Today’s interview is with Sara Jayne Townsend, author of Suffer the Children. Read what she has to say about the lessons she’d learned regarding the world of publishing, how writing is like an exorcism and the creepy house that lead to her novel’s publication.

LZ: What prompted the idea behind Suffer the Children?

SJT: Many years ago I had a local job, and I used to walk to work every day, down Nightingale Road. At the end of a row of houses, there was a creepy-looking place. It looked abandoned and neglected, and I never did work out whether or not anyone lived there. I started to imagine what might be working there and wrote a short story called Kiddiwinks about an old woman who lured children to her creepy house and killed them. When my writing group work-shopped the story, they thought I should turn it into a novel. Suffer the Children is very different from the original short story, but the creepy old house on Nightingale Road is still in the novel. The real-life one is still there, as well.

LZ: Are you still involved with your workshop group? For readers who may not know, what is a writing workshop group like?

SJT: The T Party Writers’ Group has been in existence since 1994, and still going strong. We meet once a month and we usually critique two or three stories at each meeting. The stories are sent out in advance, and everyone reads them and makes note of their comments prior to the meeting. At the meeting, we go around the circle and everyone has a few minutes to speak, and then there is an interactive discussion at the end of the critique, for maybe 15 minutes or so, in which the author might mention what he or she was trying to achieve, and ways in which the identified problems might be tackled. We have been told we are a bit harsher than some other groups–we are not intending to be so, but people are very open about elements in a story they feel aren’t working, and it can sometimes be hard on a writer to be faced with how much revision is needed.

LZ: What lessons have you learned about book publishing?

SJT: I always imagined the book contract as the end of the story, whereas I have learned that it’s really the beginning. Before I had a contract, nobody cared when I wrote or when I didn’t. Suddenly I had deadlines to meet, guidelines to follow. It meant I suddenly had to become more professional, and it’s fair to say it was a life-changing experience.

LZ: In what ways did you have the change to meet the demands of your deadlines and the expectation of professionalism?

SJT: It’s rather hard to juggle the day job, the writing and now the marketing as well. During the editing process, I had to find time to work on the manuscript, regardless of whether I felt like it or not. Now I am involved in the marketing process, time I used to spend writing I am dealing with interviews, and guest blog posts and so on. There are no more hours in the day than there were before my publishing contract but now I have a lot more things to fit into them, and I’m still trying to settle into a routine that will work best for me. It has meant getting rather less sleep, and I have to be a lot more disciplined. It used to be that if I was feeling a bit stressed after a busy week and couldn’t get into the writing zone I would go and blast zombies on the games console for a while. Now I have to apply backside to computer chair even if I don’t feel like it.

LZ: What lesson has been the most valuable to you?

SJT: The most valuable lessons I have learned came from the editing process. I have learned so much about how to tighten my writing, cut out unnecessary adverbs and dialogue tags, avoiding passive voice and so on.

LZ: Your Lyrical Press author page says the following: “Whichever genre [Sara] writes in, somebody always dies in a horrible way.” Thus, dare I ask what inspires your writing?

SJT: I’ve always been interested in creepy and mysterious stories. As a child, I liked the Pan ghost story collections and such things, and I used to read the Famous Five, and Nancy Drew. I discovered Agatha Christie when I was about twelve, and Stephen King when I was fourteen. Since then, I’ve been reading—and writing—exclusively crime and horror. I am attracted to strong plots and books full of danger and exciting events. I want reading to be a thrilling experience, not a gentle ride.

On a personal level, I find that I use writing to exorcise negative emotions. I write a lot about betrayal, loss, fear, death and other feelings I’m having trouble dealing with. My grandmother, who was always quite disapproving of what I wrote, used to ask me, “why don’t you write nice stories”? The answer is, nice feelings I hold on to, so I feel no need to exorcise them. I suppose for me writing is not so much about escapism, but about a coping mechanism.

LZ: Suffer the Children is your first novel. What was your first reaction when you found out it would be published?

SJT: My first reaction was disbelief. Suffer the Children isn’t actually the first novel I have written; it’s just the first one to be published. It’s been doing the rounds with publishers and agents for years, and it’s come quite close to publication a couple of times, but something always happened and it never came off.

After so many rejections, I opened the e-mail from Lyrical Press expecting it to be another one. Instead, they were telling me they would like to publish it. I was delighted, but in the back of my mind some cynical part of me refused to believe it was actually going to come off.

It didn’t start to feel real until I had a cover, and a release date. When the finished version arrived in my in box, I finally allowed myself to get very excited. But I still haven’t had the big celebration I always promised myself when I got a book published. Now I’m looking forward to the release—that’s when I’m going to celebrate.

LZ: How do you plan on celebrating the release of Suffer the Children?

SJT: My husband works for a French company and has to work in Paris a lot. As it happens, he will be there the week before Save the Children is released, so we thought we would extend the trip to the weekend as well and celebrate in our favorite Parisian restaurant – Georges on top of the Pompidou Centre – the Saturday before release.

On Monday, April 19, release day, I will be giving away a free copy. To be in with a chance of winning, you need to post a comment on my blog. Monday’s blog post will reveal more details. I expect I will be partaking of a drink or two after work on Monday as well, to celebrate being a published novelist.

I’m also having a launch party on April 28. Even though it’s an e-book, I wanted a real space celebration, and I will be able to sell copies of the book on CD to anyone who wants a signed copy.

LZ: According to your Web site, travel is important to you. Have any of the places you’ve visited inspired a story?

SJT: I set the opening scene of my amateur sleuth novel in Central Park in New York after visiting there. I am stockpiling a lot of travel experiences, and I do think I will use many of them in future.

LZ: What projects are you working on currently?

SJT: I have two projects on the go, both of which are intended to be part of a series. I’ve got an amateur sleuth, Shara Summers. Shara is a Canadian actress, with one parent in England and one parent in Canada. I’ve drawn on my own background in Canada to create her, although she and her family are fictional characters. In the first book, she starts off in Canada and is summoned back to England for a family emergency, and while there uncovers a few family skeletons and a dastardly murder plot.

The second series is an urban fantasy series featuring a female private eye based in London, who specializes in the paranormal and the unexplained. My protagonist, Cassiopeia Brown, can astrally project and she lives in an alternative London, where supernatural beings exist and for the most part humans are unaware of them.

So far both of these series consist of only the first book with more planned. But because I’ve always been quite cautious about writing sequels to books that haven’t yet sold, which series I put more work into is going to largely depend on which sells first!

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To purchase Suffer the Children from its publisher, Lyrical Press, visit www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=288.

For more info on Sara Jayne Townsend, visit sarajaynetownsend.weebly.com.