Interview With Kate Rigby

Read on for an exclusive interview with award-winning author, Kate Rigby!

1. First of all, for anyone that doesn’t know about you please can you provide a short introduction. Where are you from, what do you write and how long have you been writing? (As well as any other info you feel relevant).

Thank you. It’s a real pleasure to be interviewed and I’m very thrilled to  be part of the Chasing Driftwood Collective. I  was born in Crosby, Liverpool and now live in South Devon. I’ve also lived in Cirencester, Bournemouth and Wimborne. I started writing my first novel at the age of 19. My mum was writing a novel and going to a writers’ group when I was about 17. I had an idea for a book so I was able to pick her brains. I don’t know if I’d have started so young if it wasn’t for her as, unlike today, not many people wrote books in those days. Or if they did they didn’t shout about it! But it took me five years to write my first novel, now called Did You Whisper Back? I sent it out to several places and then rewrote it years later with the help of a Southern Arts bursary. It was picked up by an agent but not placed with a publisher. All told, I have been writing for over (coughs an indecipherable figure into hand!) years. I have mainly written novels but also some non fiction, short stories, flash fiction and poetry. In fact, I’m writing a lot more shorter stuff lately.

2. You are known for your hard-hitting and gritty fiction, which is unapologetic in its presentation of difficult themes. What is it about writing these kinds of books you enjoy? 

I’ve mostly started with the characters, who are usually troubled in some way or in some sort of challenging situation.  This often means the themes will also be thorny and hard-hitting: someone struggling with disability, bullying, child abuse, drug addiction, mental health issues and so forth, as well as the normal pains of growing up, love triangles, sexual exploration, family problems or societal conflicts. It’s satisfying as well as challenging to put my characters through difficulties they need to overcome although I don’t go in for neatened off endings. Often I leave them open-ended. I think it’s important not to shy away from difficult themes but to tackle them. My novels tend to be predominantly character-driven and a bit niche. They’re also what’s known as lit fic in the sense that they’re a bit more experimental with viewpoint, style, structure and so forth which is the kind of book I also enjoy reading.

3. One of your most notable novels, Down the Tubes, deals specifically with substance abuse. What is it about this book in particular you feel sets you apart as a writer, and how did your previous career aid with this?

Working in this field for years left a lasting impression. I met so many traumatized characters who’d experienced devastating abuse in childhood. Michael, the main character in Down The Tubes, wasn’t based on one particular character but he was typical of some of the people I came into regular contact with through my work or heard about via my fellow workers. Of course, I was able to weave the theme of working in the addictions field into the book too and add a dramatic element by having Michael’s mother applying for admin work in this field. This meant she would uncover shocking truths about her missing son.

4. Down the Tubes continues with a follow up novel, The Colour of Wednesday. What can readers expect from this sequel and how long had it been between publishing the first and second novel in the duology?

Those who read Down The Tubes mentioned they wanted to know what happened next but I never intended to write a sequel!  It just suddenly came to me about ten years ago what Michael’s story was two decades on from that novel, particularly in relation to the death of a family member, which played out in real time. I don’t want to say too much about the plot but the death is the catalyst for all those unresolved past issues and a return to addiction and self-destruction. Addiction is so often a lifelong battle. There are more relationship and family strains as his past comes back to haunt him and new revelations come to light. With the help of a new friend, Michael hopes to get his life back on track again. The Colour Of Wednesday explores the dark interior world of grief and past pain, while looking toward a redemptive world of hope and self-discovery.  It was nearly twenty years between writing Down The Tubes and The Colour Of Wednesday, although Down The Tubes has had many rewrites since I first penned it!

5. You’re very vocal online about your experience with neurodiversity. What can you tell us about your experience and how this plays into your life as a writer?

Yes, I’ve been writing for over forty years and  yet was only diagnosed as Audhd (both autism and ADHD) in 2022 so I was very late diagnosed. It just didn’t occur to me that being involved in the creative arts and also being neurodivergent is such a common thing!  That compunction and compulsion to create; that hyperfocusing on your special interest – it should have been a giveaway but it wasn’t. This also links into what’s known as ‘maladaptive daydreaming’ (though I prefer not to use the word maladaptive). I did a video on this with my sister as we both used to spend hours inventing characters and acting them out from childhood. Most people who engage in this tend to do it on their own – probably in the absence of having a fellow daydreamer!  Obviously, I also spent a lot of time doing it as a solitary thing too eg during lessons at school or walking to and from school or work. I lived much more inside my head than outside and writing became a channel and outlet for this too. But so many women are getting a late diagnosis now because our understanding of neurodiversity – autism, ADHD and other forms such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, bipolar etc – has massively evolved in the last ten years or so. Prior to that, and especially for women who grew up in my era, it was something that was only thought to affect young boys, or some male adults as in Rain Man.  Women and girls also have gone under the radar because of their greater tendency to mask and a greater pressure for them to ‘fit in’ socially. But the more women and girls share their experiences the more awareness is raised  and common misconceptions challenged. This is partly why I have embraced my diagnosis by starting my own videos on YouTube and TikTok and sometimes with an accompanying written blog which I have called Authism (autistic author). I realised there are so many areas to explore as an autistic author: like reading processing speed, plotting a novel, the addictive nature of writing itself and so on, as well as the non-authorial topics. So much has been a revelation to me.

6. In addition to the above, are any of your characters neurodiverse? And if so, was this intentional at the time or something you’ve discovered emerged organically later?

That’s very interesting because that was another reason I began my videos and have done some on that very subject. For instance, Helen in Fruit Woman finds it hard to concentrate on the world around her and has always lived in a bit of a fantasy world with her sister Cathy. This has been a way of coping with the pressing demands of the real world. People remarked on Helen being like a teenager rather than someone of twenty-seven. Many autistics much older than Helen are just as child-like and young for their age! Helen is naive and doesn’t always see danger. At their old Devon holiday haunt—Myrtle Cottages—Helen’s best friend Bella accuses her of being ‘deliberately obtuse’, unable to believe she could be so clueless. But Helen tends to take people at face value. She is ultra sensitive and feels things more intensely than most of her contemporaries. As children, she and Cathy didn’t always understand the social rules. It was hard for them to fit in and they were therefore susceptible to bullying.

I did another video and blog about Carrie in The Other Side Of Carrie Cornish who is hugely affected by neighbour noise. Here’s an excerpt from that blog:

“There’s no doubt in my mind now that Carrie is autistic but when I began writing it in the noughties I had no idea. But this books is semi autobiographical. I couldn’t finish it at the time as it was too close to my own experiences so I rewrote it some years later. But you’ll find no mention of autism in the book at all. Carrie does however mention her anxiety, her panic attacks, her social anxiety and agoraphobia. She withdraws into her fantasy world with her alter-ego—Seroxat Sid. We also see that she suffers with noise and light sensitivity and other sensory overload and trichotillomania (hair-pulling) though she doesn’t refer to it by name. She refers to trichotillomania or trich as a guilty secret. I didn’t know for years that this is what’s known as a ‘stim’ (or self-stimulation) nor that it’s a very common stress-buster in autistics.”

There are other characters I want to highlight in future videos. But in answer to your question it definitely wasn’t intentional! I can only observe neurodiversity in my characters retrospectively.

7. Being a writer, especially indie, you are expected to do anything and everything for your books… Including marketing! As a writer who has embraced TikTok, how are you finding it and what advice do you have for others?

Like most of us indies I loathe marketing with a vengeance! We just want to get on with the fun stuff right? 😊 But it’s one of those necessary evils. I did think doing videos and blogs, combining content of interest to fellow audhders with my own writing would be a novel approach (no pun intended!) But there are so many other aspects to my own autistic journey that it’s not always easy to limit it to writing so I have branched out a bit. I know TikTok does have a shop but I’ve not tried selling on there yet so I can’t offer any advice there, I’m afraid. I’ve had more engagement on YouTube, if I’m honest. I think it’s a very different demographic there and people tend to subscribe to your channel because they’re interested and watch the whole video. The TikTok analytics show that most people only watch a couple of seconds before moving on to the next one. It’s very fleeting and fast moving on TikTok, I guess, with lots of competing content (not to mention flashing and sensory stimulation – an audhders nightmare!) There are a few people I follow on there and vice versa. But I can only deal with it in small doses. 

I also set up a Facebook group for autistic book lovers: readers and writers. Originally I had assumed that voracious readers who can’t get enough books to read, and prolific authors who are always needing more readers for their books, would be a match made in heaven. But it hasn’t quite panned out like that yet. Still, as with any group there are a few regular engagers and hopefully a small community building. There is also a spin-off Facebook page, too, for books by or about autistics.

8. One of your books, Fall of the Flamingo Circus, was first published in the late 80s. What can you tell us about this book’s journey? Do you remember what first sparked the idea? And how was the publishing process? Tell us everything!

I do indeed remember what sparked the book – this was actually my second novel. But I invented this character Donna in 1977 at the time of punk and she just took off (with the help of my co-creator sister who also invented a male punk character at the time. He was called Laurence, so Lauren seemed a perfect choice of name – a kind of amalgamation of the two, if you like!)

I only recently brought the book back out into paperback after all these years but with a new introduction, charting some of the book’s history. I originally submitted it to a small press – the Malvern Publishing Company – who snapped it up in 1988 but they only published hardback books. Acceptance was so thrilling as well as scary! I felt on cloud nine for a few weeks, pinching myself every so often. This didn’t happen to people like me, surely?! I’d had four years of sending out my first novel. Malvern negotiated paperback rights for me and managed to get me a review in The Times. Fall Of The Flamingo Circus was then published by Allison & Busby in 1990 and US hardback in the same year (Villard). There was no Print on Demand (POD) back then, so the UK paperback was ‘remaindered’ after about 18 months having sold about 2000 copies which was sort of average, I gathered. But no great shakes.

I had attempted to get Flamingo Circus back into print with a traditional publisher but once I went ‘indie’, I prioritized those books of mine that had never been in print. It was enough for me just to get Flamingo Circus into e-format in 2012 because I had no electronic copy. I found some software on my computer called Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and that’s how I did it, page by page. Once in digital format, it’s a cinch to go from there to print. It was just a question of finding the time.

When I came to put it out in print again, thirty years on, I wondered whether I should now rewrite it in the way I originally should have. My character, Donna, was a singer in a punk band called D.K. and the Dildos 😃 (DK being her initials). She wrote some songs and the band also made some records but I guess I didn’t know much about the logistics of that. This is the main change I would have made. She was a ballsy character wanting to be at the forefront. I would probably include her original details, birth date, sibling names and so forth. She was from Hull but I knew nothing about the place. As mentioned, she ‘hung out’ with some of my sister’s invented characters who some of the book’s characters were based on. Tramp was based on Laurence; Alec on Adrian and so on. But these characters were so real to us that it would have felt like libel! But the characters of the book have taken on their own lives and the spirit of Donna is completely in Lauren.

I would have perhaps included more music too. That’s perfectly OK nowadays, whereas back then it was less the thing, maybe… 

Some of the language used is from its time but may not be acceptable today.

9. Writing has been part of your life for so long, what keeps you so inspired to keep putting pen to paper? Is it something that comes easy to you from initial idea to final concept? Or is it a longer process? Are you a plotter or and pantster when it comes to fiction? Or both!?

I think it comes back to the fact that I need to write, which I know many other authors will understand. It is a compulsive thing, which becomes second nature. You hear a song which triggers a memory, observe something in nature or in your environment, hear about someone’s experience on the radio, or recall a conversation or turn of phrase. I think when you’ve been writing for so long you have a glut of half-formed ideas and notebooks, some of which become fully fledged novels, others may be used in shorter pieces. Others are still waiting for the right story. Sometimes they are small cameos which lend themselves to flash fiction. Once I have an idea,  I usually like to see it through. The idea or concept isn’t difficult but putting the flesh on the bones and working out subplots is much more challenging. I usually sketch out a plot which evolves as I go along but the freedom of pantsing suits my way of writing. So I think I’m a bit of a planster!

I can sometimes get distracted by too many subplots, with an inability to see the wood for the trees. This also relates back to my executive function challenges!

This is, maybe, why I like to write slice-of-life or stream of consciousness fiction where plot is looser and I can make use of flashback and less linear sequences. Luckily this is de rigueur in a lot contemporary or literary fiction.

10. Finally, like so many others, I am on tenterhooks to find out what is coming next! What can you tell us about any upcoming projects you have (writing or otherwise!)

Thank you! Well, I’ve been trying to write memoirs for about three years and had the idea around 2016. It’s the longest thing I’ve written and it will need massive shaping and possibly being made into several books. I can’t wait to get to the end of this epic first draft and get to work with sharp lopping sheers! It’s far too long and unwieldy as is. The trouble is, I have kept a regular diary since late summer 1975, and so I get lost in rereading them and making notes. I don’t want this to be too chronological if I can help it but I have to go through the dairies chronologically. I’m at last up to 2020. In a way it was easiest (and most satisfying) going through the earliest years of my life when I was just reliant on key memories. When you’ve been working on something for so long you inevitably change your perspective and how you want to go about it although I’m not sure my initial premise is that original at all; it’s not as if I’ve lived an uber interesting life compared to many.  But I’m just trying to get it all down at the moment so I can move onto the more creative stage.

In between times, I’m keeping going by writing the shorter pieces. For instance, I have written a short story spin-off to my very first novel Did You Whisper Back? I hope to bring that out as a stand-alone first before adding it at as an epilogue to the main book. I’m also writing a lot more poetry. I would love maybe to bring out a poetry and flash fiction collection and also to explore audiobooks but that would be a big undertaking.  

A huge thank you to Kate for joining us today! If you would like to know more about Kate and her huge back catalogue of books then please follow the links below!

Links:

Website: https://kjrbooks.yolasite.com/

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/authorrigby

Blogs: https://authisticwords.blogspot.com/

http://bubbitybooks.blogspot.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/kate_jay_r

TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJTtmSAk/

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@TheBubbity

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Kate-Rigby/author/B001KDR9GE

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4768025

Facebook book lovers group for Autistics:https://m.facebook.com/groups/243261171372852/