Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to be a writer?
Jessica Thorne: I always wanted to write, to tell
stories. Even as a child I was obsessed with fantasy stories. I grew up on
Tolkien and Star Wars, Diana Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper, and read my way
through the local junior library before moving to the bigger one in the next
town. Eventually the librarians gave me a ticket for the adult library there as
well. I ended up being both a librarian and a writer. I don’t think there was
ever another option.
I write under multiple names. Currently I mainly write as
Jessica Thorne but I have previously written as Ruth Frances Long for Young
Adult fantasy, and as R. F. Long for adult fantasy. It isn’t as confusing as it
sounds because the books are quite different. With my Jessica Thorne books I am
now leaning towards a blend of fantasy and women’s fiction which is an
interesting combination allowing me to explore all kinds of interesting themes
in a different way. I keep the one website for all my books, and readers can
find everything at www.rflong.com.
I tend to wander from genre to genre as the story takes me
so multiple names can be helpful in that respect.
DJR: What inspired your book?
JT: The Lost Girls of Foxfield Hall was
inspired by a number of things. I always loved books like Tom’s Midnight Garden
and The Children of Green Knowe, and the idea of lives permeating a
place with magic. The story grew out of the idea of the maze at the heart of
Foxfield’s gardens. The women of Foxfield Hall come from a long tradition of
powerful women, and the many different aspects of being a woman. Their loves
and lives kind of took off from there.
DJR: What authors have most influenced your
writing? What about them do you find
inspiring?
JT: So many it’s very hard to nail down just a few. I
would definitely point to Susan Cooper and her Dark is Rising sequence
as a formative series of books. I love the idea of ancient magic persisting in
the modern world, living alongside us known only to a few. Similarly Alan Garner’s books were an
incredible influence as I try to capture his “rockiness of rocks and treeness
of trees”. Diana Wynne Jones taught me to “put the magic out with the
milkbottles” while Terry Pratchett constantly reminds me that the truth is
always far stranger than anything we can get away with in fiction. And of
course, to have fun with it.
DJR: How does your writing process work?
JT: I do a lot of thinking initially. I don’t plan
the story but I need to learn the world it will be set in. There is a lot of
research there, mainly through folklore and locations. I love to lose myself in
a place. I also use music for mood setting and to get myself deep into the
characters. I think you need to write from a place of love. Once I’m writing I
try to meet a specific word count each day. What that is depends on the book.
Sometimes it’s a range rather than a word count. I work in the mornings in a
specialist library, (Libraries again!) and so my writing time is mainly in the
afternoons and evenings. I like noise around me while I work, music or terrible
tv.
DJR: What have you written recently? What lies
ahead?
JT: My most recent book is The Bookbinder’s
Daughter, set in a magical library, for which I drew from my professional
life as my imagination. It came out in September 2021 and is available now. It
tells the story of Sophie, who returns to the library where she spent her
childhood, where her Bookbinder mother disappeared, and finds a world of magic
and mystery which needs her help if it is to survive. It is very much a book of
the heart and there are so many elements of it I adore. Not least our hero
Will, and his errant black cat Titivillus.
I am currently working on a new novel based on the legend of
the lost city of Ys, The Water Witch, due out in 2022.
DJR: What advice would you give an aspiring
writer?
JT: It’s a cliché, I suppose, but write what you
love, not just what you know. You’ll have so much more fun doing it. Don’t try
to write what’s popular or successful at the moment. By the time you have
finished your book that moment may have passed. Write the book you really,
really want to read. It’s still hard work, but it’s worth it. And never give
up.
Ruth Frances Long / Jessica Thorne writes romance and
fantasy from the heart which often strays into weird and wonderful liminal
places. She works in a specialized library of rare & occasionally crazy
books.
As Ruth Frances Long she writes young adult fantasy, often
about scary fairies. In 2015 she won the European Science Fiction Society
Spirit of Dedication Award for Best Author of Children’s Science Fiction and
Fantasy for A Crack in Everything.
As Jessica Thorne she writes adult fantasy women’s fiction, which wanders from Space Opera to time travel to epic fantasy, including The Bookbinder’s Daughter, The Lost Girl’s of Foxfield Hall, The Queen’s Wing, Mageborn and Nightborn. The Stone’s Heart was nominated for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Romantic Fantasy novel of the year in 2020.
Find her at:
http://www.rflong.com
@RFLong on Twitter
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