Meet theAuthor: Charlie Laidlaw

 

 

 

 I am delighted to welcome author, Charlie Laidlaw, to Books, Life and Everything today. His latest novel, The Days of Our Birth will be published on 27th June by Rampart Books, a new London traditional publisher.

It is Charlie's sixth standalone novel and, like his other books is mostly set near Edinburgh, in the east of Scotland.  It’s contemporary literary fiction, 84,000 words.

Welcome Charlie!

Would you like to start by telling us a little about yourself and how you started as a writer?

My first jobs were as a journalist, starting in Glasgow and then moving to London.  My career has since been spent in PR…so my life has always been in and around words.  In that respect, I’ve been lucky because creative writing, particularly novel writing, is not something you can magically start to do.  You have to learn how to write, and I had years of practice before starting on my first book.

When did you first realise you were going to be a writer?

It was always a dream to write a book, because it’s the one thing I was good at, so there wasn’t ever a Eureka moment.  I spent years trying to write and failing.  I simply didn’t have the skills to plot a book or balance narrative and dialogue, and all the other myriad things that go together to create something worth reading.  As I said, nobody can simply pick up a pen and write a novel, certainly not a good novel.

What is your favorite childhood book?

Jennie by Paul Gallico.  It was the first book I’d read where one of the main characters dies and, through it, I learned that the world isn’t always made up of happy endings.  I haven’t reread it for many years, but I was captivated by it.

 Tell us about your latest book without giving the plot away.

Peter and Sarah grow up living next door to one another in a small town in the east of Scotland.  They also share the same birthday.  He’s not so bright, but she’s formidably intelligent.  She’s also autistic, and can’t understand why nobody except Peter likes her.

The days of our birth follows Peter and Sarah over twenty years from their sixth birthday onwards.  His journey into adulthood is fairly effortless; hers, more complex.  It explores how two very different people can grow up as best friends, but never quite understand why they’re best friends and what they really feel about one another.

The book, filled with humour and poignancy, is an exploration of how people change, the things we could have said and done and, sometimes, how we can make things right again.

Peter and Sarah are finally forced to confront what they really feel, about themselves and about each other.  For them, it is also about realising that love and friendship mean more than the sum of their differences.

How difficult was writing your second book - did having one published change how you went about it?

My first book was a nightmare.  It started as a police procedural set in Sussex and, after several drafts, ended up as a comedy set in the east of Scotland.  I absolutely learned the importance of detailed plotting.  For my second book, I wrote the first and last chapters…then filled in the middle.  In other words, I had a starting point and a finishing line.  I would urge any new writer to carefully plot before starting out.

How do you select the names of your characters? Are they based on anyone you know?

My books are always about ordinary people – the kind of people you pass in the street every day.  So finding names for them is easy: they have ordinary names.

Do you or have you ever considered writing under a pseudonym?

I wrote my first book under a pseudonym thinking it would be good to keep my writing life separate from my real life.  But all it did was create all sorts of confusions.  When the book was republished some years later, it was under my real name.

Good luck with the launch of The Days of Our Birth and thanks for telling us about it!

About the Author

 

Charlie Laidlaw is a PR consultant, teaches creative writing, and lives in East Lothian. He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and was previously a national newspaper journalist and defence intelligence analyst. He has lived in London and Edinburgh, and has two children. His other novels are Everyday Magic, The Things We Learn When We’re Dead, The Time Between Space, Being Alert! and Love Potions and Other Calamities.

You can follow Charlie here:  Website  |  X (Twitter)  |  Facebook

 

Book Spotlight : The Days of Our Birth

 

Peter and Sarah grow up living next door to one another in a small town in the east of Scotland.  They also share the same birthday.  He’s not so bright, but she’s formidably intelligent.  She’s also autistic, and can’t understand why nobody except Peter likes her.

The book begins on their sixth birthday.  Peter is having a birthday party in his back garden; she is having hers in her back garden.  One is a boys’ party; the other, a girls’ party and they agree that, maybe one day, they’ll have a joint party.

But, even then, Peter and Sarah are good friends.  He walks to and from school every day, and they hold hands.  He hangs around at her house until his parents get back from work.  She helps him with his homework.

Told in the first and third person, The days of our birth is filled with humour and poignancy.  It’s an exploration of how people change, the things we could have said and done and, sometimes, how we can make things right again.

It’s not about autism spectrum disorder – about one in one hundred people are on the spectrum – but about the differences between us and how those differences can drive people apart or, sometimes, bring them closer together.

The book follows Peter and Sarah as they grow from childhood through adolescence to adulthood.  They’re still best friends and Peter wants it to stay that way, because only by staying just friends, they agree, will they stay together.  Anyway, he has his heart set on Ellie McGuire, the class beauty who, it’s agreed, is well out of his league.

But Peter and Sarah are forced apart.  Sarah’s grandmother falls ill, and Sarah’s mum moves to Brighton to look after her.  It’s a convenient move because her marriage is falling apart.  Sarah goes with her, and is enrolled in a boarding school for gifted autistic children. 

She’s no longer a figure of fun at her new school, but misses Peter and, on one birthday, runs away to see him – and is then banned from further contact with him by her mother.  She’d run away to see him, not her.

Peter meanwhile, while also missing her, is getting on with being an adolescent and young adult.  He travels round Europe on a European Railcard with his friend Cal and, to his genuine astonishment, does start going out with Ellie McGuire.  He doesn’t think that Sarah will find this out, but she does.

Peter scrapes into university in Edinburgh while Sarah sails into university in London.  Now free to see her, Peter travels south to meet up with her for the first time in years.  It doesn’t go well because he’s still with Ellie, and Sarah finally understands the depths of her feelings towards him.  It’s only when she waves him off at Clapham Junction railway station does he realise that she’s saying goodbye.

Afterwards, Sarah’s life becomes both more methodical and chaotic.  She doesn’t form any relationships and her one-night stands are her attempt at being normal.  When she dates online, she gives false names and false occupations.  Peter, meanwhile, takes Ellie on a motorcycle trip to Croatia – which she had only reluctantly agreed to go on, and which effectively ends their relationship.

After university, Peter becomes a journalist in Edinburgh, and Sarah starts working for a charity in London whose main aim is to bring clean water and sanitation to poorer parts of the world.  She wants to help people, because nobody has ever tried to help her.

But on her twenty-sixth birthday, Sarah is run over and is rendered comatose.  She’d been on a date with someone she didn’t like, as yet another exercise in self-harm.  She doesn’t stick pins in herself, or knives; but she does want to hurt herself inside.

Sarah’s mother only allows Peter to see her because Sarah needs familiar voices at her bedside and, at the risk of being thrown out of the hospital, Peter agrees that, when she begins to wake up, he will leave.  He accepts that Sarah’s feelings for him are more intense and complex than his, and that he can’t risk hurting her again.

But for Peter, sitting by her bedside, it is also his moment of change and catharsis.  He’s once again seeing the person he grew up with, someone he hasn’t properly seen for several years, and it forces him to confront the real feelings he has always had for her. 

The book ends as it began, with Sarah travelling by train from Clapham Junction into central London. Her phone pings and it’s a text message from Peter.  He’s supposed to be covering a story in New York but he’s there, in London, waiting for her. 

On their different journeys, they both have learned that the differences between them can also, finally, bring them together.

 You can pre-order here