A View from Memory Hill: Stories ‘of a certain age'.
Tell us something unexpected about yourself!
I'm a bearded, left-handed, non-swimming Piscean.
How did you get into writing?
Very early – stories at school, then years of writing short plays for my students. When I retired, I had the time and space to write longer prose works, and I'm enjoying it.
What are you currently working on?
Book 3 in my Inspector Zig Batten series, set in the apple-orchard landscape of Somerset, UK. It's called ‘An Easter Killing'. Yup, should be ready for next Easter.
Where did you get the inspiration for your new book A View from Memory Hill?
From tiny grains of observation, expanded by imagination. For example, one story came from noticing an old man, alone and out of place in a pub full of young people. I live in a part of the word with an aging population, so I see and feel the effects of age, the past and memory – and these themes link the stories.
I like the idea that stories are simply pieces of the lives you might have lived, good or bad, had things been different.
Tell us more about the main characters in your short story collection.
Each story has a different lead character, providing a great variety of voices, male, female, old and young. The first and last stories follow Maeve and her Alzheimer's husband, Jack, on their journeys into the half-shaded landscape of memory.
Who is your favorite writer and why?
So many! I was brought up on the classics – Dickens, Conrad, English poetry etc – but Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories had a big impression on me, and still do.
What are your top 3 books of all time?
What an impossible question! Three I've returned to more recently would be JP Donlevy's A Ginger Man, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. We're lucky to have so many top books to choose from.
Have you got any writing rituals?
I mostly write standing up, using a desk extension. Better for one's health [we use 300 muscles to stand upright, apparently], and quite satisfying once you get used to it. Having said that, I tend to be most productive when on holiday in Greece, in warmth and sunshine, near the sea and sitting up on a sunbed, shaded by an umbrella.
How important is marketing and social media for you?
If I don't do it, I don't sell. Even better is getting professional help so I don't have to do it all myself.
Do you read your book reviews?
Within reason, and thankful even for the odd negative one because readers don't have to write reviews. I mostly ignore one-off comments and instead look for patterns because they tell an author something that can be worked on.
What advice would you have for other writers?
Read your work-in-progress out loud, to yourself. You'll hear the gaps, wonky dialogue and the dead parts.
What are you reading now?
Groan. I'm reading about orchard trusts, planning applications, and rural development law. It's research for crime novel 3, because the plot involves conflict between housing developers and an orchard preservation society. Got to be done!
What's your next step?
I've got several short stories on the go, even while trying to finish An Easter Killing. Story ideas won't behave. They don't wait while the crime novel gets written. They whisper ‘write me', and I have to.
You can follow Paul on Twitter.
