Author Interview: Kate Rigby

Today I am pleased to welcome Kate Rigby on to the blog with a quick interview! She’s come up with some fascinating answers!

Q&A

What is your favourite thing about writing books?
I think it’s exploring possibilities and escaping into the world of my characters and their world views. I also like playing with language and form.

Who is your favourite character in your book and why?
I have so many books and as I’m writing I usually have a favourite character, usually the main character or characters. As I’m writing a follow up to Down The Tubes at the moment I would have to say Michael. He’s a true survivor.

What is your favourite drink to consume while writing?
Tea! I’m drinking some now!

Do you have any bad habits while you’re writing?
Yes, I’m too easily distracted by the internet! It wasn’t always so. In the days before social media I could just lose myself in my writing.

How do you research your books?
A variety of approaches really. I try and base it on experience and refer to my note books but having just decried the distractions of the internet Google can be a friend as well as a foe! I’m a bit of a perfectionist about getting things right. But these days there are so many things to help us even if we’ve never visited a place, we can walk around the roads on Google Maps, we can ask questions on Quora or join Facebook Groups dedicated to the things we are researching. In some things I have quite a good memory eg for when records were out (this is mainly pre 1990s) and also about the kind of slang expressions people used. I usually notice if people use today’s slang in books that are set decades ago.

Are you a plotter or a pantser?
I’m never sure but I think it’s because I’m a plotster! To confirm this I’ve just done one of those fun quizzes which states this: “Sometimes you plot. Sometimes you pants. It depends on the needs of the story, the characters, the pacing, or the details of your workday. This can give you the best of both worlds, since you are able to apply equal effort to all aspects of the writing craft. Occasionally, you end up trying to write a scene in one way which you really should have written another. Grow by adding some analysis of whether plotting or pantsing is most appropriate to a specific session of writing, and coming to that session prepared.”

I think this is very true. I always think I’m a panster and that I have lost the plot (I even wrote a book entitled this!) but I think I plot more than I know.

If you could live in any fictional world, which would you choose and why?
I like the idea of being unrestricted and being able to fly in and out of another’s world. One thing I did love as a child was the way the back of the wardrobe turned into an another world for the children in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. But it was wardrobe and the scape between their and the lamppost which was my favourite, rather than what went on beyond that point! It seemed magical to me that the wardrobe could open up like that.

About the Author

Kate Rigby was born near Liverpool and now lives in the south west of England. She’s been writing for nearly forty years, with a few small successes along the way, although she has long term health conditions. She has been traditionally published, small press published and now indie published.
She realized her unhip credentials were mounting so she decided to write about it. Little Guide to Unhip was first published in 2010 and it has since been updated.
However, she’s not completely unhip. Her punk novel, Fall Of The Flamingo Circus was published by Allison & Busby (1990) and by Villard (American hardback 1990). Skrev Press published her novels Seaview Terrace (2003) Sucka!(2004) and Break Point (2006) and other shorter work has appeared in Skrev’s avant garde magazine Texts’ Bones.
Thalidomide Kid was published by Bewrite Books (2007).
She has had other short stories published and shortlisted including Hard Workers and Headboards, first published in The Diva Book of Short Stories and as part of the Dancing In The Dark erotic anthology, Pfoxmoor Publishing (2011). Hard Workers is to republished for a third time – in an anthology called ‘Condoms & Hot Tubs Don’t Mix’ anthology – an anthology of Sexcapades – will be published by Beating Windward Press in the US on February 14th 2018. It is her shortest ever story and yet the most popular in that sense! All proceeds will go towards planned parenthood.
She also received a Southern Arts bursary for her novel Where A Shadow Played (now re-Kindled as Did You Whisper Back?).
She has re-Kindled her backlist of previously published as well her unpublished work.

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