Jo Platt's latest novel, You are Loved was published on August 14th by Canelo. I am delighted to be featuring it today as part of the Blog Tour and to welcome Jo to Books, Life and Everything to answer some of my questions. First of course, let's find out more about the book:
Sometimes, life needs a rewrite…
Author Grace Waterhouse has hit rock bottom. Her ex-husband has just had a baby with his new partner and her latest novel is… well, the less said the better.
Desperate for distraction, Grace impulsively takes on a friend’s cleaning job, parachuting herself into a new social circle including an eccentric OAP, a heartbroken twenty-something and one James Brooke, an enigmatic lawyer with an unblinking stare.
Add to this mix an anxious literary agent, a hairdresser who doesn’t mince words and a newly repentant ex-husband, and Grace's career break proves to be more breathless than breather.
They say that all you need is love – but what if that's the one thing you haven't got?
Welcome Jo to Books, Life and Everything.
Would you like to start by telling us a little about
yourself and how you started as a writer?
I’m Liverpudlian, but as my family relocated to Wiltshire
when I was eight, I no longer have the accent – save for pronouncing ‘bath’ and
‘path’ exactly how they’re spelled, rather than as ‘barth’ and ‘parth’ as the
rest of my family do.
I studied English literature at King’s College, London, and
then remained in the capital for eleven more years, working for a City firm and
starting a family. We moved to Seattle
in 2001 and then St Albans in 2003, before finally settling in Bristol in 2004.
To say my writing career wasn’t entirely planned is a bit of
an understatement. I wrote my first
novel, Reading Upside Down, largely in secret and wholly for fun,
self-publishing it only under gentle pressure from my family. From there, it was picked up by the Darley
Anderson agency and then sold to publishers internationally. It was a whirlwind journey and, as I say, not
one which was at all mapped out.
What is it about the romance genre which attracts you?
I actually read a lot more literary and crime fiction than
romance. But I’m quite a simple soul at
heart and day-to-day I want to feel uplifted by my work. I think if I had to immerse myself in angst,
or murder and mayhem, on a daily basis then that might not be the case. That’s
not to say my novels don’t have their slightly darker side. More than once my husband came home from work
to find me sobbing over aspects of my second novel, It Was You. But I can’t pretend that my writing is
anything other than primarily upbeat and optimistic. That makes me feel good and, I hope, the
reader too.
What are your writing routines and where do you do most of
your writing?
I work from home. My
family think that I work in the study, but I actually spend most of the time on
the bedroom sofa, with Barry the cat either sprawled across my lap or draped
around my neck like a fox fur stole.
I usually aim to settle down to writing at about 9.30am, and
from then until school pick-up there’s a lot of tea, cake, tutting and
faffing. The amount I write varies
enormously day-to-day. If I’m feeling
particularly inspired, I’ll take the laptop to bed and keep going until my
husband moans about not being able to get to sleep.
You use humour in your writing. How do you manage the
balance between the comedy and romance as you write?
I’m not a fan of the overly sentimental, or of overblown
romantic gestures. I like being given a
bunch of flowers every now and then, but if I came home one evening to find our
bedroom strewn with rose petals, I’m afraid I’d just point my husband in the
direction of the hoover. And I think
that less-is-more attitude to romance is definitely reflected in my
writing. For me, it’s a question of
providing a level of romantic detail and description which leaves the reader in
no doubt as to the depth of feeling between two characters, without descending
into schmaltz. Deciding where that line
lies is entirely down to personal preference.
If I write something which I feel is teetering on the edge of
sentimentality, or which is making me feel uncomfortable, then I’ll haul it
back with humour. For example, when
Alice is declaring her love in It Was You, she loses vocal volume control. We know she’s in love, and we know it’s a
highly charged emotional moment for the characters involved, but I felt that it
was also a moment when both the reader and the protagonists needed the relief
of laughter.
Without spoiling the plot, please could you tell us a bit
about You Are Loved?
It’s about an author of romantic novels who has completely
lost the plot, both emotionally and professionally. Grace Waterhouse’s husband has left her for a
much younger woman and her literary agent has just told her that her latest
attempt at a novel is unpublishable and that she needs to take a break from
writing. The break comes in the form of
a part-time cleaning job, which Grace agrees to do for three months whilst her
friend, Rose, is in Spain. It is a job
which thrusts her into a new social circle including an eccentric pensioner, a
heartbroken young woman and James Brooke, a lawyer who is apparently two-timing
his live-in lover. And as if a career on
the rocks and a new job aren’t enough to cope with, Grace’s ex-husband suddenly
turns up on her doorstep with his tail firmly between his legs, leaving her
with some very tough choices to make.
Do you base any of your characters on people you know?
My characters are always blended versions of people I know,
have met or have seen in passing. They
might have the physical characteristics of one, the strengths of another and
the flaws of a third. The closest I have
ever come to putting an actual person in a novel is Ros’s father in Reading
Upside Down. He is basically my dad.
Finally, have you three words which sum up You Are Loved?
My favourite yet!
(Maybe…)
Thanks Jo for that great insight. Maybe one day, Barry the cat will find his way into one of your books- or has he already?
My Thoughts
This is a romance with some real bite- lots of humour which comes effortlessly out of Jo's characters' mouths. I enjoyed her easy, fluent writing style where nothing jarred and nobody seemed to act out of place. The subsidiary characters are a joy, especially Percy who added some real humour to the story. It is quite ironic that Grace, a writer, cannot read the signals and interpret just what is going on with her friends and acquaintances. All her conversations with James have a sassy edge to them which means that the story is never saccharin or overly sentimental- far from it- but it is a touching celebration of friendship and rising above what life throws at you.
I also enjoyed the fact that Jo's identity as a writer is hidden from some of the people she meets. This seems to give her a certain depth of character as there are several aspects to her personality, both from her past and present life which play on her thoughts and affect how she behaves. In Grace, Jo has created a thoroughly likeable character, with some very human flaws and insecurities. I'd quite like to meet her again...
In short: an entertaining read with a whole cast of characters to meet.
About the Author
Jo Platt was born in Liverpool in 1968 and, via the extremely winding route of rural Wiltshire, London, Seattle and St Albans, she is now happily settled in Bristol with her husband and two daughters. She studied English at King's College London before going on to work in the City for ten years. In 2000 she escaped into motherhood and part-time employment, first as an assistant teacher in a Seattle pre-school and then was a Bristol-based secretary to her husband.
You can connect with Jo here: Twitter
Thanks to Jo Platt and Ellie Pilcher at Canelo for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.
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