by Annie Murray
How did you come to choose Birmingham as the setting for your novels?
It was my home at the time so it was what was all around me. I had gone there for my first job and ended up staying and having all my four children there. It’s a city that often seems to get ignored. Not many people were writing about the city and its experiences at the time – at least not in the form of fiction, though there were a number of personal accounts. I was – and still am – a very interested outsider.
Can you tell us how you research historical settings?
When I began, in the early 1990s, there was no Internet. That has its uses now, certainly. But I’ve always done my research by a mixture of listening to people’s stories, using personal written accounts and history books, looking at the many photographs of old Birmingham and, very importantly, drawing on old maps because the place has changed a good deal and keeps changing. I always go and walk around the areas I’m writing about, even though some of the inner-city wards have changed almost beyond recognition over the past fifty years. Apart from that, like anyone else writing stories, I draw on my own experience or imagination about how things would feel.
How long does it take you to write a novel?
There is an expectation of producing one book each year. I write the first draft in about six or seven months.
Do you have a favourite novel that you particularly enjoyed writing?
I think at the time of writing I often have a love/hate relationship with each one – I have chosen to write it because I love the idea but also hate each one at times, because of the difficulties it presents. But in terms of subject matter, I remember particularly enjoying researching and writing the two books about canals, The Narrowboat Girl and Water Gypsies. For one reason or another I liked all the others as well, though.
Now the War is Over revisits the characters of War Babies. How does it feel to return to characters from a previous book?
It’s a good feeling. You already know them, quite deep down, and what has happened to them, so you are not starting from nothing. You can live on with them and see what happens in their lives and how it affects them.
Your characters go through some very difficult and emotional experiences – does this affect you while you’re writing?
Yes – especially once I have got past the first draft, which entails working out what’s going to happen. There are so many details to worry about at that stage that the emotion is slightly secondary. After that, when you are reading it back to rewrite it and following the thread of it like a reader, that’s when it hits you. In fact the older I get, the more unbearable it seems to become to imagine your way into the things some people have suffered.
Do you have a particular place you like to write?
I have a work room at the back of the house, one wall of which is formed by glass doors looking out at the garden, and where I have a lot of the books I need. I love light rooms and it is quite cheerful even in winter. It feels right. However, sometimes I just take off with a notebook and sit outside or in some odd place in the house and write by hand. It’s important to have a change now and again. For some reason it helps ‘creativity’ – though I’m still trying to work out exactly what that is.
What inspires you to write?
I find life and the world and people so very interesting and that is always the way I have responded to it – by wanting to make stories out of it. It honours life and makes it meaningful. It’s what makes sense to me.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
If you want to write, you’ll write. I suppose ‘aspiring author’ means unpublished author? In that case, I’d say, keep writing, keep working at understanding the process and improving and find some other writers who you feel a kinship with and share your writing with each other. It’s always really good to get constructive feedback from other people who you trust. It is also a way to find encouragement in what is otherwise a very solitary activity.
Who are your favourite authors? Do you feel they have influenced your writing?
Everything you read influences you one way or another, I think, though you feel much more drawn to some writers. I have different kinds of favourite authors. I love world literature which shows me people and places and experiences I would not ordinarily see. There are so many, but for example, Rohinton Mistry and Andre Makine would be two. And then there are the long-term favourites that you read when you are growing up and they teach you about stories and always stay with you – like Dickens and Charlotte Brontë and Anna Sewell who wrote Black Beauty and Helen Forrester’s books about her family in Liverpool. I am a fairly conventional writer in that I enjoy narrative storytelling in the way it has mostly been written for the past 150 years or so. I’m more interested, in the end, in people, than in experimenting widely with form.
How has the publishing process changed since you published your first book in 1995?
The main thing, of course, is that everything is done on computers. This has, among other things, speeded everything up. Twenty years ago there was a lot more paper. I wrote my first few novels by hand and then typed them up, before I felt compelled by the demands of speed to learn to write more on the keyboard. And back then there were parcels of thick typescripts to be sent in the post, when now you can submit your book as an email attachment. Actually it feels much less of an occasion doing it at the press of a button instead of carting it along to the post office and queuing with the other people with dripping umbrellas. This has also meant a more print-on-demand approach to publishing, rather than the old discussion of how large a print run there should be. And now a lot of it does not even get printed because so many people are reading books electronically.
How are you going to celebrate the publication of your twentieth novel?
With a nice glass of something red, I hope.
Do you have an idea for your next book?
Yes – and the one after that!
Keep in touch
Are you on Facebook? If so it would be good to hear from you. You can follow my author page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Annie.Murray.Author or search for ‘Annie Murray Writer’ on Facebook. You may also like my website www.anniemurray.co.uk.
War Babies
BY ANNIE MURRAY
She’ll have to fight to keep her family together . . .
Rachel Booker has had a difficult start in life. When her father dies, deep in gambling debt, it’s up to her mother to make ends meet. Hardened by the daily struggle, she has little time left for affection or warmth. Mother and daughter work together at Birmingham’s Rag Market, selling second-hand clothes to put a little food on the table.
There is a silver lining as Rachel makes her first childhood friend, Danny, at the market. As they grow older, friendship blossoms into something more. But at the tender age of sixteen, Rachel falls pregnant just as World War Two breaks out. The young couple marry in haste but it isn’t long before Danny is called up.
Left on the home front with a new baby, Rachel must scrape by with the other residents of Aston. If Danny ever makes it back, will he be the same boy she loved so fiercely?
Now the War is Over
ANNIE MURRAY was born in Berkshire and read English at St John’s College, Oxford. Her first ‘Birmingham’ story, Birmingham Rose, hit The Times bestseller list when it was published in 1995. She has subsequently written many other successful novels, including the bestselling Chocolate Girls and War Babies. Now the War is Over is Annie’s twentieth novel. She has four children and lives near Reading.
PRAISE FOR ANNIE MURRAY
Soldier Girl
‘This heart-warming story is a gripping read, full of drama, love and compassion’ Take a Break
Chocolate Girls
‘This epic saga will have you gripped from start to finish’ Birmingham Evening Mail
Birmingham Rose
‘An exceptional first novel’ Chronicle
Birmingham Friends
‘A meaty family saga
with just the right mix of mystery and nostalgia’ Parents’ Magazine
Birmingham Blitz
‘A tale of passion and empathy which will keep you hooked’ Woman’s Own
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Birmingham Rose
Birmingham Friends
Birmingham Blitz
Orphan of Angel Street
Poppy Day
The Narrowboat Girl
Chocolate Girls
Water Gypsies
Miss Purdy’s Class
Family of Women
Where Earth Meets Sky
The Bells of Bournville Green
A Hopscotch Summer
Soldier Girl
All the Days of Our Lives
My Daughter, My Mother
The Women of Lilac Street
Meet Me Under the Clock
War Babies
First published 2016 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2016 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-8628-8
Copyright © Annie Murray 2016
Design © www.blacksheep-uk.com
Figure © Colin Thomas
Street © James Nelson/English Heritage/Arcaid/Corbis
The right of Annie Murray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The poem ‘A Friend’s Illness’ here is taken from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
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